Terri Schiavo smiles at her mother. Schiavo follows a Mickey Mouse balloon with her eyes.

Replayed on countless news shows and posted on the Internet, the clips help drive national sympathy for Schiavo's parents, who oppose their daughter's court-ordered feeding tube removal.

Seen without context, the snippets raise questions for laypeople. Is Terri Schiavo aware? Can she hear? Does she understand?

Less widely known are four hours of images, taped in summer 2002, of Schiavo's inert stare from her hospice bed. They more accurately show the Pinellas Park woman, argue some doctors and Michael Schiavo, who says his wife is brain-dead and should die in dignity after 15 years in what doctors term a persistent vegetative state.

George Greer, a Pasco-Pinellas circuit judge, ruled the tapes fail to prove Terri Schiavo's brain still works.

``She clearly does not consistently respond to her mother,'' the judge wrote in 2002 after hearing from five doctors with divided opinions. ``The court finds that based on the credible evidence, cognitive function would manifest itself in a constant response to stimuli.''

The longer videos were recorded to help Greer decide whether Schiavo might recover, as her parents hope, or is a shell who never will improve, as her husband and some doctors maintain.

Yet, all the clips have become powerful icons in a public relations war over Terri Schiavo's fate. They also concern media experts who say they mislead.

One family's bitter feud - crossed by religious advocates, politicians and moral debates over life and death - climaxed Friday afternoon when doctors stopped nutrition that has kept Schiavo alive since her 1990 heart attack at age 26. Death may follow in a few days.

However the Schiavo case plays out, the carefully edited Terri Schiavo videos exemplify how pictures increasingly drive public opinion in today's video-fueled society.

``The vast majority of my e- mailers seemed to believe that the few minutes of edited [Schiavo] video represented the 24/7 reality of her last ... years,'' syndicated columnist Ellen Goodman marveled in 2003 after Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and state lawmakers enacted ``Terri's Law'' and got her feeding tube restored after a court ordered it removed. The law later was ruled unconstitutional.

`Video Becomes The Story'

Powerful images, more than words, control how people form opinions about polarizing issues of the day, from U.S. military abuses at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison to a Michael Jackson documentary of him nuzzling a teenager who now accuses the pop star of sexual abuse.

One of the first examples of how video can instantly galvanize public thinking was of Los Angeles motorist Rodney King's 1991 beating by police.

``In all these cases, the video becomes the story itself. The video becomes the thing everyone can pass judgment on,'' said Bob Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University.

Without compelling pictures, some stories might never earn the traction they seem to gain with wide exposure.

Hundreds of children, for example, disappear every year. But the 2004 Sarasota kidnapping of 11-year-old Carlie Brucia, caught on a carwash security camera and replayed as every parent's nightmare, became a national trauma.

Pictures, the adage goes, never lie, but video can be edited. Some media experts warn of distortion as images spread instantly worldwide while viewers may be unaware of fuller contexts.

``When the eye and ear compete, the eye wins,'' said Al Tompkins, a former broadcaster now on the faculty of the Poynter Institute media think tank in St. Petersburg.

Tompkins said the Schiavo videos show different things to different viewers. To be fair, everyone needs a fuller context to decide what they mean. But the pictures become the truth, to many, through repetition.

``It's the job of journalists to say, `Understand where it was shot and when and by whom,' '' Tompkins said. He acknowledged that seldom happens, with Schiavo stories wallpapering the news and a hunger for Schiavo pictures where few exist.

``It's never a wrong time to do the right thing,'' Tompkins said, adding that the media should be faulted for overusing the same edited Schiavo tapes.

At the same time, the image of Schiavo appearing to respond fills news photography's need to show ``maximum action,'' like the high jumper at the height of the leap, Tompkins said.

Influential Images?

The Schiavo videos were taped as part of a court-ordered medical evaluation three years ago. They are filed at the Pinellas County courthouse, although few have viewed them in their entirety.

They first were shown in public in October 2002 during a court proceeding. In them, Terri Schiavo interacts with her mother and neurologist William Hammesfahr, who was chosen by her parents.

Schiavo appears to follow orders to open her eyes wide and then hold them tightly shut, albeit belatedly after repeated instructions.

Three years ago, Michael Schiavo dismissed the tapes. They ``show nothing new,'' he said then. ``She's been doing that for 13 years. The same movements.''

Schiavo also said his wife would be ``very, very upset'' to know millions saw her with her arms and hands contracted up under her chin and her mouth agape as she lies in a hospital bed.

Snippets are posted on Web sites such as Terrisfight.org ,maintained by the Terri Schindler-Schiavo Foundation of volunteers who work with her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, to prevent what the site terms ``a court-ordered dehydration and starvation death.''

Thousands of people have posted pleas to save Terri Schiavo on the Web site, many after seeing the videos.

George Karalekas, a video editor at News Channel 8, said no record is kept of how often the Schiavo tapes have aired on WFLA, but he estimated hundreds of times.

``Any story we've done, we would incorporate the picture in some way,'' he said.

Forest Carr, News Channel 8 news director, defended repeated use of the videos, but said the public has been prevented from seeing Schiavo in full context.

``Rather than focus on how much that snippet appears to say and its influence on the case, to me, the question ought to be how is it this person has been held incommunicado? There are huge public policy implications in this case, yet the public's been prevented from knowing much about the case. We don't know what she's like all the time.''

Even so, Carr said no one has been misled by the videos.

``It's just that they draw their own opinions.'' he said.

Not everyone thinks the videos tell the whole story.

Vanessa Jones of Clearwater e-mailed TBO.com on Friday: ``When I watch or hear of this case in the media, they are always showing pictures of Terri from 2001. Why? We need to see recent pictures of Terri so that we can also witness her progress. I am tired of those old pictures.''

As Thompson, the television pop culture expert, said: ``All you've got is a picture, and it may be worth 1,000 words. But it may take another 1,000 words to explain what the picture means.''

Reporter Brad Smith can be reached at (813) 259-7365.