Prince Harry on active service - media beatup

[pim]

Prince Harry is currently on active service in Afghanistan. Please put to one side your personal views on that war. Please, no grandstanding from either the pacifists or the war mongers or the Muslim haters or the America haters. Those views get regularly canvassed and I could probably write the script for any of them.

The fact is that Prince Harry is a serving Captain in the Army Air Corps of the British armed forces and as such he can be - and obviously is currently - deployed on active service in a war zone. That kinda thing happens to people in the military. He's a gunner in an Apache helicopter.

So what on earth is the media on about when they publish headlineslike Prince Harry in Afghanistan: I fired at enemy www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21119727

It isn't just on the BBC news link. It's everywhere all over the Engish-speaking world, and if I could be bothered to look I'd probably find it in the media of the non English-speaking world too.

What's the big deal? I don't despise what he's doing. In fact I respect him for doing his duty and taking the risks along with everyone else. Princes have been in the front line ever since before the Black Prince aimed a well-swung mace at the head of a French soldier. And the first King Richard wasn't called the Lion Heart for tending his roses in the gardens of castles in the Aquitaine or the Vexin.

[slartibartfast]

I say "good on him". It's not like he has to be there.

[jody]

No he doesn't Phil.....he looks like Prince Charles....compare the noses dear.

[slartibartfast]

I think the butler did it.

[jody]

The red hair also comes from Diana's side.....every seen her red haired sister Sarah or her strawberry blond brother called Charles.....plus, red hair is in the royal family....have a look at the portraits taken over the years. What nasty, gossipy little men you are. Worse than any bitchy woman I have ever known.

[slartibartfast]

Who'd root Charles?

[Deleted]

Celebrity status is something Royals have to deal with...until they get old...Princess Anne...its like who...??

[pim]

You guys can indulge in tabloid gossip about the royals if you like. It isn't quite why I put up this thread. I put it up because it says something about the media culture that is so dumbed down on all sorts of indicators that when Prince Harry comes back from an "op" the media rushes up and asks him breathless questions about whether or not he used that machine gun (he is a gunner! :, did he fire it? At people? Did he kill any of 'em? How many? How does he feel about firing his gun at people knowing that the bullets might ... y'know ... kill 'em? Does he think it's OK for a Prince to be into this sorta stuff? ... and so on ... inane question after inane question.

You really have to wonder what the media is for when it indulges in this sort of stuff. It isn't just the BBC, this puff piece is right across the media spectrum so it's been syndicated. The media isn't being "patriotic" or right wing or even left wing when it indulges in this vacuous empty sensationalist behaviour. It certainly isn't helping the NATO war effort in Afghanistan and indeed it isn't helping Prince Harry by manipulating him into a sensationalist bit of titillation about him firing a machine gun from a helicopter gunship in order to kill people. If anything it draws attention to Harry, makes him even more of a target and drains resources by stepping up efforts to ensure Prince Harry's security and the security of his comrades.

This is an example of the media being utterly self-serving. It's a beast that demands to be fed. Harry is obliged to co-operate and give them something they can produce a puff piece about. If Harry refused to have anything to do with the media they have the power to be very nasty. Given what the media did to Harry's mother I could understand it if he loathes them so it does him credit that he could front up to them and play a straight bat to the stupid questions that they throw at him.

As to the question of Harry's biological father. I really don't care. It could only be settled by DNA testing and what good would that do if it established that Charles is not Harry's biological father? I'll tell you whose fault it isn't and that's Harry! If it were established, biologically and officially, that Charles is not Harry's Dad, then it would throw the whole Royal Succession thing out of whack. And that involves Parliament, not just the royals. Better not to go there. Charles understands that. So does the Queen. So do they all. And so they don't go there and they won't go there. Sensible of them. And very much to Charles' credit that he accepts Harry as his son just as much as he does William.

Enough of the tabloid stuff already!

[sonex]

And very much to Charles' credit that he accepts Harry as his son just as much as he does William

Probably because he knows Harry is his biological son, I have no doubt that a DNA test would have taken place. By the way Prince Harry is very much like his red headed uncle the Earl Spencer.

[pim]

OK, I accept what you say, sonex. It isn't an issue as far as I'm concerned. But the media culture that makes the media swarm to a royal person who happens to be a member of HM armed forces on active service in a war zone returning from a mission in which he'd actually carried out the tasks he was trained to carry out ... now that's an issue. What's more I think the media culture of today in which it acts like a beast that demands to be fed, and exists entirely for and of itself as a giant parasite feeding off anybody and anything that could be called "news" is a far more serious issue.

The problem with discussion boards is that it's impossible to get a serious discussion going about anything. And this thread is turning out to be a perfect example of that.

[Deleted]

If the masses didn't like celebrity gossip then the media wouldn't print it...its a two way street in it..always has been that way....whats the big deal...just groan and look away let the masses have what they want...

[sonex]

I accept your comments on the media Pim, but I think that many people are selective in the papers they read and the television news they watch.
The UK has always had a couple of lurid, trashy newspapers. The Daily Mirror and News of the World come to mind. I've just had another look at The Age on the net, and it is generally current news.
The ABC news and current affairs programs tend not to be sensational.

As Spindrift said "If the masses didn't like celebrity gossip then the media wouldn't print it"

[matt]

We will never know, because even if they did a DNA test, I doubt they would be honest if it were found Charles was not the father.

[Deleted]

[pim]

Jan 23, 2013 10:57:51 GMT 10 @spindrift111 said:

If the masses didn't like celebrity gossip then the media wouldn't print it...its a two way street in it..always has been that way....whats the big deal...just groan and look away let the masses have what they want...

I completely disagree with you and, alas, I have to tell you that I think you've just shown a dismal misunderstanding of media culture today.

Have you really pondered the significance of our presence here on a discussion board and the growing importance of social media? With what that means for the traditional print and radio/TV media?

There's an interesting piece in today's Fairfax press on media culture and what that might mean for public discourse www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/medias-character-put-to-the-test-in-federal-election-campaign-20130122-2d57j.html which is germane to the Prince Harry beatp because it's part of the same malaise.

In the Fairfax piece, Gay Alcorn tells how a guy who regularly writes for The Drum, Greg Jericho, attended a media conference Tony Abbott gave regarding the Liberals' policy on education for disabled kids. It seems that Jericho, whose daughter has Downs Syndrome, was particularly interested in what Abbott might have to say about disability education so he rocked up to the media conference. He reports:

Like a naive fool I waited for questions. But reporters asked nothing about the policy, instead grilling Abbott on whether he believed Mark Latham when he accused Kevin Rudd of leaking to Laurie Oakes

Yes the story is a couple of years old but that's not the point. The point is the media.

So what's going on. Here's Alcorn's take on it:

Why didn't those journos ask about policy? Because their head offices weren't much interested. Because the assumption is that policies - apart from a few the parties want to talk about - are dull compared with personalities. And because once it starts, a campaign has one big narrative: who's going to win? The polls are the story, and how they go week to week dictates whether the leaders are judged harshly or kindly. There was a moment of self-reflection after 2010. Never again! The politicians could be a "small target" if they liked, but nobody was forcing the media to follow the script. Indeed, ABC manager director Mark Scott said he had read Jericho's blog, agreed with it, and ''adjusted our strategy" midway through the campaign to give more coverage to policy. But little has changed in the way politics is covered - except that it's harder. Newsrooms have shed staff, and there is now such a relentless demand to feed the beast 24 hours a day that there is less time to dig, less time to think independently.

Consequently it's a lot easier for the media swarm to ask sensationalist stupid questions of Prince Harry in Afghanistan rather than do the legwork at home and investigate the politics behind the war on terror that results in Prince Harry being in Afghanistan - and thousands of other NATO forces. Y'know, a bit like the way that investigative journalism blew the lid on the chicanery and lies behind the vietnam War.

The media isn't responding to "the market" when it swarms all over Prince Harry as he climbs out of his Apache helicopter when he returns from a mission where he was the gunner, points at his machine gun and shouts at him "D'you really fire that thing? Does it fire ... like ... bullets? Does it hit anyone? How many have ya killed?" ... and so on. Something else is going on. Why did the media miss the significance of Gillard's misogyny speech, for example? And look at the Presidential elections in the US. Why did Fox News get it so spectacularly wrong? That's a valid question for us here in Australia since Murdoch owns the majority of the media here too. What is this bubble that the media live in and why are politicians so easily caught up in it that they can actually run scared from the media?

I begin this election year wondering if the news slant that we get in Murdoch and Fairfax isn't a crock of bullshit and whether or not objective truth isn't elsewhere.

I like to read the morning newspaper over a cup of coffee. But here in Adelaide it's $2 for the Australian ($3 on weekends) and I couldn't tell you how much the Advertiser costs because I never buy it. You can't buy a Fairfax newspaper (unless it's the Fin Review ) because they don't get airfreighted in until at least 11am - unless you read them online and they're going to be paywalled soon. So could my daily $2 be better spent? There is the crossword and it's usually a good one. Maybe it is worth the two bucks after all ...

[Deleted]

Ita Buttrose made a excellent point recently about when she was a journo....'journalist reported the news and left it up to the reader to make up there own minds...now journalist are reporting and telling people how to think'.....Owners and Editors calling the shots.

Alan Jones and Ray Hadley in radio media have the same formula....tell how people to think, and so it goes if one only reads the telegraph then self analysis, diagnosis of news and thought has gone out the window....you have become a dumb sheep bleating what they have told you...like on Earl's Carbon thread the RW are convinced it is the carbon tax alone that has made electricty prices soar.

Where it goes with all this controlled thinking is perhaps a RW 'big brother world'...free thinkers driven underground.

[sonex]

Pim, an article on the ABC page today by Jeff Sparrow, no talk of live bullets here.

Quote:

"Stories about the 'heroic Harry' suck the oxygen out of any discussion of the people of Afghanistan, instead presenting a foreign war in its familiar role as a character test for Westerners, writes Jeff Sparrow."

and a quote from Nick Hopkins.......

"The diet of "Harry in Helmand" stories is likely to be more palatable to the public than the steady stream of death notices that have continued since 2006."

www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4480458.html?WT.svl=theDrum

[pim]

I think that's an excellent point, sonex; pertinent, relevant and important. It's the sort of critical insight we should be getting more of in the media. It's certainly a lot more important than who Harry's Daddy is.

If as the ABC piece says the "Heroic Harry doing his bit for Queen & Country in Afghanistan" sucks the oxygen out of any discussion of the people of Afghanistan by presenting Harry as a modern day Biggles, how much more of a distraction from the real issues in Afghanistan is this empty vacuous meaningless prattle about whose sperm had a meaningful encounter with Diana's ovum.

[Deleted]

"I'll get all my papers and smile at the sky
For I know that the hypnotized never lie

There's nothing in the street
Looks any different to me
And the slogans are replaced, by-the-bye
And the parting on the left
Is now the parting on the right.......




Meet the new boss...
Same as the old boss "...The Who....1970....yep everything still looks the same to me.