TV programmes like X factor and Strictly making the news on frequent occasions.
Reports on Snow with some random reporter going, "look it's snowing, it's dangerous" they could just show the news from last year when it snowed and they said EXACTLY THE SAME THING.

"Today was hotter than Portugal and Spain and on a par with Riyadh"

Papers with some twenty something girl wearing a bikini on Bournemouth beach and a temperature sign

So what! If it's a hurricane or tsunami that will kill or hurt people i understand, but look there's a bit of snow in the Breacon Beacons



I'm sure there are other things that are constantly recycled year on year that are both boring and utterly NOT newsworthy.

I'm sure there are other things that get on peoples nerves, what gets me though is the truly newsworthy stuff is largely ignored.

Rant over

It's called dumbing down. As a nation we pander to the lowest common denominator these days, rather than trying to encourage people to raise their attainmemt levels.

I heard the first cuckoo yesterday, or maybe it was the last. Either way I'll have to dash a letter off to the Torygraph

What would you call truly newsworthy stuff?

Things of actual importance.
Without looking who would know who Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkol Karman are? I certainly didn't yet i'd like to listen to their story being told in the mainstream media rather than Little Mix's ugly girl crying story or how deep the snow is in Sunderland or the new size of Jordans implants.

Here's a tip: Change your newspaper and your preferred TV channel

The only paper i 'pick up' is the Evening Standard, i see the headlines of the others at the kiosk or sometimes read what ever is left on the seat in the tube.

As for tv, even BBC 24, SKY NEWS and Radio 5 have dumbed down.

Today is going to be the busiest shopping day of the year, don't you know...?

Sky News

The equivalent of Fox, absolutely appalling. Spend too much time summising what might happen and not what Has happened. Only worth watching if a big disasterous story breaks. Wonderful ott reporting. If it's fiction you want, watch Sky, if fact, choose Reuters

Ps/ todays Mirror carries the headline about come dancing might be abandoned because of high winds

Lets hope for a hurricane.....

[url=http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2073590/Im-terrified-CRUMPETS--Teenager-19-stand-room-snack-suffers-phobia-holes.htmlThis[/url got me thinking the exact same thing last week. How something like this which is blatantly over exaggerated by the girl Involved (i'm not saying it may be a real issue for other people) is totally beyond me. Are they really so desperate for stories??

"It's -2C at Stanstead Airport, so wrap up warm" so said today's weather girl on Breakfast. It's cold, it's December, I don't need to be told to wear extra clothes.

Or what the temperature is 100+miles away

You mean "I can't stand to be in the same room as them and they make me vomit, but I'm Ok to have a picture taken with them to get in the paper"?

Its laughable isn't it? Nothing but an attention seeking woman who wants to be in the paper and they actually gave her the time of day!

For a second I wondered if it was April 1.

You have to remember that capitalism is not just an economic system. It is also a social order which fundamentally restructures everything from the wealth of the nation, property relations, law, police power right through to the media. In such an environment should we really be surprised and/or shocked that news agencies choose to concentrate on items (celebrities, X Factor etc.) that support the dominant ideology of consumption?

I've long since given up on the mainstream news and print media. They are so hopelessly compromised as to qualify as a tool of brainwashing.

It's bad enough watching niche channels purportedly devoted to "science". Yesterday I skimmed through NatGeo's programme list and plucked four shows out at random - one concerning the "Lost Tomb of Genghis Khan", another to do with some church conspiracy over murdered saints, another on whether the Great Fire of London was covered up and a two hour show which dealt the possibility of invasion by an extraterrestrial species and how humanity might ultimately prevail (the war winning tactic was a co-ordinated international effort to attack the alien saucers with suicide bombers ferried by hot air balloons!).

Suffice to say that any far future analysis of human civilization will almost certainly conclude we have somehow taken a wrong turn since the Enlightenment.