Tuesday 9 July 2013

de facto censorship

When the media decide what you should know...


No news is bad news

Iceland

Bankers jailed for gambling away
everybody else’s money on lame horses.
Government and economy reclaimed for the people
in a Norse perestroika.
Not in the news.

Brazil

Street protests dwarf those in ‘V for Vendetta’ fantasies.
Police driven into the sea,
police become refuseniks,
police stand with protesters,
tribespeople occupy logging HQs.
There’s more going on than football and beach-bums.
Not in the news.

Sri Lanka

Shelling of civilians, and summary executions,
soldiers jeer lewdly at the naked bodies of dead women,
war criminals pose for photos with corpses,
expressing their desire to mutilate.
Brown children press-ganged and killed by the hundred.
Not in the news.

United Kingdom

One whiteblonde child disappears,
a footballer hurts his foot,
a British tourist dies in a bus crash abroad (ignore the 47 others),
a Royal sneezes,
some Z-lister wears a new dress –
See the headlines scream and the column-inches multiply.
The news is full.

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