20 years ago: The Great storm

On the BBC when I got up, on the news this evening, on the websites and just now I was reminded it was 20 years since the 'great storm' hit the south east of England.

Well I was in the South-West at the time where it was slightly less impressive, some trees did blow over and several roads were closed due to falling debris.

My point is yes, it was a devastating storm which killed people and destroyed property but why is it head line news today. Is it such a slow news day that we call history news, they must have been building up to this for months with all their documentaries and clips.

There are stories happening all over the world that the public need to know about and discuss. A 20 year old storm is a 1 hour documentary not national news.

I wonder sometimes whether we are raising the bar of sensationalist news so high that on most normal days nothing happens that the media feels is worth reporting. So I fear that there will be more days when it is X years since such an event occurred. News may become a five minute segment of past news.

It reminded me of a West Wing episode last night. Toby Ziegler was talking with the 4 network news editors about coverage of the republican and democratic conferences. They wanted to cut coverage down from 2 hours a night to 1 hour a night. In their words they wanted to show the acceptance of nomination speech and the balloons.

Everyone likes to see the balloons, if you have never seen the footage it is where balloons drop from the ceiling and everyone is wearing placards. Every conference would not be complete without balloons. In the UK strangely enough we are less cheer leaderish about our politics.

Toby, as I would be was incensed.

Yes, no. There isn't going to be a horse race to cover, either in New York or San Diego. But we gave you the air waves for free 70 years ago and 357 days a year you can say who's up and who's down, who won the West and who lost the South.
But what's wrong with 8 days, not every year but every 4 years, showing our leaders talking to us? Not a fraction of what they said, but what they said. And then the balloons.
- Toby Ziegler, West Wing (Quoted from Conventional viewing)

The man has a point for all that is great about humanity for all its achievements, successes and the great forum of debate that is the world, the media wish to cut current affairs programming and replace it with the latest reality TV Show.

If the public has no appetite in news it is not because it is uninteresting, it is because the media are failing in telling us the story, failing to involve us . Sensationalism has replaced debate and it can only get worse not better.

In about twenty years from now this year will be interesting, there was the great snow, the great flood x2, who knows what winter will be like. Perhaps on of the main news shows could be renamed '20 years ago today...'.

But remember 20 years ago was a great storm ...