I mostly avoid news because the incessant sensational hysteria just winds me up, but there are times when I think I need to “tune in” to see what’s happening in my world. And that’s when the trouble starts.
I have been procrastinating about this “newsworthy” post. It’s about death – a sensitive topic – but specifically about how our news broadcasters deal with death, which on many occasions is anything but sensitive. Or accurate. In fact, it’s downright confounding.
The “news” is full of crazy stuff but over the past few month, the examples below have bypassed crazy, whizzed past absurd and bounded over bizarre to land in the lap of ludicrous.
Exhibit A for the prosecution is the headline from Buzzfeed, Five People Were Killed After A Plane Crashed In A Field. I hesitated to read the article (I kind of feel like reading stories of crashes is like rubbernecking at a highway accident) but I was intrigued to find out what had actually befallen these people. If they were killed after the crash, then it seems they survived the accident but then fell victim to some other killer. What was the cruel twist?
Well, there was none. Reading the article alerted me to the fact that these poor people were killed in the accident, not after it. Prepositions are little words but they absolutely pack a punch and, if you aren’t attentive, they can get you into quite a pickle.
Exhibit B is courtesy of the ABC and relates to a Doctor jailed for $360k in fake Medicare claims from sometimes dead patients. The mind boggles. Sometimes dead? I had no qualms about reading this article. Admittedly people died, yes, but they were only dead sometimes. I had to know who had gained dominion over death such that they could choose when to be alive and when to be dead – on a seemingly ongoing basis.
The reality of the story was actually just your standard Medicare fraud. The doctor sometimes claimed Medicare for consults with patients who had died before the alleged consultations had taken place. He sometimes claimed for dead patients, not he claimed for sometimes dead patients. This time – correct word but very unfortunate placement.
Exhibit C isn’t a headline, but is from a Channel 9 evening news bulletin. Their London correspondent, reporting on the measures instituted by authorities to manage the COVID-19 crisis, said that morgues were being extended to cope with “the rising dead”. The most surprising thing to me about this story was not that there were zombies roaming London, but that the reporter kept a straight face for the duration of the cross.
No clarification was ever given, but I suspect that she meant that morgues were being extended to cope with “the rising death toll”. Perhaps I’m being unfair, maybe she really did mean that people were rising from the dead. I would have thought though, that the story would have been presented completely differently if the resurrection angle had been in play.
I don’t think there is much left to say about our newscasters’ handling of death. Confounding? Crazy? Absurd? Bizarre? Ludicrous? I will hand over to you, the jury. The prosecution rests.