PUTTING NEWS INTO THE RIGHT PERSPECTIVE!

We are daily receiving myriad of news, all competing for our attention. Sometimes they are somehow connected and we only discover this when taking notice of them and delving into their background.

For example, when the U.S. weather report announces that it had hurricane Edward has been downgraded to strength 3 and later on it was announced that the president assures the people that the mistake of hurricane Katrina will not be repeated…….well there seems to be a connection there! It is easy to make this statement when the hurricane is obviously ‘only’ strength 3 whereas Katrina was strength 6!

Other news show blatant duplicity as is the case quite often in politics as a recent event will highlight.

Early in the morning, when just getting up and feeling more or less fortified to face the day, I was confronted on television with the sensational news clip of a dying baby whale, trapped in an Australian bay.

It showed how concerned people were with rescuing the cute little creature which somehow had become separated from its mother who was nowhere to be seen.

Reporters and animal activists milled around this calf in little boats, trying to find a way out of its entrapment and into the realms of the free, wide oceans. There, they pondered, it would find a mother whale willing to suckle and nourish it back to health and into becoming a great, proud creature of the wide-open, watery spaces.

And all the time, a magnitude of press, reporters and other media were swarming around the poor and helpless creature, were excitedly fluttering around, chattering into their microphones or looking concerned into their cameras. Newspaper circulations have increased and television channels intensified their ratings war.

Eventually, the hapless creature started to suffer and a compassionate veterinary surgeon had to put it out of its misery.

Now, there is a bit of after-kerfuffle by politicians, especially from the opposition party, about what should have been done and wasn’t done by the heartless people in government and a few more points have been scored by political parties, back and forth.

Now, everything seems to have dyed down and other, so-called newsworthy news, have replaced this event and very soon people will have to rake their brains to remember this tragic incident. .

Now comes my main point: forgotten by all this is the fact that we are having a whaling fleet in our Southern ocean waters, with killer ships constantly bringing in large numbers of wale carcasses, for study purposes, as the Japanese euphemise their senseless slaughter.

They do this with seeming impunity as we are too cowardly accepting this action of illegality and inhumanity. After all, we do not wish to confront an important trading partner – do we?

And for this reason, the clamour had been directed to an incident and sentiment plus publicity are exuded over a cute little baby whale where it can do us no harm!

Which, again, necessitates the careful examination of any news we receive, lest we be misled and misinformed of the true situation of our world we live in!

Peter Frederick

http://www.peterfrederick.org

http://www.life-on-the-road.com