Makes you proud to be British.....

Today I literally had a "WON'T SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!" moment whilst watching the news on ITV1. As is to be expected, the majority of the news centered around small villages in rural Cumbria, the area where, for the benefit of those who dwell under large rocks, a previously-nondescript middle aged man went apeshit and drove around shooting strangers and ex-colleagues in the face with a hunting rifle. All seemed normal thus far, the presenters rambling on in a soft, hushed monotone as they do when a tragic event has taken place. There was the usual roving reporters stood in the village square or in front of a police cordon telling of a community still in shock over what has happened. There was someone from the local community such as the vicar or a victim's cousin's friend's pet hamster being asked to describe the mood of the local community. This is all par for the course and is to be expected in such an event. What i didn't expect, or think was in any way a good idea, was to have a nine year old boy who had the misfortune to witness one of the victims get shot in the head go in front of ITV's cameras and be asked to recall his memories of the incident. Am I the only person who thinks it is blatantly exploitative to ask a small child to relive such an event for the sake of entertainment? And you've got this soulless heathen of a reporter goading this child into revealing more gory details to the point where you half expect him to ask how many pieces the victim's skull fragmented into upon impact. But this is the way the news is nowadays. The news isn't the news anymore. Like with any movie, any CD, any book, any TV drama series, any soap, we select whether we watch BBC News, ITV News, Sky News or CNN based on which station offers the most interesting narrative or the most outlandish statements. For example, if BBC News are saying things like "Derrick Bird was a quiet but friendly chap with no history of mental illness" and Sky News are saying "DERRICK BIRD TRIED TO CHECK INTO MENTAL HOSPITAL NIGHT BEFORE KILLINGS!" naturally you are going to gravitate towards Sky News' coverage because it is more interesting, more exciting, more entertaining. And that what TV news is these days. Entertainment. Look at all the fancy title sequences, look at how any two-bob celebrity is shoehorned into a news report to give their view on a subject they know fuck all about. It's all about who can say the same thing in the most entertaining way. And the eyewitness report of a nine year old boy is more entertaining than the thoughts of a fuddy-duddy old priest.

It also made me smile in a depressed, resigned kind of a way that, after the reports on this shooting had ended the next item on the agenda was the bombshell that England captain Rio Ferdinand had twonked his knee and was out of the World Cup, the news of which was delivered in the exact hushed monotone I mentioned earlier, the kind of patronising softly-softly voice which usually accompanies stories such as the one above. It says so much about the society we in Britain exist that the news of an athlete on wages of over £100,000 per week has picked up a recoverable knee injury is delivered in the same anguished way as the news that twelve innocent people have been murdered for no good reason.