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Media Reflects on Prince Harry's Afghan Secret
by
findingDulcinea Staff
In a world of Web coverage and instantaneous news, could the British royal ever have kept his Afghan whereabouts under wraps?
30-Second Summary
Prince Harry has returned home after a media leak revealed his presence on the Afghan front lines. He had been serving in Afghanistan since December.
But with the pervasiveness of the Internet and instantaneous news coverage, the question is whether the British royal’s whereabouts ever stood a chance of remaining confidential.
“Slim chance,” reports The Guardian. “There's no point in criticizing anyone involved in this deluded little charade, because everyone acted from perfectly comprehensible motives.”
Ian Stewart of The Scotsman agrees that a media blackout was a dubious deal from the start because “deliberately withholding information” can damage a paper’s contract with their readers, even when the press understands “that sometimes the greater good is served by delaying publication of certain information.”
It was naïve for the British Ministry of Defense to believe the news wouldn’t surface on foreign websites, Stewart concludes.
Still, says Dan K. Thomasson of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the British press should be praised for keeping the secret as long as they did, especially in the Internet news age.
No matter the verdict on whether the press could have stayed quiet about the prince’s deployment, the story is yet another example of how new technology has changed the way current events are reported.
It was 10 years ago that the Drudge Report Web site—one of the first sources to reveal Harry’s presence in Afghanistan—broke the story of the Monica Lewinsky affair, which quickly became a national scandal.
But with the pervasiveness of the Internet and instantaneous news coverage, the question is whether the British royal’s whereabouts ever stood a chance of remaining confidential.
“Slim chance,” reports The Guardian. “There's no point in criticizing anyone involved in this deluded little charade, because everyone acted from perfectly comprehensible motives.”
Ian Stewart of The Scotsman agrees that a media blackout was a dubious deal from the start because “deliberately withholding information” can damage a paper’s contract with their readers, even when the press understands “that sometimes the greater good is served by delaying publication of certain information.”
It was naïve for the British Ministry of Defense to believe the news wouldn’t surface on foreign websites, Stewart concludes.
Still, says Dan K. Thomasson of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the British press should be praised for keeping the secret as long as they did, especially in the Internet news age.
No matter the verdict on whether the press could have stayed quiet about the prince’s deployment, the story is yet another example of how new technology has changed the way current events are reported.
It was 10 years ago that the Drudge Report Web site—one of the first sources to reveal Harry’s presence in Afghanistan—broke the story of the Monica Lewinsky affair, which quickly became a national scandal.
Headline Link: ‘Slim Chance for Harry’s Secret War in Web Age’
Keeping Harry’s whereabouts was a near impossible with news Web sites up and running 24 hours a day. “There is no effective way of leaning on a few blokes in London to shut up in the national interest if zillions of Web sites are tuned in and wholly reactive,” Peter Preston writes in The Guardian.
Source: The Guardian
Opinions & Analysis: Did the press act predictably, or honorably?
The Scotsman newspaper questions why the Ministry of Defense considered a media deal that was bound to fail. “Whenever newspapers are asked to withhold information, the instinctive response is: ‘No.’ We are already bound by legal and self-imposed ethical restrictions and to step even further out of them requires very compelling reasons,” Ian Stewart writes.
Source: The Scotsman
Dan K. Thomasson says the Prince Harry situation reminds us that the press is capable of acting honorably. The fact that the entire British press establishment stuck to the media blackout for so long “lends hope that responsible journalism may survive after all, even in the face of the rapaciously irresponsible Internet.”
Source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer
The BBC thought long and hard about agreeing to a media blackout, writes Jon Williams on the BBC editors' blog. “In truth, the surprise is that the agreement lasted so long. We—and the other UK broadcasters—were clear that we would not report his deployment. But nor would we deceive our audiences,” he writes. Hundreds of readers commented on the post.
Source: The BBC
Related Topics: ‘Citizen journalism’ and the power of the Web
“Citizen journalism” has ushered in an era of “digital democracy,” thanks to the Internet writes The Times of London. Jay Adelson, chief executive of Digg, a site that allows users to post articles, said recent events like the London Underground terrorist attacks were reported by ordinary citizens, “with more unfiltered information, than traditional newsrooms were able to publish or broadcast.”
Source: The Times of London
PC World magazine compiled “The 16 Greatest Moments in Web History,” last year, including the Drudge Report breaking the Lewinsky scandal, the bloggers who covered Hurricane Katrina and the advent of Wikipedia, the site that allows the public to create and edit encyclopedic entries on nearly every topic imaginable.
Source: PC World
The Lewinsky scandal, 10 years later
The Internet played a huge role in the Monica Lewinsky scandal, The New York Times reported shortly after the story broke in 1998. The Drudge Report Web site was the first to report on the presidential affair, and almost every major news organization set up special Web pages with coverage of the story.
Source: The New York Times (subscription may be required)
Background: Prince returns from Afghanistan deployment
The news that Prince Harry was serving on the front line in Afghanistan broke in late February, ending a media embargo.
Source: findingDulcinea
After the news of Harry’s service in Afghanistan was widely reported, the British military decided his presence there was too risky, both for the prince and his fellow troops, and brought him home.
Source: findingDulcinea
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