The news has gone to such shit. Editors are asleep at their posts and reporters are a bunch of egotistical, self-absorbed pussies who charge their MacBooks and comb their hair as the real news happens in front of them.
It took about twenty seconds of searching MSNBC this morning to prove my point.
Top Story: Iraq. Du du duu duuuuuuun.
Shiite pilgrims celebrating the holiday called Ashoura are attacked in Baghdad. This type of thing, you may have imagined, has happened before. But there is one particularly gory photo to go along with the watered-down text. You can see at least a dozen men, dressed in white robes, blood pouring from their heads. They are marching and shouting, very much alive. They are carrying swords. It is their custom on this holy day to slice their foreheads with swords. It’s a stunt since adopted by professional wrestlers. Cut the forehead and it bleeds profusely, but does no real damage.
This is all news, to some degree. It’s interesting to read about foreign cultures and their organized self mutilation. The story was written with more urgency than required, and really struggled to get to the point. But the reporter is writing from a battlefield, maybe writing in a second language, so I’ll cut them some slack. I’m not all criticism. Not really.
The picture, with the white robes, pouring blood and faces frozen in shout, was worth a glance.
The headline, however, was awful.
“Shiite Holiday Marred By Violence In Iraq”
Come on. The holiday itself is violent. Yes a bomb went off. Yes rebels don’t like these self-cutting pilgrims for some reason. But these pilgrims are slicing themselves open and blood is the intended result. That’s what the picture is of. That’s violent. Marred by violence. That’s like saying the St. Patrick’s Day parade was marred by alcohol, or the rodeo was marred by injuries, Or New Year’s Day was marred by hangovers. I thought my frustration with today’s big market news had peaked, but as I finished the story I saw something else that I knew would make my morning worse.
“NBC Field Notes.” It’s a section, I assumed, of first person accounts from combat correspondents. People in the field, as it were. But the headline for the first story in the section was titled, du du dun duuuuuun, “When my daughter found Britney on my iPod.”
I shouldn’t have to say another word about it. But the sheer stupidity, the lack of judgement, the dizzying number of errors that have to be made for this piece of shit to get this prime real estate on the web, it just defies reason.
Pilgrims slicing themselves up, OK I’ll buy that. In some countries they crucify themselves to celebrate a holiday. But writing about your stupid daughter and your stupid iPod and some stupid girl who sings and your stupid opinion on it all, I mean, where are the fuckin editors?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment