A Tragedy of Journalistic Standards

I considered doing a piece today on the recent parliamentary elections in Austria which have led to a worryingly huge increase in support for two far-right parties, Alliance for Austria's future, and the ubiquitously named Freedom Party. But I thought I'd let that pan out and give you all(both of you) a bit of a break from parliamentary intrigue, at least until tomorrow. 

Whilst perusing the BBC's video news in the hopes of bringing you all something a little bit less dry, and possibly something with more tits (there aren't very many in most European parliaments.), I came across the promisingly named video 'Swedish Women Dice With Death on M6'. You can see the video here. What I thought was going to be two mud-wrestling Swedish babes come to England to make it large, mistaking traffic rules on the M6, and having to mud-wrestle their way out of the country turned out to just be a really tragic, sad story, milked for as much drama as possible by British taxpayer money. Obviously.

Two Swedish women attempted to commit suicide, it seems, by running in front of fast traffic on a motorway. After being taken into police custody, they repeatedly broke free and ran into traffic over and over until one had been hit by a lorry and critically wounded, and another had to be restrained by six officers to prevent her from running back into traffic. And this is after she'd already been hit by one car. The video ends with talk of them being charged with assault on the officers, when it's blindingly obvious that they're clearly not in their right minds. 

It takes a certain sort of mind in editorial journalism to not only consider running a story on such a tragic event, but luridly cutting the video so that the cries of the women and officers involved are given an echo to add a dramatic touch to the proceedings. Journalism has a purpose. It's there to inform us on what's going on in the world so that we are better cognizant of our place in it, and therefore better able to make judgments on how to act in it. No one gains from watching a video of two women trying to run into traffic, beyond clucking at the television and saying 'crazy world, eh'. The idea of journalism pandering to the masses and producing 'edu-tainment' is a laboured point.  There is a place for making political or scientific journalism accessible and entertaining for audiences. That's different from dredging up the most tragic, pointless events one can and proudly putting them on display for us to gawk at like some post-modern freakshow.

To cap it all off, the video went black after it finished, then asked me if I wanted to see 'MORE LIKE THIS', and directed me to a wordless video of a boy being hit by a bus. They might as well have cut in ''hurr hurr'' and the sound of crunching popcorn.