Thursday, July 28, 2005

I am getting increasingly concerned about how the news is presented to us. I appreciate that the requirement for 24-hour news channels and internet newspapers constantly updated means that everyone is searching for a new 'angle' on the news. But this requirement seems to be at the expense of accuracy. For instance, the 'terrorist with a padded jacket' who 'ran away when challenged' and 'vaulted the ticket barrier' story that we were peddled for days last week, was swallowed wholescale by the news media and repeated endlessly. So, on Sunday lunchtime in the pub there was no discussion amongst the bar room Jeremy Paxman's about the fact that this innocent bloke had been gunned down without someone adding the rider that 'he must have been up to no good, otherwise why run away, why jump the ticket barrier, and why wear a padded jacket in the July heat?' Of course, all this will be forgotten next Sunday when the entire thing seems to have been dismissed as a complete load of cobblers. Is all this misinformation being fed to a news hungry media who are so keen to file a story that they have become 'embedded' to the Metropolitan Police media centre? Or is it simply lazy journalism, with one reporter saying something and all the others piling in behind? Why, for instance, didn't someone ask the Met. about the 'padded jacket worn by a Pakistani' in the immediate aftermath of the shooting... before trotting the story out as if it were a fact. Now we are being told that the London bombers on July 7th may have been preparing to attack a nightclub or football match? Or perhaps it was a bomb to be placed up the backside of the next lazy bugger of a journalist who posts a story based on pure speculation