#thenews

I twittered/tweeted/posted the following tweet yesterday evening whilst the BBC News was talking about a gang of paedophiles that had been caught in Scotland:

// How do you catch a paedo gang? Do they have matching hoodies? #thenews #

A highly-irreverent, quite a naughty approach to the story, which I immediately tried to backtrack on a wee bit by twitterising thusly:

// The news fries my brain; it's death and the very gutter of human dignity followed by a comedy series or a late movie. #

But I was still hung up on the first thing. We've been discussing in our public administration seminars why it is that people misunderstand functions of local government so much - is it a journalist's job to educate folks or a councillor's? I can't quite sort it in my head that it's a journalist's job - in whatever way it's their job to entertain and titillate people to the extent that they will establish a relationship with their newspaper and keep buying it, it's that simple. It could be argued that ignorance keeps the councillor in his job and everyone's happy, but the coverage of local government in newspapers is necessarily simple and simplified.

The reason I bring this up is the gang of paedophiles. Do they really hunt in packs? Will you find them sat in groups of 6 in an MPV outside Mothercare? Do they have secret handshakes and five-aside football teams and hang around together? The seamy and the depressing and the evil is simplified and boiled down to a 2-minute bulletin between two chunks of entertainment that gives people the very barest update on what is going on in the world. The MP expenses scandal suits this style perfectly - no politicians are to be trusted; they're all out to get every single penny they can off the poor, hardworking majority of the country who work hard and pay their taxes. Good versus evil, you've made your cup of tea in good time for the next programme, the world has been put to rights and you can sleep easy.

Stereotypes are the very enemy of a civilised society. It's how Brazilians get shot on the tube, or child doctors get 'paedo' daubed on their house by angry yet stupid lynch mobs, or how good MPs like Ian Gibson are lost to absolute hysteria. It's why the news fries my brain. But at least there's something funny on after.