As I previously reported, the ABC drew heavy criticism for its coverage of King Charles’ coronation. As Melbourne radio king Neil Mitchell said, the taxpayer-funded leftist propaganda outfit public broadcaster “totally misread the mood” by spending most of the lead-up to the ceremony “bagging the living daylights out of the monarchy” and whining about “colonisation”.
Australians pay a billion dollars a year for the privilege of funding a leftist media collective. New Zealanders might get off relatively cheaply, with the “Team of $55 million”, but that doesn’t mean that they were treated to anything better during the coronation.
So why are so many mainstream media outlets so poor at telling the news?
I say this after tuning into One News coverage of the coronation only to blunder into a 5 minute piece about Harry, followed by how to cook coronation quiche.
Maybe they thought they were being entertaining, but instead they came off as infantile.
On the other hand, even the BBC’s coverage was, for once, a model of professional journalism.
So I tuned over to BBC World. There, they were talking about the King’s involvement in the arts and they followed it with more details about the ceremony.
The story was about the King and his country, not his errant son.
In fact, Harry arrived on a commercial flight, gave no interviews, joined the rest of the family, sat with other retired or non working royals (which is what he is), and afterwards he went to the airport to go home to see his own family. No fights, no showdowns, no dramas.
Not that you’d know that, from the demented mainstream media coverage.
The Mirror alone, over the week ran 100 articles about Harry, mostly derogatory. People have described the onslaught as ‘hate for hire’.
Even when Mike Hosking wrote 1000 words about the Coronation for the Herald the paper chose to highlight one sentence in which he said Harry looked alone and a little lost as the headline.
I actually thought Harry seemed relaxed and chatty, but who cares.
As Andrew Dickens rightly points out, the story of the day was the King and his ascension to the throne in one of the most consequential events in British history in years. That’s what people tuning in were interested in. The gossip-column obsession about Harry was yet another example of a legacy media almost completely out of touch with its audience.
As was the legacy media’s endless rehashing of left-wing monomanias.
The breakfast show on TV1 was covering whether it was time for New Zealand to become a republic. Too soon and too stupid in my book. I don’t believe it will happen in my lifetime. Particularly after the success of this weekend.
The reason the British monarchy the most successful monarchy on Earth is that they have spent hundreds of years slowly backing out of the day-to-day affairs of state so that today they are purely performative and symbolic. No one is feeling oppressed or ruled by this family.
Ultimately, though, the coronation story was the story about the British nation.
It’s about their capability and their spirit.
In the past year the Brits have seen three historic royal events – the Diamond Jubilee, the Queen’s funeral, and now the King’s coronation.
And they’ve all been faultless triumphs of organisation, story telling and co-ordination involving thousands.
This was not live coverage of an old toff sitting in a chair in a church and having someone put a fancy hat on his head, as some critics portrayed it.
This was a nation showing the world what it can do and that it’s the best in the world in doing it. It was a show of strength and order and no-one is cancelling that any time soon.
NewstalkZB
The sheer, no pun intended, majesty of events like the Queen’s funeral and the new King’s coronation is something that is uniquely British. For all the quibbling — again, from the legacy media — over the cost, the coronation ceremony is the sort of genuinely dazzling spectacle the Americans can only wish they could pull off. The Chinese and Russians can put on all the shows of brute military strength they want, but one hundred nuclear missiles trundling through Red Square are no match in heart-stirring splendour for the royal carriage or the immaculately groomed Windsor Grey horses.
Heck, even a drum trooper’s magnificent Shire horse taking a dump in the Mall was more impressive than a robotic Pyongyang parade chanting the praises of their portly dictator.
God Save the King! indeed.