Not long ago, the Drudge Report broke the story that Prince Harry had been deployed to and was serving in Afghanistan. The verb broke seems particularly apt to this sort of reporting. As of a few minutes ago, the AP is reporting that Prince Harry’s deployment is at an end.
I’m not a fan of British Royalty. I’m an American and the whole notion of a monarchy is slightly offensive to me. Far too often, the British Royalty provides just another sad celebrity family drama for the tabloids. They are in my opinion more often an embarrassment to Britain than they are a source of national pride and honor, and I believe the history of England is with few exceptions is marked by overcoming the limitations of the monarchy rather than enjoying particularly great leadership. It wasn’t British monarchs that made England master of the seas and the envy of the world. It wasn’t British monarchs that made England a beacon of liberty.
But all that is rather beside the point.
Right down at the most fundamental level, Harry is just a young man serving his country and trying to do the best with the hand of cards he’s been dealt. Harry can’t be blamed for his birth or the sad theater his family provides. I have no illusions that his life of privilege is an easy one. For most people, one of the cruelest things you could do to them is to bestow on them wealth, fame, and privilege. If he manages to rise above that, he will do better than most in the same circumstances.
I have long been a critic of the media reporting news that the public does not in fact need to know. There are some things I’d rather not be told, because if I know them then someone else with ill will also knows them. Good journalistic ethics include knowing when not to publish a story. Just because Drudge is not part of the traditional media, does not exclude him from this criticism. In this case it is particularly bad because there is no possible value the knowledge that Prince Harry is in Afghanistan could have in informing my judgments as a citizen. There is no pressing reason why the public needs to know where any particular young man in the military is serving, even if they are famous. There is no value in the public knowing this knowledge which balances against the life of even one young man, to say nothing of the life of everyone serving with him. These sorts of stories are not posted for the benefit of anyone but the journalists who are eager to get a particular scoop.
So what is the outcome of this scoop? Matt’s actions in my opinion reflect badly on all bloggers and even all Americans. He is injured the career of a soldier, and deprived a young man of his right to honorably serve his country on the field of battle. He has valued his own celebrity status higher than of the lives of a group of young men. And he has discomforted a valuable US ally. I may not care much for British royalty, but the same understandably cannot be said for all the British. Not only has he deprived a young man of a source of pride and honor, but he has in some measure deprived a whole nation. And now we can look forward to a future where any time someone wishes to make the point that online journalists can not be trusted to abide by the ethical standards of traditional journalists, this anecdote can be trotted out.
A public apology by Matt Drudge to all the injured parties would in my opinion be appropriate.