Zimbabwe’s president does a good turn to journalists by grabbing the hand of politicians and royals, making major news out of so-called “gaffes” by UK home secretary Jack Straw and even Prince Charles. But what happens when a journalist seeks out the hand of a war criminal?

The BBC took credit this week for uncovering Afghan warlord Faryadi Zardad, who was living in London under a false passport. Tracked down by John Simpson, its star correspondent and the self-styled liberator of Kabul, the broadcaster repeatedly showed a clip of the journalist arriving with a TV crew at the non-descript terraced house in which Zardad was holed up before his arrest and unprecedented prosecution on English soil for crimes committed abroad.

Seeking to show how its intrepid reporter unmasked the truth in an “exclusive” for the BBC’s flagship news programme Newsnight, every broadcast reporting Zardad’s 20-year conviction showed Simpson in a handshake with a man who, the broadcaster delighted in explaining, kept a human “dog.”

The point is not that Simpson made a mistake. It’s just that accidental handshakes should not distract reporters and editors, especially when such actions mean nothing more than juvenile embarrassment.

There has been a consistent bias in the reporting and analysis of the latest terrorist incident that the source of the crime is “somewhere else.” That extends both to the human and technical resources deployed. So there is a great “shock” when the terrorists are discovered to be young local men living in relatively tight-knit communities, and a similar reversal when the explosives used are “home-made” rather than of an industrial/military source.

Still, we look for identity cards, and controls on the movement of suspect foreigners, when already we should know different. The two shoe bombers were both home-grown and with home-made explosives. Only their arrest avoided last week’s catastrophe occurring earlier.

The bias on display is that ordinary folk live in a safe well-ordered and relatively low-tech society and the bad stuff is extrinsic. The truth that we are discovering about globalisation is that threats that used to be foreign are now indigenous, and this may be much more of an issue of technology and media than immigration, religion or multi-culturalism to which the right will point. Necessary discussion of the latter meanwhile is hampered by the liberal bias of political correctness, and dare one say it, the ostensible quality of Muslim leadership in the UK if those put up for interview are anything to go by.

In any event, the underlying cause is probably one of cultural alienation and despair, probably involving some level of mental illness, and independent of religion. After all Timothy McVeigh of the Oklahoma bombing was no immigrant, or Muslim. Nevertheless, this does not let the religious communities in which these terrorists live off the hook–quite the contrary.

When a bomb goes off in a busy city, it is reported by eye witnesses that the immediate aftermath is followed by silence. This makes sense, because so dramatic and unexpected, so random is such an event, that all our senses must be reorientated to take account of what has happened to determine what danger we are in and what course of action is necessary.

In media terms, with 24-hour news programmes available to the public, there is no silence any more. Not only are those engaged in reporting, editing and presenting not allowed any moment for reflection, they stream unbroken incoherence to the public, depriving them the necessary time and distance as well as accurate facts to make their own sense of what has happened. This creates a new danger; a sort of information pollution that sets up and feeds particular biases.

In the immediate aftermath of last Thursday’s bombing of London, initial reports described seven blasts–six on the underground and one on the bus. There was double counting because those escaping the three underground blasts emerged from six underground stations.

This was still the case at least three hours into the story. At that point too, only two deaths had been reported, which commentators were already taking to indicate a much less serious incident than was initially feared. While the casualties went up, and the number of bombs went down, the latter information was taken to indicate a much lower level of coordination, or fewer people involved, again suggesting a much weaker organization than at first feared, or compared with the Madrid bombing.

The police, however, described the crime scene on Monday as the biggest in British history, and urged patience on the part of victims families, as their evident frustration was starting itself to be picked up by the media. How can a forensic, scientific examination match the media’s real-time response rate, and flexibility with the need for accuracy? If we don’t acknowledge the need for reflection, we won’t get it. Those with the ability or propensity to rush to judgement will get promoted. Decision making will be impoverished, and the risks will increase.

Real-time coverage leaves its mark. Few people will return to more considered writing, or pick up on the smaller, often more salient facts that emerge at a much later date.

Goodwill is a powerful thing. In finance it is the difference in value between the assets of a company and the price it is sold for, representing the momentum built up in its cashflows.

Momentum then is a powerful force whether in sport, music or business. The Live 8 concert carried the goodwill of its audience of 3 billion, in both an altruistic and artistic sense. This would be the largest audience any artist on the bill is ever likely to play to. Although nerves will play a part, on the whole it would be reasonble to expect performances as polished and clipped as that which brought Roger Federer his third Wimbledon title. All these artists are in theory at the top of their game.

It is however a function of the “winner takes all” phenomenon, that this kind of artistic success need not necessarily reflect relative skill, either in composition or performance. Nor does it depend, as Federer’s has, on a continuous effort to improve. For example, REM’s performance of their angst-ballad “Everybody Hurts” was remarkably lacklustre from an objective fan’s perspective. But this does not matter, because all that the audience needs is a representation of what they love to evoke their memory of the song and their emotional attachment. They do not need the thing itself. Knowing this, the artist indulges in what Herbert Simon famously characterised as “satisficing.” The irony is this was coined as a critique of the performance of the firm.

By contrast, anyone attending a small-scale concert by a classical musician on the same night will expect technical precision of the highest order. So such a musician must play better to an audience of 35 than a rock god to 3 billion.