Pet Hate

I’ve always had a great love of the media, indeed I was a radio announcer for a while. When used well, the media, can be a powerful force for good.

But alas, these days, I’ve seen it used in the worst of ways.

I suppose there are a lot of reasons to hate old medias ways of reporting news, but here’s one of mine which really rubs me the wrong way, and it’s one of the things which you’ll hear often.

There’s some sort of terrible disease which we all know about, we may know someone who has it, or we might have it ourselves.

For the last twenty years or so, scientists all around the world have been looking at cells, watching what they do, treating them with particular chemicals, staying up late, giving up their time and energy in the hope that one day there may be a cure.

Then there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, after years of exhaustive research, maybe, just maybe there’s a cure within reach.

The media is informed, and how is the story reported?

“MEDICAL MIRACLE”

I absolutely hate this.

What this says is, let’s forget the students who spent years learning how to become doctors, surgeons, researchers, physicists, biologists etc, let’s forget that after they became any of those things, that they spent all those days and nights doing very difficult, and often tedious work… let’s just forget all that, and claim that God did it.

Let’s just suggest to the public that this potential cure just popped out of the sky, like “manna from heaven” because someone prayed a lot, and jesus waved his magic pinky, and that was that.

Have you ever watched credits at the end of a movie?

Imagine if in some strange land, they wiped all those names and all you’d see at the end of a film was “God did it”.

For all you know, thousands of people whose names you’ll never know, were involved in getting this possible cure to the point it’s at, and thousands more will improve and refine it for years to come.

That’s long hard hours of blood, sweat and tears.

Media needs to stop attributing hard work and dedication of so many truely wonderful people, to religion, it’s not in the least bit right, or fair.

Wolfie!