Filling in

I woke up early for once and thought I would live on the wild side and turn the telly on whilst waiting for the kettle to boil.  

The face of a cabinet minister filled the screen.  He was suited, polished and his words carefully chosen.  The message he conveyed was loud and clear - 'a vote for me is a vote for spin'.  I immediately regretted turning the telly on.  I don't even want most celebrities as celebrities, so I absolutely draw the line at cabinet ministers. 

He was replaced on the screen by the weather report; then by someone from a mortgage provider with a quick side trip to the streets of Manchester and London to see what non-celebrities think.  The news then moved on to orphaned orang-utans.  This all took about eight minutes and my head is already spinning with the amount of information it has been bombarded with.  The orphaned orang-utans were too sleepy to engage with the reporter and the reporter suggested they have their breakfast and the cameras could return when the orang-utans are a bit livelier.  I think it is advice the BBC should follow itself.  Let us all wake up and come to terms with the world before being attacked by news and views.

I scuttled off to the radio in search of a bit of peace and quiet.  It being a Monday I am not quite up to the cheerful witterings of Chris Evans so I chose Radio 4 and the measured tones of the Today show.  Even Radio 4's news has changed.  It also has more clips from witnesses, more spokespeople.    

We have 24 hour news on several channels, both on radio and on television, hence the interviews, the tug at the heart strings stories of orphaned wild animals, street polls and eye witness snippets.  There is a lot of time to fill.  It isn't 30 minutes three times a day, it is 60 minutes, 24 times a day.  We can't just hear an item of news, we have to be spoon fed it with polls, people who knew the person in the news or, more often, people who may have met them once.  The days of the news being read at 100 words a minute in the calm, measured tones of Moira Stewart or Alastair Burnett are long gone.  I will stick to reading the news in papers or online.  I don't have to have sad stories dripped out to me in a caring, sharing, 'this is how sad you have to feel' voice and I definitely don't need half the nation to get their five minutes of fame to play the part of witnesses.

Today's weather report - a gloomy outlook to start the day, which may brighten once I have had my second cup of tea.