G20 Printing Error Highlights Need To Pay Attention
This report was filed by CBS News London producer Mimi Spillane.
Yesterday, I asked how many people it took to run a meeting of the world's leaders.
Today's question: What if you have the meeting but there's no media to cover it? Like the tree falling in the forest, does it make a sound if no one's there to hear it?
Above: Journalists at work in the Excel conference center in east London, where world leaders are gathered for the G20 Summit, April 2, 2009.
I am overstating it. You've already seen plenty of pictures of President and First Lady Obama and the other leaders attending the G20 London Summit, in and out of Buckingham Palace and 10 Downing Street, having news conferences and shaking hands. So there are plenty of reporters paying attention.
But it seems that some, perhaps hundreds, of the journalists here were perilously close to not getting into the ExCel Center — the site of the meeting — because of a printing house problem.
There were huge problems getting credentials out to the media, apparently because the credentials weren't ready in time. Without credentials, you can't get into the grounds where the summit is being held. If you can't get here, you can't cover it. And if it's not covered, how do you, the public, know it really happened?
Okay, I can confirm the meeting is going on. But it seems a pretty apt metaphor for the times.
Twentey-plus world leaders in one place really seems to have stretched the limits of pretty much everyone involved — from police to government staff to the world's media.
Apparently, it could only take one inefficient printing company that no one is paying attention to, to really mess things up.
Take an overstretched economy, throw in some banks that no one's paying attention to and… well, you get the picture.