Charlie Brooker's Newswipe. S01 E01.
First broadcast 25th March 2009.
Brooker looks at the potty levels the news' obsession with the Credit Crunch has reached.
Charlie Brooker
Tim Key
Nick Davies
Danielle Ward
Brooker looks at the potty levels the news' obsession with the Credit Crunch has reached.
Charlie Brooker
Tim Key
Nick Davies
Danielle Ward
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00Hello, I'm Charlie Brooker and you're watching News Wiper, a program all about what the bloody
00:27hell's been going on, such as this. Unemployment now so huge it has to be depicted by plummeting
00:34monolithic numbers. World's most evil man can't even be bothered to stop reading his
00:40blue book during trial of the century. And Pope doesn't understand how condoms work,
00:46shocker. Crazy Pope. But first. Viewed from a distance, our world, planet Earth, looks
00:55like a serene, slowly revolving orb, or a novelty beach ball. But it's not. It's actually
01:00a complex and bewildering hive of activity filled with people and objects and resources
01:05and institutions and belief systems and sugar babes and field mice and godless buses and
01:09Lord knows what. It's chaos, essentially, and we're all stuck right down here in the
01:14middle of it. And who amongst us truly understands what's really going on? To have some idea
01:21of how things work, you're supposed to have been watching the news every day of your bloody
01:24life. Although the chances are you haven't, at least not really. I mean, when were you
01:28meant to start? When you're a kid, the news is effectively out of bounds. It's a program
01:33aimed at adults that's either impenetrably boring. The economy minister for the economy
01:38today said interest rates were discombobulating the trade union. Or outright terrifying. Murdered
01:44horses and terrorists today said that you and your mummy and daddy are certain to die
01:49in a global apocalypse. End result is you ignore the news for years and then suddenly
01:53when you're a bit older, there comes a point when you realize you've become completely
01:56bloody ignorant. Maybe you find yourself sitting next to some erudite f*** at a dinner party
02:01who's banging on about the Israel-Palestine situation. Or maybe you start going out with
02:06an opinionated news junkie who wants to discuss politics for 16,000 hours. Either way, the
02:11depth of your ignorance leaves you ashamed, so you do something about it. You pick up
02:15a paper or switch on the news. But because you've fallen behind, it's like tuning into
02:19episode 803 of the world's most complex soap opera. And at the same time, the news itself
02:25is becoming less of an easily digestible summary of events and more of a grotesque entertainment
02:30reality show with heavy emphasis on emotion and sensation and a swaggering comically theatrical
02:35sense of its own importance. The world has changed, and we must change with it. Politicians
02:41and newsmakers know this, which is why everything's geared more and more towards soundbites and
02:45razzle-dazzle. The soap opera analogy's a fitting one, because that's what the news
02:49has become. It's showbiz, basically, and as a consequence, the news has become just another
02:53rolling TV show whose meaning is lost somewhere among all the babble. Sometimes it's happy,
02:59sometimes it's sad, but somehow it isn't real. Well, this show's gonna put an end to all
03:04of that forever, or at least 29 minutes. The aim is to provide a fun, snarky weekly digest
03:09that'll help keep you, and hopefully me, on top of the news soap opera. And it starts
03:14now.
03:15It seems like only yesterday we were all loaded, but now not a day goes by without us being
03:21bombarded by bad news about the economy, with the recent grim unemployment figures being
03:25the icing on the cake. How did it come to this? Well, the trouble began in America when
03:30US banks granted mortgages to subprime customers. These high-risk loans were bundled together
03:35with other less risky loans into collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs, kind of like boxes
03:39of assorted chocolates. These were flogged to investors around the world until interest
03:42rates in the US rose, causing many of those subprime customers to default on their mortgages,
03:46effectively turning those risky chocolates into little balls of shit. By the time things
03:50went bad, so many of these suspect toxic asset boxes had been sold, none of the banks knew
03:54how many shitty boxes the other banks were holding, and they all became reluctant to
03:57lend to each other as a result. That seizing up was the credit crunch that caused the current
04:01problem!
04:02Okay, did you follow that? No. Of course you didn't, because you're a rational human being.
04:06The world of global economics makes less sense than me going BOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOB
04:36So bad, leaders of the G20 are having to get together in the world's most disappointing
04:39razzle pile up in a desperate bid to save the world from global cashpocalypse.
04:43Yes, everything about the economy is scary these days.
04:46Even the Financial Services Authority have made Channel 4 news scary with stark warnings
04:51like this.
04:52There is a view that people are not frightened of the FSA.
04:56People should be very frightened of the FSA.
04:59He's not wrong.
05:00People already are frightened of the FSA.
05:02Of course, the news hasn't been too scared of using the financial mess to pad out their
05:08bulletins.
05:09On a slow news day, you can tie almost any story into it as the gift that keeps on giving.
05:15You can shit out some chirpy guff about feeding your pets on a budget.
05:18Don't worry about wasting money on treats, because dogs are actually much better off
05:22with something simple like a nice raw carrot.
05:24There you go, boys.
05:25Or a fashion item on how the recession is going to influence your choice of dress at
05:28the Oscars.
05:29You look amazing.
05:31Or consumer advice telling viewers where to head for a romantic bargain.
05:35You can buy two wedding rings for just £18.
05:39They're made of tin.
05:41Or a human interest report on a jobless hunk reduced to selling himself on the streets.
05:46He's advertising his services during morning rush hour in Manchester.
05:49I'm trying to find myself a job.
05:51I'm not waiting for it to come to me.
05:53This is my way of doing it.
05:56Or you could follow the lead of upbeat CBS Evening News and cheerfully explain that maybe
06:00the world's lunatics can save us.
06:028% of people think that the economy is getting better.
06:06Who are these people?
06:07And can their delusions actually save our economy?
06:10Or you can highlight the villains like Louis Walsh lookalike Frederick the Shredderick,
06:14who makes everyone so angry even Linda Bellingham called for a peasant's revolt on lightweight
06:19daytime festival of chit-chat loose women.
06:21Look at the French Revolution.
06:23Why are we sitting about all the time letting people like Gordon Brown walk roughshod over
06:28us?
06:29Let's have a revolution.
06:31Every day there's been baffling new terminology to learn with the latest being quantitative
06:36easing, the Bank of England's recent attempt to stop the economy tumbling into a great
06:39big bin full of bums.
06:42Now unless you speak fluent jargon, it's not immediately clear what quantitative easing
06:47actually is.
06:48In fact as Newsnight found out when they hit the streets to ask human beings, even Brainiac
06:52Moss from the IT crowd doesn't know what it is.
06:57It's the easing of quantitiveness.
07:01Thank God then that the news is on hand to describe exactly what quantitative easing
07:04is in easy to follow metaphorical steps.
07:08Put simply, quantitative easing is a tool for fixing a blockage in an economy that isn't
07:13running smoothly.
07:14There you go, it's a sort of spanner made of money.
07:18How does it work?
07:19Well I suppose you twist it into the stock market.
07:22It's like creating money out of thin air or filling up a petrol tank with imaginary
07:27petrol.
07:28That is what most economists agree is needed to get any recovery started.
07:33Oh God he isn't making any sense, what I need is someone who can't help but speak in profoundly
07:40simple terms.
07:41Hello, welcome to 5 News, I'm Natasha Kapinski.
07:44I'm pre-emptively chuckling because I reckon she's about to tell us it's designed to encourage
07:49the banks and arse to get lending and spending.
07:53It is designed to encourage the banks and arse to get lending and spending.
07:57Our chief correspondent Jonathan Samuels investigates whether these measures will help an economy
08:02that's been going off the rails.
08:04Why Natasha, that almost sounds like a cue for a bad railway metaphor.
08:10The economy at the moment seems to be like a runaway train.
08:13Great, alright, let's see you run with this one.
08:16The government's been pulling lots of levers behind the scenes to try and slow down the
08:21economic crisis, but it's got to such a stage now that they're trying a different track.
08:27Just tell me how it works.
08:28It's called quantitative easing.
08:30The idea is to pump more money into the economy and get banks lending again.
08:35Toot toot, the economy's like a train.
08:38We once had a model economy.
08:40The government hopes the latest measures will mean we soon see light at the end of the tunnel.
08:45The thing is, baffling though all these visual metaphors are, they're not a patch on quantitative
08:49easing itself, which essentially consists of one branch of government using dreamed
08:53up money to buy chunks of debt from another branch of itself.
08:58But will it work?
08:59Well, here's what Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, had to say on Dynamic
09:03Five News.
09:04Nothing in life is ever certain.
09:07Changing interest rates is not certain.
09:10These measures we think will work in the long run.
09:12I can't be sure how long it will take.
09:14Much of this will depend on what's happening in the rest of the world.
09:17In other words, I don't know, that's the problem with the economy in a nutshell, it's a big
09:22bunch of unknowns.
09:24Nobody knew we were going to get into this mess.
09:26Nobody knows how bad it will get.
09:27Nobody knows how we'll get out of it.
09:29Nobody knows anything.
09:31Now the global financial crisis might be frightening, but is it also a golden money-making opportunity?
09:37Danielle Ward finds out.
09:39The credit crunch is over.
09:40We're in recession.
09:41It's official.
09:43And we're reminded of it everywhere.
09:45The news media got so much mileage from the credit crunch, it even found its way into
09:49the Oxford English Concise Dictionary.
09:52So you hear credit crunch and you think, how exciting, shopping on a budget.
09:55I'll be ironic and serve beans on toast and Lamborghini at my dinner party.
09:59There's some solidarity between us, we were cosying up together, we were battening down
10:02those hatches.
10:04When I hear recession I think of joblessness, homelessness, hopelessness.
10:08Everyone's out for themselves and it's just not fun anymore.
10:11Louise, it's a mess.
10:13What do you think when you think of recession?
10:14What does it conjure up in your mind?
10:16The word.
10:17Depression.
10:18Everywhere you go you're hearing it.
10:21Recession.
10:22We should get rid of the depressive words and try and think of positive ways to get
10:25out of this situation.
10:26So everybody's fed up with the recession.
10:27It's in the papers, it's on the news.
10:29No one wants to hear this word anymore.
10:31It's time we rebranded it and sexed it up.
10:34Norwich Union successfully rebranded itself Aviva with a celeb-heavy big-budget campaign.
10:39And when a Nitt Ringo star rebranded himself a bellend...
10:42Would any of this have happened to me if I'd have still been Richard Starkey?
10:46I rounded up some genuine creative TV people to see what we could come up with.
10:50How do we sex up the recession?
10:51What we need is like a craze.
10:52Do you remember those bands came out and it was all like, oh this means I'm against like
10:55racism.
10:56We could have one that just means I recognise we're in a credit crunch one and we could
10:59sell them for like 250.
11:00Yeah, that's a good idea.
11:01What colour would they be?
11:02Erm, sort of grey.
11:03We'll get some guys working on it.
11:04For 50 grand they'll just work that out for us.
11:08Are we going to have a phrase?
11:10I think it's a word.
11:11I think it's a big word.
11:12It's a word that's kind of, you know.
11:14Apocalyptic.
11:15Something apocalyptic.
11:16Pocket apocalypse.
11:17Erm, pocket ellipse.
11:20After what felt like literally hours of blue sky thinking, we came up with a new and very
11:24exciting 21st century concept.
11:27Goodbye recession.
11:29Hello moneygeddon.
11:32If we can rebrand the recession as something vibrant and appealing, perhaps we can even
11:36make money out of it.
11:37I mean if they can flog ground zero baseball caps, I don't see why we can't sell some
11:42recession merch.
11:43So I set up a stall selling moneygeddon t-shirts, mugs, keyrings and survival bottles of water
11:48to see if I could profit from my recession rebrand.
11:51If you loved credit crunch, you will adore moneygeddon.
11:54We've rebranded the recession because we thought it was a rubbish word.
11:58It made everybody depressed, whereas moneygeddon makes everybody angry, united and thrilled
12:02at the same time.
12:03It's a lot like when Coco Pops became Choco Krispies and they had to go back.
12:06This is it now.
12:07Moneygeddon is the recession.
12:09You enjoy that.
12:10It tastes of tears.
12:11Oh, right.
12:12Well, I'm afraid that's what we're all shedding with this recession.
12:16Right, I'll have that.
12:18I made a substantial £9.46.
12:21And while that may not be quite enough to keep me in Fred the Shred style luxury, I
12:25think I could be onto something.
12:27So what have we discovered today, other than I would be rubbish on The Apprentice and I
12:32look like a young Tory in this T-shirt?
12:34Well, we rebranded the recession.
12:36We made it moneygeddon.
12:37And do you know what?
12:38It sells.
12:39Not very well, but it sells.
12:47Oh, that is absolutely unputdownable.
12:49Anyway, the news wasn't all recession this week.
12:51No, there was room for plenty of bullshit too.
12:54Religion, and while en route to Africa, big chief Catholic man Pope Benedict Lutwoffer
13:02XVI enlivens Channel 4 News by sharing his scientific wisdom.
13:07It's a tragedy, this question of AIDS.
13:10That cannot be overcome by money alone.
13:12And that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems.
13:17Oh, yeah, these condoms I've been using have really aggravated my AIDS.
13:21The Pope's startling claim provoked a fiery debate back at the studio, featuring a religious
13:25woman so irrational, Jon Snow didn't even try to hide his amusement.
13:29Clearly, a condom is the only intelligent thing to do.
13:32No, and it's no use saying that you think a bit of rubber will protect you.
13:35Yeah, you should just put your faith in an unprovable man in the sky.
13:39Listen to the facts.
13:40When the AIDS epidemic in Uganda started going up, it was when they introduced condoms.
13:44Before that, it had gone down using only the Catholic method.
13:47Yeah, in case you're wondering, the Catholic method is to remove the condom
13:50and then bury the head of your penis in the sand.
13:5222 million people have got AIDS now because of the condom campaign.
13:57It's making it worse, not better.
13:59F**k me.
14:00Now, how much does the PR industry affect the current affairs agenda?
14:04Here's Nick Davis, author of Flat Earth News, with his take.
14:08Journalists, on the whole, are chained to keyboards in offices and they recycle second-hand
14:13information from Newswire and from the public relations industry.
14:16And neither of these sources of information is reliable,
14:18but both of those sources are recycled, largely unchecked,
14:22into what we laughingly call news.
14:24And so, as journalists get weaker and weaker in performing their job,
14:28the PR industry moves in and fills the gap.
14:31There's a brilliant example of this with the NatWest Three,
14:35who are these three businessmen who worked for a subsidiary
14:38of the National Westminster Bank,
14:40who got caught up in the aftermath of the collapse of Enron
14:45Within months, evidence is surfacing that the NatWest Three
14:49are embroiled in corrupt and illegal activities.
14:52By 2002, the FBI have charged them with criminal offences
14:55and the press have clearly established that these three are bad guys.
14:59But, there's a single fact in there, which is that they're going to be
15:02extradited to the United States with a new piece of law,
15:05which is not very fair.
15:07So, on that slender basis, the PR company who were hired by the NatWest Three
15:12just focused the story on the unjust law.
15:15And at that moment, suddenly, the whole angle changes
15:18that almost everybody across the entire political spectrum
15:21in the House of Commons and the House of Lords
15:23was drawn in by this PR campaign to support it.
15:26I have no idea whether these men are guilty or innocent,
15:29but one thing does seem to me to be clear,
15:32that on the question of jurisdiction,
15:35any crime that they may have committed
15:38seems to me to have been committed in this country
15:41and not in the United States.
15:43One of the things that the PR people did was to play the family card.
15:46They set up interviews, sometimes the man with the wife,
15:49sometimes the wife on her own,
15:51and it's to do with making them human victims.
15:53We feel sorry for the wives and the children who'd be left behind.
15:56It's suggested that they may lose their homes,
15:58so they were heavily played.
16:00He doesn't know when he may come back here,
16:02and what faces him in Texas is in stark contrast to this.
16:05These guys were stealing millions of bucks.
16:07I mean, they were very, very greedy crooks.
16:10But that fact got rather lost in the coverage.
16:12They will be given green boiler suits,
16:14prisoners' uniforms, which they will have to wear tonight
16:17at a detention centre nearby.
16:19Now, although Rory was saying it's quite a modern building,
16:22it's also been described to me just in the last hour as pretty grim.
16:25According to the PR stories that were being put out,
16:28when these guys got to the States,
16:30they were going to be held on bail for years.
16:32In fact, they were held in a hotel for rather a short period of time.
16:35They were going to be appearing in court with orange jumpsuits
16:38until they appeared in their own closing,
16:40and then they faced jail sentences of 35 years.
16:43In fact, they got 36 months.
16:45So the whole image of this cruel, ruthless American judicial system
16:49that was going to be so ghastly
16:51that was going to treat them like kind of Guantanamo Bay detainees
16:54was really not strictly true.
17:00Finance and transport, and Sky News' Dermot Murnaghan
17:03traverses the south-west of England on a bike,
17:07and tells a financial woe
17:09in a series of reports called, amazingly, The Economic Cycle.
17:12Apart from getting a sore arse,
17:14he found plenty of sorrowful and jobless real people to talk to
17:17in what was surely designed to be
17:19the most heart-tugging reportage of the year.
17:21Trouble is, he didn't always seem to find
17:23quite as much financial misery as he wanted.
17:25What happens, you know, if the sun doesn't shine,
17:28if it pours with rain,
17:30or the tourists just don't come because they haven't got the money?
17:33How much longer can you last?
17:35Well, I think we can last.
17:36I think people are realising that they're not going abroad,
17:39and I think they're realising that their country,
17:41and certainly Cornwall, is just such a stunning place.
17:44Just talking to Ian out there,
17:46I mean, it's fingers crossed, isn't it, for this season?
17:49You don't know how it's going to pan out, do you?
17:52It's looking good, though.
17:54Why do you say that?
17:56Bookings are up 50% this time last year,
17:59and we're having a lot more inquiries.
18:01Oh, God.
18:02How have you been treated by your banks?
18:04Are they saying,
18:05Look, Tony, Julie, we understand times are hard.
18:08Do you need a bit of extra cash here?
18:10Or are they saying something different?
18:11I haven't been too bad.
18:12I've not had a problem.
18:13I must admit that I've been on social media.
18:15Brilliant.
18:16Great.
18:17Brilliant.
18:18Jesus.
18:19How are things holding up in this economic downturn for you?
18:22It's not too bad, actually.
18:24It's looking good for the coming season.
18:26This is bullshit.
18:28Why are you optimistic?
18:30Look, I don't want to underplay recession,
18:32but guys like you and the newspapers
18:34do love a lousy story about how we're going to hang the handcart.
18:38Yeah.
18:39Thanks.
18:40Fascinating.
18:41I think it's a really good thing.
18:43Whatever.
18:44Poetry now with our topical verse correspondent, Tim Key.
18:52This poem is about bankers,
18:55the dreadful...
18:59...bastards.
19:00The dreadful bastards who work in banks.
19:02Screwed the country over.
19:04Anyway, I'll let the poem...
19:06Let the poem do the talking.
19:10This horrible fucking banker figure
19:14sat his fat arse down
19:16on a chair in Amanda's office.
19:20And in brackets I've got Amanda's part of HR.
19:24Human resources.
19:26The banker
19:29had caviar and swan round his chops.
19:34And his hair was stuck down to his forehead
19:37with sweat.
19:38Just a despicable...
19:40He was panting.
19:44Exhausted from the short walk
19:46from the glass elevator to the office.
19:48Imagine this big fat...
19:51And by 14 years of greed
19:54Amanda leaned forward
19:56and he peered lustily down her top.
19:59Same as like when he bleared at the dancers
20:02in the strip joints
20:04in which he blew his money
20:06throughout the 90s.
20:08He licked his lips
20:10clonking fish eggs
20:12and feathers onto the floor.
20:14We're going to have to let you go.
20:17Amanda smiled.
20:21Is it because the bottom's fallen out?
20:23Yes.
20:27Is it linked in with me and me mates
20:29being irredeemably greedy twerps
20:31in the good times?
20:33Yes.
20:35That and also complaints about your hygiene.
20:39Our lumpenbanker
20:41staggered away
20:43in waves of tears.
20:45He staggered to his lawyer
20:47and his lawyer sorted everything out
20:49and he got an excellent
20:51redundancy package in the end.
20:57Horrible man.
21:00You know when I suggested doing this
21:02screen wipe current affairs spinoff type show
21:04I thought it would be a good exercise
21:06in self-improvement but in fact
21:08all it's done is depress me
21:10because the news is so horrible.
21:12We believe from what the police officer
21:14was telling us that he killed his
21:1674 year old grandmother
21:18also his mother, his uncle
21:20his cousin, his 15 year old
21:22second cousin
21:24in addition he killed a baby
21:26he killed a sheriff deputies wife
21:28he killed two pedestrians
21:30he killed a petrol station assistant
21:32he killed a motorist
21:34he let loose 7 rounds at a trooper
21:36he shot the chief
21:38of police and he shot
21:40himself. We'll let you digest that
21:42for a moment. Which isn't to say
21:44the world itself is horrible
21:46I mean it's still full of sunshine
21:49and flowers and cuddly creatures
21:51you'd like to have sex with like this rabbit
21:53look at that rabbit
21:55anyway I guess what I'm saying is there's generally
21:57more good than bad in the world
21:59unless you're watching the news which likes to
22:01accentuate the negative at every turn
22:03for instance a few weeks ago
22:05at a homecoming parade for ah boys
22:07a small group of 15 to 20
22:09Islamist protesters kicked up a stink
22:11by wobbling a load of antagonistic
22:13placards around and loudly
22:15decrying western imperialism from behind
22:17a line of western imperialists defending
22:19their right to shout about the system that was permitting
22:21them to shout. If you see what I mean
22:23predictably the protest outrage
22:25sung well wishes so much things quickly turned
22:27ugly. Yes cunts
22:29before long two people were arrested
22:31one for climbing on top of a supermarket
22:33and throwing a packet of bacon at the protesters
22:35so a tiny minority of
22:37another minority tried to stir up some
22:39outrage and there's two arrests. Not a
22:41huge deal. Except the news
22:43thought differently of course. To the news
22:45it was a huge deal. It provided
22:47dramatic material for news bulletins
22:49fantastic emotive copy for populist
22:51tabloid headlines and a great starting
22:53point for countless hours of confused
22:55debate on shows like banal morning
22:57guffstorm the right stuff. Steve
22:59what's your feelings on this? Well I
23:01totally think it's bad that they
23:03tried to protest and
23:05basically
23:07and shorter bursts of simplistic
23:09yes no debate on decisive sky
23:11news
23:13hello yes
23:15I think probably
23:17hello. Meanwhile
23:19radical cleric Anjum Chowdhury who heads
23:21the group that arranged the protest was all
23:23over cosy GMTV
23:25enjoying the publicity and their comfy
23:27sofa. And the reality is
23:29you see that if we had this demonstration at another
23:31time when the parade was not taking place
23:33it probably wouldn't have got the coverage that
23:35it's got and I wouldn't be here now talking about
23:37it. Anjum you certainly got us all
23:39going this morning there's been a lot of dialogue and
23:41dialogue has to be considered a good thing I guess
23:43thank you very much. It's good that you've come and talked to us about it
23:45yes thanks Anjum. Now would you like
23:47an infidel biscuit? Mmm they're lovely
23:49There was also another parade scheduled
23:51to take place that day which the news excitedly
23:53cut to. But wouldn't
23:55you know it when the moment of truth came the
23:57Watford march passed off without incident
23:59and the news was left without a story
24:01parade let's have a listen and see what's going on
24:03down there in Watford. No
24:05no no be shaggy baby killers this is
24:07boring fuck it. Still
24:09while there wasn't even the tiniest protest in
24:11Watford there was a huge protest taking
24:13place in Northern Ireland where thousands
24:15of demonstrators were taking to the streets
24:17in the name of peace
24:19yes that's thousands
24:21of protesters coming together
24:23to demonstrate against the recent
24:25upsurge in republican violence
24:27so surely 15 to 20 protesters in Luton
24:29gets a lot of coverage surely thousands
24:31of protesters in Northern Ireland is going to
24:33get even more right? We're on
24:35Tonight at 10 a
24:37mass shooting at a school in Germany
24:39leaves 16 people dead
24:41yes because on the same day as the peace demonstration
24:43a lone maniac in Germany went
24:45berserk with a gun killing 16 people
24:47this senseless tragedy provided material
24:49for news reports for days to follow
24:51first there were the initial
24:53dramatic breakdowns detailing precisely
24:55how the carnage unfolded there was
24:57grim voyeuristic mobile phone footage
24:59of the gunman's last moments and a chilling
25:01reconstruction of a warning he apparently
25:03posted on the internet
25:05he typed these words
25:07everybody's laughing at me
25:09no one sees my potential, I'm serious
25:11which later turned out to be
25:13almost certainly false incidentally
25:15the aftermath in Vinnyden proved so compelling
25:17for the vulture like rolling news stations
25:19they even filled air time showing things that weren't
25:21happening yet. Two days later
25:23even footage from an old ping pong tournament
25:25in which the back of the gunman's head was
25:27vaguely visible was still considered
25:29news. The latest pictures of
25:31Crutchmare show him playing table
25:33tennis, his favourite sport. And three
25:35days later even worse footage pixelated
25:37to the point where it looked like a broadcast
25:39from the f***ing Lego dimension
25:41well that was considered news too
25:43in the video Crutchmare is shown
25:45taking part in an arm wrestling contest
25:47in Rottenburg last year
25:49yeah I think if I squint I can just
25:51about make out the face of a killer
25:53isn't the news brilliant? Repeatedly
25:55showing us a killer's face isn't news
25:57it's just rubbernecking and what's more
25:59this sort of coverage only serves to turn
26:01this murdering little twat into a sort of
26:03nihilistic pin up boy
26:05one thing the news kept plaintively asking
26:07was why this had happened
26:09why? What had triggered in the mind of a
26:11seemingly normal teenager
26:13such fury and alienation
26:15well if you want to know why, why not ask
26:17a forensic psychiatrist
26:19we've had 20 years of mass murders
26:21throughout which I have repeatedly
26:23told CNN and our
26:25other media, if you don't
26:27want to propagate more
26:29mass murders, don't
26:31start the story with sirens
26:33blaring. The school day had
26:35only just begun when the attacker
26:37struck. Don't have photographs
26:39of the killer. The 17 year
26:41old's 3 hour rampage ended
26:43in his own death. Don't make this
26:4524 7 coverage
26:47the German Chancellor is about to give her
26:49reaction, we'll bring that to you live
26:51do everything you can not to
26:53make the body count
26:55the lead story
26:57carnage in the classroom
26:5916 people are dead
27:01not to make the killer some
27:03kind of anti-hero
27:05dressed in black combat gear, the gunman opened
27:07fire at random
27:09do localise this story to the
27:11affected community and make it
27:13as boring as possible in every other market
27:15because every time we have
27:17intense saturation coverage
27:19of a mass murder, we expect
27:21to see one or two more within a week
27:23but I mean, hold on a second here
27:25in summary then, not only does bad news
27:27always trump good news, but that bad news
27:29might itself actually help create more
27:31bad news, which is good
27:33news, if you're the news
27:37well that's all we've got time for
27:39this evening, go away
27:47and Charlie's back
27:49with another Newswhite next Wednesday at
27:51half past 10, next tonight
27:53all aboard the hospital train in India