Feral Beast: Princess Di dossier vanishes

Wednesday, September 5, 2007

Princess Di dossier vanishes

What a wreck. The car and the case are kaput. Wanted: A three foot high stack of files pertaining to the paparazzi pursuit of the Princess of Wales, that blonde icon who famously was killed in a tunnel a decade ago. Whether these vital papers were misplaced or stolen, it is a huge blunder for the Parisian police and will make it practically impossible to tie up all loose ends in their investigation of the world's most notorious car crash.

Already, this lapse is fueling conspiracy theories bigtime. Whodunnit indeed. Bring on Inspector Jacques Clouseau. Six thousand pages is a helluva lot of paperwork to chase.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...: is this why the authorities opened an inquiry in the UK ten years after? Or is it cuz the boys are now men and can take the nasty implicaitons of their mum's life in stride? Will we ever know why Di died. I think it was a stupid accident. But surely she was a victim of us feral beasts as well as of her own mania for publicity; October 5, 2007 at 2:16 AM

Feral Beast? Try Lemming

If the press were an animal, what kind of animal would it be? I’ve got my answer. A legion of lemmings, furry and well-intentioned, but ultimately condemned by their nature to follow each other mindlessly off a tall cliff, over the Paris Hilton peak or into the Invade Iraq crevasse. The words “feral beast” certainly wouldn’t come to mind. It’s not particularly accurate or particularly evocative. But that is how the departing British prime minister, Tony Blair, sees journalists: as malicious tormentors who have tried to tear him limb from limb.

--Gal Beckerman of the Columbia Journalism Review

“Journalism is a form of cartography,” write Tom Rosenstiel and Bill Kovach of Pew. “It creates a map for citizens to navigate society. Inflating events for sensation, neglecting others, stereotyping or being disproportionately negative all make a less reliable map.”

"Journalism is good at solving small problems or taking small bites of a big problem. It’s not good at solving big problems." Adapted from David Simon, creator of The Wire.

Retrospective : five decades of journalism as reported by CJR

Fake AP Stylebook reminds us: Unless you're doing a story on the Muppets, you are not a gonzo journalist.

"The once idealized information superhighway has become a parking lot of error, misinformation, rumor and junk." Poynter Institute, advocating a broader definition of who is a journalist.