Am I becoming more pedantic or are the news agencies becoming lest strict when vetting their stories? Like a grumpy old man I am finding that some news articles grate on me with a level of annoyance that I find hard to justify. Some recent examples that you may recognise:
- During the Christmas Eve travel chaos in the UK there were repeated scenes where a studio cut to “their reporter on the scene”. A pristine looking reporter would then describe what they saw as the camera panned “these people have been listening to announcements all day”, how is that news? We look to the news agencies to provide us information, when there is travel chaos I know that all of the terminals will be full of people waiting for information that does not count as news!
- Some idiot started a small fire on a ferry which subsequently had to return to dock. All very dramatised by the press, but I accept that is their job, and lots of coverage. There were hundreds on board so how long did it take the press to find Mrs Bell who said “I think I will stay in the UK from now on, it’s a lot safer”. This woman had gone on holiday with her husband and we can only hope that is the entire extent of their gene pool. They went on a weekend break to Holland, some drunks set fire to a duvet and for that she has condemned the rest of the planet as uncivilised and dangerous! New York? Vienna? hell no that’s just Syria by another name for Mrs Bell.
- The final one, of many, is the revelation that painkillers have been found in ice cream manufactured by the biggest manufacturer in Europe. The pain killers were found, still in their tablet form, inside wrapped ice cream cones so we clearly need an ‘expert’. Our expert tells us that this “looks like a case of contamination” well I checked the ingredients and it doesn’t list painkillers so that’s a pretty safe bet. There were two tablets found, one each in two separate cones, the expert thinks this may have been deliberate, clearly he is an expert in stupidity then. This is obviously somebody that has dropped a couple of pills by accident and either been unaware or too scared to stop the line. If you are trying to poison people it is accepted good practice to crush the poison especially if you are hiding it in something soft like ice cream! Two contaminated items from such a huge supplier lends itself to accident rather than malicious and it was paracetamol, surely a simple peanut would have been more devastating if the intent was malicious?
I don’t know if it is the multiple news sources all fighting for the same story or it is a feature of the instant availability of news that we have today but it is definitely losing its value. During the travel ‘chaos’, they are delays unless it is Christmas Eve, we were faced with television screens full of idiots demonstrating that were idiots. Let me be clear it is not the fault of the public, we knew they were idiots that’s why they are public! It is the idiot that, employed to seek out newsworthy quotes, stuffs a roaming microphone randomly at these buffoons. “We’re just like trying to get home for Christmas” and there’s me thinking that you had headed out early for Easter! “I don’t want to spend all night here” oh no, quick summon assistance there is someone in the throng of bodies at check in that didn’t intend to spend 24 hours here!
When I was younger the news was full of insightful information and explanations. Whilst these poor people were eating the weak and setting fire to belongings to stay warm at Heathrow a suited newscaster would explain the weather trends and the fact that it was all Coca Cola’s fault, we learnt something that was the point. Is it perhaps that I have now reached an age where they can teach me no more? I don’t mean that I know everything I mean that I have reached an age where I can see through the well scripted news readers and realise that they don’t know any more than I do.
I think that the news studios are more cunning than that, or perhaps they are cleverly aligned with other state departments, they are preparing for the zombie invasion. When the living dead are roaming our towns the reporters will be dispatched and we will be fed a series of inane and moronic statements from roaming hoards of flesh eaters. To us at home it will be business as normal, we will watch the news and then pop out shopping thereby feeding the growing army of the living dead. They are conditioning us to see morons on the streets, the next step will be the worsening make up and then the scuffles in the back ground, by my predictions we will see this in the New Year’s Eve coverage. Slowly but surely they are conditioning us so that the invasion is not a shock, I’m off to polish my zombie bat……