vickyducky (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
vickyducky) wrote2011-10-21 02:34 pm
vickyducky) wrote2011-10-21 02:34 pm
Occupy what now?
I don't think I'm overstating things if I say that there is a perception amongst many British people that the press and media in America are quite insular. And arrogantly, we like to think that we are better informed. But actually I'm beginning to think that that's not the case at all.
Firstly, a disclaimer: I almost never watch television news reports because I hate the presenters, and I only rarely read a newspaper (although my husband does bring home the Daily Mail ,but that's more in the nature of Heat magazine with the odd rant about how public sector workers are going to bankrupt the country. Because public sector workers don't pay taxes, or work for their pay or contribute to their pensions like everyone else does. Oh wait, except we do.).
But on the four days a week that I go to work, I listen to the Today programme on Radio 4, which I'm sure likes to think of itself as a very serious news show, and hear several headline bulletins throughout the day.
And yet, if it weren't for things I've seen people tweeting about, I'd have absolutely no idea that the whole Occupy Wall St and all the other places it is going on, was happening at all. This seems like it should be a big news story to me, and yet I haven't heard a single mention of it. This afternoon there was a passing reference to the 'anti-capitalist protesters' camping outside St Paul's Cathedral. But only because apparently tourists and worshipers don't like having to walk amongst the tents to get to St Paul's. There was nothing about what is actually being protested about, or the wider context and global nature of the protest.
Listening to the BBC you could be forgiven for thinking that the only thing that has happened anywhere in the world for the last fortnight was Liam Fox's travelling companion fiasco.
Firstly, a disclaimer: I almost never watch television news reports because I hate the presenters, and I only rarely read a newspaper (although my husband does bring home the Daily Mail ,but that's more in the nature of Heat magazine with the odd rant about how public sector workers are going to bankrupt the country. Because public sector workers don't pay taxes, or work for their pay or contribute to their pensions like everyone else does. Oh wait, except we do.).
But on the four days a week that I go to work, I listen to the Today programme on Radio 4, which I'm sure likes to think of itself as a very serious news show, and hear several headline bulletins throughout the day.
And yet, if it weren't for things I've seen people tweeting about, I'd have absolutely no idea that the whole Occupy Wall St and all the other places it is going on, was happening at all. This seems like it should be a big news story to me, and yet I haven't heard a single mention of it. This afternoon there was a passing reference to the 'anti-capitalist protesters' camping outside St Paul's Cathedral. But only because apparently tourists and worshipers don't like having to walk amongst the tents to get to St Paul's. There was nothing about what is actually being protested about, or the wider context and global nature of the protest.
Listening to the BBC you could be forgiven for thinking that the only thing that has happened anywhere in the world for the last fortnight was Liam Fox's travelling companion fiasco.
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Makes you wonder who's running all the news organisations doesn't it.
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