What happens next
By Fred • Jan 30th, 2008 • Category: Articles, Features
Wise sailors have always been more interested in reliable weather forecasts than reports of yesterday’s storm damage.
As it happens, history is not a bad guide to future possibilities, especially when you consider some of the alternatives. But news isn’t history (yet). We look back only because we have better information about the past than the future.
As ‘the news’ shifts its attention from the recent past to the fleeting present, the only way beyond live coverage is to start forecasting what’s next. This sort of information may not be as entertaining (the video footage aint in yet) but it’s certainly useful, as sailors will attest.
Some specialist publications - many of them business-oriented - are already doing this. A case in point is Security Council Report, a valuable independent service for anyone who’d like to know what’s cooking in those impenetrable UN hallways.
On the agenda for February: discussion of peacekeeping challenges in Darfur, Somalia, D R Congo and elsewhere, plus new reports on children & armed conflict and conflict prevention.
Fred is living in hope that we'll all get better at collective, preventive action.
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