An Interesting Phenomenon

Call it learned helplessness or what you will. I find it rather quizzical that some European journalist on one hand have no difficulty abetting a lie, but elsewhere are afraid to report at all, lest their press credentials come under threat.

the EU summit, the Portuguese Union, CGTP-Intersindical, organised the biggest demonstration in Lisbon in 20 years.

Under the slogan "For a social Europe – Employment with rights" up to 200,000 people gathered to oppose what they believe to be a "neo-liberal" EU reform treaty, which more or less equals the rejected EU constitution.

The funny - or alarming - thing is the fact, that these 200,000 people managed to demonstrate almost unnoticed without being mentioned by the media.

...and a rather dim media at that. While falling over themselves to see a soldier shot in Afghanistan, in their own venal and corrupt environment, they sit around hoping for a press release that carefully crafted enough to sound “juicy”.

To be fair, we have to consider the question that the event might have not been communicated properly by its organisers. But there were hundreds of journalist sitting in the EU summit's press centre.

Normally this means "sit and wait". Waiting for the press conferences of the presidency and the national briefings, waiting for some insider information from a high ranking civil servant floating down from Olympus to enlighten the masses.

Maybe they never thought to go outside and find their own news instead of sitting around the press pen bitching about the filter coffee.