h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Although globalisation on the one hand is rampant, giving us McDonalds in Beijing (I don't know if there is one, but you know what I mean) and Coca Cola in Timbuctoo, it seems that people are still very fond of contemplating their own navels.

Channel-hopping from CNN to Sky to our local (German) television, or reading the headlines on a stand with international newspapers, it becomes apparent that newsmakers don't seem to notice this trend of a shrinking world. In fact, they don't seem to notice that there is a "rest of the world" at all. They give 80 % of air time and column space to national news, however trivial.

So, while we are aware of the problems in Israel, the biggest item of news at the moment here is Boris and Babs Becker and their split up. Not the divorce in itself, but the question as to whether it will be televised so that the public can ogle at the dirty washing. Although the court proceedings would have taken place in Miami, I doubt whether this was a subject at all anywhere in the American press.

Secondly the press and conversations at the hairdresser and in supermarket queues is very occupied with the fact that - surprise! surprise! - some cases of mad cow disease have now cropped up in Germany. Sales of (all kinds of ) meat have dropped drastically - 80 %, according the unreliable press - and the panic is immense. The media here in Germany really created a stir when the first cases were made known in Britain and a very vehement boycott and antipathy were stamped out of the ground simply on the basis of media action at the time (was it 10 years ago?). Now this is backlashing and the German cattle breeders are suffering as it is discovered here.

However, I didn't want to go into the details, just start a comparison of headline emphases across the globe. I would particularly like to know what the Scandinavians write about in their newspapers - we hardly hear of anything from there The only thing I can think of is the publishing of the new Henning Mankell book, but that again is only applicable to the German translation.

Perhaps this thread will become an ongoing thing. If I don't keep blocking it with my ramblings.

In Ireland this morning, the headlines are:

1. Trial of Irish politician accused of corruption continues.
2. The Northern Ireland Peace Process.
3. Man shot in Belfast.
4. Irish leader on official visit to Malta and Cyprus.
5. Report to council of Europe accuses diplomats of domestic slavery.

Only the last of these five is about anything outside of Ireland and Ireland's affairs.

The third one might surprise Americans. It is still a national news item here if someone gets shot, even if they don't get killed. Shootings in America appear to be commonplace. The total number of people killed in Northern Ireland in thirty years of violence probably only amounts to a those killed in a long weekend in New York or Los Angeles.

Congratulations, TC - another thought provoker.
In Hong Kong
1 Beijing slams fake Tainanmen papers (this is about papers smuggled out about who said what during the Tiananmen crisis)
2 Beijing targets US (Bush) policies (shot across new government's bow)
3.More Taiwan (business) mergers planned
The other long articles are about India and Indonesia.
Local news in abundance (very parochial. HK supports 2 daily newpapers in English and at least 2 in Chinese!) but the main headlines are nearly always Beijing

I believe that a quick guide to a stories newsworthyness is [number of people affected] x [nationality modifier (10 for your country, 2 for near neighbouring nationality, 1 elsewhere)] x [chance of this occuring again in your country].
There is, therefore, an inherent bias towards the newspaper's readership.

On a less serious note, the leader story from the Caistor section of the Grimsby Evening Telegrapgh is:

"On top of the Wold"
The highest land in Lincolnshire lies on Caistor's doorstep. The back road from Nettleton to Normanby-le-Wold is also the highest road in the county.

It is a very quiet place

So's h2g2 this morning...

My local paper once ran it's maiun front page headline on the shocking story of two (young) teenagers attempting to go joyriding in an invalid carriage - sad, very sad...

The two main headlines here seem to be-
that Adair has to stay in prison and should the two lads who killed Jaime Bulger be allowed anonimity when they are released.I haven't caught up with anything else.

The headline that interested me on Sunday was the Express one, {in no other paper} about the MMR vaccine.
My youngest son had this, and he has Asperger's Syndrome.
I've been with solicitors for two years while they are building up a case against the vaccine manufacturer. {Not just me, there are thousands of other families with vaccine-damaged children in the U.K.}
I'm not against vaccination.
Single-dose vaccinations are great. But the choice has been taken away from the parents. It's either the triple dose MMR or nothing in this country. And the MMR has been banned in Japan...

Thanks for keeping me in touch. I hope this thread survives. Wait for the American shift to come in tonight, see what they have to report.

I hadn't heard the vaccine report - nor any of the Irish items. Not even on Sky News, where the biggest story seemed to be the guarantee of anonymity to the Bulger murderers.

And to hammer home one of Duncan's points, some local media in New Zealand heard the merest whiff of a rumour that James Bulger's killers might be set up in this country with new identities and no word to the authorities, they went nuts. They demanded prompt answers from a bemused immigration minister and psychoanalysis of the two killers from criminologists who have never even met them.

This is the silly season at the moment when all the politicians go on holiday and the papers are struggling to fill the spaces that would normally be filled with their acts of stupidity. Stories that would normally rate only a brief on any normal day of the year are transformed tabloid-fashion into frontpage dramas. One headline to grace a recent copy of The Dominion was These Rose Thorns Can Kill - a story about the danger that splinters and thorns can cause. A frontpage story on the local newspaper the other day was a picture of an odd-shaped cloud that made some people think the mountain was erupting.

A few serious news items on the frontpage yesterday and today - a courtcase about a 21 year old woman charged with killing 13 month old child (has made national news); and a local regional rugby representative is made captain of a Super-12 rugby side (a big deal, I assure you).

Being a student I don't get much contact with headlines, but the German BSE crisis has been on our news at some point, and I can't shake the feeling that the newscasters are pleased about it. On the World Service they reported the resignations of the German agricultural and health(?) ministers...

Perhaps things are happening in your country that you would prefer to see in the headlines.

At the moment I'm a bit out of touch with the news, too, but there must be some stories that should be known more to the public - or perhaps the truth about something that has been blown up by the media after getting hold of the wrong end of the stick?

Perhaps things are happening in your country that you would prefer to see in the headlines.

At the moment I'm a bit out of touch with the news, too, but there must be some stories that should be known more to the public - or perhaps the truth about something that has been blown up by the media after getting hold of the wrong end of the stick?

Thirty plus people died at Heathrow last year_ after_ a flight. How many at your international airport?
[Take the aspirin to thin your blood
Get up and walk about as much as possible
Wear support hose
Drink a lot of water]

To reduce the risk of blood clots?
There is still the problem of recycled air in the economy class

On page 15 of today's Express:
The photo of Boris Becker's ex-lover and her baby Anna whom she says was fathered by BB.
Well, if that baby ain't the spitting image of her dad...
I've had 4 kids & not ONE of them looks remotely like me ~sigh~
And the little girl on the front page, who was abused, tortured and made to sleep in a bath, before finally being rescued by the Angels...thanks goodness the so-called parents got life sentences.
B******s.

Don't you think that even on the news they go into far too much detail of what was actually done to these kids? I am sure there's loads of perverts drooling when they hear it and, worse still, dying to have a go themselves.

~shudders~
yes, but there's lots we don't get to hear.
My friend, an ex-policewoman, had to watch "snuff movies". I didn't even know what one was, until she told me.

Today's headlines...

Will there/won't there be a live TV debate between the party leaders in the British general election.

The earthquake in Central America.

I think they got these the wrong way round - the election that hasn't been announced yet seemed to deserve more air time than people digging a 10 foot mudslide with their bare hands trying to save their loved ones.

Just to go back on TC's original topic, BSE, I think it was Joanna that said the British press seem to be rather pleased it's happened elsewhere? I'd say they were closer to positively gleeful myself! The really scary bit about that was the 30 second report that the feed responsible had been sold to third world countries that don't have and can't afford the testing procedures. The whole fiasco would be funny if it wasn't so flippin' scary.

Oh, my.
Today's front page...a 56 year-old British woman, pregnant with twins.
{excuse me where I dance a jig that it'll never be ME}
~dances jig~
And here I am dreading raising a teenager in my 50's.
She'll be raising two teenagers in her seventies!
Good luck to her.
I feel ~much~ better about things today!