Oh boy, is America's name mud over there in Britland.
An American website, the Drudge Report, broke the media blackout over Prince Harry's deployment to Afganistahn, forcing him to return home. Now the American media is being maligned as generally reckless and desperate to own a story at any cost - even the cost of human life. You should have heard my parents on the phone last night!
While I think it was certainly irresponsible to put Harry and his squadron in danger just to be the first to release the story, I hardly think that The Drudge Report is representative of the American media in general. Nor am I surprised that an American news outlet (mainstream or not) is particularly thrilled about being gagged just because Harry is a member of the British Royal Family.
While we're on the subject of the Royals, I have to say I'm ticked. What started off as a 5 hour BBC Special on a "Year with the Royal Family" has been condensed into a one hour, MTV-style edited special on ABC this coming Monday, hosted by Barbara Walters - who wasn't even part of the filming and didn't interview a single Royal for the special. One year, condensed to 5 hours, condensed to 1 hour, and then no-doubt interrupted by 20 minutes of commercials and another 20 minutes of BW asserting her 'journalistic superiority' while chattering endless about something she knows nothing about, between "clips" from the BBC special, no doubt carefully selected to only include the most salacious filming. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
4 comments:
Bah! on the whole lot of them. The media, I mean, not the royals.
The media certainly has its place in a functioning democracy, but I spent some time watching cnn and msnbc etc while convalescing and it's all about the bottom line - that's the driving force. In some ways that works, in some ways it doesn't. Suffice it to say that 20 minutes is all I can stand.
I have to agree with e... I stopped listening to a lot of the news a year or so back, and my quality of life has improved significantly. I think the problem happened when the news stopped being about objective reporting and started being about ratings. I'm sure there's an objective source somewhere out there in the world, but I have yet to find it.
It's called the BBC, Koda.
Actually I think I may have stumbled onto that a few months ago... Perhaps I'll seek it out again tonight.
I watched an old episode of Arrested Development last night in lieu of the 10 o' clock news. The news promo for some new danger lurking in the dentist office made the the decision a lot easier.
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