This has got to be my favourite piece of news from the past week. It’s got all the elements of a juicy online piece – a pinch of conflict here, a sprinkle of scandal there. And it’s all topped off with a generous dollop of celebrity drama.
Almost every major news outlet – be it TV or radio, print or web – has had some form of coverage on Naomi Campbell’s witness testimony in the trial relating to diamond-fuelled civil war in the 1990s. BBC and Fox News featured live streaming of her in the witness stand, and The Guardian UK and The New York Times ran a live blog as the trial was happening.
Let’s take a moment here to point out that the Charles Taylor war crime trial has been ongoing since 2007. Charles Taylor who? I think it’s safe to say that most readers have never heard of Charles Taylor before this week. But now the former president of Liberia and his alleged war crimes are all over the headlines, thanks to high-profile witness Naomi Campbell.
It is a heady mix of a world famous fashion icon, a warlord who became president, and of course, "blood diamonds" that allegedly fuelled a civil war.
It's sad that it takes the involvement of a supermodel to get people reading about a civil war that killed 250,000 people and left the country in economic ruin and overrun with weapons. The media frenzy and international attention Naomi brought with her to the witness stand was wonderfully summed up by Charles Taylor’s defence lawyer:
Asking her if she believed Charles Taylor had sent the diamonds, Naomi responded,
"I don't know anything about Charles Taylor. Never heard of him before, never heard of the country Liberia before. I never heard of the term 'blood diamonds' before."
"Many people hadn't," purred Taylor's defence lawyer, "until you turned up today."
***
This particular article, one of the many on the trial coverage, caught my attention simply because of this photo:
Now most of the other news reports mentioned the now-infamous dinner party hosted by Nelson Mendela as well as the illustrious guests that attended, but this article was the only one that published a picture of the party. The name captions were a nice touch, although I do feel a bit sorry for the “Unidentified Person”; she seems a bit out of place among all the other famous names.
It article was a bit too long for an online piece but the sub-headings were a clever way of breaking it up into readable chunks. And every time I could feel myself getting bored whilst reading the article, there was a catchy little fact box with background info on Naomi, or a description of her courtroom testimony. It could be argued that the page was cluttered with too much text, but as a reader, I was happy to have all the information on one page. I don’t know that I would’ve bothered to click on any links.
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