Live

I've written about the terror industry before but there is so much more that needs to be explored. When I say terror I'm not talking about the kind that was sold to us in the last decade, you know the tea towel wearing Middle Eastern kind, I'm talking about the shiny new brand of terror, the environment, and how Mother Nature seems determined to destroy us all. The things I talk about in this blog need to be taken with a spoonful of honey. My honey is I lived through the floods and still deal with its consequences every day, I lived in and fell in love with North Queensland and Japan and have many loved ones in both areas. This is my honey and it shouldn't be forgotten that I have a personal affiliation with many of the natural disasters that have ripped through our world in the last 3 months. In saying this, I believe the media have turned a disaster into pure terror and modern journalism has a hell of a lot to answer for.

We all know about sensationalism, we only have watch a local current affairs program to understand this concept, but it seems that the media outlets have ramped up their coverage of world events to an all time saturating high. It has been said that the Vietnam War changed the face of combat forever by transporting the war into our living rooms through the wonderful invention called television. Seeing it for ourselves changed the way war was digested by the general public and perhaps even brought a small amount of accountability into the senseless act of war. Surely this was a good thing...

With the introduction of new medias and instant medias like the web, we now not only see every war and natural disaster but we see it live. Was anyone else disturbed last Friday afternoon as we watched live a giant tsunami hit the shores of Japan? Did it seem macabre to anyone else when we watch live updates of people being stretchered dead and alive from the rubble in Christchurch? Did it seem almost voyeuristic watching Yasi ripping through North Queensland? Did it feel wrong to watch the family floating away in their 4 x drive in the QLD floods, over and over and over again, especially when we knew that one member of the family died.

Was it really necessary? did you feel more informed or just more traumatised? Did you feel a solidarity with the victims or even more detached?

Does anyone else feel exhausted by this 3 month old year?

There is no wonder why on the news they are giving tips on how to reassure your children that the world isn't coming to an end. Who is going to reassure the adults?

Journalism has changed so much in the last few decades that it makes me wonder if they can even use the same textbooks at university that they did even 5 years ago. Everything seems to demand live coverage, rolling coverage and media personalities on site. Investigative journalism seems to have gone out the window as this new in your face style takes over. However I don't ever remember asking to be so "informed”, I don't remember demanding that my news be brought to me live and updated continuously as if I have constant thirsts for information. I don't remember asking for live coverage of disasters and then seeing the same images over and over again, and I certainly don't remember requesting to watch pain so damn close up. Privacy is nonexistent, dignity simply doesn't matter and the effect of such coverage on us has never been researched.

The media seems to determine what news is and what we want from that news, despite how this is impacting on our daily lives. Can we avoid it? Sure, just turn off the television, radio, internet, don't visit any social networking site and certainly don't buy the paper.... on second thought it makes it pretty damn hard to avoid. The sort of coverage that we are seeing on the 5 and 6 o'clock news should come with an MA or R rating yet we gather with our families in front of the of television and absorb it. Every earthquake, every super storm, every fire, every flood and every famine. I'm not saying that these events are not newsworthy, as they certainly are, what I am questioning is the way they are delivering this news to the public.

These days a natural disaster not only means a tragedy, but now it is used for political leverage, distraction, sensationalism and television ratings. The news industry has become a big business and is less about keeping us informed and more about keeping us enthralled, and if terrorising the crap out of us gets the ratings, then that is what they will do. It is hard to even believe what is being reported to us as the integrity of the news has been thrown out of the window as it is simply all a game now. In their eagerness to jump from one hair raising disaster to the next, to be the first on location and bring it to you live, over and over again, the real stories are being lost and quantity takes over quality. One disaster is dumped for another and the people and their plight are being left behind. A good journalist would dig a little deeper and highlight the effects on people involved as the real effects are felt for months, years and generations, but once the aftershocks or nuclear dust cloud settles the news crew move on in search of the next front page story.

So I will ask the question again...Does anyone else feel exhausted by the last 3 months?

I do, I feel drained, emotional and just plain scared.

Yet all these events, as terrible and real as they are, are nothing new and have gone on for centuries as the only thing that has changed (despite what Bob Brown says) is the way we are being told about them.

I think we should all declare a week, no let’s be more ambitious, a month, where we don't have to watch terror over and over again and maybe then we won't have to reassure the children and some adults that the world isn't ending.