Friday Flashback - Just Because People Watch It Doesn't Make it Important...or Good...or True!

Ok, so this week I have decided to delve in to the archives and present you with an older post. I'll be making this a regular thing, on the first Friday of the month. There are a lot of new readers to this fair blog land of mine (*waves* hello and welcome, thank you so, so much for taking the time to visit my little corner of the interwebs, I really do appreciate it!) and I thought it may be nice to re-visit an old post and add any insights or epiphanies I may have had in the intervening time. I am also new to a lot of your blogs and so I thought it might be nice if you shared with me one of your older posts too. Doesn't have to be your best one, just one that you might have been particularly proud of, or think gives a bit of insight in to who you are as a person or blogger, or even just one that you would like a little more comment love on. Feel free to add that post to the linky at the end of this one, or hit me up with the link in the comments, and I promise I will stop by, have a read, and leave some comment love.

This post was originally published Wednesday February 9th 2011, updates are in bold red font.

***Warning!!!***

This post may offend some people. You may think I feel I'm superior because of the views on 'news' tv that I am about to express. Rest assured, I know I am just as lame and stupid as anyone else. I just don't care for this crap. But I am not against a little crap-watching, God knows I watch my fair share of it. Just not of this kind. And it's my opinion that it's crap. I respect that you may have another opinion, and I don't think you're an idiot for liking the programs I'm about to mention. I will, however, think you're an idiot if you truly liked Passions for it's gripping storylines and powerful acting.

There was an opinion piece written by David Koch of Sunrise on The Punch today. If you can't be bothered reading it (however please do, so I don't do what I'm about to get annoyed about) he is basically talking about the 'important role' that commercial breakfast television has and responding to critics of his show, and others like its, coverage of the recent natural disasters to have befallen the country.

When it comes to breakfast television and a current affairs and 'news' in general, I always take a cynical approach. I never fully believe everything I read or am told by the media. And I really, really don't like breakfast tv, ala Sunrise or Today, or A Current Fair/Today Tonight. And lately, the 6pm news on both those channels has been shitting me. In fact, it's been shitting me for a while. Yep, still shitting me today, if possible it's even worse!

The Dynamic Duos with impossibly white teeth
TBH, I like Wilkinson, I wish she wasn't on such a crappy show
But I gotta support the C'town girl, even if I don't watch it!

What I don't like about these shows is the absolute crap they have most of the time. Granted I don't watch them very often at all, but nearly all of the times I have, it's frustrated me no end.

The crap on these shows is unbelievable. Most of it is common sense stuff, take for instance, a story on ACA tonight, about those offers where you sign up to a contract, mobile phone for instance, and get something for free, say an xBox. They warned me that in the long run, these types of deals may not really be deals at all. Companies are in the business of making money and they aren't going to offer me something that costs them money.

Well no shit sherlock! Doesn't everyone know that? I spose in a way what scares me is that some people don't know this! I feel sorry for them. If it sounds too good to be true, well people, I'm here to tell you, it usually is!

The sensationalism and OTT-ness of these programs also shits me. Take any crisis coverage from 7 or 9 in the last 2 years and try not to drown in the fake concern, fake smiles, fake tears and just general barely-hidden-glee at the ratings this human suffering might bring, on the reporters faces.

It's just so ridiculously OVER the TOP! I can't say that more. It's ridiculously OVER the TOP. It's 1000% embarrassing! I used to make fun of American news programs for their ridiculous sensationalism of current events, but now it's our own networks too! Have you noticed how now, whenever anything even remotely interesting happens they have people 'on the spot' ready to give their report about the dog who pooed on the footpath and the woman who stepped in it and Oh My God the humanity, this is breaking news people and we have reporters at the scene RIGHT NOW!

What really gets to me though, is that the vulnerable people, the ones who can't think for themselves or aren't that interested in getting their news from a variety of sources, so they can get all the angles and gain a better understanding...even just those who, for whatever reason, don't have time to find their news, like me, now that I have given birth to a time-sucking parasite child...they hear these soundbites and opinions from people, presented as fact, and they just accept as correct what they've been told. Never mind the fact that what they have heard has been taken totally out of context and doesn't mean what they think it does, because the program didn't bother to go any further in their reporting than the headline. It's the misinformation that gets spread around that really shits me. Well, it shits me just as much as the OTT-ness.

This is particularly true of the print media online (I'm looking at you SMH.com, News.com.au and Ninemsn.com and now even Mamamia.com.au). I can't tell you how over misleading headlines I am. The ones that say one thing, but then when you actually read the story you discover that either a) the headline really has nothing to do with the content of the story or the point it's trying to make, and b) those that are deliberately sensational, just to get you to click through to it.

I understand that, like any business, they have to make money and achieve a certain click-through rate to please their advertisers, but come the fuck on! Some of them are just flat out lies. They may as well just pop a bunch of popular keywords in as the headline, they'd probably get just as many clicks from Goggle search results anyway. Maybe headlines should just be words like BOOBS, PENIS, PUBES or VAGINA (see what I did there? Let's watch as my hit-rate goes through the roof by all the pubescent teens searching for those words!)

What they don't get, is that now I'm so wary, that unless I am absolutely intrigued by the headline, I don't click through. And more and more I just don't click through, because the really interesting headlines are often the worst ones! I suspect I'm not the only one.

In the same way I have an even bigger problem with talkback radio. People listen to these shows, they hear Joe Blow call up and tell them how their mate told them that NSW Labor is actually run by a bunch of Big-Pharma Ninjas, and that is why our water is being sold to the Russians so they can use it to create super weapons disguised as vibrators which are then shipped back to Australia and sold on the blackmarket in a conspiracy to bring down the federal government one sexual encounter at a time. And Joe Blogss sitting at home, he hears this, thinks cor blimey, that guys on to something, and if Alan Jones is talking to him then there must be some truth to that.

Those talkback guys love to pick out one line from an entire news story and just run with it, facts be damned. And it's the way people hear this crap and take it as fact that really worries me.

If you think Australia is a modern, liberal minded country all you have to do is listen to the people that call in to talk back radio, or read through your facebook feed to realise there are some really stupid, ignorant people living in this country.

These are the same people that comment on The Punch (and other opinion pieces and websites) by picking out one sentence in an opinion piece and attacking the author over it, not bothering to make sure they have really understood the context of the sentence and the overall point the commentator is trying make.

That is why I think that, just because your show is popular Kochie, and there is a tiny percentage of the country that tunes in to your show (and really, 800,000 viewers in a country of 20 million people isn't that much), it doesn't mean that it is good or important.

But maybe there's my answer. Maybe it doesn't matter because it really is only a small percentage of people who are actually watching this tripe.

Regardless, I still think all those programs, and the 6pm news on channels 9 and 7 is a joke. And it's doing nothing to improve the awareness of those that watch them for their 'news-worthy-ness'. But maybe that's the appeal. We all like to watch crap every now and then, I myself have a weakness for Gossip Girl.

However, Gossip Girl doesn't pretend to be something it's not. They're never gonna be a serious drama, and they don't pretend to be.

Just once, I'd love to see some crisis-devastated person turn around and answer the stupidest question ever posed by a news reporter, "How do you feel?", with the reply "Let me see, I'm over the fucking moon. How do you think I bloody feel!". Wouldn't that be brilliant!

What do you think? Am I being too harsh?

And just to bring the laughs, take 30 secs to watch this clip I found on YouTube.


I'm also linking this up with the fabulous Bree for Flash Blog Friday and Grace for Flog Yo Blog Friday. Happy Friday everyone!