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The MediaMay 2009 Superfluous kings for messengers by James Bowman On the lack of true greatness in the celebrity era. At least let us hear no more about the “cynicism” of the media. Miss Jade Goody, the British reality-TV superstar of whose approaching demise I wrote last month in this space, has now died; a nation has mourned her passing; and, in what David Aaronovitch of The Times of London rather hyperbolically calls “the war between Jade and the jaded,” I find myself unhappily classed among the latter group. “Cynicism,” claims Mr. Aaronovitch, “comes as easily to a journalist as hyperbole—sometimes even in the same article. There is a small media industry to build a Goody-type phenomenon up and a slightly smaller one to lament that such a vulgarity exists at all.” I would have thought that we lamenters form a much smaller “industry,” but let that pass. It’s true enough that the lamentations can become, willy-nil ... This article is available to subscribers and for individual purchaseSubscribe to TNC (Print and Online editions) Subscribe to TNC (Online only) This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 27 May 2009, on page 55 Copyright © 2012 The New Criterion | www.newcriterion.com http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Superfluous-kings-for-messengers-4085
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by James Bowman On the media's growing carelessness in concealing its biases.
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