Anything else?
October 25th, 2006Talk about one-track minded.
Yesterday’s lead news story in The Guardian was about the British government’s promise to meet more stringent climate change targets.
“If only”, I thought.
If only there was a top news story here that was about something other than the war in Iraq or Bush’s blessed “war on terror” (WOT).
I honestly can’t remember switching on the radio or picking up the newspaper in the morning and seeing a lead news story about health or education, or even the economy as it affects ordinary people, in all the 15 months I have lived here.
In the UK there was a sense that someone — possibly, I concede, someone from Blair’s infamous spin machine — was setting the agenda. Today the government’s pledge to improve the NHS, tomorrow how it is improving inner-city neighbourhoods.
Maybe the British media are too compliant. But generally I don’t think that’s the case. If anything, it is the US media that has been found guilty of taking the government line at face value. (And don’t get me started on Bush’s press briefings that are broadcast on NPR and put me right off my breakfast — the press corps sound so chuffed to have been invited to the party and they always preface their invariably anaemic question with a little joke or fawning comment to “Mr President”…)
And it’s not because the country is gearing up for elections that all we hear about is whether Bush is going to “stay the course” in Iraq or whether some other big bad foreigner is out to get us. It’s always like that.
But maybe I’m mistaken.There was a piece on the front page of the New York Times today about health and this is what I learned: a sixth of Americans — 46.6 million out of 300 million — do not have health insurance.
Well, there’s a ringing endorsement for all that attention — and big, big bucks –being spent on the WOT.