Monday, December 10, 2007
For Al Jazeera
Growing weary of our Panamanian canoeing inadequates and Ed 'Crazy name, crazy guy' Balls, I turned on Al Jazeera. First, I saw a highly intelligent assessment of the search for a malaria vaccine, then I saw a brilliantly-handled and eye-opening story about Chinese coal fires. Malaria kills about 3 million people a year and the coal fires account for 3 per cent of global CO2 emissions, more than the whole of the UK. I don't remember seeing anything on either of these things on Anglo-American news channels. So why are we going on about these damned canoeists and why are we going to build 7,000 offshore wind turbines when, for a lot less money, we could help the Chinese put out their coal fires and the South East Asians extinguish their peat fires? While we were doing that, we could build some excellent nuclear power plants and leave our coastline unsullied. We could also drag our TV news up to the standards of Al Jazeera.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
We hear the world 'global' used a lot these days, don't we? Global this, global that, ad nauseam. However, it seems to me that the word has very little meaning. Nothing is global, everything is parochial, and always will be. It occurs to me that perhaps we are psychologically ill-equipped to think globally. Even when I'm canoeing through the streets of Dublin in years to come, I won't be concerned about the inexorably rising water levels (at least not much) but the price of parking and the cheek of that politician on the box last night who said the government were considering introducing a paddling tax.
ReplyDeleteWe inevitably focus on what is immediate, short-term. If we didn't we'd probably get run over. Take it too far and you get a kind of fin de siecle madness, 'apres moi le deluge' (literally, perhaps).
ReplyDeleteReading Al Gore's Assault on Reason book, apparently the US media is something like the 55th in the rankings of 'freest media' in the world, however one calculates these things. UK's probably not that bad, one hopes.
Good point, El. So has there been a marked increased in the number of road traffic accidents involving anti-globalisation and environmental campaigning types in recent years? Presumably Al Gore is so clumsy and absent-minded these days he forgot to put his name down for the Democratic nomination.
ReplyDeleteBritish 'news' gave up long ago. What passes for news in britain is basically 'comment'.
ReplyDeleteHow many people need BBC News 24? How many people watch it? How much does it cost to run it as a cost per viewer per year? I bet we’d be shocked at how much is spent.
Our news obsessed world, the competing nature of news providers and this desire to always be able to say things like 'worst ever', 'most', 'dire', 'dreadful', 'disturbing', or whatever other words designed to make us feel even worse is potential crippling. There needs to be a sense of perspective from news providers and a recognition that they are providing us with what is at its heart a service and not a business. Competition in the news rating wars is irrelevant to us as recipients of news.
Franklin D Roosevelt said in 1933 “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”. We should heed those sentiments and so should the news media who have a duty to not stir up the fear of fear.
Well put, Richard. Is the practice of journalists interviewing journalists a symtom of the malaise you speak of? At the very least, it has always struck me as odd and rather pointless.
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting about the disappeared canoeing man though isn't it? I mean who would want to live in a coal cellar for 3 years? He was in hiding longer than Anne Frank - yet he did not write a diary...
ReplyDeleteAlso, don't you think that his wife looks a bit like 'Kiki' from 'Hectors House'?
Just a postscript to the fear comment above. Its interesting how the apocalyptic dread (waves rising, sun going out) of the environmental movement has leeched into other areas like terrorism. Everything and nothing becomes an existential crisis.
ReplyDeleteIs Al Jazeera a muslim pub landlord? I'd like him to be.
ReplyDeleteHey, who's ''we''? You brought up the flaming canoeist!
with regards to China's coal fields - Lindsey Hilsum had a report for Channel 4 news either Sat or Sun -from the coal face er fields - as for THAT other story - what else canoe do? (Inspired by the Sun on that one)
ReplyDeleteNeil, the journalist interviewing the journalist is just about as pointless as some of it gets. Then again the 'expert' who is trotted out and then their opinion is discussed later in the day by another 'expert' is pretty grim too.
ReplyDeleteThese of course rank up there with the news item that is in fact a trailer for an upcoming programme. then there's the news item that is constructed out of some dubious survey. 87% of men have never slept with a parrot....you could build that into a 3 minute news segment, then add an RSPCA offcer and several other interested parties. Before long you could have a whole programme.
How could you tire of Ed 'Blinky' Balls? When asked in an Independent interview about his unfortunate surname, he said of his schooldays: 'Although it was bad for me it was much worse for my sister, Ophelia ...' -- sheer genius!
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