Brits Don’t Understand the War For Ratings
Those silly Brits. They clearly don’t understand American-style journalism and the importance that news organizations put on winning the war for audience ratings. For those of you who don’t know, British authorities are upset at ABC News for releasing a photo of one of the recovered bombs.
The British police asked ABC News on Tuesday to withhold a report showing images of what were said to be unexploded bombs found in a car used by the July 7 bombers and of the inside of a subway train mangled in the attacks, a network official said yesterday..
Later yesterday, a police spokeswoman, who spoke in return for anonymity under standard police procedures, said of some news organizations: “Obviously they made their own decision. We asked them to be responsible and they were not.” She added, “We still don’t want the pictures to be published for operational reasons.”
Ok, let’s look at this more closely:
Tony Blair (a Brit) said the best way to deal a blow to the terrorists was to go about our business as usual. For American journalists that means going after scoops regardless of the affect that it will have on prosecutions or the overall fight against terrorism (e.g., Newsweek).
We live in America and have this thing called the First Amendment which means that news organizations can’t be told by authorities what they can or can’t do. In the U.S. news organizations are only governed by Nielsen ratings for their editorial decisions.
If ABC didn’t do it then it would have been one of the other fine organizations that might have gotten credit for breaking the story such as Al-Jazeera.
It’s easy for a British policeman to ask that investigation details be kept under wraps since they aren’t in an arms-race-like fight for TV ratings. I’d like to see what that same British policeman would say if his income was dependent on the overnight Nielsens. If so, he’d probably be releasing photos of Yasin Hassan Omar in his underwear.
Finally, and most importantly, the U.S. public has a right to know every possible detail of the investigation not matter how arcane, confidential, sensitive or unverified it is. Come on Brits, get with the program.
(Hat Tip: LGF)
Technorati: abc news terror london bombings
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July 28th, 2005 at 9:50 am
Let me say — before someone blasts me — the above is sarcasm. I don’t like the fact that ABC rushed the story any more than I like the CBS Rathergate. The first was pushed by a desire to have a “scoop,” the latter for a political agenda. In both cases, the interests of the public were not served.