It’s taken a strange turn, the world of information and ‘news’. Reminding me of Casualty, the TV series. Which I used to enjoy as a kid, the drama, the tension, the NHS being presented as heroes. Good bit of programming, in more ways than one. But it was a good watch, for a time. I started to go off it when a change to the set up happened, and it took me a while to notice. It slowly stopped being about the person the accident was going to happen to, or had happened to and shifted away from the ‘victims’, to focus on the staff. The affairs, the dramas, the back-stabbing etc. It became a weird soap opera, rather than a medical drama. And although I spent time watching soap operas too in my youth, the constant, crappy and hectic drama of fictious people eventually made me wonder why I wasted time watching it. So stopped. As you get older, you start to see a lot more of that hectic drama in real life and people, so no need for a fictional version to run alongside that. But by switching the set-up to be about the staff rather than the patients lost me, it was no longer interesting.

Anchorman 2 – the film. I liked both of them, funny and quite ridiculous but the sequel was interesting. Showing how on a basic level, when you can’t get the scoop, or find any real news to report, you either make it up – or you be the news. The news becoming the news. And we were on the brink of it, after we went for multiple 24-hour news channels, more newspapers than you really need, constant drivel and information intermingled and filtered through to the masses. And filtered it is, even the instantaneous internet world is edited and filtered, checked and restricted. So, there is still an overall editor calling the shots and deciding what is fit for public consumption. Or not in some cases, but they go with it anyway. No longer on the brink though, corporations have fully crossed over into being part of it rather than just reporting it. Weirdly though, not because they don’t have real news to report, of that there is plenty, but it doesn’t quite fit the narrative that corporate forces want people to follow.

And as we know, once you become the observed, you are no longer the observer, and you can’t be both. So, the influence that newspapers, TV stations and faces that represent them is dwindling and being redefined with everything else. Those faces no longer command respect, as we know they are just the mouthpieces of the media machine, and are the stupid ones for maybe not seeing it before, thinking they were just there to ‘let us know’ what’s going on. Hardly ever giving thought to the why, just blindly watching news and reading papers, seeing headlines and ‘paying attention’ as they call it. Being aware of the world around you, or something like that. But knowing now, it was an awareness steeped in falsities and of what someone else wanted me to know or be aware of.

For years we have had invasions of privacy though on their part, investigations into people, well known and otherwise, for exposes, scoops and front-page news. However, it seems to have taken a strange turn in the latest round of the news being the news. And when it’s their own, or them being used for news fodder, suddenly it becomes a topic to discuss about rights and privacy. And it is a problem and strange part of society that we have, that people feel the need to tear people down, gossip about others, spread rumours, or just plain old humiliate someone – by way of a publication no less. Why are we like that as a species? Taking delight in others misfortune and wanting to see people fail, hoping instead you make it? And then what? Have everyone wishing you had failed instead of being happy for you? It’s an odd thing, and I get a smile on my face when I see someone else do good, or have a happy moment, so when trying to imagine what it must be like to see the same thing and feel hate or have a mean feeling towards it, is a difference I can’t get on board with.

Yet it’s one that has been cultivated. You’ve Been Framed comes to mind here, and I laughed like many others for the silly misfortune that befell people, slapstick, I guess. The presenter of that show had another that I wasn’t so comfortable with, Beadles About. It was good, but painful, and I really felt for the people being wound up and tricked. And really, I found it hard to reconcile that we would cause people untold stress and worry, just for ‘entertainment’. All laughing at the end when they revealed it was all a joke, but there being a strange tension of ‘but what if they had died? What if they had flipped out and hurt someone?’ I didn’t enjoy watching it in the end, as it was screwing with what I believed were real people, their lives and their emotions. That wasn’t entertainment for me personally, and carried over into other programming. Once you can see it’s a set-up, or people are being used beyond what they think they are there for, it becomes painful to watch. Just like the news. So, no longer there for reporting what is going on, they are there to enact a painful script and are being used for purpose, thinking they are there for something else possibly, or are complicit, either way it’s a struggle to watch and listen anymore. And just like I mentioned in my article Early News, why is it really necessary that we are pummelled with information, updates and stats from chosen countries all over the world on a daily basis anyway? So, again and as with much these days, it comes back to what purpose does it serve and why…

(c) K Wicks