Miss Kolka

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Breaking News! | 19 février 2007

When you work in international news, it seems that you are always covering the same stories - melting of polar ice-caps, middle east peace proces,repressing regimes, train bombings, deadly bird flu outbreaks, opposition protests and so on. When it comes to choose what is important news we seem formatted. We only "tick" to certain words when reading the wires (the raw source of information for news channels) and it is like every day is a follow up of what we've heard before. We completely ignore certain regions and the problem of television is also that we don't have time (or give ourself time) to go into complicated stories or explain something unfamiliar. I doubt the average viewer in Europe is interested in major business deals between China and African countries for example. How to make news more interesting? What a big question. Many news channels have begun to categorise news into segments such as "business", "international", "Celebrities" and so on. Thatcan maybe help but it makes news even drier than it already is.

And how is it that it always has to be about pain and death? About opression and torture by certain regimes (since western countries are always flawless in their warfare) Happy news doesn't really exist. Odd images of dogs in funny clothes or celebration pictures from Rio can be seen for a few secondes but apart from that news is majoritively bad news. So let me see how many died in the Baghdad bombing of the day and how many politicians have talked nonsense and promissed things that will never happen...

Yes that's right - at least 30 die in Baghdad while - 66 died on a train blast in India. Meanwhile Rice, Olmert and Abbas meet for talks in Jerusalem where everyone will agree on a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine, except that Hamas will not regognise Israel, the international community will not recognise the Hamas-led government and the fighting will go on. What's new under the sun? And why do we even bother?

Publié par Kolka à 12:46:24 dans Miss Kolka | Commentaires (2) | Permaliens

22-02-2007 17:45

De Kolka

Sujet: tommy boy Url: [Liens]
Thank you Tom.. How I miss these conversations of ours! And I totally agree with you - sometimes you just cant listen any more to all of these stories that all sound familiar. Does it mean you don't care? I don't think so. When are you coming over so we can discuss this tete-a-tete? bisous

20-02-2007 22:26

De Thomas Sujet: What to do...
I know what you mean my dear Sara. Whenever reading or watching the news I often end up with a sense of despair. The horrific realm of war and terror, dirty politics and corruption seem almost too appalling to bear. What is the point of telling all these stories when individuals do not seem to be able to do anything about it? The communication is one-way and as media consumers we do not react to what we read or watch in our mediated everyday life. Recently I started reading a Danish newspaper named Weekend-Avisen. Unlike many of the daily broadsheets this newspaper does not focus on everyday political and humanitarian crises in Baghdad or on the West Bank. As a weekend-based newspaper it collects news from the week passed and analyzes and reflects on what has happened. Of course it also writes about Iraq and Palestine but also about international politics/art/culture/philosophy etc. Although I am not in favour of a \'I don\'t care about the news cause I can\'t change anything the world anyway\' attitude, I do feel sympathetic to people who feel this way. While sometimes feeling like I\'ve given up, I must admit that I retreat to media products which focus on rather Ã¢??softÃ¢?? issues (culture/academia/literature and art). Unlike the daily news, these \'soft\' issues are not entwined in war and suffering to the same extent. Do I do this because IÃ¢??ve given up? Or do I ignore such news programs because of a feeling of guilt? Should I act on the atrocities that I am witnessing everyday watching CNN - or France24? I think itÃ¢??s a mixture of it all. Watching the news I feel guilty, it saddens me and I am left despondent. Anyway, whatever the reason of my unhappiness, I must admit that whilst IÃ¢??m figuring out what to do I am happy to have found a newspaper that focuses on more than war and terror. Although definitely deserving attention from all over the world there is more to life than war and problematic international politics. Love Tom - ton ami en pleine crise