Category: Media

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This damn war is so depressing. The Ukrainians desperately need the world to witness what is happening so they are sharing their experiences in the various different ways that modern technology has to offer. It is heart rendering. I can’t think of another way of saying it. There is a particularly moving one where a Ukrainian girl is evacuating Kyiv with her mother and saying goodbye to her father who must remain. The little girl is inconsolable. The father is inconsolable. I, of course, am moved to tears myself.

Usually, I avoid watching scenes like this because they depress me. There is nothing I can do to make the father or his little girl feel better. I am watching a family’s intimate moment, perhaps last moment together. Is this something I should be watching? Who is filming this and why? I don’t think the family is filming it so that 20 years from now the family will sit down and watch the day that they all broke down because they were being separated by war. It’s being posted by someone for all the right reasons — to show the trauma of the war on people experiencing this violence. OK. I have seen it. It made me cry. What now?

It worries me that the Ukrainians might have a different idea about what these videos are doing. I think many of them are trying to move us to action. Action that will genuinely help them in their struggle. Military action. You can hear it in their voices. The Russians are terrible. Help us. We, on the other hand, are just watching the news. Genuine help is not coming. We all know this. We are dealing with an unstable man who has been embarrassed on the world stage. He also has nuclear weapons. The biggest responsibility for the rest of the world right now is to see that Putin doesn’t start recklessly sending nukes this way and that. This means that the Ukrainians are on their own and all the heroic and heart rendering videos showing their struggle isn’t going to change that.

I sincerely hope that the Ukrainians throw the Russians out. They absolutely deserve a victory. But, I am having really mixed feelings about giving them any hope that the West will change their minds and help them out militarily. All these brave people saying look what is happening to us, you can’t just stand there and watch, can you? I am afraid we can and, sadly, we must.

In the meantime, all the war coverage feels wrong to me. Nightly, I see desperate people asking for help. After I have a good cathartic cry about their situation, I change the channel to my regular television viewing of murder mysteries and situation comedies. Aside from giving them my best wishes, there is nothing much I can do. The war, however, is great reality television. The hero rallying his people to fight back, brave civilians taking up arms to defend their country, a menacing villain everybody loves to hate and emotional conflict for days. What I don’t want, and what I am afraid I am seeing, is for a whole country to commit suicide because they think that help is on the way when all we really plan to do is watch it on our televisions. Has the war just become a snuff film which we can all safely watch under the guise of responsible journalism?

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I find myself increasingly irritated with the quality of reporting emanating from even the most prestigious news outlets like the BBC and the New York Times in regards to the evacuation of Kabul. It seems like everybody needs to get evacuated. Everybody.  I am not sure why and they aren’t particularly adept at telling me why.

A good example of this occurred several weeks back on the BBC that still nags at me.  Lyse Doucet, a BBC correspondent, interviewed an Afghan man who felt abandoned by the British because of visa issues which left him in Kabul after the Taliban took over. The man worked for the contract caterer who supplied meals for the British Embassy. He felt like he served the British well during his tenure and deserved evacuation without all of the visa application roadblocks the British government were putting in his way. Again, his only connection to the British government was serving meals to the embassy staff. He felt this work made his immigration during this time of chaos automatic and necessitates the British to ignore their application process for him and his family. He never really explained why other than he worked hard for the British. Doucet doesn’t pursue it. She does let the viewer know he feels abandoned and would like to very much for the British government’s help in bringing him there. 

I do not want to live in a Taliban controlled Afghanistan. I feel sorry for any Westerner or any Afghan ally who was left there.  I also want the Western governments to continue to help anyone who wants to leave.  I am sure that there are hundreds of thousands of people who want to leave Afghanistan. But, if the BBC was looking for a compelling story about someone trapped in Kabul and who is in immediate danger from the Taliban, the trusted news organization missed the mark by quite a lot with this particular story.

Evacuating a country, in the best of circumstances, is difficult operation. Afghanistan is far from a perfect situation. The country is in a civil war.  It was a dangerous place before the Taliban took over and it remains a dangerous place today now that the Taliban has taken control.  Both the Westerners who went to Afghanistan and the Afghan allies who worked with western governments knew this when taking their jobs. The British government was faced with a difficult job of evacuating their citizens and any Afghans allies. They had to prioritize based on the chaos around them, the resources available to them and the people who needed to leave immediately.

This is where the BBC breaks down. Just because the man felt he should be evacuated doesn’t mean that it was urgent for him to leave, or that it is important for him to jump the queue. Doucet doesn’t even try to make his case.   I kept thinking what exactly has he done that warrants the British government getting this man and his family to Britain. I am sympathetic to him wanting to leave, a lot of people do. But does he risk death or prison because he remains in Afghanistan. Did the Taliban threaten him?  Did the BBC have evidence of the Taliban threatening anyone and everyone who worked with the British embassy?  What were other Western governments doing for their catering staff?

Doucet milked this man’s uncompelling story for all that it was worth while spending precious little time determining if the man warrants any real concern. It is sad that he wasn’t on the list to evacuate immediately but if I were compiling that list, and given the facts I have, I would certainly have left his name off of it. Which leaves me pondering why the BBC chose to air this story. I am certain there are better examples out there that illustrates the point they were trying to make. Unfortunately, this man’s story fails miserably. It lacks both context and urgency. In the end I learned about an Afghan who doesn’t want to live under Taliban rule and who felt his very tenuous link with the British government entitled him to better treatment. The British government disagreed and he remains in Afghanistan with a lot of other Afghans who want to leave and who will have to struggle with British visa process to gain entrance.  It is a sad story and I am sure there will be more sad stories like it before the Taliban is through, but the man was not abandoned and he doesn’t warrant any special treatment.

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First, I have to confess I know very little about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. I am uninterested in them. I don’t read about them. I don’t watch them on television. My knowledge is limited to knowing that Prince Harry is in the British Royal family and Meghan Markle is married to him. Despite all this lack of information about the couple, I have an opinion about them.  I think he is dim and she is a megalomaniac monster.

I never really bothered much about having an opinion about them until a friend and I happened to start talking about them. It was soon after their interview with Oprah Winfrey.  I confess I missed the show. The interesting thing is before I could give my opinion about them, he gave me his impression.  It was very close to mine – Prince Harry is dim and Meghan Markle is a megalomaniac monster. Given my history with the friend, I am fairly certain he had as much interest in the royal family as I have – which is none. Why do two different people who have no interest in Meghan and Harry have exactly the same opinion about them. 

Meghan may be a monster and Harry may be dim. I don’t know.  I have no experience with either of them.  I have no relevant data to determine whether this is true or not. It may be. Or it may be incorrect. What concerns me here is that I have an opinion about people who I could care less about and who I so disinterested in that I haven’t bothered to learn more. 

You may say that they are public figures and their behavior permeates the news. I can buy that.   It could be easy to subconsciously pick up this information without actually trying.  They are in the news regularly.  I am aware of their names. Yet there are hundreds of people in the public eye that I have no opinion about.  Meryl Streep, for example.  I like her acting and I have from time to time read about her. The difference here is I still don’t have a particularly strong opinion about Meryl Streep. I like her acting but I don’t have a definite view about the her as a person. I like her because she is a great actress.  I can’t say if she is a monster, or dim, or bat-shit crazy.  All I know is her abilities which is really all I need to know. But Harry and Meghan I have a definite view of the person I might find. 

It concerns me that I have an opinion about someone with whom I have no interest. This opinion popped into my mind without any effort on my part. It obviously coming from somewhere.  Someone is influencing my opinion without me paying too much attention to who it is and why.  Someone wants me to know that Meghan is a monster and Prince Harry is dim. And I do. I have acquired an opinion without even trying. This is troubling.  

Even more troubling is that powerful people want me to believe certain things about which I am not paying very much attention to. I simply don’t care enough to learn more about the couple. But someone does care and they care deeply enough to try to influence my opinion. They have succeeded in this instance. I believe it to be true and am talking about it with other people as if it were true.  I won’t give it another thought because it seems like a silly irrelevant opinion. Why should I give it a second thought? I am not terribly worried about Meghan and Harry, I am fairly certain they will land on their feet no matter what travails they face.  I am, however, deeply concerned on how effortlessly I have been manipulated into having an opinion about them.