Unlike doctor vee I didn’t watch last night’s 10 o’clock news. So I didn’t see them cover the blooker awards until I checked it out this morning.
As doctor vee points out, they manage to put their foot in it – well in this instance one of those interviewed managed to. Paddy Calistro believes that blogs, lacking editors, will spread misinformation and this is bad because in the future there will be no alternative sources of information.
Now, I might be inclined to take this nonsense seriously if it wasn’t for the fact that there are precedents. When Samuel Pepys maintained a diary, were there not other sources of information relating to the times? Samuel wasn’t the only diarist who has given insight into historical events – and, indeed, they managed to do so without editors. An editor is a useful second pair of eyes; someone who will check content and style, someone who will pick up on ambiguous prose, poor punctuation and usage. They may, if they are sufficiently knowledgeable, point out factual errors, but that is by no means guaranteed.
So Ms Calistro made her point unchallenged, such is the dumbed down nature of our broadcast media. Which is something covered in a discussion over at jawbox. The assumption is made by the programmers that the viewer not only has a low IQ, but a short attention span and is unable to take in information unless measurements are made in “football pitches” or “double decker buses” thereby insulting the intelligence of those who are perfectly capable of understanding proper measurements, whether imperial or metric. We now, too, are inundated with distracting and unnecessary silly graphics to illustrate the blindingly obvious. We are treated much as I was during my first year at school when learning to read Janet and John books.
If I had a tinfoil hat, I might almost believe it was a deliberate attempt to keep the proles stupid, uneducated and unthinking… :dry:
Frankly, if I want informed and accurate comment, I’d be more likely to find it by trawling the blogs than on the 10 o’clock news.