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Journalistic sensationalism. Two words that irritate me even more than Tottenham Hotspur. I get that newspapers and TV news media have to pay the bills and sales of newspapers and TV ratings are where the money comes from, but I'm sure that life is sensational enough to attract the public's attention without having to make stuff up. I'm just asking for a bit of context, just a teaspoon full of perspective once in a while to keep us informed rather than using language that has us all perpetually terrified.

Politicians I expect to play this game. It's their job to make the other side look as bad as possible by massaging the facts and spinning the figures, but it ought to be the journalists who offer the context the politicians ignore. Unfortunately, because the news dudes are all competing with each other for newspaper sales and viewer ratings they play the same games as the politicians, leaving us all to work out what's going on for ourselves or, if we don't have time or are too thick, leaving us scared to death that the world is about to end very shortly. Bastards. All of them. Box office people do this too. Every year a film breaks all box office records, but they never take inflation into account. No one adjusts for the fact that cinema tickets are more expensive from year to year.

When Gordon Brown's astronomic borrowing figures are displayed in big red letters no one ever compares them with the actual size of the economy. Inflation is never taken into account either. It's just, the national debt in 1946 was £24billion, today it's £640billion!! accompanying these shocking revalations are a few alarming looking graphs and pictures of people surrounded by bills and the streets are suddenly filled with people running around shouting WE'RE DOOOOOMED.

What they don't mention is that they're ignoring the fact that our GDP is now about 140 times bigger than in 1946. As a percentage of GDP our national debt has been much much worse than it is today, but that's not sensational enough to report so it's much better to ignore all context and give us the impression we're in a hole 25 times deeper than the one our grandparents were in after the second world war. The headline 'record levels of debts' could apply to something like 45 of the past 60 years. It's a record as such, but it's not like Bob Beamon's long jump record.

This is the main reason I hope the BBC directors and head boffins all burn in hell. The BBC gets their money regardless of ratings. They're not in a ratings war with anyone. They ought to be the ones presenting clear and unbiased facts in their news programmes and current affairs shows regardless of how unremarkable they may be and with context. They don't though. They're ever bit as guilty as the commercial channels for sensationalism and silly bollocks. It's no wonder most of the country is hooked on valium.

Sky Sports News of course are the epitome of exaggerated journalism. They have a 24 hour channel but only approximately 2 hours of real news per day to report. I pay them £50 a month to fill the other 22 hours with anti-Arsenal shite. Over the years they've manufactured all sorts of stories out of nothing. Whoever's in charge over there must be a huge fan of Blue Peter and Tottenham. The shite that's given air time on that channel is the journalistic equivilant of making toy robots out of cereal boxes and sticky backed plastic. Just gather up whatever crap you hear on an afternoon then botch it all together somehow to make a story. If it involves Arsenal, some sort of anti-English flavour and maybe a fight then all's the better.

It's been William Gallas' turn again today. His fairly innocuous comments have been the cereal box and Sky's sensational breaking news story of him possibly losing his captaincy because of said remarks are the toy robot. All he said as far as I can tell is that Arsenal have been shit recently, some of the players don't get on, there was a bit of a to-do between some of the players after the Tottenham capitulation and one of the players is a bad influence in the dressing room. No shit, you don't say, fucking hell!


To anyone who watches football regularly all of those things are obvious. Except maybe who the player might be who's being a bad influence in the dressing room, but that is also obvious to anyone who follows Arsenal. Gallas is not doing Arsenal's dirty laundry in public. They lost to Hull and Stoke, we have been shit, no one is disputing that. Emanual Adabeyor and Nicklas Bendtner had a fight on the pitch a few months ago for fucks sake, it's no great betrayal of trust on Gallas' part to reveal these players don't get along and had the players not been fighting with each other after the Tottenham game I'd be alarmed. That was an unforgivable display. I'd be far more concerned had they all just trooped out of the stadium and gone for a curry together. And the player with the disruptive influence, well it's Nicklas Bendtner. Everyone who follows Arsenal knows that. He's been an arrogant twat ever since he arrived.

I like William Gallas. I like the fact that he appears to give a shit enough to make these comments. I'm pretty sure there's nothing happening at Arsenal that isn't happening in every other football club everywhere. It's not the soap opera Sky Sports make it out to be. They'll continue to report it as such though. The only time all six of the 'breaking news' tickers on Sky Sports News are all flashing related stories is when it involves Arsenal.

Ah, now then....as we speak their most serious ticker, the yellow and black one is reporting breaking news that Gallas is no longer our captain and isn't in the squad for tomorrow's game. "Sensational reports coming out of the Emirates," says the presenter. OK that's a story. I'm running so bad at the moment, I spend an hour slagging them off for manufacturing stories and they luck box their way into an actual one. Bastards. When it comes to breaking things, I share Caligula's frustrations at times like these, "I wish these people had only one neck."