Comments on: I was a premature green . . .

By: Caroline

Caroline — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 20:04:37 +0000

Thanks Robin
This is fantastic, you read my mind + redefined what I was trying to say and made it so much clearer – Actually I usually shy away from political subjects but I just read your second blog post and found all your points very interesting – a pleasure to read you!

By: Robin Ramsay

Robin Ramsay — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 07:21:18 +0000

This comment is spot-on. The mass media amplifies news in both directions, making things that are bad (kids carrying knives, for example) seem dreadful and things that are good seem spectacular. This happens because the tabloid media – and this now must include the TV news apart from Newsnight and Channel 4 News – has no interest in complexity and ambiguity. The news peddlers assume the consumers of their product are morons and feed them moronic pap.

By: Caroline

Caroline — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 13:12:21 +0000

About your comment at the end of your last paragraph – with the credit crunch and all the essentials coming up in price, the media/news suddenly denonciated food wastage to encourage the population to become less wasteful, soon they will be featuring on the news “grow your own food on your veg patch” or “allotment”. What I mean is that the media are now shaping/preparing the people to change their behaviour for the better which has to be a good thing. What sometime concerns me is the manipulative power of the media, at the moment it certainly feels like the gloomy tv news are feeding the economical crisis by scaring the shoppers away – I suppose the media did the opposite when things were going well giving people the impression that there house value would always go up, so the influential power of the media goes both ways but nevertheless this certainly won’t help the economy get better!