Friday 4 June 2010

News? Bah!


When will this wall-to-wall analysis of the Cumbria killings stop?

I don’t know about you, but I wish to hell that news programmes would restrict themselves to reporting news and not going off into areas that would be best left to chat programmes.

Several times over the last few days I’ve heard reporters asking the relatives of those killed how they feel. What a mind-numbingly insensitive and totally ridiculous question to ask someone when a close relative has just been killed. News programmes are turning into purveyors of human interest stories, which is not what they are meant to be.

I also think it also ridiculous for people to be calling Derrick Bird evil. He was certainly disturbed, and people with mental disturbances do some hideous things. People are not evil in themselves – circumstances and their state of mind at the time may make them commit evil acts, but who can put their hand on their hearts and say unequivocally that if they had the same experiences and problems that Bird had that they would not react in the same way?

While returning from head office yesterday I spotted a hearse on the M25. I laughed out loud when I saw the coffin – it was made of wicker! How’s that for being environmentally friendly to the death?


4 comments:

Alan Burnett said...

I believes it is someone's law (could it be Van Bergen's Law) which states that the inanity of the news automatically expands to fit the dimensions of the news programming slot available. Thus with 24 hour news you get what you would expect.

Kabbalah Rookie said...

I cannot bear the sensationalism of news reporting. Who cares whether Derrick Bird had a hit list and called people beforehand? I feel immensely sorry for his victims and their families, but I also feel incredibly sad for him, becoming so overcome by whatever situation he was in to react so drastically.
So, Derrick Bird replaces BP replaces Israeli shootings replaces volcanic ash cloud...

Liz said...

My colleagues and I were talking about this at work earlier today and we came to very much the same conclusion. The only person who knows what really happend is dead, so can we just stop all the guessing and analysis and leave those people alone to grieve?

Ms Scarlet said...

I think the BBC were making a documentary covering the emergency services that had to respond to the Cumbrian shootings.
I'm sure the documentary team delayed the response of a medic trying to get to his helicoptor. It made me feel very uncomfortable. They should let these people get on with their work.
Sx