This is a bit of a rant, so just to give you some advanced warning
My latest gripe is one that i’ve become increasingly annoyed about and is pushed on us more and more
News/Polls that state the obvious, but try and make out that it’s something that’s new/shocking/amazing.
What’s got up my nose to make me want to rant about it? The headline from yesterday’s newspaper that we get at home Blair-Bush deal before Iraq war revealed in secret memo
My first comment on seeing it was “No Shit!”
Ok, so the story is about some memo from January 2003 which has made it’s way to the papers, but it’s just the tip of the iceberg which joins surveys that essentially say things like “Drinking beer will make you drunk”, and “Taking drugs will make you stoned” but wrapped up in a pretty wrapper pertaining to be breaking news stories. In fact what they are are a waste of money and peoples’ time. Someone is being paid to do pointless research when there is plenty of research which can be done to be beneficial to the human race
On top of this there is so much information out there and so many statistics & market research being done that often by the time you get to the core of the article there’s so much information overload that it can be hard to summarise what it’s saying.
These days i’m very much against beating around the bush before getting to the point. I can’t stand it when people spend 10 minutes asking something which could’ve been said in less than 1 – i just don’t see the point of saying things that aren’t necessary or over complicating things.
I’d like to give more actual examples of these kind of stories, but… wait, i’ve found another one in the same newspaper:
Lack of Stroke awareness puts victims at risk
This is not news in my opinion.
Check out the percentages from some survey – they report that 33% would suggest the person lies down, and 12% would wait to see if symptoms worsened. So, what did the other 55% say? Have a pint of beer? Or did they actually say call an ambulance? If that’s the case, it’s not really big news. It would all depend on who they asked (particularly age & profession). The article also says that 22% of people did not recognise the symptoms – i’m not particularly surprised at this and would suspect it was higher for those of my age range. But what it does try and imply is that not recognising the symptoms would mean you wouldn’t call an ambulance quickly if you saw them. It is also implying that the 22% and 45% are related and plucks this magical figure of 25000 lives being saved – when in fact they are two separate questions – so there’s almost certainly a bit of bad maths in there.
What really amazes me is that these are stories from a respected newspaper – makes me wonder what kind of drivel the more common papers like The Sun or The Daily Mail are printing
But back to my original point of stating the obvious – i do find it very irritating, and although the examples in this thread arent particularly good, it does show at times how little thought goes into newspapers before they put ink to paper