I would like to make a note of two things:
1)The Burmese government is oppressing its own people more than usual this week. The have been oppressing them for a long time but now it has come to the world's attention via the internet because they have shot monks and a foreign journalist. This puts them in a large and comfortable club of dictatorships with little regard for human life, freedom, or indeed, very much, apart from political and ideological survival and individual gain.
2) This may seem reasonably important, but it isn't. If you pay any attention to the news, you will see that of far greater importance is equine flu and football. Football, in fact, will be the most important issue this weekend.
The footballers, it seems, can run faster than Burmese monks.
This sort of narrow focus looks like delusional self interest and is, in consequence, an embarrassment, to say the very least.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
as is becoming more and more apparent, the media is not there to fulfill the purpose it advertises. it is there to tell people what they want to hear, or don't mind too much hearing, or will pay attention to.
why?
because, dear friends, as you know - it is all about the money.
That sentiment sounds suspiciously familiar, Ali- clearly we're on the same wavelength. :-P
Although I think it does actually do exactly what it advertises- have you never heard news agencies advertise news that you want, news that is relevant to you, or any other fancy wordings that boil down to news that you're willing to pay to hear?
Oh, boy, have I. The news is aimed at delivering what you want to hear - which, to be sadly and brutally honest, is generally chaos. The world wants to hear about the rest of the world falling apart - it makes our lives all of a sudden appear more normal and less problematic. I think we are all guilt of the 'thank goodness it's not me' mentality. But then - why worry about it at all when your favourite team is winning? So much easier to emphathise with losing, rather than dying, don't you think?
Post a Comment