Last July, the major British news organizations and their affiliates collectively became aware of a tantalizing piece of intelligence, one which under other circumstances may have proven to be the year’s singular news story: the flamboyant and fun-loving Prince Harry – now a much-celebrated officer in the British Armed Forces – was going to be deployed to Afghanistan, and would be commanding a squadron of troops in the war against the Taliban.
I have always been a passionate republican, and one with strong reservations about nation-building campaigns, yet I cannot help but get a lump in my throat at the dignity and poetry of this beautiful narrative; a gallant young prince, braver but less handsome than his brother, battling on the frontlines and in the trenches with his comrades against an kingdom of tyranny. But for sensible and self-evident reasons, the Ministry of Defense demanded a media embargo on any live coverage, offering in exchange the opportunity for a comprehensive exposé after the completion of his tour. The story would not go forever untold, they promised; only until the young royal’s safety could be assured. Reasonable enough, right?
A voluntary media blackout of this scale and scope is a rarity in the competitive arena of the free press, and we should take great care not to place the blame for what eventually transpired at the feet of the entire profession; the embarrassing and disgraceful debacle was largely the result of one man’s greedy attempts to place himself at the forefront of investigative journalism. The rest of the networks, in spite of themselves, restrained their sensationalist impulses and kept quiet.
The worldwide embargo was first violated when New Idea, an oblivious Australian women’s magazine, printed a short and obscure article about it, and Berliner Kurier printed some unsubstantiated speculation, but the situation only became unmanageable for the Ministry of Defense when Matt Drudge posted a piece about it on his tabloid website.
Drudge is a creepy little person with whom everyone should be no more or less than peripherally aware. He first gained notoriety for technically being the first to break the news on the Lewinsky scandal – causing Newsweek to dump their own more thoughtful exposé – and has since made a reputation for himself as the most shameless journalist in the blogosphere. There is little doubt that he knew what he was doing was wrong: his unapologetic defense stems entirely from the fact that he wasn’t technically the first to break the embargo. (A curious justification, certainly, juxtaposed with his statements describing the report as an “exclusive.”) But why would anyone believe in the sincerity of his responses, anyway? This is the same man who once falsely accused Sidney Blumenthal of domestic abuse, and then retracted it after the innuendo had already reached saturation, and who more recently torpedoed the reputation of CNN reporter Michael Ware with demonstrably false allegations, based on information entirely from an imaginary source.
To Prince Harry, I doff my cap; I daresay he could teach some of our elected officials a thing or two about personal responsibility. But as for Drudge, a wretched and treasonous egomaniac who has only once significantly turned out to be right, the question should not be “Should we continue to give him journalistic relevance?” but rather, “Should we ever offer him parole?”
