Royle Wedding

OK so…

Anyone know why the 29th April is special? Come on! It’s a pretty special date, in fact it’s life changing!

Well actually it is. This year April 29th sees the 350th anniversary of the Chinese (Ming dynasty) occupation of Taiwan. It’s also the 150th anniversary of Maryland’s delegates voting against secession from the American Union. Both of these events are historical junctures helping to define the two most powerful nations on earth. Want something personal? Hell. It changed my life. On 29th April 2006 I got married. You can’t beat that can you?

Except obviously you can can’t you? According to all the media hype, the wedding due to take place on my fifth wedding anniversary is gonna trump my humble affair hands down. Gah! It makes me sick. I don’t even know how I know Middleton and Windsor are tying the knot on April 29th. I can’t ever remember asking anyone “You know those two people I vaguely know about, one of whom is in a family that I’d like to see hanging from a lamppost… the posh bloke with the daft senile racist granddad? Yeah? When are THEY getting married? Because I’d really like to know!” It just seeped into my skin like some clever poison that hits the vital organs before you know you’ve breathed it. 29th April has been blaring out through our screens and newspapers for what seems like forever.

Usual suspect writes usual story in usual way

Now the way I see it the world is divided into three groups of thought about the royal wedding:

1. Blimey. A new princess Diana? A people’s princess too – her mum was an air stewardess… did you know that? I SAY! DID YOU KNOW THAT?!?! WOW. Doesn’t matter that her dad was loaded. It’s like lady and the tramp in reverse. I’m so excited. Living proof that anyone can join the royal family. I love the royal family so much. I’ve just gone and had April 29th tattooed to my forehead in blue-blood ink. I keep a picture of the queen in my wallet/purse so that if I got shot/stabbed and was dying I’d have an image to comfort me as I choke back my last blood bubbled breaths.

2. I hate the royal family. I’d like them all to die. I don’t believe that the state can support the notion that people are born superior to others. The tax I pay is supposed to create a fairer and more equal society not line the pockets of a landed aristocracy who form nothing more than a pathetic blighted (or bloated) anachronism on the landscape.

3. I really do not care either way.

Of these three I’d say I fall most into category two. Which I’m slightly ashamed of. It would be much cooler not to care. I can remember the moment I heard Princess Diana was dead – the first thing I said was ‘good’. Hell! I’m a real rebel actually. I once gave the middle finger to the queens motorcade as it zoomed by and I’ve refused to stand up at royal minute silences down the footie. Power to the people!

But the vast majority of the global population don’t care. Hell, thankfully, some don’t even know, although I still worry when I speak to people in other countries and they talk about it. As though assuming every household in Britain has a small Kate Middleton shrine and a little “advent calendar” counting down the days to the wedding – except with a little royal turdy titbit of trivia instead of a santa shaped chocolate. Thankfully though these people often couldn’t give a toss themselves. They’re just making small talk because, from what they’ve seen, the whole country is Royal fucking mentalist.

There lies the problem…

Basically the first category of people is surely a tiny proportion of our fair country. If the Daily Mail, Sky News and David Cameron were to be believed this is because we have so many immigrants that half the population can’t even say “God Save The Queen” in English… let alone sing our hatefully putrid national anthem.

Regardless. I know of NOT ONE PERSON who is attending one of the multitude of street parties that are allegedly sweeping the country on April 29th. But these are surely going to be ubiquitous? Alas… not true. The simple fact is this: Not many people care about whether or when some royal gets married. Even Helen Mirren didn’t even know which Prince Kate was marrying – something the press was keen to point out as a faux pas, rather than the norm.

However, the tiny minority who actually care seem to have the weight of the entire national media on their sides. They WILL have their street parties (in their old people’s homes and mental asylums) – it’s probably in their diaries already as the most important event in their lives since they lined the motorway wailing and weeping and throwing flowers on Diana’s hearse.

So here is the point. Who asked the date of the wedding? How do we know?Why do I, someone who hates the royal family as much as the next man and ignores or rails against anything I read about them, know so much?

• Why do I know Kate Middleton is supposed to have three different dresses to throw people off the scent (what scent)?
• Why am I aware of every bit of Diana’s jewellery that’s gonna be worn on the day, from some earrings on an aunt to the ring being shrunk for the new people’s princess?
• Why do I know about Middleton’s secret confirmation ceremony as a Christian (presumably if you’re going to join the family of the god/appointed head of the Anglican church you may as well join it)?

Tell you why? It’s the press stupids! The sinister act of pressmosis has poisoned this republican heart with its royal wedding fever. Like today on Sky news. As they railed against immigration again there was a little line running across the bottom of the screen relating some story about the royal wedding which said “blah blah blah Middleton blah bah Blah ROYAL WEDDING ON 29THAPRIL” – probably assuming that someone had come down from a cloud and missed the whole media frenzy of the last few months. The BBC, JUST TO REMIND US are running a documentary on the history of Royal Weddings in the next few days. There’s even a film coming out about the wedding BEFORE it even takes place.

Straight to TV format

I was in Lidl recently and this GERMAN retailer, specialising in short and deep retail lines, had a WHOLE SECTION dedicated to the Royal Wedding. Mugs, champagne glasses, the fucking lot. Sure Lidl aren’t a newspaper, but they are another reflection of the flag-waving tea-towel-toting Royal-Wedding-loving media.

I want to be reminded of this beautiful day every time I dry up

A quick google search on Royal Wedding returns 372 million results from the last 24 hours  – surely this is disproportionate. 7 results for every man woman and child in the country. In a single DAY?… Ok so royal wedding is a generic term, but news sources for the last 24 hours returns over 18,000 results. Our media are so keen to push a news agenda on a nothing event that they will write or reproduce 18,000 stories on it in a day.

Mind you running the same search on Cameron immigration only turns up just over 1,00 results…. so perhaps there is a sense of perspective out there somewhere after all.

Hacks

Ok so?

Journalists are a principled bunch aren’t they. No? Stop laughing. Come on now – it’s not a joke.  Journalism is truly an altruistic and noble profession.

It’s like once upon a time when society was created god… Or the first king of society or whoever… Said “let there be three professions who can go forth and smugly boast of how governed they are by principles n’ting”

The first was doctors and their Hippocratic oath thing about saving life. The second was lawyers and the whole pursuit of justice and ‘innocent until proven guilty’ mantra. The third was journalists with their pursuit of the truth and all that cool stuff like going to prison to protect their sources. It seems estate agents, stock brokers, marketing types and the rest of us scum were fine without principles.

That’s how it feels anyway. You can’t meet a doctor/lawyer/journo who doesn’t prattle in at some point about the higher guiding principles of their profession. Like god-anointed prophets, they work for a higher power. I guess it must be pretty powerful for a doctor to save a life. Or a lawyer prove a condemned persons innocence. Or even a journo to uncover a massive conspiracy.

Yeah. That’s great. But actually doctors spend most of their time prescribing drugs for work-shy hypochondriacs. Lawyers are there cashing in on minor bureaucratic shizzle like house moves and wills and whatever. Journos? Well they read and reproduce press releases and celebrity tweets innit!!!

Actually. It seems journos do a bit more than that. If the headlines of the last few days (years?) are to believed it seems that these white knights of the press looking after our public interests decided to go all Watergate and live up to their nickname by hacking the phones of a bunch of people. Nice principles there.

How do you sensationalise a story about being on a phone? Like this!

The thing is I’d pretend to be surprised but how can I be? Forget principles – the news has no principle except to get the story it wants. Look at all the big scoops you hear about! Secret filming of elaborate stings and honey-traps? Dodgy leaked material? Bribed insider sources? Forget phone hacking. They’d go through someone’s bins if they thought it would get them a break. Well the do don’t they… so even the lowest thing imaginable is standard practice for the press. And we’re not just talking the tabloids here… The secret filming of Vince Cable and the MP expenses leaks came through the Telegraph and I’d not be surprised if the whole world of the press and media had whole reams of ill-gotten stories published or just sitting in reserve waiting for the right time. Someone working for a paper once told me they had whole cabinets of stories they’d gotten from one means or another but never been able to publish for legal reasons.

"Were reallly sorry we got caught"

No. Hacking is no surprise. Hell. I’d even go for a bit of phone hacking if it was for a burning story. If someone broke the whole illuminati, aliens, area 51, Kennedy and King assassinations, secret reasons for invadiny Iraq etc with a bit of phone hacking then the world would have nothing but gratitude. It would be less appalling to hack in pursuit of ‘the truth’ if the resulting story blew the lid off the world and made collective jaws drop so hard that they measured on the richter scale?!?

But when ‘the truth’ is some story about Sienna Miller and her stepmum, or sky sports sexist Andy Gray, or a bunch of publicists and agents most people have never even heard of, then it’s just a bad joke isn’t it. The rest of the press is having a field day, sitting on the same high horse they always sit on when one among them crosses the line. Suddenly the issue is about the ethics of their actions. But what about the banality of them???? What about the fact that they weren’t hacking phones to find a big story. They were doing it as a matter of course for a bit of gossip here or some news there or a bit of dirt on a few celebrities. That, for me, is what makes the whole affair sordid and pathetic.

I really hoped Id seen the last of this bloke

I’m so unsurprised or bothered about phone hacking that I’ve focussed my attentions elsewhere. Japan, Cote D’Ivoire, Libya, Syria… You know, places where real things have been happening rather than some frenzy over confirmation of an already-old story. But the fact that members of the press have been utilising observation techniques that were once the preserve of national government just so they can keep up with the gossip is god awfully depressing. Next time you get some journalist, any journalist, giving it large about how altruistic their profession is then just remember. These are the people who phonehacked Siena Miller’s stepmum. It might make even a lowly estate agent feel a bit better about themselves.

And finally…

OK! So.

Once upon a time the news had a pretty specific structure to it.

I’m not talking about years ago when it could only be seen in black and white in the cinema. I’m talking relatively recently. Before satellite came along with its 24 hour news party which threw everything out of the window.

Think back – to the halcyon days of “news” when papers were king, the 9 O’Clock news was something you watched on a terrestrial channel and the internet was just a twinkle in Tim Berners-Lee’s eye.

The news would go something like this:

1. Headlines – whatever happened that was deemed important. Murders, wars, explosions – you know… all that jazz.

2. News – A run down of the headlines in more detail with some other stuff thrown in. The less important stuff but still newsworthy – strikes, political stuff, medical stuff – whatever   interest is waning already.

3. A feature – some story that they’ve decided to use as a showcase for investigative journalism – usually a waste of time and money cos by the time they’ve filmed it it’s either old hat or irrelevant. Think “a day in the life of a tramp?” or “What happens to rubbish when you throw it away?” or “What does it feel like to watch paint dry?”

4. Sport – on specifically towards the end so that someone who just wants to know what the football scores were (before the internet etc) had to sit through the rest of the news.

5. “And finally”… the bit at the end of the news where the news reader would relax, put on their best false smile and waltz us through a wonderful, uplifting but completely irrelevant tale of human interest. It would invariably involve babies, animals or overcoming adversity. It would always have a happy ending.

The best “and finally” articles would combine all of these factors in a brain-melting display of love that would have you hugging your worst enemy in tears of solidarity in the middle of a knife fight. A story about a panda giving birth is a perfect example of “and finally” – Animals overcome adversity to have babies –  everyone’s happy. It doesn’t matter if the cub gets rejected a week later and starves in some squalid cage while its human handler weeps bitter tears and mumbles about how Panda’s are hell-bent on their own extinction. That comes later. The “and finally” is GOOD NEWS. It would never sully itself with the pain and anguish of the horrible reality it seeks to gloss over.

Animal cannibalism does NOT constitute human interest

Back when the news had a structure “and finally” stories never bothered me. They were television’s well-meaning but condescending way of trying to ease the burden of news that had just been dumped on the viewer. Like the media saying “look I know everything we’ve said, about the meteorites and the mass murderer in your garden and the strikes and shortages and pollution and starvation an all that are getting you down… but have hope  – even Pandas, a species hell-bent on its own destruction, can have babies. So there’s a little ray of sunshine out there for us all”

People would watch the news and just when they were  getting off their fat arses to amble through to the kitchen and get out the carving knife so they could murder their own children in their beds to spare them this terrible world Trevor McDonald would sit back, smile and say “and finally” and they world would feel a bit better.. Like when they say “don’t have nightmares” at the end of crimewatch as though somehow the power of suggestion is enough to ward off those demons…. frikkin’ crimewatch – For me that was like a cast iron guarantee I WOULD have nightmares – even if I hadn’t seen the show…

Anyway…. “And finally” was a harmless, patronising and ultimately meaningless dollop of news cream. It told people the news was about to finish and cheered them up before they topped themselves.

Of course now the news is on 24 hours a day – in the papers, on the internet, every-frikking-where. This means you can’t have an “and finally” because, on a 15 minute eternal loop, the news never ends. You can’t even do it in a newspaper. The news morphs into sport and every article has links to an online story where you can join the hordes of weasel-faced drones looking to add blather and comments on every piece of ink squeezed from a journalistic pen.

This should mean the “end” of and finally but somehow it hasn’t. It has a new name now. It’s a “human interest story” and it follows NO RULES apart from being largely irrelevant to anything that actually governs our lives. Since “and finally” gave birth to “Human Interest” the latter has multiplied like bacteria in agar. Now it’s so ubiquitous that every “human interest” story is leapt upon – and the internet alone supplies them to infinity (thanks Tim Berners-Lee) . But “human interest” isn’t positive or uplifting like “and finally”… it’s often as depressing as facing an eternity watching in complete paralysis as your body becomes entirely consumed by fungus while an out of tune accordion plays a “pop goes the weasel” over and over again!

Human interest stories are now as bleak as the stuff they’re supposed to provide relief from. And the interest they can generate can turn them into news pieces themselves. Not so long ago the world turned itself inside out over youtube viral turned “human interest story” about a cat being put in a bin.

I’m sure the new producers were just thinking “yeah – chuck that on, nice bit of human interest to break up this depressing post-election stuff and that Chilean mine thing” – next thing we knew the news was all over the news. It was being reported in Thailand. A woman putting a cat in a wheelie bin – REPORTED  IN THAILAND.

When human interest stories go bad!

And god was it depressing. Like Raul Moat… now that was news – but somehow the press weren’t satisfied with it just being news so they turned it into a human interest story AS WELL. Not only did we have blanket coverage and live radio mikes of him actually SHOOTING HIMSELF but the news ran an orgiastic frenzy of human interest coverage as well – Imagine Fiona Bruce cocking her eyebrow for an “and finally” and then emphatically delivering  an insane murder/suicide story before the weather comes on? Not nice … is it!

Where the news once treated us to one (JUST ONE) human interest story each night. A story that had to be happy and cuddly and signified the END of the news, now we get a different human interest story crowbarred into alternate reports. We can’t be trusted to watch 10 minutes of war in the middle east without being treated to a meaningless distraction. The internationalisation of the news m,eans that the irrelevance of the story can be global – the ubiquity of the internet means there’s an endless supply of human meaninglessness to draw upon and because the news is all about drawing a response from its audience like blood, there is no editorial responsibility to human interest stories. It doesn’t matter if they are horribly depressing, it doesn’t matter if they’re entirely banal – if they get a reaction and break up the blanket coverage of whatever is hot news on any given day they’ve done their job.

For the news the ideal new format would be like this nowadays:

1. Headlines – whatever happened that was deemed important. Murders, wars, explosions – you know… all that jazz.

2. Human interest story – man throwing a bag og kittens into a lake caught on youtube.

3. Headlines (see above)

4. Human interest story – Panda kissing a puppy’s broken leg better

5 Headlines (see above) and repeat…. forever

Most read

OK. So…

What’s the first thing you do when you look at a newspaper or a news website?

If you’re anything like a human being you’ll probably look at the headlines. That’s what they’re there for… to attract your attention. To make you see what the NEWS wants you to see.

If you’re a bit cannier you might already know what you’re looking for. You might browse around to find it. Perhaps search, perhaps narrow by category… you know. Deciding for yourself what it is that is of interest to you in the world?

Of course you might not be like a human being.

You might be more like a mindless sheep looking to fill yet another wasted hour of your life as you count down to corpsetime.  

In your bovine fascination of this human world you’ve stumbled upon you might decide to look and see what OTHER PEOPLE find interesting and use that as a basis of forming your own stupid opinion and thoughts. Some people aren’t content enough with having the media to tell you what to think – you want to also see what the media are telling other people what to think so that they can think like them as well.

Nazi books and "our daily quiz" compete with national disaster... effectively

Yes. That’s right – I’m talking about the “most read/watched/shared” menu that sits on virtually all news sites. Usually in a little box on the right hand side of the page (I’ve tested this on a number of sites, it’s not just the BBC), so that as you read left to right you end up gawping in wonderment at what the rest of the world thinks they should be looking at beginning an eternal and ever decreasing cycle between themselves driving the media drivng them driving the media ….gah!

I don’t know what the worst thing about these boxes is. In principle they should shirley reflect exactly what the news headlines are – shirley! The public go to news sites to find out about breaking news. Breaking news is usually headline news. So ergo the box should be the front page of a news site in miniature.

But this isn’t the case is it? Because the media love throwing up little human interest stories or bleeding out some nice disaster porn that attracts just that little bit more human interest than reporting the flat and depressing fact that something important and probably tragic is happening.

Thank good some people have a bit of sense.

As I write this the second “most read” story on the BBC website is about Chris Moyles breaking a Guinness by having his show run for eternity or something. This is AHEAD of the imposition of a no fly zone in Libya. So the internet viewing public effectively think it is MORE IMPORTANT that a radio DJ can fill the hole in time between songs for a long time than for multiple countries to be put on a war footing in the middle east.

On the “most shared” a story about someone diving into a paddling pool is top. That’s right – more important than the nuclear alert in Japan. A MAN DIVING INTO A PADDLING POOL.

Of course you wouldn’t say this is the fault of the news… this is the fault of the piddle-braned-public. The ones who watch “you’ve been framed” and go “aaahhhh” whenever they show a picture of a pet or baby – even one that goes on to become a murderer.  But OF COURSE it is the fault of the news. The news report this. The news opens it’s mouth and vomits this into the face of their readers shouting “LOOK – A MAN DIVING INTO A PADDLING POOL” and there are just enough people in the world who go “ooh really?”. These are the same people who send texts with emoticons or forward on emails that say “you know you’re dead when…” or fill their facebook feeds with pointless games and apps … you know who you are!

As revolutions were toppling governments in the middle east in February it should always be remembered that Time Magazine, one of the most important and most influential journals in the world, had, as the most read article on its website, a story about JUSTIN BEIBER’S HAIRCUT. It really puts the uncertain future of an entire region into perspective when a small child’s haircut is seen as more important by the net viewing public.

But the worst thing about the “most read” bits of the news is that they DRIVE THE NEWS as well.

That’s right.

Journalists  go there and see that little square box and say “ooh I’ve not covered that bloke in a Mankini kicking a dolphin story, but it seems pretty popular” and they blindly go ahead and cover it.

I know this because the BBC occasionally used to have to reset its “most viewed” server. Whenever it did it brought up a story that I’d press released years ago as the number one story. Without warning (or even reading the date) other press woud begin faithfully reproducing the story again and aagin – even though it was THREE YEARS OLD. I’d get calls from journalists asking for interviews for a 3-year-old story simply because the BBC server had reset.

Now that’s lazy! And Stupids

Stupid News

For gods sake "Estimated shaking intensity"? What??????

OK. So.

I’m a bit of a news junkie. I really am. I wake up in the morning and put on BBC news 24. I check the news websites all through the day at work and then I check them when I get home too usually alternating between sky and BBC while I cook and before relaxing with some other TV/book/conversation/descent into oblivion.

Know what I’ve noticed?

THE NEWS IS RUBBISH – it’s stupid, infantile guff. Instead of being an independent and informal means of educating the general public about stuff it’s degenerated into the horrible middle ground between some sort of savage reality TV show and an episode of the Noel Edmund’s Christmas special.

These last few weeks have been news heavy. We’ve had revolutions in the Middle East, culminating in regime change, civil war and the Saudi Army invading Bahrain to help out the government. We’ve also had a terrible Earthquake/Tsunami in Japan culminating in devastation, a huge loss of life and ongoing fears about a possible Nuclear Reactor going into “meltdown”.

Of all the times in our life to be using the TV, Radio and internet to keep abreast of events now is the time to do it.

The problem is that the news people know it. And they’re delighted. It’s like they can’t hide their slobbering grins as they voyeuristically reel out more and more footage of dead rebels in Libya or waves turning buildings into matchsticks in Japan.

A couple of days ago the BBC was running a montage set to gently epic classical music (think along the lines of adagio for strings or the second movement of Beethoven’s 7th or something) of tsunami damage ending with the sun rising over a boat washed up on the shore. THEY DID THIS EVERY 15 MINUTES. Sky News had the same idea but they did it with some percussion heavy stuff to really drive home the urgency of the situation.

As if that wasn’t enough we were subjected to a BBC commentator later on providing a RUNNING COMMENTARY on news footage as it came in… “Just look at that wave… look, as it SMASHES that boat into a bridge… and SMASHES its way up the street” by the time he was finished he had the guilty look of an adolescent waking from his first wet dream.

And that’s the problem with the news. It’s lazy. Now they don’t bother investigating stuff – they just get all their info from twitter or Facebook and re-report that for the benefit of people who think the internet is a massive scary microchip that steals your soul.

When there isn’t news they don’t bother making the effort to find some, they just try to make stuff that’s about as relevant as Nick Clegg into a burning issue. When there is news they beg for YOU to do all their work for them and send in pictures, reports, anything – until they get their act together to squeeze every last semblance of life out of it with a flood of reporters, cameramen and general idiots.

I was watching something the other day where they had a reporter ON THE GROUND in the town where Prince Williams stag do MIGHT be taking place…

So that’s what this blog is. It’s about my horrible relationship with the news. One where I cannot stop watching it. But I cannot stop ranting about it either. I want to know what’s going on in the world but I don’t want to have some presenter reading out banal emails from a keyboard punching idiot of a viewer expressing sentiments that are both obvious, stupid and largely irrelevant.

Journalists can be brilliant. They can uncover stories and deliver and drive great news. But these days it seems much more important to stick up a few pics of a snowman and ask “WERE YOU THERE? DO YOU HAVE PICTURES? CONTACT US AND TELL US YOUR STORY”

I welcome any pictures, ideas, comments, submissions – anything that helps me be as lazy as your typical journalist