Three things about the bombs in the London transportation system:
- This wasn’t a high-concept asymmetric vectored-fear attack like the World Trade Center was because there was only one wave – not one wave as an opportunity to get the TV cameras on the site of a second wave so that the global community would see the attacks replayed over and over again on cable news. This was localized sabotage and terror, even if it did happen in London during rush hour.
- Living on the Pacific Coast of the U. S. and not having cable, one would not have found out about it from the television until the evening news – no Special Reports on the networks. Wikipedia and Flickr had better reporting on it than did CNN; just like Slashdot had better reporting than CNN on 11 Sept. 2001. CNN really isn’t very good at reporting in real time via the Internet – none of the cable news or traditional print news organizations are. Maybe there is a rule parallel to the “In a crisis ignore the authorities” rule that says “In a crisis ignore the media.”
- This is the first event in the asymmetric war that has happened when I didn’t have cable – and I could feel the news-jones well up as I flipped through the six broadcast channels on my TV finding nothing but daytime crap.