Two months ago I mocked the fanfare for the new Messiah
I predicted that by June, the honeymoon would be over.
How wrong I was, it's only October.
But this post isn't about football. It's about the 'news' media, mainly the newspapers, but also TV news (why is it that sport is considered to be news, yet so many areas of human endeavour and interest are roundly ignored or, at best, given irregular occasional coverage).
It's immature and sensationalist. I haven't enjoyed England's last two matches especially, and I do believe that the team and management are accountable tot he fans that pay their vastly inflated wages.
But in the eyes of the media, it's hero or zero, good/bad, black/white, on/off. I do not think there is a single newspaper or TV channel that is consistently excellent. I don't think there is one that consistently equals its best performance. But they demand from our footballers what they are not capable of delivering themselves.
It's hysterical and in its immaturity it infantalises the rest of us.
In that linked post, I attempted to draw parallels with the political coverage by those same outlets. We need a free, sane, fearless, intelligent media as a safeguard for democracy. Instead we get screaming over-reaction, and hyperbole in place of reflective analysis. We have a general population unable to analyse an issue and unable to see that, sometimes, there are grey areas.
Do we get the media we deserve?
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