state of fear

once upon a time, a fire at a disused building would not really have had much news and media coverage. a disused building on fire in London would perhaps have had a brief mention in national news in the UK.

this, however, is the 21st Century. a world of saturation news and media coverage. instead of being oblivious to the fire going on now, i cannot move for coverage of it. as far as i can determine, the facts are that some plastic or polyester are on fire in a disused bus station. there are 8 (eight!) of the supposedly scarce fire brigade trucks on the site, and within minutes the smoke has reduced and whatever fire there was, well, it seems to be no more.

the world, however, is being bombarded with "personal eyewitnesses" (as if you could have a different kind of eyewitness?), each giving their own theories and ideas as to what the cause is. every 60 - 90 seconds, they are announcing that they "do not believe it is a terror attack". it is clearly not a terror attack, so why even bother mentioning it?

most radio & tv news stations need to fill their airtime up with something, anything really. this is why we had a ludicrous amount of time given to the tragic story of one child going missing whilst on holiday with her rather thoughtless parents. yes, that is a sad story, but the coverage of it was at least excessive, and ignored the fact that hundreds, if not thousands, of children vanish or have harm befall them every day, sadly.

this current story, and old unused building being on fire, is no story. two paragraphs in a local newspaper at best, it should be. but the media is making it into something of a catastrophic level.

thanks to our information age, our technologically "advanced", with blanket news and information coverage available everywhere, any time, is it any wonder we have created a world in which we live in a state of fear, where every incident in the world is thrust upon us, convincing us that it is a "major disaster" and will directly affect us, no matter how many thousands of miles away we are?

it's an interesting thing we have done, unleashing all this choice and constant information; information that we are gifted, information and knowledge that we have not earned and thus do not respect.

the news and information broadcasters / producers will not change their ways, so all i can do is urge you to be mindful of what they tell you. invariably, the best advice i can offer anyone is when reading a news article, note what they do not tell you or emphasize, rather than being concerned with what they wish to highlight.


be excellent to each other, or rather, to quote another famous quote :

don't panic!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!