Affront Page

Two posts in a day? Well, stuff is happening...

Sharks have been featuring heavily in our paper lately. This is obviously due to the tragic event last week.

At the moment my ire is currently torn between the girl on the front page on Sunday, and the paper that actually whacked her on there in the first place.

Now, it was a tragic event, having someone taken from you in such traumatising circumstances, and I am sure the paper likes to report upsetting stories as a means of “informing the populace”. Yes, I am sure that speaking to the girlfriend of the victim does warrant some relevance.

I’m sure she mourns for him, however being a girlfriend for five weeks does not necessarily suggest that these two were exactly soul mates. I dunno, maybe they were. But being smack bang on the front page with the title of “Lost Love” seems a little bit sensationalist to me.

The story doesn’t really indicate that these two love birds had made plans together; in fact the victim seemed more keen on going surfing with his mates down the coast. The article doesn’t indicate whether this ailing, suffering soul-mate was actually going along with him.

Basically, I’m sure that there is pain there, as there would be if you lost anyone you knew. But having her on the front page of the paper smacks of either enthusiastic, exaggerating media types trying to sell papers, or some girl who wants her mug on the rag.

I’ll assume the former, because I know their track record.

What other news happened that day? Lets have a look. Oh, look. There was a dawn raid on a Pakistani family who face deportment. They were shifted from their house at 7am and moved to Port Augusta, which is 4 hours away. Wow.

I feel a bit insulted if a paper believes that I would buy a paper because of one girl’s pain for the loss of her “boyfriend”, over the authorities’ uprooting of an entire family, based upon their nationality and the possible psychological damage it is doing to their children.

But I guess that issue is so 2001.

And here I was thinking that the front page was for “important” news. How idealistic of me.

Oh... and my wife said that she noticed the paper having a fish markets advert on the same page as the shark attack coverage. That was a little... er... ominous? Tasteless? Ironic? I dunno.