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June 23, 2006
Friday
 
 
A rant about the Big Media
Brian Micklethwait (London)  Media & Journalism • Sports

Last night, at my own personal blog, I found myself getting really quite exercised about this utterly banal and ignorable headline...

DoomsdayS.jpg

...which I snapped yesterday afternoon. And in a very Samizdata-ish manner, a style that has been eluding me somewhat, of late. So, here is a link to my rant from Samizdata.

I got up at 6 am yesterday, which would be early for most people, and is about the day before yesterday for me, and I spent all of the morning and half the afternoon working extremely hard. Now it is 6 am today. I am up again, and face a similar day. So maybe my rant resistance is, just now, lower than usual. Maybe now, unlike usually, I am angry.

But it was not all rant. I also found myself weaving in my favourite cock-up of the World Cup so far, which was committed last night by an English referee, during the game which saw the Aussies going through to the last sixteen of the competition.

Comments

Brian, I take it we are referring to the hapless English ref, a certain Mr Poll. He was terrible and as one of the commentators said on the TV, his chances of reffing a final are more or less dead.


Posted by Johnathan at June 23, 2006 08:22 AM

Interesting change of tactics by the worriers today; apparently vCJD has an incubation period of 50 years now. So that's why we're not all dead now, as promised at the height of the BSE panic. They wern't wrong after all! Maybe the virus in Hackney really is a doomsday killer.


Posted by MarkE at June 23, 2006 01:42 PM

....apparently vCJD has an incubation period of 50 years now.


Bah. My other bad habits are going to kill me long before then, so why should I give a toss?


Posted by rosignol at June 23, 2006 02:23 PM

The headline seems to refer to a report by the local healthcare"trust", about the possible effects of HN51 Bird 'flu on Hackney:

"Doomsdasy scenario on bird flu outbreak"

(N.B. typo in the online headline)

As a newspaper headline it is utterly confusing to those of us who, via the internet and other media were inforrmed, within the last month or so, about:

a) An out break of the very contagious Viral Haemorrhagic Septicaemia in a trout farm in Yorkshire

b) The test purchase by investigative reporters of some (deliberately inactive) part of the Smallpox virus, from a commercial DNA synthesis laboratory.

c) All the Chemical Biological Radiological Nuclear fear and hype surrounding the bungled anti-terrorism raid in Landsdowne Road, Forest gate, in east London.



Posted by Watching Them, Watching Us at June 23, 2006 03:00 PM
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