Come on, give me the real news please

LONG ago, I thought I would give up watching this country’s freetoair news because it was irritating me. Irritating me to the point of giving the TV a jolly good telling off for being so infantile and stupid.

I got to the point where I wanted to hurt that television.

It was due to the simply silly content I thought, while my everpatient partner would shush me and watch and listen and wait for the good bits, which apparently had newsworthy content, most probably cute animals, Royal Family members or ones which said whether or not Roger had won his latest tennis match.

I would storm from lead items about Richie McCaw’s hamstring and John Key’s game of golf.

Heaven forbid catastrophic climate indicators, cunning trade machinations or deranged world leaders. These were never mentioned, or hardly ever.

Meanwhile, the Russian spy attempted assassination is a very serious threat to world balance and those actions must be addressed. Syria’s situation is a cesspit, Donald is a disaster to all but his mainstream allies within the United States. The rest of the Middle East is a constantly fermenting heady brew of intangible solutions, half of Africa is starving and the rest is politically unstable and/or starving, and the planet’s climate is heading for hell in a trash can.

According to television news a fluffy puppy got saved from a drain in west Auckland and the best coffee in Taranaki is in Stratford. All’s well with the world. Pete Jenkins

Galloway

[Abridged]