The Wonderful Journalism Ethics
of the Middle East, Part III
As you've no doubt heard, Britney Spears is with child. The news hit the Middle East like a tidal wa…
uh, like a… like a very big, important piece of news hitting a region.
It made every front page I saw: The good ones (Gulf News), the shitty ones (7Days), the unintelligible ones (six dozen Arabic, Farsi, Urdu and Hindi papers). Britney Spears is clearly a cultural touchstone. The world cares, is what I'm saying, people.
Yet not all the coverage was sweetness and light. 7Days – the Harry Potter of newspapering, conjuring photos out of thin air – was actually quite vile towards Britney. "There is little evidence suggesting that Spears is anything other than trailer trash. In another life she would be on Jerry Springer," they wrote. And that's no opinion page – that was the news article. What we in the journalism business call "the separation of church and state" – that is, the total partition between news and opinion writing – is not functioning here, apparently. Much like the real separation between church and state, come to think of it.
This failure of journalism ethics is bad enough… but could it be even worse than we think? Could the sheikhs actually be trying to undermine American global power by chipping away at the very underpinnings of our society… the ideals we hold most dear… our precious celebrities? They couldn't be that nefarious… could they?
uh, like a… like a very big, important piece of news hitting a region.
It made every front page I saw: The good ones (Gulf News), the shitty ones (7Days), the unintelligible ones (six dozen Arabic, Farsi, Urdu and Hindi papers). Britney Spears is clearly a cultural touchstone. The world cares, is what I'm saying, people.
Yet not all the coverage was sweetness and light. 7Days – the Harry Potter of newspapering, conjuring photos out of thin air – was actually quite vile towards Britney. "There is little evidence suggesting that Spears is anything other than trailer trash. In another life she would be on Jerry Springer," they wrote. And that's no opinion page – that was the news article. What we in the journalism business call "the separation of church and state" – that is, the total partition between news and opinion writing – is not functioning here, apparently. Much like the real separation between church and state, come to think of it.
This failure of journalism ethics is bad enough… but could it be even worse than we think? Could the sheikhs actually be trying to undermine American global power by chipping away at the very underpinnings of our society… the ideals we hold most dear… our precious celebrities? They couldn't be that nefarious… could they?
posted by Eric at 5:30 AM
1 Comments:
Chilling.
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