Something rather irked me the other day. But, before that, some background. On late-night television these days we are now treated to two of the American morning shows. Whereas we once only had the pleasure of Katie Couric on NBC Today, now, because 'we live in such troubled times', a second morning show is thought necessary. Channel Nine airs the ABC morning show Good Morning America with Diane Sawyer as part of its war coverage. Now, I love Katie Couric. For some reason she is one of the few American anchorpeople - along with Jim Lehrer and the retired Walter Kronkite - whose face I don't want to smash. But Diane Sawyer is another story. I find her false, mawkish, and without much of a drive to challenge or contextualise the conventional wisdom of the day. And in the brief minutes that I was watching Good Morning America the other night, Diane managed to vindicate my dislike.

You see, in the last few days, the morning shows have begun re-introducing entertainment content into their story line-ups. Thus Katie conducted a charming interview with Colin Farrell, and Good Morning America ran a piece about the making of J-Lo's new Flashdance inspired video clip. No complaints here. But when wrapping up the J-Lo piece before going into an ad break, Diane said something that I found really self-promoting and shitty. She said something to the effect of, "As I explained before, the guys on the frontline told me how much they love those kinds of stories. So guys, that one was for you. We hope you enjoyed it and we'll do our best to keep them coming. We're thinking of you". AARGH.

Her statement referenced her whistlestop visit to Kuwait to show how serious she was to have put herself in harm's way by being 'on the spot' for a few weeks - in which time she filed important stories showing her run to safety as chemical alert sirens sounded, and informatively detailing for the cameras the gear that she and all the 'fighting men and women' needed to put on in a short amount of time in order to prevent exposure. She had been there, man. Her concern was real. Puke, puke, puke. The sheer wrongness of it struck me violently. Airing the J-Lo story obviously had nothing to do with the will of the people fighting the war in Iraq. If they were pleased, it was a by-product rather than a raison d'etre. She needn't have used them to justify the gradual switch back to normal programming that is occurring on every channel. ABC could have just shown it, no apology required. But, because there is a war on, everything has to refer back to it. People can thus gleefully show that the war has effected them too. For some reason, that can't just be a given.

I was only just able to keep myself from screaming profanities - it was late, though, and I had to respect the fact that the rest of the house was sleeping. So, instead of raging, I became dejected. In the days since, I have come to realise that there was more to my reaction than simple annoyance at Diane. That instant may have been so intensely disagreeable for me because it provided a straw to break the camel's back. It was yet another unasked for proof that some people can get away with anything.

It seems that every time an event of significant magnitude occurs, it necessitates that the arts community pauses to evaluate itself, and having done so, to seem shamefaced for a little while because of its lack of seriousness - which everyone is then allowed to point out - in such a time of crisis. Thus, for some reason there was a chance that the Oscars might be cancelled because of the war. Then, when that was denied, it was somehow feasible that some stars wouldn't show up, because of the war. Some actually didn't show, go figure. Perhaps they too wanted to luxuriate in the glory of the war having an effect on them. Whatever. I found the whole Oscars, will it or won't it, thing very annoying. No other professional community has to justify itself to the world. No other professional community has to allow inane debates about the worth of its existence. This annoys me. Because I do think that there is one group that needs to be a little shamefaced about itself. Members of this group serve themselves without regard for the public. They exempt themselves from judgment while piling it onto others. And, when war breaks out, they are not pressured to doubt for one moment their own importance. They gain only strength from the fact of a crisis, without having to provide any aid and without necessarily any skills in the prevention or treatment of bad things. I like to call this group 'the proportion of those with a public voice who display the least amount of intellectual rigour'. They are an actual species, and you might have noticed that they are running the place.

It seems that those who have become successful in the media machine are precisely the ones who entered their profession - be it politics, journalism, writing etc. - without a sense that their position requires them to be questioning, skeptical, open, exacting, courageous, and yes, rigourous. Thus, with wall to wall coverage for the first few days of war, we were treated to an almost unbroken stream of correspondents talking about who they were with, where they were (nothing specific of course), what was going to happen (and what people thought of that), when it was going to happen (and what people thought of that), but rarely, why the hell there was a war on. Others, waiting back in the studio would oblige each scanty morsel with a 'Great reporting. Keep safe'. And then they would cross live to the official press conferences where little or no reference was made to blood or death, and where horrors, secrets and untruths were easily hidden behind the veil of 'operational matters'. And they all got away with it.

So, the Diane Sawyer Incident irked me. It irked me into realising that I am irked and have been for some time. And what am I irked about? I am irked that those who are feted as important, as fonts of integrity, and as the people to whom we must turn in order to make sense of a crisis, are little more than prating knaves. They are given the power to shape the public consciousness, and they misuse it. For some reason, they are allowed to forget that there is a social contract to which they need to adhere. Can't they just get over themselves and do their fucking jobs?