Stop Spreading the News!
Like most single, childless men, I am glad that for six weeks in the summer, the drive to work is made much easier and less cluttered with the entourage of the school run MPVs. Like most single, childless men, I am glad that for a few weeks in the summer, some children aren't even in the country hogging all the benches in the parks or gathering at car parks and practicing wheelies and stoppies until their limbs are black and blue. But like everyone else on this tiny little melting pot of an island, I was shocked to discover that our very own police force had arrested nearly two dozen men in connection with the now very heavily publisised "plane plot", and that every airport in the country had brought all those sun seekers' vacations to an abrupt halt.
It seems so long ago now that newsreaders would wax lyrical over the little things in life, like a pensioner's cat being rescued by firefighters from a tree, or an amusing story where a man attempting to rob his local paper shop, forgot the door was a push and not a pull, fell backwards, hit his head on the pavement and then was rushed to hospital with concussion. After all, we all need a little cheering up from time to time. It hardly comes as a surprise to anyone then that the news yesterday was brimming with just two stories - the "plane plot" and the continuing bloodshed in Lebanon and Israel.
Honestly, do they do this for attention? There's not much chance of any of us forgetting what's going on in the world today - the news are doing a damn good job making sure of that. But does anyone else think that a situation like the one imposed on us yesterday is merely seen as an opportunity for news readers to claim some mileage? It seems superflouous to have a dozen people strewn across Heathrow, Gatwick, Luton et al, just to deliver a story that could easily have been done in the studio. I know that flights have been cancelled, I read it on a website. I don't need anyone to stand in a carpark overlooking a desserted airfield. News isn't about artistic poinancy, it's about delivering a story - nothing more. If I couldn't have already imagined the scale of the potential loss of life, I was told at least a dozen times later that it was even more "unimaginable" than when they last said unimaginable. I'm sure a few World War veterans would have a thing or two to say about that.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to make what happened yesterday sound insignificant. Terrorism is evil in all shapes and forms. I just wish that the news would return to those days when life just didn't seem all that bad, when there was that little ray of hope that we're not all going to die because of where we live, what we believe in or what our Government is doing. Can't we have just a little laughter after a hard day at the office? If only there were more vertigo-suffering felines stuck on a high branch, or more bungling burglars then maybe we wouldn't feel like we need our blood pressure taken every day. Perhaps we all need a holiday. I think we all deserve one. I hear the Lake District is nice this time of year.
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3 comments:
There never was an age of all news being wonderful, it's just all in your mind! The news is about war and conflict, crime, and statistics about speed cameras.
The Home of the "wacky" or "light interest" story was always on the local news, where newsreaders didn't have to wear ties.
There was the occasional "and finally..." piece with Trevor MacDonald, but otherwise the main news programmes have always told the same story - it's only the names that change.
And is shouting for our attention a bad thing?
It's easy to be apethetic to pictures on the news. People you don't know in a country you've never been to. It's harder to ignore it when it's happening just up the road.
It is only through knowing what is going on in the world that you can ever move closer to understanding why things happen, and how to stop them happening again.
If you want to be entertained then while the news in on BBC 1, so is the Simpsons on Channel 4
You can't put rationale on war. They called WW1 the war to end all wars, and that was 88 years ago, since then there's been WW2, the Falklands, the Gulf wars, the list goes on.
Some baffoons still live for war, sadly, they're the ones running the country.
I'm not trying to to put a rationale on war! All I am saying is that is that at six o-clock on an evening I would rather hear about the issues that are affecting the entire world over the more trivial matters.
Did we need seven news reporters at seven different airports?
Probaly not! But people associate more with news from their part of the world then they do about anywhere else.
For us in Sussex that means pictures from Gatport Airwick - just up the road - are infinately more powerful than anywhere else.
It's just a shame that we can phase out hard news stories regarding other parts of the world, yet become concerend at local stories about kidnapped dogs or soon to be demolished local aminities.
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