I was daydreaming at work and thought that I would share a thought or so with you.
Firstly, the following link should take you to my profile on the BBC's 'Have Your Say' website, from which point you may browse through their daily discussion topics as well as access other BBC blogs and of course, News (or is that propaganda?) headlines from around the world.
http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/profile.jspa?userID=4398032&&&edition=1&ttl=20070226163410
A word of caution here; this forum is seriously moderated which is, I think, a new way of spelling censorship. (If so called despots do it we call it censorship but when we do it it's called moderation; for ****'* sake, we're not even allowed to watch uncensored Big Brother)
Today, as I scanned news headlines in a daily paper(the Daily Mail) and on my e-mail home page I thought: why are the headlines so pussyo? I mean, should we be caring that Helen Mirror(sic) won an Oscar? What about our boys and girls dieing in Afghanistan and Iraq? And, by 'our' I don't just mean British ones I mean EVERYONE-All The Innocents!
Have you noticed how even when major stories occur regarding troop deaths/casualties their details are invariably shunted into an inner page? Is this not a cause for concern?
The gauge by which I measure the veracity of a newspaper, radio show or television news programme is the emphasis it places on real news stories as compared to the attention it gives to the 'magazine' type drivel.
Over some time now I have gleaned the following:
- Early evening news shows(sic) are rubbish! This is because the masses watch them and, therefore, better not get too heavy and upset the punter- keep it nice and light and everything's going to be just fine.
- I have noticed, as I was an avid viewer of Fox(Fix) News(sic), that ever since the mid-term elections in the U S of A, there appears to have been a complete shift in programming structure; gone is the hard line, 'kill 'em all' posturing of some of their main presenters-notably Shawn Hannity and Bill O'Reilly and it has been replaced by, well, a 'pussyo' type stance. The re-run of the Hannity and Colmes show, which I loved to watch, has been replaced by a really -four letter word beginning in S- magazine show called Red Eye. This show can really only be described in four letter word vernacular but- to give credit as and when it's due- I have heard one of their contributors state that Bush never won the 2000 election; impossible to imagine a few months ago! Or, have I got it wrong? Comment please!
- Talking about veracity, a politician's can be judged by how succinctly he/she answers questions and whether or not they start with the old 'before I answer that question' routine. This invariably means that the politician in question will go into a 'waffle' at the end of which most of us may have forgotten what the actual question was. Only hardened anti-wafflers like Paxman and Snow are adept enough at challenging such people but admittedly sometimes without success.
Well, that's all for right now but watch out for more.
