AH, THE 4TH ESTATE:

America just wants to cut to the chase, watch the fireworks and move on to the next showdown (Aaron Hicklin, 23 March 2003, Sunday Herald)

WE ARE fighting in Iraq, apparently, because the soldiers are bored. We could have waited a little longer, perhaps, but they've been hanging around long enough, and frankly they want to get back home, have some real chow, and watch Friends.

Those soldiers are not the only ones. Sometimes you get the feeling the whole of America just wants to cut to the chase, watch the fireworks and move on to the next showdown. At Fox and CNN, where news isn't news unless it's 'breaking', the stress of sustaining the coverage has been killing them. Hans Blix and Colin Powell just didn't cut the mustard, and all those endless Security Council meetings!. If only everything in life could be as perfectly scripted as last October's sniper attacks in Washington: one death every two or three days, just enough to hold the public's fickle attention, and then a gripping finale. All over within three weeks. Next.

Not really over, of course, just the fun part. John Lee Malvo, the 17-year-old co-defendant in the case is having his constitutional rights trampled so that attorney general John Ashcroft can have him executed, but that's not news. That's tedium. Like anthrax. Remember that? It closed down the Capitol in October 2001, and terrified America, but it was only interesting when it was scary. The perpetrator was never caught, despite the biggest operation in FBI history. For all we know, the attacks were a government plot to justify attacking Iraq. Probably not, but you can see how conspiracies begin. If the FBI with all its resources couldn't find the culprit, perhaps it was because it didn't want to.

Well, that's responsible journalism, eh? Posted by Orrin Judd at March 23, 2003 8:07 AM