Prince Harry the Hater?

So they would have us believe:

Taking the prize in the indignation derby was British Muslim activist Mohammed Shafiq of the Ramadhan Foundation. "I am deeply shocked and saddened at Prince Harry's racism which upsets and offends many British Asians," Shafiq said in a statement. "The use of this sort of racism has no justification and I am saddened by those that are advocating using this term is not racist. … It's time for real remorse."
Among Harry's few defenders was Ingrid Seward of the royal-watching magazine Majesty, who told the BBC that the prince and his academy friends "were having fun and … calling each other nicknames." She pointed out that Harry's reddish-blond hair had earned him the nickname "Ginge or Ginger." (In the video, the prince-lieutenant pretends to give orders to his army comrades and then asks if there are any questions, to which one of them responds: "Are your pubes ginger, too?") Alas for Harry, "gingers" don't have quite the kind of ethnic clout in Britain as Pakistanis these days, and the revelation of his nickname prompted no demands that anyone apologize. . . .

That's from my latest column at Pajamas Media, and you should read the whole thing. Maybe Harry's been swept up in that "racist backlash" we've been warned about.

Of Drudge and duty

Reaction to the Drudge Report's revelation that Prince Harry was serving in Afghanistan (the prince has now been withdrawn) includes some unusual discussion of "journalism ethics" -- with quotation marks that are quite necessary, I think.

Of course, Prince Harry's willingness to serve his country is entirely admirable, and the fact that the Drudge scoop led to Harry's withdrawal is to be lamented. Still, I can't go along with this suggestion from my friend Jeff Quinton of the Inside Charm City blog:

Since Drudge really isn’t that necessary anymore for news, and his scoops are few and far between anymore, why not drop Drudge? Remove his link from your website, de-link him from your blog and don’t link to him.

No. And not because I endorse what Drudge did. Rather, I think whatever blame there is in this matter must fall on Drudge's source. The sources were presumably parties to the agreement that kept details of the prince's deployment out of the news for three months.

It was the sources who broke the agreement. Drudge was never part of that agreement. Someone had a duty to keep this quiet, but that someone was not Matt Drudge.

Who leaked it to Drudge, and why? That's an interesting question, though I doubt we'll ever know the answer. I've never known Drudge to burn a source. But if you're looking for someone to blame in this affair, you need to ask yourself who that source might have been, and why they told Drudge.

Truth is a journalist's ultimate defense. When I was starting out in this business more than 20 years ago, my editors would tell me, "As long as you've got your facts straight, they can't touch you." For all the talk about how the New Media revolution has changed everything in the news business, that Old School rule still holds.

Of course, a smart journalist quickly figures out that he needs to earn his sources' trust, and that the ability to keep a secret -- making sure what's off the record stays off the record -- is essential to building a relationship of trust with those sources.

Drudge is no dummy. Reverse-engineering this Prince Harry story, I would bet that Drudge's source was someone in the British press corp who was eager to report on Prince Harry's Afghan adventure, but who was constrained by the agreement to keep his deployment secret. Therefore, the source tipped Drudge in order to blow away the agreement.

That's just a guess and, like I said, we'll probably never know the facts. But I still say that it is the source, and not Drudge, who bears the responsibility for this leak.

Linked at Newsbusters and Memeorandum -- thanks!