The Silly Season
Summer is often mistakenly regarded as the best season of the year; the weather is supposed to be better, the days are longer and most people are on holiday. By most people’s standards summer is an easy time to relax. Not for the media.
Journalists frequently describe summer as “the silly season” due to the farcical nature of attention grabbing headlines designed to generate sales when there is no real news, just like when Channel 4 broadcasts Big Brother when they run out of real programs.
Although the term implies that the stories themselves are silly, I think it applies equally to journalists who report them. Without being able to speculate whether the Prime Minister’s new tie is a device to change his image, or being able to expose a Conservative politician’s hypocritical bedroom habits, journalists are the people who really suffer, in the same way students feel when they are told that there is an essay due in a week’s time but have no idea how to approach the question.
This year seems to have been a very quiet season, even for summer. We’ve heard about a shark in Cornwall that turned out not to be a shark (I think it was a catfish?*) and that there has been a book published about how boring British tourist destinations are as well as a story that claims that over half of the cats and dogs in Britain are overweight. You’ll notice they are domestic stories, because for some reason nobody looks across the sea (must be all those Cornish sharks) and as such, I can’t tell you whether the entire world stops because the UK Parliament is in recess (unlikely) or that foreign affairs don’t sell papers.
There are a few stories that can be relied upon each year; it’s entertaining to discuss the political ramifications of a politician’s holiday. Gordon Brown, who usually stays in Cape Cod, USA, decided to stay in Dorset, UK, this year. I’ve never been to Dorset, but I have been to Cape Cod, and yet I have a strong feeling which place he will enjoy the most. I’ll give you a clue: Dorset is on the coast of Britain and as such claims to be a beach instead of a glorified rockery. Président Sarkozy has been the first French statesmen to holiday in the USA in years, and he clearly wants to repair the Frenco-American relationship, which has suffered a series of diplomatic incidents; from Charles de Gaulle’s withdrawal of French troops from NATO in 1966 to Chirac’s non to the Iraq invasion in 2003.
The one debate that emerges every year is the response to exam results; the statistics will climb and so will arguments. The education system is tailored to suit the needs of everyone apart from the people being educated by it, but that’s another story altogether.
*Since this article was written, I have been informed that the shark was indeed a shark, however the photograph was taken on the coast of South Africa, rather than England.]
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