July 19, 2009

No Britons Involved

I don’t know if the callous news reporting of the Indonesia hotel bombings caught your attention earlier this week. They got a mention – but not much, while the search for a Brit who may (or may not) have been nearby at the time the bombs went off. But the tone of the report was basically – bombs, faraway country, a few foreigners killed, and now on to a skateboarding dog.

However, the BBC report I saw was unusually callous in that they managed to make a tenuous link between a bomb in a hotel in faraway Indonesia and Manchester United, who were due in that very hotel next week – but have thought rather better of it. So they suddenly came back to the story – almost as though al Qaeda was a bit pissed off at Ronaldo’s transfer from their favourite football team and wanted to exact revenge. It was pitiful

Which is ironic when you think about it – because I suspect that terrorist bombs are much more regular events in London than they are in Indonesia? And Manchester United is obliged to visit London on a fairly regular basis.

But it got me thinking of our media’s mania for British death and destruction. The seemingly endless and grisly casualties from Afghanistan for example. I know that eight British soldiers died last Friday – because I have been endlessly told so. But I have no idea how our good friends in the Taliban have been getting on.

Now I know that the BBC is unlikely to send Kate Adie or Ragi Omar into a terrorist bolthole to take afternoon tea and discuss how the war on terror is going from their perspective. But it would be nice to know if our brave lads are having any results in the turkey shoot they are engaged in.

So one-eyed and one-sided is the media’s policy in covering the news that nobody in the UK will think we even bother to fire back.

But our obsession with British involvement is not just restricted to harrowing news stories. Obscure sports rear into our sub consciousness in total parallel to the level of British involvement.

For example – a few years ago we had wall-to-wall coverage of sports as ludicrous as ice dancing because there was Robin Cousins, Torvill & Dean et al. Now you won’t find any television channel giving skipping around on ice the time of day –unless some gormless celebrity is involved.

No today we are supposed to be enthusiastic about blokes & girls in Lycra riding strange bikes in very small circles – sometimes with the involvement of an electric moped, sometimes not. It is so absurd a ‘sport’ it is hilarious – but hey, Britons are involved. Once no Britons are involved (give it a year or two) and it will go back to well-merited obscurity.