Missing children and why I quit journalism
“To suggest that this might not be a good way of finding a missing child is clearly spitting in the wind … Journalists may have cooked the McCann story to a burnt crisp.”
Thanks for that, Simon Jenkins (in his Guardian column). He’s commenting above about the media circus (yes, when someone uses that phrase around me, I too fail to see anything other than a bear in a fez driving a miniature car around a big-top with a camera around its neck) surrounding the disappearance of poor four-year-old Madeleine McCann.
Of course, it probably wasn’t advisable for Mr Jenkins to turn this into a pun based around a popular brand of frozen oven-chips. I mean, yes, we all saw the McCann-McCain potential. But sometimes a line has to be drawn.
In general, Simon Jenkins isn’t wrong. I encountered an interesting debate on all this at John Walker’s Bothererblog (if you haven’t visited, you should- it’s more or less the only blog I regularly read). I won’t reiterate the discussion here, but it all stemmed from a list of all the UK children currently listed as missing, with McCann, the most recent, right at the bottom.
You can read any level of hypocrisy that you like. How come nobody’s heard of Muzamil Hussein? Is it as simple as his name and race? How do we get off pretending that we all have a personal connection with one little girl and her family while the rest of mankind is lucky to get mentioned at all? And to what extent is this all the fault of the media?
Well, at least I can answer that last question, or attempt to. They just screened a two-minute appeal at the frickin’ FA Cup Final, for crying out loud. There’s a reason I’m quitting journalism. Actually, there’s about a dozen reasons, but this is a biggy.
Even the columnist who actually detects the hypocrisy and ridiculousness of stuff like Halo 3 Beta campaigns to find Madeleine McCann- who sees that this is the easiest quick-sale a paper can make right now- makes a pun about chips as he does so.
I give up.
Right on. I hate the state of journalism today. I almost joyfully expect to see the news-handling system turned to government-controll in my lifetime. Sure, the thought is disgusting, but so is the feeling of being gradually reduced to the misery-gloating, sex-crazed, most basic stimuli/response-nature in my humanity as a news-reader. The steadily improving sensationalism keeps specializing these quick-sell stories based on the results of the damned click-counters on their webpages and everything, themes, angles, headlines, headline-words, freaking typefaces, everything will eventually be narrowed down to create the optimally successfull news-template. Sounds extreme, but admit it – it’s just a question of how FAST young minds are being passivated, taste-wise, opinion-wise, political-wise. We’re being reduced. The hateful part is that it’s good business-sense and completely justifiable. You have to sympathize with them on the one hand, i mean, it’s the result of efficiency and finesse – chief virtues of our time – they’re getting readers, or at least staying upright in the competition.
Government-controlled news sounds evil to you? JA, but consider how cool it would be to fight a corrupted government for a change. That’s what the world needs, anyway. Some fighting in a war where there’s a right side.
What a crazy-sounding comment.
Nice blog, Simon. All the articles are ripe with a sense of mindfull joviality. A kind of serious, conntemplated kidding around. I mean, we should seriously send marsupials to space, no kidding around.
Hey, i think my comment is more massive than your article.
Comment of the month. And I’ve only been doing this three days…
I find it very hard to square my libertarian and neo-liberal free market sensibilities with the manipulative nature of the media. it’s essentially a subset of education- the bringing of knowledge and understanding- and no-one’s leaving THAT to the suits.
Does this make me a commie?
I think the words of the late Hunter S. Thompson sum it up best:
“Why bother with newspapers, if this is all they offer? Agnew was right. The press is a gang of cruel faggots. Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits — a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage.”
If someone could try and shoehorn that into a journalism exam I would love them forever.
Yes. So glad you said it, folks. The point is ‘saleability’. The missing Miss McCann has everything our western stereotypical sensibilities resonate to: blonde, blue-eyed, cute, cuddly and crying out ‘INNOCENT!!!’ with every part of her physiognomy. Brings out the carer in one and all. So we all go nuts; pensioners leave their prize peonies to pine in Potters Bar and dash off to the Algarve to join the tear-fest. There’s a run on yellow ribbons. Footballers make emotional appeals and dedicate their goals to her recovery. It makes for great publicity and gives us a focus for our Angst in one fell swoop. And don’t the hard-bitten old Journos love it? Oh yeah; they milk it for all it’s got.
But just check out all the missing young ‘uns in the Big Issue or on the police files. Not so cute, not so immediately loveable-looking; struggling with lots of different issues, some of them. THEY might as well be the wallpaper in an abandoned latrine for all the public attention they get. It’s so unfair.
Ahhhhhh. I feel better now…
Does your reasoning make you a commie? why, Comrade, whatever gave you that idea?
Nazdrovié !