A hurricane that almost never was, a bunch of journalists trapped in a luxury hotel and a massacre

Been a strange week for news.

The media, it seems, was gripped by the story of a bunch of journalists being trapped in a luxury hotel in Tripoli. I heard an incredibly self-indulgent interview with one of those journalists (who I don’t doubt for a second was genuinely terrified) in which he informed us they were now having to cook for themselves and that some parts of the hotel had lost electricity. That’s about as newsworthy as a facebook update.

Today we were told that at the same time this non-event was happening a large number of civilians were massacred (by whom is less clear) and that tens of thousands of political prisoners are unaccounted for. Its unfortunate being trapped in a hotel but how can news agencies make the claim to be ‘impartial’ when they are always putting their reporters at the centre of story?

There was a particularly cringe-worthy moment the other night when the veteran ITN reporter James Mates walked into an abandoned Tripoli hospital and stated shouting ‘is there anyone there?’. Pure pantomime for the camera. Inside were literally hundreds of dead bodies.

Then finally we had the hurricane that almost never was (with a massive focus on New York). After Katrina this kind of overblowing of a natural disater is an inevitability. The political stakes are too high in not preparing for the worst.

But is there nothing else to report?

Probably not.

(this is not diminish the impact of the storm on the thousands of people who have lost their homes.