Nicholas Barrett

The picture above is a screen-grab  from the BBC news website.  Thanks to this ‘news story’ the final of this years apprentice was ruined for me.  Evidently the same thing happened to broadcasting demigod Charlie Brooker, here a few of his tweets.

So I spend the night writing & studiously avoiding finding out who won The Apprentice… and the BBC News website spoils it with a ticker.

Perhaps if I push a spoon into my brain at just the right angle I can delete the memory.

I shall now return to my work, faintly sadder than before. THANKS, NEWS-BASTARDS. THANKS.

What I don’t understand is why they bothered.  For one thing  Its not news because the apprentice was filmed months in advance of screening.  However if the result is genuine news to a person then they are one of two groups.  Either they couldn’t give a fuck about the apprentice thus having chosen not to watch it rendering the article irrelevant or they do care and are planning to watch the final later rendering the article devastating as it ruined the climax of a series they have already donated 12 hours to over the last three months. Both groups will not want to see the headline let alone read the story making the online piece a total fallacy as-well as a source of annoyance to every single person that sees it? 

Despite having watched the whole series I’m not really that annoyed that the BBC pissed all over the final of the apprentice because in all honesty I had limited enthusiasm to begin with.  The contestants are vapid and irritating making it hard for me to sympathies or empathize enough to care about their fait and it’s equally difficult to care about the structure of Allen Sugar’s organization.  No the real reason I’m angry is because this kind lazy reporting is pushing real news(that happens to be happening far away) further out to the peripheries of our collective conscience.  Anything that can be accomplished by sitting on a sofa and watching reality television is not journalism and never will be and never should be allowed to eclipse real journalism.  

So for the benefit of people who view real news as being more important then the results of glorified game-shows, here are a few stories ( all from the same night) that the BBC thought worthy enough to cover but less important then reality TV, none of the stories below made it to the front page of the website.  

Pipeline explosions kills 27 in Mexico 

Murder & abduction in run up to Ivory Coast election

Riots after Bangladeshi stock market crash