Monday, September 11, 2006

I'll be Avoiding the TV Today

We all know what day it is today and what happened five years ago so I'm not going to go into detail about it.









It's just a shame that the UK and US media don't feel the same way.

It's one of the disadvatages of having sattelite TV, having a choice of about 30 news channels of various languages, 21 documentary channels and a plethora of entertainment channels. Then of course to top it all off, you've got the BBC there as well.

So far, Sky News have dedicated their time to showing how what happended in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania has changed the world, (or Afghanistan at least) the same sort of features they have carried on this day for the past four years, CNN seem to be more intent on showing archive footage and I can't be bothered with Fox this morning.

At first I thought the BBC had been somewhat restrained in jumping on the bandwagon. I haven't yet seen anything about 9/11 on News 24 and although they did show a documentary at the weekend, it was actually very well put together. They have however let themselves down with BBC Online. A story and a feature about one of the most important events in modern history I can understand, but digging out old 'Have Your Say' discussions they've become as bad as the rest. In fairness, the BBC 'Have Your Say' sections are moderated, just not moderated for stupidity. I'd post some examples, but you could easily find them for yourselves.

National Geographic have already shown their 'Inside 9/11' documentary, as good as it might be, for more times than I care to remember and they'll no doubt want to show something tonight, if only to launch tomorrows opening episode of the new series of Seconds from Disaster and this evening more than any other I'll be avoiding ITV News, the video version of The Daily Mail.
In the press, The Mirror has it's 'moving 7-page memorial suppliment' whilst the coverage in the Times is somewhat more sparse, preffering instead to publish extracts from the autobiography of a 25-year-old.

Yes let us remember, yes let us appreciate that 3,000 people lost their lives in the most significant terrorist attack ever to take place and yes let us realise that the world is now a very different place to what it was five years ago. But please don't keep showing the same images infront of me year after year.

Today, their is no news. Five years ago there was news, but not today. Everyone at Reuters and PA can go home early this afternoon.

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