As much as I enjoyed my holiday, its good to be home. Since I left, it appears we have another crisis on our hands. ISIS and Cecil the lion (remember him?) have been pushed back from the headlines, allowing refugees some time at the front of the news. I am not heartless, and I do feel for these people. I do not want to talk about refugees, rather the sad nature of what we feel requires our sympathy. The media does tend to dictate to us what we should be feeling, none more so than in the last week or so. With thousands and thousands dying every day, why give these people more attention than others. Are we morally responsible for the refugees? Or rather, as I suspect, are we purely pushing our anger and guilt at the state of the world onto the next hashtag. The next crisis.
Everyone is guilty of being manipulated by the media. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a plum. I watched Sue Perkins in Calcutta on BBC2 a few nights ago, and watched the children living under the underpass at the feet of the high rise apartment blocks. We were told of the conditions they face there, how they lay blankets on top of human waste to sleep at night. What difference them than refugees?
Its exasperating, especially because crisis after crisis nothing gets done. Lions will still be hunted, refugees will drown, wars will rage, ISIS will destroy, America will invade, China will pollute. Remember Charlie? Whats changed?
Well that’s my uninformed rant over. I should delete this and just post my poem, but I am too stubborn.
I wrote a short, snappy poem covering the above topic. You can find it here, now;
Media exposure
Should not equate
To sympathy.
Do not be told
Who to love
And who
To ignore
Again.
©Stuart Buck
Stuart Buck 