Journalists

I was watching a programme on TV the other day where the presenter was interviewing a woman who had survived breast cancer. I almost fell off my chair when the presenter asked the woman if she worried that the cancer would return. What an utterly ridiculous thing to ask.

Sometimes I really hate the media. They say the most ludicrous things. You know the kind of thing. Someone loses a loved one or is involved in a horrible accident and the reporter says “How do you feel?” I wish someone would smack the reporter and then say “So how do you feel?” Geez I would pay someone to do that.

My other bug bear is when newspaper reporters use completely irrelevant information in their stories. I mean, does it really matter if a mass murderer lives in a £500,000 house? Or that a rapist lives on a council estate. I’m sorry but I just don’t understand how that is relevant to the story. Does it mean that mass murderers don’t usually live in expensive houses? Or that rapists live in tents?

Reporters often think it’s really important to print the age of their subject. Again, how is this relevant? Does it matter if someone is 25 or 55? I have worked in and with the media for over 10 years and things haven’t changed a single bit.

There is one newspaper in the UK which shall remain nameless. It’s not the kind of newspaper I would read through choice but sometimes I have to buy it for work purposes. I remember a feature which appeared in this newspaper a few years ago. It was so full of clichés and stereotypes that I wrote a letter of complaint. Obviously they didn’t print it but it felt good to get something off my chest.

The article was written by a dreadful middle-class journalist who had spent one week living on a council estate somewhere in London. In the article she described how awful it was living on said estate. She talked about the junkies shooting up on the stairwells and the kids hanging around the streets mugging people. I don’t doubt that much of the stuff she wrote about was real. But it was the way the article was written which annoyed me the most. It was just so patronising. There was lots of “Oh look how these poor people live. I am so glad I can go back to my four storey house in Notting Hill next week.” To me, this journalist (who I hope was fired for writing such trash) was just a voyeur who wanted something to talk about at her next dinner party.

I’m not a big fan of any newspaper to be honest. They are either too trashy, too middle class or just too bloody worthy. That’s a bit of a problem when you work in Public Relations.

Oh well.