Headlines

Not so long ago we found ourselves on holiday with poor WiFi. Good enough to use the iPad for scanning headlines but not worth firing up the laptop. No matter. Headlines are familiar enough anyway - barely worth scanning apart from a residual interest in major stories and a fading desire to keep tabs on the memes of the day.

Scanning the headlines is rather like shopping in a supermarket. Ignoring isles of salty snacks, sugary drinks, confectionery and prepared food becomes a habit. So much so that one doesn’t notice just how much junk there is in the average supermarket - 

- average? 

No not average - they are all like that. Selling the average is what supermarkets do. So it is with media headlines – barely worth a second glance and this is what struck me as I browsed the headlines on the iPad. 

The world is a wonderful place. There is an infinite variety of fascination out there, so much so that ten lifetimes would not be enough to do it justice. That’s not what we see in the headlines. We see the equivalent of supermarket isles full of salty snacks, sugary drinks, confectionery and prepared food. We see the junk which sells but doesn’t inform. We see the junk which isn’t even good for us, the garbage we might shun if it were not for our ingrained laziness, our perennial habit of taking what is offered rather than seeking out the best that is available - 

- no that’s not it – not quite. 

Media headlines have begun to seem infantile. They were always strident, over-dramatic, misleading and simplistic, but the desperate hunt for clicks has reached another level as they say. Infantile feels new to me and it feels like a trend. Not particularly new because we have seen this level of reporting for quite some time. It’s back to the supermarket isles, back to the infantile consumption, back to the isles of confectionery.