You Can’t Escape

One of my personal objectives while away skiing was to get a respite from the news media’s fear peddling rubbish which is filling the void since the demise of the USSR, but as could be expected I was unable to escape entirely as footage of British soldiers in Iraq on an Italian news bulletin burst my bubble.

Soon afterwards I was approached by the gay Italian desk clerk, “Its absolutely terrible isn’t it?” he ventures as an opening gambit. So I fended off further discussion by eyeing him soulfully and simply saying “Its just propaganda”, then watched his eyes widen as he scuttled off to his duties sure that he was convinced I was some sort of fascist.

I’ll admit that it was an educated guess but lets face it, The News of the World is not exactly a bastion of quality reporting and coming on the heals of those Danish cartoons fiasco it just seemed too opportunistic to be true. What foreign viewers sometimes do not know is that while the BBC, as a state broadcaster, normally has to verify its reports before publication it is sort of exempted from these constraints when it reports that another news source has claimed something. It just has to state the source; thus giving said source a veneer of respectability. Then when this is in turn reported by another news agency the whole item can start to degrade into a form of Chinese whispers and important details fall down the sound-bite gap.

As it turned out it was a good call as when you manage to view the full footage it becomes apparent that the soldiers were reacting to being bombed, singled out the ring-leaders and gave them the kicking that they thoroughly deserved. Showing considerable restraint under the circumstances really and remember this is quite old footage taken when there was scant civilian authority to take the miscreants to.

A fuller commentary here : House of dumb - Like Kittens, But with Bombs.

So looks like operation “Clash of the Civilizations” is going just fine but if you are going to watch the news take it with a pinch of salt, or better still throw away your TV set and watch the salt.