When an important issue is hanging in the air, today’s media landscape offers you the choice between literally hundreds of sources for information marginally related to it.
If the plot leaves any leeway for it, no b-movie director will pass these by: fake newspaper clippings and TV news reports. The alleged elegance of this type of narrative (supplying information to the audience while creating a sense of urgency and importance) has led to utter overusal, naturally.
I managed to limit myself to only four instances. Of course you have recognized the British daily known for it’s accuracy and consideration towards their readerships’ feelings- they have yet to inform their readers about the British Empire’s collapse, but they are carefully working their way towards it. (‘Sources claim British Empire not quite in the shape it used to be.’)
Then we have the American TV station notable for it’s ‘fair and balanced’ approach. Don’t laugh – they ARE balanced. They are just not EVENLY balanced.
The ‘German Pickelhaube Channel’ is Germany’s largest TV station, bringing 24 hours of programming into every German home. Series, movies and news – of course always with the perspective from ‘unter der Pickelhaube’. They seldomly admit it to foreigners, but 80 % of the male population still wear their Pickelhaubes, that quintessentially German headgear, on Sundays.
BS 2 is a Japanese TV station. Yup, while all other nations just get BS on TV, people in Nippon can at least choose between BS 1 and BS 2. The thing in the newscaster’s arms is Domo-Kun, that station’s mascot. While my research into Domo-Kun failed to find out what kind of…uhm..thing (?) he (she? it?) is actually supposed to be, I found out this much: his/her/it’s digestive gasses are able to knock bats out of the air. I wanna see the NBC peacock trump that.
And then, of course, there’s the Internet. The advantage of using the Internet as a news source is that you can get your news already peer-reviewed and commented – that way, you run no risk of ever encountering anything that would threaten your world-view.
The holidays are just around the corner by now, and I got a great piece of fanart from my ‘Secret Santa’, Jason Siebels of ‘Anywhere But Here’ (->link http://www.abh-comic.com). Check ABH out, it’s a great Slice-of-Life type strip, in a classical B/W newspaper cartoon style, and updating daily. Thanks a lot, and happy holidays, Jason.
And there’s a new piece of fanart in the fanart section, this time by TAB from Khaos Komix (->link http://komix.comicgenesis.com/, another daily updating strip. (Somehow, I feel so lacking with my two updates a week.) Don’t neglect the fanart thread in the forum, btw, for more fanarty goodness.
Wait a moment, there was something else…was it ‘Vote for me, please’? Yes, but there was even more…ah right, I wanted to say something about the future of the main characters…but now I’m all out of space…Christmas Special on Thursday!