The FT's Nick Fraser turns his obsessive relationship with cable news into a cry for attention that manages to be both heavy-breathing and totally insane:
"I watch 24-hour television news in the following places and moods: bored in hotel lobbies, helplessly insomniac, fitfully attentive on the treadmill in health clubs, or anxiously, anticipating disaster, at airport departure gates.....Sky and the BBC claim to know that each visit to their news channels lasts about two minutes; but I must have logged the equivalent of two talking books of War and Peace....... I can claim to be mildly addicted to the meaty, bullying style of Fox host Bill O’Reilly.
"Many believe that 24-hour news has come to a place where it can do little but recycle its own, no longer new formulae - and to an easily bored, sceptical audience. One pointer to the future lies with the success of Fox News, which is committed (despite the slogan 'fair and balanced') to anti-liberal provocation. Through its aggressively anti-elitist chat, complemented by reporting that doesn’t bother to hide its point of view, Fox handsomely outperforms CNN. Perhaps the Fox dirty secret is that many viewers like news that nakedly appeals to their prejudices."
And ultimately goes completely off the rails:
"What of the notion that TV news renders the world as fetish, dwelling ceaselessly on the images of collapsing towers or a blown- up bus, but leaving out things that matter?...."
There you have it. Caring about September 11 and the London bombing is for the stupid and the shallow. I won't ask you what you do think actually matters, Mr. Fraser, because I'm afraid I'd get sick.
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/dbc79b82-f432-11d9-9dd1-00000e2511c8.html
