Don't Believe a Word of It

Another month, another TV 'fakery' scandal. This time it's ITV's turn, with them being accused of false advertising by claiming a documentary showed the death of an Alzheimer's sufferer, when in fact it only showed him slipping into a coma. What a bunch of bastards, eh? Depriving the viewers of a chance to see someone pop their clogs - what's the world coming to? We don't just want real life these days, we demand real death too! To be frank, I was quite relieved to find out that his death wasn't filmed - it would have been a gross invasion of privacy, not to mention tasteless. Still, the way things are going all so called 'fakery' on TV will be frowned upon. They'll have to start using real bullets instead of blanks in cop shows and thrillers and start importing real aliens for Dr Who to battle.

But really - did anyone ever seriously think that you could 'trust' TV and believe everything you see there? Personally, I take everything I see or read in the media with a pinch of salt. The problem isn't so much with TV, but rather with the morons who watch it. I know that's a sweeping generalisation (and I don't make many of those), but it is getting to the stage where I sincerely believe that you should be made to sit an intelligence test before being allowed to have a television licence. As someone who writes completely made up 'news' stories and publishes them on the web, I'm painfully aware that there are a disturbing number of people out there who actually believe them to be true. It doesn't matter how bizarre and obviously fake I make them, there's always someone out there who takes just about every story I publish on The Sleaze at face value. Scarily, they aren't all unemployable drug addled simpletons. Many of them are apparently intelligent professionals. Often employed as researchers for TV companies.

Getting back to the point, best of all about this TV 'fakery' furore is that it has largely been stirred up by the print media. Yes folks, those self-same newspapers who couldn't tell that the Hitler Diaries were a fake, so they published them anyway. Like I said, don't believe a word of it.