The Phantom Horse Strangler and Other Local News...

Local news stories - they always fascinate me. It's the way in which the way local reporting always seems to be slightly 'off centre' and emphasises the wrong parts of stories. Let's look at a couple of recent examples. A few weeks ago there was a sensational sounding report about a horse being strangled in a field outside a nearby town. Yes, a horse. And yes, it was strangled. Obviously, this conjured up pictures in my mind's eye of a maniac wandering around the countryside in dead of night, stalking terrified horses and throttling them with his bare hands. I couldn't help but envision a 'Jack the Ripper' type figure in a cape and top hat, cackling maniacally as he choked the life from another horse. A horse strangler - there's a type of serial killer you don't see in the movies, I thought, this could really put us on the map. However, what the story only added as almost an afterthought was that the horse had been wearing a rope halter, which had become caught on a tree. The strangulation was entirely accidental. If they'd simply said that the animal had choked to death in their headline, the confusion would have bee avoided. Mind you, a horse accidentally choking to death isn't anywhere near as sensational as the idea of a horse strangler being on the loose...

In our second example, a man was found decapitated, apparently with a chainsaw, in his flat. He was the last tenant in the block, which was being cleared by its owner, a hosing association, prior to redevelopment. Unlike the other tenants, the victim had turned down offers of re-housing, refusing to leave the flat. The housing association was believed to be in the process of obtaining a repossession order from the County Court in order to evict him. All the ingredients for a huge scandal - tenant brutally murdered by developers when he stood in the way of their plans, perhaps. However, the story concluded by saying that the case "wasn't being treated as suspicious". What? Not suspicious? The bloke's had his bloody head cut off - hardly a normal method of suicide! I'm not an expert, but I would imagine that it is bloody difficult to chop your own head off with a chainsaw! What really gets me is the way the story simply ended on this statement, not elaborating on it in any way. There have also been no follow ups. The whole decapitation angle was treated almost as a footnote to the eviction saga. Unlike the horse saga, which tries to make a mundane accident seem sinister, this story all but ignores a sensational aspect central to it! Local reporting - don't you just love it?