If you lived in the 60′s

An old article I worked on. November 2010

The R L Journal

If you lived in the 60’s would you have been tripping out on acid at some concert fighting for your freedom through free expression? Would you have been hailing Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X in celebration of their achievements in the battle against racial inequality?

On 16 October 1793 would you have been throwing rotten tomatoes at Marie Antoinette, not from your local Tesco, but from your back garden or the local market? Would you have taken violently to the street in the hope of improving your current situation?

What about on the 10^th of November when a student demonstration against cuts and increments to university funding and fees occurred in London. Where were you then?

In England we saw the first noteworthy demonstration in years and it has been condemned for violence and dubbed ‘out of control’ by many. Students marched out on the 10^th

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Thoughts on News and Journalism; The Fourth Estate of Today

Yet Another Perfect System

A hundred and fifty years ago a whisper took about fifty avenues to reach your ears. It tried the short cuts only to find itself lost in dark alleys and dodgy nooks. When it asked for directions the local man (through and through Londoner he is) thought it was a tourist and sent it the wrong way. Those fifty avenues were so long that most people did not even bother finding the whisper at all. It was too expensive and not worth it at all. They just lived their lives not caring about news on a bigger scale, because when it did reach them the elephant in the room had metamorphosed into a fly on a wall.

Nowadays, at the tap of a key, a whisper will cross a million avenues and go around the world in seconds before reaching not only your ears, but also your eyes. It reaching our senses so quickly makes it fresh, and fresh is good. A fly on a wall is truly the fly on the wall, it did not have fifty avenues and weeks in which to change its appearance. It had mere seconds therefore it most definitely is the fly on the wall.

And since whispers travel vast distances in short times a whisper that is ten minutes old is already ancient and a new one has to be picked up. By the time the day is over, we will have already forgotten that first whisper, which may have been the most important one.

The first whisper of the day is covered by dead bodies harbouring flies yearning to be the one on the wall whatever the cost.

That is the state of news in our modern day. The elephant in the room has become invisible and all there is is a triviality masking the true state of affairs. Good journalism is reliant on experts and reliably unimpeachable sources, in essence flies on walls, the people who see and know all. But when these experts and reliable sources choose to ignore the elephant in the room what becomes of the news reported to us?

In a world of too much information and “news” we have become desensitised and unable to pick apart that which is important, yet we claim to be aware of the character of our modern and driven world.

We are just like the poor of old who could not afford the news and therefore lived their lives not caring about it on a bigger scale. Whereas we can afford all the news, we cannot afford the consequences of said news. This truth is too expensive. We shut our eyes and plug in our I-Pods when something we dislike or do not understand is brought to our attention. Our poverty is that of the mind because the opportunity is there, but you tell me what we do with it.

I, personally, file it away and hunt for the newest and juiciest…