What a palaver! Have you ever had to go through fifteen months' worth of emails; sorting the junk out of the ones that are actually worthwhile? Don't! Two thousand, six hundred and fifty three and only about twenty of them was I vaguely interested in! I don't need penis enlargement since I have no penis and I certainly don't need a Stannah stairlift even if does come with a three year warranty and 50% discount! I doubt that the engineers would be happy about fixing the brackets to the ice on the bluff!
However, one I thing I did notice in the interminable drive to clear my in-box; how the Brits, or rather the Brit media, have not in any way lost their appetite for news which isn't news and news which merely panders to the more ghoulish among a population. I am of course talking about the non-news about Jeremy Clarkson's little contretemps with a producer and the almost rabid fascination with air-crashes.
Don't get me wrong, I have nothing but sympathy for the families of those killed in the Lufthansa 'cheapo' subsiduary's plunge into a Swiss mountain but is is news? Perhaps on day one, when the disaster happens, but on every other day as the poor hapless co-pilot has his all-too-human frailities dragged through the mud of a media only too happy to cast blame and opprobrium willy-nilly to the wind in a fit of all-too-self righteousness! Does anyone care about the family of the co-pilot who, according to French investigators, willfully rammed the plane into the side of a mountain merely so he could kill himself. Sick, yes! But news?
And what of the French investigators who have been more than willing to feed the media tasty titbits about every little detail of the co-pilot's existence; don't they feel any compassion towards the families of those killed and the family of the co-pilot? It seems that they don't. It must be distressing enough to have those that they loved perish in such a disaster but to have it ground into their faces that it all could have been avoided if only (pick one or more): (a) the pilot had not been caught short; (b) the pilot could have gained access to the flight deck; (c) an attendant had been with the co-pilot; (d) the Europeans had adopted the same policies as the US after 9/11; (e) the airline had spotted the co-pilot's mental state sooner, if at all; I leave the other options to your own fertile imagination and the media's promptings.
While it is desirable that 'the truth must out', wouldn't it be better if the media, and everyone else involved, just reported that a crash had occured and left it at that until such time as the official report was published. But then, that's not the media's conception of news; is it?
The media's conception of news is either 'disaster', preferably with a hearty dose of human tragedy mixed in, tsunami, an air crash, earthquake, or some 'celebrity' (A-list or E-list, it matters not) doing something which celebrities, as opposed to 'normal' human beings, ought not to engage in, although the majority of humans do. Violence, infidelity, inhaling or injecting noxious narcotics, not practising what they preach, the list is endless. Do people really care? Do they care enough to think that it is news? The media seem to think so!
The blow by blow, speculation by speculation, possible outcome by possible outcome of the whole Jeremy Clarkson brouhaha has been the best, recent example of non-news that I have ever come across. Who gives a wet wank as to whether a self-opiniated, racist, chauvanist tosser attempts to deck his producer over an argument about whether said tosser can have steak or not? Unfortunately, some people do, Twitter is testament to that, although God alone knows why; the media know their audience, give them that! But honestly, is it news?
It was once said, I forget by whom, that a nation only gets the media it deserves. This was said, I believe, in the wake of the deregulation of TV in the UK which Sky ushered in. Well, whoever said it, got it spot on! With only a very few exceptions, the media, whether print, broadcast or online, now only cater for the very lowest common denominator with channel after channel of dross and a regional and sometimes national press insistent on not reporting newsworthy stories but only the sexual habits of 'celebrities' so far down the alphabet as to be almost invisible to the naked eye.
So, that's my rant over for the day but I will leave you on an optimistic (well, sort of) note. MG has finally got around to pitching his 'novel' (I call it that but really it is lamentable fare) to literary agents. I wish him all the best but really. . .I don't hold much hope that it's going to be the next Harry Potter!
No comments:
Post a Comment