Media, government relationship one of suspicion not seduction

JOURNALISTS and politicians have a fatal attraction of the bunny boiling variety.

For those not old enough to remember the movie Fatal Attraction, Glenn Close is a beautiful but discarded one night stand. She stalks her married former lover obsessively, breaks into his house and boils the family bunny rabbit in a cooking pot. Fatal Attraction is only a movie; journalists and politicians are real life people. They have a mutually obsessive, incestuous, and dysfunctional relationship.

To do justice to the reputation of all concerned, the affair between the media and this Government was no one night stand. It was a longer and more intense affair, formed amidst a horrific political blitz in the bomb shelters of economic crisis. Who wouldn’t have huddled together in that barrage of events? Now alas, above ground what looked beautiful by torch light is less appealing in day light. And the pity is that the ardour that is quickly dissipating was so long in coming. The long lonely nights of opposition were until their electoral climax very nearly unrequited love. The most unlovely of governments get more attention than any alternative proposition.