London’s Daily Mirror has been making news the past few days with its news that during an April 2004 meeting Prime Minister Tony Blair talked President George W. Bush out of blowing up an Aljazeera office in Doha, Qatar.
Citing Section 5 of its Official Secrets Act (which in the UK is seriously no-nonsense), the UK government has ordered the paper to cease reporting on the purportedly leaked memo. And for something so “purported,” a British civil servant (or two) is under arrest for leaking the “purported” document to a “purported” friend in the office of a former anti-invasion “purported” PM (parliamentary member) … fair play, the latter gent turned the document back over to the British government.
As for US response to the “purportedness” of this memo: "We are not going to dignify something so outlandish and inconceivable with a response," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.
Yeah, right. So George wanted to nuke a – lets call it less than friendly – news gathering office.
Who the hell cares?
Of course Aljazeera does and that’s understandable. Part of their statement noted: “If the report is correct then this would be both shocking and worrisome not only to Aljazeera but to media organisations [sic] across the world."
Being that Aljazeera has had a missile hit its non-occupied-at-the-time offices in Kabul, Afghanistan in 2001 (we thought it was a terrorist building) and had a reporter killed in a bombing of its Baghdad office in April 2003 (ditto), I’d say “shocking and worrisome … to Aljazeera …” is a rather appropriate stance for it and its staffers to have.
And maybe some other news organizations might want to consider the ramifications of accidental bombings, shooting, fraggings, etc., as well.
But I reiterate: who the hell cares?
I’m sure we haven’t heard the last of this, but …
Do you think there’s a sand encrusted, hot, sweaty grunt that gives a damn what happens to some overpaid, overplayed, pick-and-choose reporters, past, present or future?
No comments:
Post a Comment