A bit about the Media and certain stories in it, how I feel about them, the media and freedom.

I had sat after hearing a report on the radio thinking that I would write a piece about the news issue that had been raised, but then when I did some research into it I found out that the story being talked about wasnt a current issue it was in fact something that happend around 4 years ago. Then I was again listening to the radio latter when they annoucned a news story which I really did not think was news worthy at all, apparently the child of the singer Adele calls her a bum head. This made me stop and think about how the actual media itself is crazy. It makes news out of things that are not news at all and are in fact just bits of random celebrity dribble while also dragging up events that happend ages ago again and again when there is very little happening. Then when something dreadful actually does happen they drip feed you all of the details piece by piece sometimes with acompanying photos and videos which are sometimes far more terrfying than the horror films or video games that the same media has screamed will ruin are children by showing them gore and mayhem that they shouldnt really be subjected to. The media seems to want a free pass to titilate its viewers/readers/listeners with ghoulish delight by giving your fear center a little tickle while also trying to take the moral high ground.

Still in this post I want to both my feelings on the media as well as my feelings on some of the stories that have recently been in the news, I dont promise all of these stories will have recently happend, I just want to talk about things that have been in the news in the last few days (although unlike the mainstream media if something is old I will point this out).

So to start Home Secretary Aber Rudd has demanded that Whatsapp must allow security services to access users’ messages in the wake of the Westminster terror attack. Ms Rudd said it was “unacceptable” that the security services were unable to see messages sent by terrorists. The problem here is though that it is basically a polotician saying that they should be able to spy on the people they represent. Yes right now she just wants to look at what proven terrorists have communicated through online services but its a slippery slope, the next step would be to look at the communications of suspected terrorists. Then after this they could widden the definition of terrorist up to the point where anyone who disagrees with anything the goverment says can have there deepest most secret messages looked at just incase they have said anything they can possibly be punished for. I think the simple truth is that the government needs to be denied some powers in order for its citizens to have freedom, if you strip away basic freedoms like the freedom to have private conversations then your trying to take away peoples right to disagree with the status quo and in the words of Yoda ''that path leads to darkness''.

I suppose I should go back to the old news story. I said at the start of all of this that sometimes something that happend a long time ago is reported as if it just happend. Well in this case it was a 4 year old story in which a man who had murderd someone had got a sex change on the NHS and gone into a Women's prison as he was now a Woman. My instant response to the story was that the man commited this criminal act as a man, was tried and found guilty as a man and therefore should serve his sentance as a man. I thought that he should loose his rights as a person for killing a person, for breaking the rules of society, after all he had killed someone and had taken there rights away from them alone with there life.

If you look at my oppinions on the two above stories then you will see that on the one hand I am wanting the goverment to let people be free to have there own oppinions yet I am also wanting criminals to loose there rights, it could be argued that I am controdicting myself. This is not the case though, what I am really saying is that I think people deserve to have there own freedom and oppinion up until the point they prove they dont deserve it, but the thing I fear is that those in power will use criminals and extremists as an excuse to take away everyones rights, they will use our fear of these things to take away our freedoms under the illusion of protecting us.