This thread (if it takes off) will likely spread out into wider discussions on the media but I just wanted to start a discussion on the way that the news reports certain events, and the events they choose to report on. I could also sit here all day and talk about some of the methods of gaining the images and information that they then report on but I'll keep it restricted to this.

 

Some of you will have heard of the Daily Mail sidebar of shame. On the online site it used to be filled with women in bikini's. Someone too fat, someone too skinny, someone too something. Always 'too'. And there'd be a feast of perverted photo's and teasing captions to get the click required to meet their advertisers needs. Such click bait is a very obvious way of doing things though, it is instead more respected media outlets that trade in on misery that are starting to annoy me just as much.

 

On the BBC at the moment there is a link to a story titled Girl 'repeatedly raped by group'. No other information is given, only this. They are aware that people who are clicking on it will not know anything about the case or who the people in question are, otherwise they would have given more detail in the headline. Instead they have decided that to get more people to click on the link they would go with that headline. I just find it weird because I got a real urge to click the link to find out more but I'm not sure I agree with the tactics used. I find myself debating whether we should be more euphemistic in our approach to these things, or whether we could confront the truth. Simply in terms of headlines to click on I think a little more tact could have been used.

 

Basically, anyone wanna discuss something about that?

I don't right now, but I normally give it a little time for my thought to settle before responding to most of your threads. I will however provide this article I was going to post in your thread about being a girl (Like how you're a big girl or something) and I had a rant about Daily Mail and other things but I think I lost all of what I wrote before I posted and didn't want to bother writing it again.

 

http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2012/05/21/how-the-mail-online-turned-us-into-misogyny-addicts/