Prince Harry’s Jihad: Entertainment as News
Looking earnest and intense, CNN’s senior international correspondent Nic Robertson hunkered down in trendy London to tell viewers how Prince Harry’s trials are far from over, even as the third in line for the British throne returns from fighting the Taliban. Prince Harry, the senior reporter gravely tells the camera, faces fanatical Muslims for challenging Islam and the faithful in faraway lands, an insult that demands avenging. At any rate it certainly means more CNN installments.
The story is a hoax, a joint PR effort of the royal publicity machine in collusion with a pliant press corps. Even to untrained journalistic eyes it reeks of Buckingham palace’s spin. That’s what British royalty does, but what’s the media’s excuse for swallowing it hook, line, and sinker?
The masquerade includes the “outing” after ten weeks of negotiated silence by media and the makings of a B-line movi: prince travels to face bad Muslims guys in Afghanistan, transforms from boozing playboy to just another bloke serving his country, a young man who meant to do well until a media betrayal forces him to return to the palatial life he spurned.
By coincidence, of course, choice moments of the episode were documented with filmed footage showing the royal lad shooting his machine gun at no one in particular, musing about how, dear oh dear, he hadn’t washed in four days and citing the immense pride experienced by his father Prince Charles and grandma the Queen. A Hollywood-Mayfair production. The press was mildly reprimanded for breaking the secret, and then given full throttle to revel in every aspect. As Chris Horrie, author and co-author of ten books about British tabloid culture aptly summed in commentary: “a fantastic publicity coup for Buckingham Palace.” No kidding!
The problem resides not with celebrities royal or otherwise, but the lamentable condition of media and its abject surrender to innuendos, ideological sparring, and giddy humbug as substitutes to reporting without fear or favor.
A recent contribution was the New York Times’ front page layout of presidential candidate John McCain’s presumed love affair, a story worked on for four months by four senior reporters and countless editors that delivered no sex and no scandal, instead leaving a most eminent newspaper stranded with that deer-caught-in-the-headlights look. It spoke more of a relentless left-wing drift by a publisher and his senior editors, a decade-long dilution of all the news that’s fit to print, and a rising panic of a print media in decline. The sad result was another stumble of a national American patrimony long abused by its skippers.
The collapse of basic journalism is a global phenomenon that started well over two decades ago with all-the-news-all-the-time, 24/7 cycles that now substitute simple facts for “the best political team anywhere,” a bunch of talking heads rebutting another and attack bulldogs flaunting ideologies of religious right or enervated left.
Al Jazeera presents terrorists and suicide bombers as Islamic heroes and martyrs. On this side of the pond, Fox News dismisses global warming as a demented conspiracy. Cartoon characters on Islamist networks’ children’s shows are championed by cub lions and baby rats that martyr themselves for jihad against Zionist ghouls.
Added to it is the journalistic personality cult, a decades-long reconstruction of reporters and anchorpersons as stars in their own right, members of some elite club. First loyalties are to political persona, and overall ideological persuasions of views of their publishers and owners along with entertainment, a principal value.
Thus the prince’s spin is passable as in why spoil a good story with any real questions. Never mind the lad served briefly under watchful eyes of minders with staged episodes filmed for the moment of the outing and a green light to partake in the profit of mediocre fairy tale mongering.
We traverse a serious crisis of credibility and trustworthiness where news is served a willing suspension of disbelief. The propaganda of Al Jazeera emulates an American model of decades ago. Instead of transmitting templates of freedom of expression, the U.S. media is offering freedom from journalistic discipline. You reap what you sow.
Youssef M. Ibrahim, a former Middle East correspondent for the New York Times and Energy Editor of the Wall Street Journal, is a freelance writer and Mideast political risk consultant based in New York.
Yes Buckingham Palace are renowned for engineering wars in an otherwise peaceful region of the world,just so the 3rd in line to the throne can go there,vaporize some muslims,and go from playboy to patriot.
They also killed Princess Di,and the Duke of Edinburgh was involved with the faking of the moon landings. Do try and keep up.
Given that your hoax scenario is possible, what is the evidence that it is true? All that I see here is a declaration that Buckingham Palace is capable of such a thing – that’s not evidence that they did do such a thing.
talk about missing the lede. the fault line is politics, not competence. Or do you think the same journalist that is “incompetent” in the presence of Obama is magically made “competent” in the presence of Bush?
At the very least, Prince Harry may have transcended the boy-in-a-bubble existence re Afghanistan: i.e., he should no longer have an imaginary relationship with the real situation.
You’re only jealous because you don’t have any royals of your own.
I think the fact that the UK still has an ongoing living breathing heroic national story is really upsetting some people!
You can keep your republics (Federal, Peoples, Socialist or whatever it styles itself today)!
This reads like a postmodern diatribe – a non-story, lacking in substance, facts and rationale, criticizing others (NYT) for publishing a non-story lacking in substance, facts and rationale but what can one expect from someone faults Fox News for regarding Global Warming as a”demented conspiracy” in the very article where he himself is touting another far less believable conspiracy?????
Actually, Prince Harry never even went to Afghanistan.
What you saw was a hologram filmed on the same sound stage where the Apollo moon landings were faked.
I blame the Jews.
I very much enjoy the way Muslims regularly deliver angry pointy fingered lectures to us in the West on the proper practices of journalism, freedom of expression, tolerance, or the rifeness of conspiracies hoaxes and credulous readerships in our domains.
For a change, wouldn’t it be delightful to see Muslims stabbing their always-ready angry accusatory fingers at the Muslim societies which they herald from? If anyone needs to hear lectures on the proper function of journalism, hoaxes, propaganda, and the mass consuption of same by credulous and scandalously ill-educated populations, surely it would be there?
Fascinating… an entire article about Harrygate that never once mentions Drudge. Instead, what we get is a smelly pantload of barely coherent MSM-bashing.
If this is what “new media” is all about, give me “old media” any day.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We’ve heard all this before.
We all know that it’s not possible for royals to go to actually go to war. I mean, it’s not that royals don’t visit combat zones. GWB, Shrillary, McCain… they’ve all visited Iraq, but you’ve got to know they were the most-well-protected-butts-in-the-history-of-the-world.
I actually happen to love the Harry Goes to War story. But when my dad fought Germans in WWII and earned a Silver and two Bronze Stars, the only guys he had watching his back were guys just like him… everyday American boys who only went to war because bad guys were making war on innocents abroad.
You know what? The Great Untold Story about Harry isn’t about the security detail that accompanied him or the photo ops that most likely humiliated him. I wouldn’t want to be royalty and have to live like that.
I think the untold story is that a royal had to go through basic training and test himself. Plus, he really did get the chance to bunk down with the common folk who’ve always protected the world.
It’s from this common class that the true saviors often arise. If not for Churchill, the Brits wouldn’t be speaking German today, but Berlin might still be radioactive.
The Liberal American press ruined a really good thing, but they always ruin everything.
I wish every royal would serve in the military. I’m betting that Harry’s experience wasn’t very pleasant at all. I’m guessing that he was sometimes treated more harshly than the average West Point student.
But isn’t that a good thing?
It’s so easy to live a life detached from commoners. Harry may not have served as long as his handlers hoped he would due to the snarky American press. But the people who disparage Britannia forget that there is a finger hovering over a button that can change the world more than Algore ever will.
“The Liberal American press ruined a really good thing”
Since when is Matt Drudge a liberal? Remember, he’s the one who nearly got a liberal President removed from office.
Wow, Fox news criticises global warming? Americans should count themselves lucky. On this side of the pond there is no opportunity for those of us who think the whole thing is a load of nonsense to present our views without being called ‘shills’ for big oil. I’m jealous. Regarding the Harry story? Not interested mate. Go and fight and then criticise.