Media Life As We Know It

Recently I was working in Epsom, Surrey. I was renting a flat in the small town of Leatherhead during this time. It was when I was working in Epsom and living in Leatherhead, I had to get a train that took about eight minutes to my destination. Here is an abiding memory.

So, as usual, I sauntered onto a train at Leatherhead (it was an hour late) that hopefully would get me to my destination in one piece. And, as usual, the carriage was strewn with crushed-up copies of a free, daily tabloid newspaper, The Metro. So I sat down, managed to get a copy that wasn't crumpled and wrinkled like Ena Sharples’ face, and scanned the front page. There was the momentous disaster that was Notre-Dame. The front page also covered a bloody stabbing that took place in London the previous night. Still in London, on the front page, there was a column covering demonstrations relating to climate change that had resulted in widespread violence with 767 arrests for drunkenness, breach of the peace and other 'sordid behaviours.' And just as I was about to turn to page two, there was the horrific report of a ten vehicle pile-up on the M6 close to Salford resulting in the deaths of 24 people.

I had had a pretty awful day at the office and was looking forward to either a stiff G&T or a couple of large glasses of wine to ease the twitchiness that had gripped my nerve endings like a blacksmith’s vice! But these front page disclosures: misery, doom and gloom, despair, cans of rotten worms, catastrophe-en-contretemps. And as I eventually did get to page two, there was the story about an OAP in Manchester being arrested for defecating in the Arndale Shopping Centre - hellish!

Later, I sat back with what turned out to be my third glass of Chianti Classico Riserva and was aware of my mind drifting. It was a hazy shade of red, just like the Chianti. I started to reflect and uttered to myself, ‘Life as we know it?’ Depends which side of the fence you sit on, doesn’t it? So what am I saying here? Well, it has been a life-long conundrum for me. It is this. Why, during my life, have I been spoon-fed by the media: newspapers, television, radio, Internet newscasts, you name it, daily bucketfuls of unreserved crap? Why this obnoxious obsession with feeding the public with endless headlines covering death, hatred, Islamic terrorism, suffering and starvation, stabbings and murder? I mean it is fed to us by the media moguls as if our very existence depended on it.

As I poured myself another very large glass of Chianti, I decided to switch on the telly. Unfortunately, Sky News was on, and before I could switch channels I caught the last few seconds of a news item: seemingly the Chao Phraya River in Thailand had burst its banks resulting in the deaths of scores of people . . . deary, dear, some things never change. Or, the media and life as we know it (from the media).