Lessons to learn form the Harry affair

Matt Drudge has come under a fair amount of criticism over his breaking of the Harry embargo,despite the fact that the news had been out for at least a month.

For Steve Borris,the affair shows that

Matt Drudge is the primordial life form of the New Journalist, so Old Media must begin to learn from his success and copy him. Editing/aggregating is what the future of journalism is all about, as the public learns that reporters have been little more than middleman-repeaters of stories that now can be told directly by news sources themselves.

And why?

He is fearless, in part because he is an outsider who requires no favors from those in power. He is an editor/aggregator, not a reporter. He is totally independent, publishing without review by others. When he breaks stories, his verification processes are unknown and he often publishes rumors. He gives equal billing to entertainment news and stories that are sensational or satisfy prurient interests. He is a conservative populist, not a Beltway liberal. He lacks a college degree, much less one in journalism.

What the media commentators are saying

Not suprisingly the Harry affair dominates.In the Independent Steven Glover reflects on the episode

A surprising number of people, not all of them diehard republicans, think the media were wrong not to report Prince Harry's front-line role in Afghanistan. They point out that there was no issue of national security at stake.

But he thinks that the blackout was justified

After Prince Harry was prevented from fighting in Iraq last year, it was clear that he could only avoid unacceptable risks in Afghanistan if his presence there was not publicised..... It is difficult to see how anyone, apart from the Taliban, has suffered."

Peter Wilby in the Guardian though is less complementary and perhaps a touch cynical

Kings and princes used to go into battle at the head of their soldiers, standards flying. Nobody thought it right to hide Henry V or Richard III while they were doing battle with the enemy. But the modern military wants the symbolic benefits of royal leadership without undue risk to the royal personage. In the case of Prince Harry, the Ministry of Defence had its cake and was allowed by the media to eat it as well.

Staying with the Guardian Emily Bell asks

What happens when anyone can publish anything, about anyone, anywhere at any time? It is an interesting philosophical and legal minefield which we pick our way through on a daily basis, tin hats awry. One thing in a world of uncertainty is certain - the old levers of control are inadequate - and this is becoming apparent to the most obtuse controller.

Refering to

Nick Robinson's online comments on the row about House of Commons speaker

she says the furore surrounding it was

an intense overreaction to a new type of journalism - Robinson, after all, was summing up the issues around the case on an open blog rather than presenting them as a bulletin item.

Matthew Norman at the Independent looks back to the Mail's campaign on bin bags and asks

Has there ever been a more spectacular smash-and-grab raid on any issue than the Daily Mail's thunderous campaign against the plastic carrier bag? Suppressing a wry grin at the chutzpah isn't easy. Papers such as this one bang on about green matters day after day, year after year, while the Mail prefers the insights of such revered global warming sceptics as Richard Littlejohn, Mad Mel Phillips and Professor Tom Utley, FRS, the climatological autodidact who slew false fears about melting ice caps with the observation (regarded in the scientific community as the most important of its kind since Archimedes took his bath) that when the ice in his G&T melts, the liquid doesn't flood over the side of the glass

FinallyMaggie Brown at the Guardian gives some useful tips to Peter Fincham on what to do with ITV,

Fincham will need more than good luck - that is no secret. But what exactly lies in store? And what do senior figures in the television industry see as the greatest challenges facing him?

On the Harry Embargo

Good media practice or simply coniving with the authorities.

The British media's decision to place an embargo onthe news that Prince Harry was fighting in Afghanistan will be debated for some time no doubt.

The one school of thought is that her is an ordinary soldier,unfortunately from a quite extraordinary background who simply wants to do a job that he has been trianed for.The experience of Iraq showed quite simply that with media coverage that wasnt going to happen.

At the other extreme the Respect MP George Galloway accuses the BBC of colluding with the government over its imperialist quest and no doubt believes that the other media outlets are also part of thius big conspiracy.

If nothing else this experience show that in this 24 hour global village that we live in,it is almost impossible to maintain a news blackout.The fact that it lasted 10 weeks is remarkable in itself.

The fact that is was broken by Matt Drudge in the States shows the problems that the established media have in supporting any sort of control.

John Williams writes on the BBC editors site that

At its simplest, journalism is about telling people things they don't know. So when the Ministry of Defence approached the BBC - along with other parts of the UK media - to ask us not to tell our audiences about a possible deployment of Prince Harry to Afghanistan, it was something we thought long and hard about.

Adding that

So, for the past ten weeks, the BBC, ITV and Sky News have been filming with Prince Harry - the first time we've been up close and personal with him. We interviewed him at Clarence House in mid-December, just before he was sent to Afghanistan, we spent some time with him at the start of January when he was settling in at a remote base in Southern Helmand Province, and most recently, we filmed with him last week at a new location in Helmand Province.

We don't do this stuff lightly - there are no other "voluntary agreements" in place at the moment, there's nothing else we're not telling you. Until yesterday, only a handful of people in the BBC knew about the story - trust me, keeping secrets from other journalists is hard work!

Interestly though Adrian Monck tells us that back on 7th Jan,an Australian magazine reported

Prince Harry has joined his regiment on a covert mission to Afghanistan and his unit has already seen front line action.
Not seen in public since the middle of December, New Idea can exclusively reveal that despite opposition from senior members of the British government and the royal family itself, Harry now joins his uncle Prince Andrew as a royal who has been to war.

So how secret was this?