From a Wiley cartoon, The Age, 21/10/2008The media gives me the irrits at times (only at times?); I am talking mainstream media here. They have to make things 'issues'.
A case in point: last week a nursing home was shut down because it had failed a Government audit. The media was howling lamentations and was full of clips of distressed residents and irate relatives. Woe! Woe! Woe! How could the Government do such a horrid thing?
I have no doubt that if some calamity (fire, death, pestilence) had befallen the nursing home, the same media would have been up in arms because nothing had been done. I can see their reaction in my mind: Woe! Woe! Woe! How could the Government have permitted such a horrid thing?
It is all so fake.
One small pleasure I used to have when driving home from work was listening to cub reporters trying to get compromising comments from seasoned politicians and diplomats with leading questions like "You must be angry about so and so...". The politicians weaved their way around the questions with most delicate verbal ballet. "Well, no, I am not angry. However I would like to say that..."
Sadder were the 'normal' people who got interviewed by the same cubs. Unprepared for the implanting of an emotion, they usually took the bait and told the reporter how angry they were. Even if they weren't really angry beforehand.
"Yes! I'm angry! Now, um, remind me why again..."
...
You must be very irritated by these cub reporters, Lee...
ReplyDeleteI really hate it when they protract interviews with crass, often intrusive questions of people along the lines of 'And how did you feel when...', when the answer's bleeding obvious to anyone with a nanogram of imagination, and anyway, it doesn't constitute news.
I'm really cross now!
Sometimes it is SO obvious that they have 30 minutes to fill that they just keep beating that dead horse.
ReplyDeleteWhat I love is when the 'news' show is filled with something like how to make soup. Jeez, I wish they could just say "That's all" at the 15 minute mark.
and, done!
ReplyDeleteDidn't take long now, did it?
And...why am I up here instead of one post back?
Well, it must surely be quite obvious, isn't it?
Surely you realize that I am now chicken little, crying out as I run through the countryside...
"...the Sky is Falling! The Sky is Falling!"
ah, but wait....
the sky IS falling,
http://forests.org/archived_site/today/recent/1997/20left.htm
the official report comes that 20% of virgin forests remain, but, going to just 8000 years prior, we are at 3%
hmmmm
lessee, would that much depletion of clean oxygen PLUS the addition of CO2 create a warming trend?
It may well be a 'swing of nature' but, more likely, the end result will be an extreme deinhabitation among the centered regions of the equater, widened to about as far North and South as climate changes can already be seen.
...good news?
The word is that most forests can be brought back to good healthy status within our lifetimes.
...bad news?
Businesses like Kimberly-Clark ripping down the Boreal forest areas to create....kleenex.
The problem here is three fold. First, businesses are more concerned for their bottom line,
there are strict wood taxes involved with Canadian lumber (supposedly to what? keep forests safe?) and lastly, there are the developers within Canada itself, greedy to make a buck like everybody else is doing.
OK OK I know.
I'm going off.
But, having landed on the last post and then this...it seemed natural.
Although not quite as fun as you made this post.