. According to a recent Guardian article about the Beeb’s plans to pay their journalists to keep their peace instead of blabbing in newspapers, Greg Dyke (aka Boss Hogg) believes that managing journalists is like ‘herding cats’. Spare a thought then for the military trying to look after, or look out for, journalists in a battle zone, or an ‘intifada’, especially when some decide that ’embedding’ is just not real enough (and doesn’t make anyone famous). Much like a cat, you can guarantee they’ll blame you when things go wrong. Trust? Trust is for the dogs.
I wonder whether Nick Gowing’s caterwaulings would be neutered by Greg’s new policy? If so, is this progress? Once again thanks are due to Tim Blair.
Nick Gowing isn’t alone in his hysterical accusations. The vastly overrated, pompous git John Simpson feels likewise:
http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/story/0,7493,986599,00.html
So Simpson doesn’t have an anti-American agenda, but he can’t restrain himself from describing the deaths of journalists in the Iraq war as the “ultimate act of censorship” and feels it necessary for the US govt to investigate “why more journalists were killed by American soldiers than by any other means”.
After dropping his delightful little “ultimate censorship” bomblet, he decides to blame the policy of embedding journalists for the figures. He implies that any other journalists in the field were either regarded with a cavalier attitude or deliberately murdered, in the process revealing an apparent astonishing ability to see clearly into the consciences of US service personnel. The simple notion that war is a dangerously violent activity seems to have escaped him, as does the small poin
point that since the Americans were doing the vast majority of the ‘shooting’ in the war, it isn’t particularly surprising that they shot the most of anything – deliberately or otherwise. I’ve little doubt that the majority of any stray dogs killed due to military action were killed by US forces (why did you target those puppies?).
“In this war, the Americans were more than twice as dangerous to the proper exercise of journalism, the freedom of reporters to see for themselves what was happening, as the Iraqis were.”
No anti-American agenda, but let’s not pass up the opportunity to misrepresent the almost inevitable deaths of war correspondents in warfare as being an infringement on the freedom of the press, for which, of course, the Americans are most dangerously to blame.
“Not because journalists are so wonderful, not because they are special in any way, but because their activities have a direct bearing on some of our most important liberties and the genera
general health of our society.”
It’s a shame some of these journalists can’t be concerned about our liberties and the general health of our society when they set out to tell lies to promote their personal agendas.