Pope TV overkill

Rolling news is great. Where else can you sit down in front of out TV all day and watch the same six news stories go round and round and round?

But sometimes they can’t help but show their failings, either. Take this weekend, for example, when all the news channels were waiting for The Pope to die.

Everyone has their own opinions about Pope John Paul II. To some people, he was a brave example of religious leadership who helped  end communism in Eastern Europe.

To
others, he was an outdated relic who refused to intervene in catholic
child-abuse scandals and acted as a catalyst for the HIV epidemic in
Africa by condemming the use of condoms.

Either way, towards the end he was a
frail old man in the last gasps of life. And isn’t there something
about waking up on a Saturday morning to see the BBC News 24 tickertape flashing along reading "Pope’s breathing is shallow" or "Pope’s liver failing" that’s a little, well, tasteless?

When
non-stop TV news works, it’s a fantastic source of information.
Whenever there has been some kind of huge fast-moving global crisis,
viewers can feel almost comforted about switching on and knowing that
they’re up to date with all the latest developments.

But when an
old man is slowly dying - there’s just not that much to say. If the Pope was
being systematically dismantled by, say, a squadron of giant
firebreathing ants, then there would be things to report. But that wasn’t the case.

As sad as it is, you can’t big up a urinary
tract infection minute-by-minute. Not without looking like a circling
vulture, anyway.

"Pope’s consciousness compromised", "Pope
said to be ‘touching the Lord’", "Die, Pope, die, so we can show our
obituary package that we’ve been preparing for twenty years". One of these headlines did not feature in the BBC’s rolling news coverage. Can you guess which one?

This
weekend, a lot of news was made of the dignity that the Pope showed in
his final days. It’s a shame that can’t be said about the people
reporting it.

[story by Stuart Heritage]