Why I Hate the News
The 24 hour news that is. I am in fact a total news junky who reads multiple newspapers online. I start the day by reading the FT and WSJ online immediately followed by the two major Icelandic papers Moggin and Frettabladid. I have a subscription to the first two and the Icelanders are kind enough to put pdf copies up on their websites.
That's just the beginning though. On a daily basis I skim the NYT, the Guardian, Le Monde and several English language web versions of non English speaking newspapers. In addition I am constantly hooked to Reuters and google news. So I do not in fact hate the news. It is just the 24 hour news stations that I loath.
The constant repetition of no news specifically drives me to distraction. Today provides an excellent example of what I mean. Last night the police launched two terror raids i.e. raids that are justified with reference to the anti terror act of 2000. One raid was on an Islamic school in Surrey somewhere, the other against a Chinese restaurant in East London and in addition a couple of people where picked up elsewhere. In total some 16 people have been arrested.
The police have not made any statements so literally what's above is all we know. More to the point it is all the news stations know. This lack of information has not stopped them from focusing on this story to the exclusion of all else. So we have an endless repetition of a scene that goes something like: Sue you are at the school what is going on? Well John nothing!
This instead of following upon all the half arsed reporting they did during the week. Can't stand them.
Sent from my Blackberry Mobile
That's just the beginning though. On a daily basis I skim the NYT, the Guardian, Le Monde and several English language web versions of non English speaking newspapers. In addition I am constantly hooked to Reuters and google news. So I do not in fact hate the news. It is just the 24 hour news stations that I loath.
The constant repetition of no news specifically drives me to distraction. Today provides an excellent example of what I mean. Last night the police launched two terror raids i.e. raids that are justified with reference to the anti terror act of 2000. One raid was on an Islamic school in Surrey somewhere, the other against a Chinese restaurant in East London and in addition a couple of people where picked up elsewhere. In total some 16 people have been arrested.
The police have not made any statements so literally what's above is all we know. More to the point it is all the news stations know. This lack of information has not stopped them from focusing on this story to the exclusion of all else. So we have an endless repetition of a scene that goes something like: Sue you are at the school what is going on? Well John nothing!
This instead of following upon all the half arsed reporting they did during the week. Can't stand them.
Sent from my Blackberry Mobile
posted by thoroddsson at Saturday, September 02, 2006
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