Wednesday 26 March 2014

Barbarism in the 21st Century

And so after ten years of marriage, Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin have - apparently - called time on their relationship. They're now going to separate or, as Paltrow inimitably put it, partake of a "conscious uncoupling". Very sad, of course. For the sake of their kids let's hope the end of the affair does not subject them to the sorts of rancour one might normally expect.

Still, was there any need for this "news" to be dignified as such with its slot on the lunch, afternoon and tea time bulletins? Forget remotely operated drones rocketing wedding parties. The summation of barbarism in the early 21st century is celebrity tittle-tattle getting more views on the BBC news website than the disastrous debacle of the missing Malaysian flight, and mounting tensions in eastern Ukraine.

2 comments:

Robert said...

Presumably the BBC believes the punters are more interested in celebrity gossip than Ukraine and they're probably right.

Anonymous said...

i'm curious, did any bbc reporter speculate that the missing malaysian airplane was the result of an encounter with a black hole? because apparently, some "journalist" on cnn did just that. in fact, last week, coverage of flight 370 so totally dominated the news that events in the ukraine, not to mention venezuela, the middle east, turkey or anywhere else in the world was completely sidelined and buried under panicy speculation about the flight crew and pseudo expertise about radar, black boxes and transponders repeated as if on some continuous tape loop. i'm afraid with the media as with what passes for most politics these days the rule is every time you think you've reached rock bottom, there's always another sub-basement opening up beneath your feet. it's like the lyrics to that old pop song "the limbo dance" from the early 60s--"how low can you go?" the answer to that question fills me with a certain dread.

les