Friday 4 December 2015

Truly classy journalism by MSNBC - not to mention great work by the FBI and the police


I look forward to hearing that some MSNBC executives, at least one journalist and several law enforcement officials have been fired - not to mention jailed. I'm all for freedom of the press - but this is ridiculous! 

Why hasn't all this evidence been bagged and removed for analysis? What the hell is going on?

Oh, and the FBI has just made this statement:" We are now investigating these horrific acts as acts of terrorism." No, you think?

And CNN reports that the landlord of the apartment has just been taken away by police. Who, maybe, should have been guarding the place?

4 comments:

  1. Well, with the Prez putting Global Warming above Terrorism on his personal agenda a few days ago ("Today, there is no greater threat to our planet than climate change"), should we be surprised that the FBI seem to be taking a similarly relaxed view of this horror?

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  2. This clip is an example of the fixation that TV news has with "immediacy" and "freshness" with often ridiculous results [the BBC reporter at RAF Akrotiri is standing so close to the runway when the first Tornados take off for Syria that everything he says is drowned out by the roar of after-burners. Or that fat, blond bloke who conducted his pieces to camera in front of artillery as they were firing in some Arab conflict and nearly got his head blown off].

    You actually feel that the next stage will be the TV news teams crawling over crime scene before the police and forensic people have arrived followed by actually being there during the actual bloody event and sticking their microphones up people's faces as they are lying wounded on the ground.
    .
    I am in no way trying to make light of these ghastly events but see the opening to Woody Allen's " Bananas" [1971] as an American news team is present before and during the assassination of a Latin American dictator and manages to interview him during his dying moments [ "Make way for American television..."]. Somebody has got to put a curb on how TV reports tragic news items - not in terms of factual content, but a deeper demonstration of good taste would not go amiss. And for Christ's sake cut out all this constant branding - who cares what news organisation is generating a report [ viz a funeral scene after the massacre of Beslan "This family invited the BBC to the funeral of their four daughters" or a reporter helping bedraggled refugees ashore at Lesbos and shouting several times " The BBC welcomes you to Europe"]. The trivialisation of serious news does nobody any favours.

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  3. Knacker of the Yard5 December 2015 at 11:25

    Famous But Incompetent, as we call them. I imagine they must have thought that it was the usual US nut jobs, they'd topped themselves, job done. US detectives tend not to be as meticulous in closing off the crime scene as our boys, possibly because they have other methods of securing the right result.

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  4. How splendid, Inspector Knacker. The vinyl insertion in Private Eye was such a delight.

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