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Follow Up

Yesterday we visited the Tirana International Hotel where the Press were holed up. In one room there were ranks of them sitting at their laptops but few of them appeared to be doing any work. Some were watching the television which was broadcasting most of the visit live, others were watching the other television which was showing a football match. On the balcony the TV people were sitting around in the shade of their umbrellas chatting.

The unremitting lack of activity might explain why news coverage of the President's visit which I've been checking this morning is so relentlessly bad. The same set of quotes from Bush and Berisha - presumably taken from a press handout. The same predictable summaries about Albania - poverty, pro-American, corruption. The same voxpops, for which most of them seem to have found one person to talk to and then gone back to the hotel.

In case you missed the press conference given by Bush and Berisha a full record is available at the White House website. And if anyone comes across any decent reporting worth mentioning before I do let me know.

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Comments

Anonymous said…
I was looking for material as well from European sources, but they were really short and I could tell by the tone that they were so jealous!
;)
Why are Europeans so Anti-American? Instead of helping the Us after 9/11 ... They are so wrong!
4:29 pm
Anonymous said…
people were glued to the tvs everywhere
4:30 pm
olli said…
I haven't seen much of the European Press that's not also available in English and I didn't detect much difference in tone from mainstream American press.

After 11 September Europe was supportive of the US - the US turned down offers of assistance in Afghanistan. It was Iraq - and the management of the lead up to Iraq - that did the damage.
5:15 pm
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