Reporting on death of Sunday Mirror's Rupert Hamer

Alcatel · 11-01-2010 02:43PM #1

I wanted to make a note on the tragic death of Rupert Hamer, the Sunday Mirror correspondant who was killed whilst embedded with US Marine's in Afghanistan. He's the first British reporter to die in Afghanistan since the war began in 2001.

However, the reporting of the story was and is, to my mind, overblown.

I have been reading and watching and listening to coverage, and a lot of the time the US Marine who was killed alongside Mr Hamer is not mentioend at all. Mr Hamer's death should not, to my mind, receive any more attention than the death of any serviceman or woman, from any country. How many squaddies, GI's or Jarheads get the front page in newspapers these days?

That Mr Hamer is the first UK journalist to die in the conflict is worthy of note. But I feel in general that we gloss over many of the deaths of soldiers in the media these days, and I find it unsettling to see Mr Hamer getting considerable attention versus the deaths 12 other military personnel, including 1 British, since the beginning of the year.

Morlar · 11-01-2010 02:45PM

Alcatel wrote: »

However, the reporting of the story was and is, to my mind, overblown.

I agree with you there. The one that sticks out was the rotating skynews report which signed off with following hyperbole ;

'reporting from a warzone has never been more dangerous'.

HalloweenJack · 12-01-2010 01:07PM

The thing is these soldiers are involved in the war, therefore there is a public perception that they are more likely to die.

In contrast, this journalist is a relative by-stander who's just "doing his job", that's why the media are playing it up becuase he was "innocent", compared to the soldiers.

Soldiers sign up for the army. They know they could be thrown into a war but they still join. They are aware of the risk involved.

Journalists are there to report the story. They don't want to get involved in the fighting, they just want to observe it and report on it. Morally, the journalists have a more noble occupation, whether the media organisation they work for supports the war or not.

Plus, the killed soldiers were American, not British.

Reporting on death of Sunday Mirror's Rupert Hamer

Comments