As far as most big news broadcasters are concerned, there is only one story worth reporting on at the moment – there is a royal baby! Nelson Mandela could die or Denmark could finally break off Europe and sink into the sea, but these are irrelevant stories since there is a new 3rd in line for the throne.

It is understandable that people need distractions from the normal doom and gloom news broadcasts, but media does have a tendency to overdo, and overcommercialise these events – and they really have gone all out this time. You can download an app that tracks the hourly progress of the baby, or read a book on the history of the diapers used by the royal family (because I’ve always wanted to know what type of diaper queen Elizabeth crapped in!)

Although a “guess the royal baby’s name” app would be more light-hearted entertainment than “guess how many people died in Syria today”, the hype does tend to eclipse far more life changing stories that still need to be reported, since the revolution in Brazil isn’t going to go on hold … while everyone dotes over the fact that it’s a boy!

This entry was posted on July 23rd, 2013 at 1:16 pm by Emily Morris and is filed under Media, Reflections, Uncategorized, Zimbabwe Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.