Reply #36: re "oddities" [View All]

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

I name the four powers who are behind the al-Qaeda conspiracy

AT TIMES of national emergency, the habit of the news media to drop a story or a lead in mid-air when it seems to be going nowhere unsettles the public. The media betray a sort of sheepish wish to “move on” from an erroneous report, hoping that their audience will not notice.

Rather than acknowledge this, they publish a new report, leaving us to compare it with what had previously been said — and draw our own conclusions. Or they start barking up a different tree, the inference being that the last tree may have been the wrong tree. The habit is more disliked by listeners and readers than I think editors appreciate. Perhaps the first item on each day’s news agenda should be “matters arising from yesterday’s news”. News editors would then do us the courtesy of explaining where some of those stories went.

Immediately after July 7 it was prominently reported that the explosions “bore all the hallmarks” of the use of a type of high-grade military explosive whose presence would indicate a sophisticated international dimension to the bombings. We were alerted to a likely al-Qaeda link.

Then the news went silent. Then it was announced that tests showed the explosive to be of a home-made (or home-makeable) kind that al-Qaeda were known to know about from the internet. Then that story, too, seemed to fizzle out.

read on:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1065-1704834,00.html