Sensationalist British media
hardly fails to surprise me with its laughable standards “journalism”, however
with the recent rise in mind numbingly stupid headlines following the
unimaginable horror of the school shootings – I’m actually starting to wonder
why anyone still buys these tabloids any more. Surely these readers would have
more self-respect than to pick up The Sun and consider themselves informed of today’s
current events, but these things continue to sell.
The Sun recently ran the
headlines that reported the murderer who opened fire on innocent children in a
school was somehow influenced by Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. Hooray, it’s “let’s
jump on the video games are evil bandwagon” time! Hang on; they just need to
get off the “Goth killers” bandwagon first.
In the interest of
transparency I’d like to inform you guys that I have just finished a game of
Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 before sitting down to type this up and no, I am not
feeling any urges to grab a weapon and open fire on innocent children. There is
no evidence to suggest that playing video games = mass murderers. It’s
insulting to even suggest that. To even imply that Call of Duty or video games
in general is a main cause (one tabloid reported Dynasty Warriors as being one!)
is becoming less and less of a credible argument and the constant backing of
such an argument simply makes you look ignorant, narrow minded, backwards and quite
frankly stupid.
To me that is the best way to
describe the general institution of British Journalism, most (not all!) is
quite frankly antiquated and a relic of times long since passed. More and more
people are finding their news elsewhere. More and more people get their fix of
entertainment gossip elsewhere, these trash tabloids quite frankly should just
die out now – and quickly – and reform themselves in the wake of more connected
and smarter audiences. I’m normally not one to just lash out at such a large
sector of people, writers and journalists however this is just another instance
of brazen sensational “journalism” where these tabloids get away with presenting
shit as fact.
This follows the scandalous
investigation into phone hacking and the invasion of privacy by journalists in
more and more bold attempts to sell newspapers. Finally they were somewhat
threatened by the Levinson Inquiry but the reforms suggest by that didn’t go
far enough. We shouldn’t live in a world where journalists can offer depressed
and mentally unstable people money for drugs and sex just to get a story. Or a
world where whole sections of people (the killer was labelled as a Goth in a
recent headline) are quite frankly discriminated against, whether they are
immigrants, gamers or people who are interested in alternative music, attire
and values, by large corporations whose interests solely lie in sales and
political control. An establishment that can change its entire political belief
at a whim to stay “in with the readers” loses all integrity with me.
It’s trashy, uneducated and
petty. Their attempts to tarnish all forms of media and entertainment in which
the large News Corporations have little control (for example News Corp has very
little control in the games industry or avenues of Goth music and fashion) are
getting obvious and quite frankly laughable.
We deserve better from our
media and government and it burns me up inside that productions such as The Sun
are still able to operate today. They are a fountain of hate and bigotry that
are in the business of scaring readers and keeping them under their control
rather than presenting news.
How about they stop finding out
what music and games the killer listened to and plastering his face all over
the front page and focus their attention on the innocent lives lost and the
families having to deal with such a tragedy. Maybe that’s asking for too much.
T
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