Suitably Flip

Amanpour's Disaster

Christiane Amanpour was busy throwing stones at Coalition military efforts on Larry King Live last night.

CNN has posted a transcript of the hour.  NewsBusters has the video and commentary.

Christiane Amanpour: "[W]e have to have an independent eye on these conflicts.  The war in Iraq has basically turned out to be a disaster. And journalists have paid for it, paid for the privilege of witnessing and reporting that. And so have many, many other people who have been there. And I think that's terribly, terribly difficult for us. And unfortunately, for some reason which I can't fathom, the kind of awful thing that's going on there now on a daily basis has almost become humdrum. So when something happens to people that we identify, like Bob and like Doug, we wake up again and realize, no, this is not acceptable, what's going on there. And it's a terrible situation.”

King: “Well said.”

Yeah, well said.

I'm not sure how many people find insurgent-led violence to be almost "almost humdrum", Christiane, but it'd good to know that once it affects journalists, you wake up to the fact that we're grappling with real honest-to-goodness evil stuff over there.  Sadly, it sounds like the next logical leap you made was to a conclusion along the lines of, "We must therefore run away before another friend of mine gets hurt," rather than, "This fight is indeed crucial.  Go troops!  Quell that loathsome insurgency!"

Anyway, if the journalistic burden of maintaining your "independent eye" [?!] on the conflict is so "terribly, terribly difficult", you're welcome to retire at any time.

Comments

Amanpour's Disaster

Christiane Amanpour was busy throwing stones at Coalition military efforts on Larry King Live last night.

CNN has posted a transcript of the hour.  NewsBusters has the video and commentary.

Christiane Amanpour: "[W]e have to have an independent eye on these conflicts.  The war in Iraq has basically turned out to be a disaster. And journalists have paid for it, paid for the privilege of witnessing and reporting that. And so have many, many other people who have been there. And I think that's terribly, terribly difficult for us. And unfortunately, for some reason which I can't fathom, the kind of awful thing that's going on there now on a daily basis has almost become humdrum. So when something happens to people that we identify, like Bob and like Doug, we wake up again and realize, no, this is not acceptable, what's going on there. And it's a terrible situation.”

King: “Well said.”

Yeah, well said.

I'm not sure how many people find insurgent-led violence to be almost "almost humdrum", Christiane, but it'd good to know that once it affects journalists, you wake up to the fact that we're grappling with real honest-to-goodness evil stuff over there.  Sadly, it sounds like the next logical leap you made was to a conclusion along the lines of, "We must therefore run away before another friend of mine gets hurt," rather than, "This fight is indeed crucial.  Go troops!  Quell that loathsome insurgency!"

Anyway, if the journalistic burden of maintaining your "independent eye" [?!] on the conflict is so "terribly, terribly difficult", you're welcome to retire at any time.