The 24 hour news channels fail to cover themselves in glory at this kind of event.  They are after information for the sake of being watched and being interesting.  If they can't be exclusive, then they must deny the exclusivity of the other channels.  They keep referring to these horrific events as a "story" - "this has been a long 'story' for the peopel of Rothbury" said one news anchor last night.  There is greed to be near to the "story" - these events are happening "only 100m behind me"; "we have been moved further back by the police".  This conversion of crisis "news product" is doubly troubling.  It belittles human pain, and it is guilty of hypocrisy.  It masks its true intentions in the false cloak of urgent concern and the public's "right to know".

The primary "news product" is conflict.  Peace is a terrible thing because it is dull.  Thus, one news reporter at 6.30am this morning said "the question that is being asked around Rothbury this morning is 'Why did it take so long for the police to find Raoul Moat?'".  You want to question this in so many ways.  Firstly, a mere four hours after Raoul Moat's final act of annihiliation, during which most of the people of Rothbury would have been in their beds, did this reporter really have the ability in four hours to crystallise the complex and diverse thoughts of an entire village, into "the question that is being asked".  One suspects that this is code for "the question that we journalists are going to ask to get more mileage out of this 'story' is..."

Not sure what I think of this.  I quite like the last line.  Elsewhere the metaphor feels a bit stretched.  Its from Joseph Bayley, Psalm of My Life, Page 42.

A Psalm Of Preaching

I'm on the bridge

Lord

the ship's bridge

steering a shipload

of your people.  There they are

on the deck looking up

trusting