Sunday, May 31, 2009

The McLuhan Memorial Lecture, 2009

Two thoughtful analyses of modern media, culled from yesterday’s Guardian. First, Ben Goldacre knows who to blame for the pervasive crapness in modern journalism:
Through our purchasing behaviour, we have communicated to newspapers that we want them to be large and cheap more than we want them to be adequately researched.
And Charlie Brooker uncovers the uncomfortable truth about BBC World’s news channel:
It’s a channel whose viewer demographic consists exclusively of men sitting on the edge of a hotel bed impatiently waiting for their girlfriend to finish in the shower so they can go and have a shit.

5 comments:

Christopher said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Christopher said...

Too true. Moreover watching BBC World News in these circumstances invariably brings on acute constipation.

Dick Headley said...

There's a lot of truth in that. Very much more entertaining when jet-lagged and disorientated.

Billy said...

BBC news freaks me out as it repeats itself every 10 minutes or so. Watching it for ages creates a hypnotic event which only Sky Sports with its ever rotating statistics and leagues can top.

Tim F said...

And al-Jazeera can have the contrary effect, Christopher.

As are most things, Dick.

You should watch Thai TV news, Billy. A three-minute news story can be based on the same 40-second loop of footage, repeated to fill the gap.