Sunday 15th July
There is always news, but what constitutes News is not always new. The problem is that we have an infrastructure that is quite unsuited to the reporting of news. In the Middle Ages a Town Crier might be sent out to proclaim the death of a King, or a great military victory, the rest of the time there would be nothing except the usual gossip at the weekly markets. With the coming of newspapers, editors soon realised that they had to fill their papers with something, and it was often made up, or if not actually invented then highly exaggerated, not only in its content but its importance. Here we also started to see the blurring of comment and opinion with the personal interest of the owner, culminating in the late Twentieth Century and beyond with News International using its papers for both political and business ends. For a long time TV news was trusted to be impartial, though anyone who knows anything will tell you that it was the News editing that was the most important element; in other words what was decided as News was as important as the actual reporting of that news. So, in a way the Media make the News, or at least decide what prominence to give different bits of news. And every year we have the silly season stories, where for lack of anything really decisive, especially when Parliament is on one of its many long breaks, the news schedules are filled with items that wouldn’t normally get in on the rolling news channels let alone the evening main bulletins. And they have to fill in their allotted half hour with something, don’t they. So, how does the discerning member of the public decide what is important, apart from as an increasing majority do and switch off completely. You just have use the boredom factor, where at present Syria probably scores the highest followed by the Olympic Torch Relay which seems to have been going on all year already. Wouldn’t it just be lovely if Huw Edwards were to say after five minutes, “And actually that is all that has really happened of any significance today; there really was no News to report, so goodnight.”