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How fickle is our new media?
HHGTTG
Posts: 5,941 Forum Member
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Well it only took a week or two but now I no longer know about the flooding conditions in the Somerset levels nor the plight of those poor people so affected and the same goes for other areas of our country.
This is now being replaced by interminable news of mostly irrelevant (to us) happenings in Ukraine.
How fickle are our new media outlets going from the riduculous with Monty Python-esqe reporters standing, waist high, in flood water etc, to now the sublime, where we hear virtually nothing.:(
This is now being replaced by interminable news of mostly irrelevant (to us) happenings in Ukraine.
How fickle are our new media outlets going from the riduculous with Monty Python-esqe reporters standing, waist high, in flood water etc, to now the sublime, where we hear virtually nothing.:(
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However, if the weather suddenly gets bad again expect it to change.
Instead they are a mixture of current-affairs entertainment (only if it has pictures), mawkish disaster-reporting ("22 people were killed - here's a video of the scene") and vicarious involvement ("I'm standing outside .... ").
Why do they do this? Because they only want to attract viewers, not to provide information. Most things that affect the most people are abstract: such as changes in the law, politics or economic policy or they're not photogenic enough (no blood, smoke, wreckage or cute animals) or too difficult to explain in a 30-second bite-sized segment.
Just remember: if it's on TV, it's never completely true or balanced. Everything has been selected, edited and interpreted to fit someone's criteria rather than to present raw unvarnished truths for the audience to consider and form their own opinions about.
And I saw a report on the BBC News channel yesterday about the flooding - it is receding, but it will take a long time for the residents to get their homes back to how they were. They interviewed one man in his kitchen who said that this was the first house that they (he and his wife) had got to look how they wanted by redecorating and improving throughout, and now it was ruined (he then broke down).
As an aside, I recall some unwritten rule in news broadcasting that states that public interest in a story will remain for just 10 days before interest wanes.
Well that's not necessarily true for me. I would like to be updated although less frequently, obviously. During that news overkill, I had the misfortune of tuning into Sky News (hate it) but I thought I'd give it a try but always seem to come across adverts. Anyway they had that awful Kay Burley in Somerset being rude to some officials and I hoped all the time that she would slip into the flood water - awful woman.
(PS I really miss that :rollingeyes: smiley.)
Glad to be of service.
To be fair though, just as to you the Ukraine news may be mostly irrelevant, to many who were well away from the flood areas, much of that coverage was fairly irrelevant too.
Yes, the coverage was certainly over the top but the fact remains it occurred in this country and some updating wouldn't go amiss would it? As others have said, the travelling circus that is the new media moves on in its relentless, puerile style that it adopts in such matters.
I disagree with everything you wrote. It was complete nonsense. What else do I have to add?
You can find the smaller more insignificant story online, the ones that most likely will never see the light of day on the main news bulletins.
Well they could put it all on one page but I think that would be more than a little stupid myself.
Thats not the point you sometimes have to dig deep to find out about certain things, there is other easy to reach pages that can be used.
Other ways such as .... ?
The fact that you are calling the media "fickle" is, quite frankly, ironic.
If it was up to you, the the end of WW2 would still be headline news then, yes?
So no reporting of World War 2 after mid September 1939?