Sensationalising and Trivialising by the Media

The petition is entitled restrict the all public media from being allowed to sensationalise triviality on the one hand or scaremonger on the other and the explanatory notes say

"No more sensationalising of triviality. For example: what a celebrity wears, eats, sleeps with is not a matter for News At Ten or newspaper front pages.

Scaremongering. For example: bird flu will kill us all; global warming will kill the planet; terrorists will kill all of us in the western world (using anthrax, ricin or some weapon we have overlooked); it will be illegal to celebrate christmas; and so on.

The media is to blame for a lot of the failings of our society. They create vain, selfish, frightened children who grow up wanting everything without working for it, who have awful social skills and a general ignorance of anything older than they are.

I use the term "media" to include televison programmes, radio, newspapers, magazines, web sites, adverts (on TV, radio, posters, billboards, etc) and anywhere that can reach a public audience."

A number of things stand out about this. The first question has to be "how do you ban the press from sensationalising things without curtailing the freedom of the press?

If you don't personally like what the media are like, I suggest finding new media. The internet is particularly useful for this; if I want trivialities about what celebrities are wearing, there's Go Fug Yourself (trivialities and bitching - what else do you want?); if I want more sensible news I cast my eye over the Graun or the BBC. It works for me.

Blaming the media for the failings of our society is ridiculous: if parents and the education system can't teach children to critically judge the media, then that is their failing, not the media's.

Sensations sell papers. Don't like it? Don't buy them.