Morality, media and generational worldviews.

It appears from, where I swim, that the world has gone a bit mad this week and it all revolves around the individuals pictured here. I am sure enough words have been penned about the actually commotion without me adding to it. There were one or two things that caught my attention and may be worthy of futher ponderance, however.

As the world was informed how they should react to this by the tabloid media as usual, even the BBC seemed to give it unwarranted attention in a week when horrible things are happening around our world - there was little attention given to the situation in Congo until the weekend which is very hard to understand. Who decides what gets in the news and what gets left to the back pages of the broadsheets? Who gives the media the right to tell us what we should be outraged about anyway?

Also, what I am about to say is unjustifiably generalised and ageist but has been presented in some of the debate over the issue. Various reports are suggesting that the older generation seemed to express outrage and disgust, while Younger views inteviewed seemd to be less conerned; of couse that is a bit of a media hype "contrast for effect" in itself, but Torin Douglas, not prone to hysteria, also reports that younger Radio 1 listeners are less concerned about what Mr Brand and Mr Ross did.

If there is any truth in this, it causes me to ask the question - is this about young peope having more of a sense of humour as they suggest? Or is it about the younger generation being steeped in post-modern relative morality which means they are less likely to be "ouraged of Epping" and more likely to expect people to be allowed to "live and live"? Perhaps it is more likely that younger people just tend to be more balanced about something that, while it was unacceptable, shouldn't cause an over reaction? Maybe trying to generalise by age is just a waste of time in itself....

Dr Sharky is more concerned that this week has shown, yet again, how the media can dominate the agenda, work hard to manipulate priorities and even create it's own news.