Say Aleppo and television images of a destroyed city fill our minds. Say "Syrian refugees": every sight so familiar we're unconsciously in contempt. Or openly so. The image of the dead toddler on a beach in Greece was emotional media manipulation. Easier to cry for one than a thousand. But the media both missed the point and worked another on us.
Television media has done its job by raising awareness of a country's crisis on an international scale. They're also culpable of imposing their moral - read political - viewpoint on us. Like the media do with a lot of situations and television has become the worst offender.
News shows that should be informative and unbiased are now about how they are much better than other channels and about each individual presenter. Who, filmed middle of a war zone, the only person wearing a flak jacket, the only one ducking for cover, talks as if the entire war is about him/her "reporting for you from Aleppo". Or wherever. Cue: duck again for the camera.
It used to be a quieter process of intrusion. Now it's cynically partisan liberal left or hard right. Fox, CNN, BBC and others compete for not just our attention, but to persuade us of their political viewpoint too. While half the world is killing each other, Bloomberg TV keeps on about money.
How about the others keep on about simple facts and leave the political stuff out? We want the full story, not selected snippets of sensationalised so-called facts. On the Middle East, I have rarely seen a television news programme that laid out clearly the different factions and explained sectarian viewpoints.
