Another rant...

I've been quite pissed of at the medias lately.
In France, there was this hruesome story of that woman who killed 3 of her newly born babies and kept 2 in her fridge (without th father knowing they were event conceived).
Sordid, to say the least.
OK, the girl's completely crazy.

But suddently in the French media there was loads of similar stories. Baby killing women. What happened? Did that 1st story triggered a bunch of crazies to do the same?
Of course not. Crazy people have always existed!
But since it's kind of fashionnable at the moment, here you go, let's cover all the similar stories we find!
Like avian flu. There was this huge psychosis caused by the media about a year and a half ago and now what? Has it disappeared? No. Still there. Still pretty threatening. Bu hey the media don't talk about it. So no problem.
But they still need to keep us afraid, so let's get the baby killers on screen.

Crazy people on the streets! That's a good trick to get people to vote for security (right wing then). Strangely French presidential elections are next year...

I just can't believe how those guys are that irresponsible. Even Le Monde (who's usually pretty objective and also my primary source of info) does it.

On the side, but related, depending how they can present the info, it's amazing how they can manipulate you into thinking things that are WRONG.

Example: I just read an article in Le Monde saying that Elton John said that we should ban all religions. At 1st, reading it, I thought: well it's quite good it's not to him then. That's just a celebrity talking nonsense. How it was presented, his opinion was pretty simplistic and I don't think banning something is ever going to solve anything. It's just another form of oppression and how do people react to oppression? They FIGHT back of course! And what sense does it make to forbid what people think?
Anyway, I checked out the equivalent article on the BBC website, to see what they thought of it. And it turns out that this article goes into more details and that his opinion is not that simplistic (whatever you think of it), well at least the "religion ban" (which is still stupid in my view...) is only part of it and sounds more like a pun (when Le Monde made it look like the main thing he had to say).

But here you go! How just the presentation of the info can just change your feeling towards it... Nothing to mess around with...

Then again on Le Monde, it's a news flash, when on the BBC it's a proper article...
But it's quite a good thing to get reminded sometime how important it is to cross check informations from different sources. Always.