Thursday, July 20, 2006

The current Middle-East Crisis...

Reveals the sorry state of 24-hour news reporting in this country. I've had to turn over to Euronews to actually see for myself what's happening. On Sky News and BBC News 24 you are instead treated to a steady stream of experts opinionating and vying to deliver the most authentic-sounding pronunciation of Hizbollah. Viewers of these channels are thus denied any 'direct' experience of events, but are instead advised to synthesise an opinion from what is effectively a distributed panel debate.

And suddenly the most visible aspect of the whole story is the rather lame spectacle of dual-nationality Lebanese citizens hopping to safety on a Royal Navy destroyer − very reminiscent of the way worldwide attention immediately after the Rwandan genocide happily switched to the 'good-news' story of the international relief effort in the Congolese refugee camps (even though the beneficiaries of this were in many cases Hutu genocidaires.)

Once again uable/unwilling to intervene to stop the bloodshed at source, the international community is managing its self-image by showing us footage of its armed forces 'rescuing' people with the relevant paperwork. NYT: "Marines return to Beirut to aid US evacuation..."

1 comment:

G!º said...

Desde luego que estás molestando jejeje, no se inglés y entré aquí por el título, que está en español, pero lo demás no y no lo puedo leer.
Eres realmente diablogico.
Saludito de la España profunda.