11/22/2004|||110111721709004801||||||

STUPIDITY WATCH

I hardly ever watch Channel 4 News any more. If I ever needed reminding why I switched off, presenter Alex Thomson came up with the goods in a stunningly foolish op-ed in today's Guardian. It's bad enough to hear an influential journalist complaining that the war against terror isn't being covered "fairly" (Thomson suggests that Al Qaeda and the Iraqi insurgents should think about embedding reporters.) Worse still is the way he off-handedly characterizes the global conflict:

"In the ideological and military clash of Christian fundamentals with Islamist fundamentals, the western media are simply off-limits to the latter."

Moral equivalence doesn't get more idiotic than that. Read the whole piece. I thought at first that it was some sort of spoof. Sadly, it seems to be genuine.

UPDATE: Harry's Place offers a wry response:

"There are obviously ethical problems in the notion of embedding with the US and UK military but I'd venture that a few more serious ones would arise if you were going to sit around listening to the 'resistance' plan their latest suicide bombing:

'Foreign desk here John, you got anything for us today?'

'Yeah, I can give you 500 on the power plant suicide bombing that is scheduled for this afternoon and Mo' says that there could be a couple of be-headings later this evening, not sure if they will make deadline though. Zarq will probably do a press conference after the last execution'

"Thomson says it is most likely Arab journalists who will be the ones to start building a relationship with the terrorists and I'd dare say one or two probably already have. After all, someone delivers those videos to Al-Jazeera pretty promptly. But western journalists embedded with the terrorists? I suppose it might be worth a try. Maybe we could offer him some names to get started with?"

|||Clive|||http://clivedavis.blogspot.com/2004/11/stupidity-watch-i-hardly-ever-watch.html|||11/22/2004 09:39:00 am|||||||||

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