This Just In …
Something that irritates the hell out of me is the tendency for news channels and websites to create stories or to over-dramatize meaningless everyday occurrences in an attempt to make themselves seem relevant.
The concept of rolling, 24 hour news is a good idea on paper. People are interested in world events. People do need to be aware and informed of events that affect their lives.
But it takes less than 20 minutes of watching any news channel or reading through the latest “breaking” news on any of these websites to realize that there is simply not enough actual news to fill the airtime and webspace devoted to it.
A classic example of this is the BBC’s “News24” channel – that seems to show the same 20 minute VT of “headlines” on a loop from dawn till dusk every day … punctuated with the odd weather report and a film crew out on the street asking passers by whether they think the war in Iraq is a good thing or a bad thing.
When did the opinion of people on the street make the leap to being News?
Is it just me that really couldn’t care less what random people strolling down Oxford Street think about the Government’s policy on Immigration?
As a by-product of this lazy time wasting, these news channels have become a soapbox for the uneducated, bigoted and outright racist element of society to voice their twisted opinions … and the egos of the channels in question assume that these views are those of “the general public“. And with the move from “text us your opinion, at a cost of 10p per go” to “tweet your comment to us, free” we are now getting more and more of these brainless opinions than ever.
What worries me is that the people watching this may not see it for what it is.
Since this constant coverage began, the lines separating News from Opinion and Everyday Occurrence have become incredibly blurred.
A recent example from the Yahoo News headlines is the “News” that Kanye West is following someone on Twitter.
That is the entire story.
It is accompanied by an example of the calibre of Tweets this fan puts out and the 10-sentence article is topped off with the “news” that the random nobody Kanye has decided to follow has made no comment on the matter.
Really?
Is this Newsworthy?
Is this the kind of thing that people actually visit news sites to read?
I sincerely doubt it. I think it is the perfect example of the depths to which these sites (and channels) will sink in order to just put SOMETHING out, to make updates and report “breaking news” every few minutes despite the banality or the insignificance of the content.
There was a time when a slow news day was something remarkable – an unusual occurrence where a local newspaper shows itself up by reporting a cat stuck in a tree on it’s front page. But now, we are bombarded with this useless “information muzak“.
We shouldn’t have to sift through this garbage to find the one or two real news stories of the day and I find it offensive that the news companies assume we are all interested in this bland, mind-numbing, transparent filler. I long for a site that cuts through the crap and just delivers the real news, but even respected companies like the BBC and CNN have fallen into this information overload pit and it’s driving me insane!
MisterShouty 