Fluff from the naval of my mind

When I was a youth I would occasionally be importuned by my mother to “turn down that damned music!” I am fairly sure that she simply found the loud music an irritation, an imposition that she could not freely escape without leaving the house. In the same way I cry, “Turn down that damned hysteria!” to all the world’s media.

Sure I could simply stop watching all news, stop reading all newspapers and websites, mask my eyes at the supermarket to avoid the blaring headlines of insipid magazines arrayed across the checkouts. But, like my mother leaving the house to escape my loud music, this is not a practical solution and seems to me an imposition on the victim of the lack of consideration while effectively rewarding the perpetrator with more freedom and space in which to declare loudly their ill considered and hysterical opinion.

This is a constant source of irritation to me and has been particularly brought to a head by the recent snow in the UK. There is undoubtedly an issue with snow in the UK at the moment but to attend to the media you would think the apocalypse was upon us. Every news report has some hapless reporter buried in clothing more suited to an Antarctic expedition  standing in what most countries who actually have proper snow would consider a mild snowfall reporting that devastation and death surrounds them as the ‘country grinds to a halt’.

The country is not grinding to a halt. Only yesterday I drove from the West Midlands over to East Anglia with nary a problem. Clear roads and a relatively light dusting of snow where all I saw on the whole journey. The motorways are open and clear. I crossed several and in each instance traffic was flowing freely, North and South. I drove to and from London over the Christmas and New Year period only a day or two after the media had warned everyone to make only necessary journeys (who the hell makes unnecessary journeys? Oh, I think I’ll just pop out for an unnecessary drive around the country) ,no snow of consequence in evidence. I drove along the South of the country three days after the snow-pocalypse had been declared in that region by the media, no snow to speak of. There is some minor icing on less used side roads but even driving on seldom trafficked roads in the fens the roads were virtually clear of snow and ice.

Yes, the snow is bad in the north. Yes, the south west has had more than its share of snow this year. But the ‘country grinding to a halt’? Really? Seriously?

And the snow is only one minor and current case in point. Almost every story on the news (and for the most part they are stories rather than reportage) is inflated and injected with an unwarranted sense of urgency. It is no longer acceptable to simply report the news, it must be embellished to make it entertainment and what could be more entertaining the impending disaster.

SARS, H1N1, video piracy, the AIDS epidemic of the ’80s, banking collapse, recession, unemployment. Yes, all serious and important issues that should be reported. But. All of them have been inflated by the media into the next apocalypse to befall mankind or business.

The problem of this is summed up in the fable of the little boy who cried wolf. As soon as media started to tell stories rather than report news they were caught in a vicious cycle. Each turn of the cycle required the story to be further embellished in order to attract attention. If the news were simply reported this cycle could never happen, but dry facts are not considered newsworthy. Now we must be entertained by our news.

Then there are those who claim that by presenting the news in this dramatic way it ‘gets through to people’. After all, SARS, AIDS (in the west at least) and H1N1 have failed to become the apocalyptic plagues that the media presented on the news so it must have worked. People must have paid attention and the disaster was averted. Hurrah for the media!

The problem with this logic is illustrated in the following anecdote.

I watched each morning as my elderly neighbour walked to the end of this driveway and carefully administered a nauseous unction to the hinges of his gates. Each day, without fail, he repeated this process. The substance was foul smelling and the smell was apparent as soon as I walked from my front door.

One day I could take it no more. I confronted my neighbour and asked, “why do you put that foul smelling substance on your gate each morning?”

“Why, to keep away elephants”, came his cryptic reply.

“But there are no elephants in London”, I protested.

“See how effective the stuff is!” He proudly declared.