Be Careful Who You Trust
Imagine the shock when I saw Diane Dimond appearing on the CNN program, Reliable Sources.
During her interview on CNN, Ms. Dimond spoke about how the media got it all wrong about Michaele and Tareq Salahi, who infamously crashed a party at the White House.
On her website, Ms. Dimond promises that the ''the reader will be left wondering what ever happened to good journalism ....''
Ostensibly, Ms. Dimond wrote her new book, Cirque Du Salahi, as an amend on behalf of the mainstream media for their biased coverage about the party crashing story. I hope that after they read her new book that fans of Ms. Dimond's style of celebrity journalism accept Ms. Dimond's amend and are able to be made whole, in that the her fans come to know an objective story about the Salahis. Perhaps with the writing of this book, Ms. Dimond has come to the realisation that it is not easy for a journalist to set aside one's biases when they report the news.
It is disappointing that given constant transgressions that mainstream reporters make every day in the major dailies, on network news, and on cable news channels, that, of all of the serious subject matters where the mainstream media has been neither objective nor entirely forthcoming -- from the reasons why the United States invaded Iraq following the attacks of September 11 to the known dangers facing Benazir Bhutto's return to Pakistan -- that Ms. Dimond would pick reality television stars to examine media ethics.
If she were to make a more serious study of copycat/wolf pack journalism, Ms. Dimond should have picked a more weighty story. The media circus that followed the White House party crashing lasted for a few weeks -- a flashmob of a frenzy, when compared against Ms. Dimond's media campaign against Michael Jackson, which lasted for several years.
