Of their faces shiny with virtue and simultaneously sooted
with smoke from burning tyres, there is little more for me to say. The young
woman shot in the throat, who tweeted her last tweet and then came back from
the dead, leaves nothing unsaid. Protestors barracking their leaders for
settling too easily; the presidential palace deserted except for animals in the
private zoo – all of these articulate what’s happening in Kiev with the
possibility of its opposite, without needing any help from me.
There is realpolitik: Russia's sphere of influence versus the self-interest of the EU, played out on the streets and played
badly – for short-term positive image-points rather than the long game of Diplomacy. But the turn of events in
Ukraine – the possibility that they will turn and turn again – eludes both the diplomatic game and the critical analysis of it.
At the
other end of the news reporting spectrum, there are pin-sharp pictures which bring the-right-now
to us readers right-here. But their technical quality lends a spurious
clarity to events which are still hazy; their outcome yet to be decided.
Analysis and illustration: neither approach quite captures the quickening uncertainty of the moment.
Nor is this the time for Singing
The News. Other events have prompted me to use an experimental form of reporting
in order to locate the true liveliness of those involved; and this, in
turn, is to suggest the possibility of other outcomes – that it is possible,
after all, for events to turn out otherwise.
Nowadays we are normally so far from recognising this possibility,
it takes an unusual form of composition to construct it. But in
Kiev today the possibility speaks for itself. It is writ large in a situation
which could patently go either way; and there is nothing for newscompositor to do but sign
off for the night.
Cheers!
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