The news war

I've been spending a lot of time following events in Libya this past few days. This morning's trip to St German's to celebrate St Bartholemew's Day was my first outing since Sunday. Each day is punctuated by sessions of news channel hopping between BBC, Sky and Al-Jazeera, both on telly and on the web, plus regular scanning of Twitter to sift for the odd speck of gold among the dross of thousands of postings repeating old stories or peoples' varied emotional reactions or spam of Russian origin. Unscrupulous folk mention Libya or Tripoli so that the search engine will pick up and display a posting which is generally about something unrelated, usually dodgy. Purveyors of verifiable facts and outrageously fictitious notions of events, not to mention comic one-liners, are all there in the mix, but with a little practice it is possible to identify stuff worthy of consideration.

On any hashtag (= #name) relating to the conflict, one can find the first posting of any occasional article or news report worth reading, the pleas of people close to the conflict for medical aid, or recognition of some new conflict hot spot. People were tweeting about Gaddafi's network of tunnels days before reporters were broadcasting the guided tours. Twenty four hours before Gaddafi soldiers concealed in the forest area linked to the zoo started opening fire on the city's liberators, someone in the locality was tweeting a warning about the danger of their presence there. No doubt news hounds and military intelligence observers also have their eyes on the 'tweetosphere'. It's interesting to see how long it takes for a noticeable reaction to new information. Sometimes the tweets throw up specific immediate material that simply needs to be prayed about. As one might pray briefly on hearing the sound of an ambulance  racing through the streets.

Watching over days, the same film footage, reports and interviews are aired time and time again. Each channel has its own angle. The Beeb is always a bit behind Sky and Al-Jazeera in sniffing out new stories, and a bit more preoccupied with the views of powerful institutional figures and speculation on policy than immediate events on the ground. Interviewers, reporters and commentators can get very worked up at what seems to them like a slow rate of progress in resolving a crisis. Their impatience is an irritation, itz demonstrates a kind of naïvety about the pace of real events outside the studio, and the scale of difficulties being faced up to in order to get through huge upheavals, especially when you don't have all the resources and a dedicated team at your beck and call.

I used to think the Beeb was most balanced in its reportage, but it's been good to compare perspectives and priorities between news organisations and to see that the Beeb reflects the establishment position - our establishment of course. However, one thing I'd like to think the Beeb would never do, and that's display a Mediterranean map marking the wrong Tripoli (in Lebanon), while fighting in its Libyan namesake was being reported. But CNN did. And news of this went around the twittersphere like wildfire!

But why this obsessive watching? The overthrow of this particular evil tyrant has been longed for since well before Saddam Hussein came to power. How it has come to pass, and where it will lead the Libyan people is for me a matter of much prayerful concern. One of those things I feel I should make time for in retirement.