Compare and contrast Britain with North Korea. One has a state-controlled media, news blackouts and pages and pages of congratulatory and uncritical PR puff about senior members of a privileged, unelected elite. The other is North Korea. Boom boom.
The BBC has been justifying its decision not to report for the last ten weeks the news about Prince Harry fighting with the British Army in Afghanistan. If you weren’t convinced of the rationale for this decision before, then Jon Williams’ post on the BBC Editors blog probably won’t change your mind.
The whole idea of “trust for access” is part of the journalist’s stock in trade but when it involves the Royal Family, the Chief of the General Staff and the senior hierarchy of the BBC it leaves a sour taste in the mouth. I hate to sound like a wacko conspiracy theorist but what else aren’t they telling us? Will we wake up in May to be told by Nicholas Witchell that Prince Edward has been moonlighting for the last ten weeks as a Madonna tribute act in Gravesend?
The BBC’s justification for the blackout, in basic terms, is that by reporting Harry’s deployment, his and other soldiers’ lives would have been put at risk.
As Williams puts it:
When lives are at risk, it’s not always helpful to have things played out in the glare of publicity.
Well quite. But the simple answer to this salient point isn’t to roll over and agree not to report something when that nice Sir Richard Dannatt tells you to. It’s simply to say: “Sorry, Harry, but you’ll have to stay at home.”
Really, who cares whether Harry “wants” a career in the Army? It’s not as though he doesn’t have other options for how to make a living – in fact, he has the luxury of not having to do anything for a living.
The worst part of the affair is the acres of cyberspace that have now been given over to the worst kind of pro-royal PR dribble I can ever remember. Take a look at this page on the BBC News website and marvel at the sidebar on the right.
Prince Harry enjoys off-duty moments… Harry on nickname ‘The bullet-magnet’… Harry’s ‘excitement’ over posting… Brown praises Harry ‘dedication’… In pictures: Harry in Afghanistan
It’s like Hello! magazine with out the incisive edge.
Still, as Jon says:
We don’t do this stuff lightly – there are no other “voluntary agreements” in place at the moment, there’s nothing else we’re not telling you.
Gah! And we’re supposed to take his word for it. Like they haven’t got a track record in keeping stuff secret.
The Conversation {1 comments}
I’m always surprised that journalists are so happy to jump into bed with the military – the ludicrous embedding during the Iraq war being a case in point. You – as a journalist – agree not to say anything the military don’t want you to say in exchange for some fuzzy green footage of a jeep driving across a desert? Astonishing.
Having said that, I’m not sure there was any choice in this matter.
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