Beyonce and the Tiffany “Scandal”

(idexonline.com) - Never trust a journalist. For at least two reasons. The first may surprise you. They tell the truth.  The trouble is it's not the whole truth. Those who value their jobs will not knowingly tell an outright and deliberate lie. But they may well miss out facts that get in the way of their story.  The second reason is that they are highly skilled at weaving a tiny fragment of information into front page sensation. And so it was this week with Beyonce and the Tiffany diamond "scandal". I'm tempted to put the word scandal in an extra set of quote marks, because it's so far from actually being one.  But as we'll see, it doesn't take much to get a decent scribbler hot under the collar. This is what happened. Beyonce and her rap star husband Jay Z teamed up with Tiffany for a campaign celebrating modern love in which she was photographed wearing the iconic 128.54-carat Tiffany Yellow Diamond. This not just any big diamond. It is the diamond that has come to symbolize Tiffany's pre-eminence in the jewelry world. Its origins have never been a secret. It was recovered from the De Beers' Kimberley mine, in South  Africa in 1878, at a time when slave labor was widespread and working conditions were primitive. Today we'd use the term "blood diamond" to describe a gem recovered under such circumstances. At the time they just called it a diamond.