New York Post reaches a new low

I never post about stuff like this but damn this left a nasty taste in my mouth. 
 
I just clicked on an article in the NY Post about the woman who live streamed from the top floor of the London fire, where she was trapped. They have the video embedded. Couldn't believe my ears when, at 12 seconds in, they added a horror movie style bass drone sound effect to make it seem more dramatic (as if it could be). I don't know if I'm overreacting but I just thought holy sh**, that's TACKY. Have a listen for yourself. I know they're a scummy tabloid and all but my God....is that normal practice? 
 
http://nypost.com/2017/06...n-burning-london-tower

That is a new low...
Total failure.

Wow, that is incredibly sleazy!

I don't happen to think that there is anything remotely entertaining about somebodies pain and tragedy in what appears to be the last final moments of a persons life .
When I was a little boy my family had a brush w the National Media ...
I was present during the event that had taken place . I can tell you what the media said and what really happened were 2 very different stories ...
 
Kenny
 

Late 1980’s was working as an aircraft mechanic for Cessna in Long Beach. Our facility was on the edge of the airfield next to many other maintenance shops.
 
One night a thief started doing the rounds of the shops to steal avionics packages.
 
He was approached by a security guard. The guy pulled out a wrench, bashed the guy in the face and left him for dead, then went on raiding the planes. The guard regained consciousness and called in the incident.
 
Second security guard came in and found the guy next to our hangar. The guy was over 300 pounds, about 6’6” and came at the guard with the wrench. No match for a single bullet that dropped him dead.
 
By the time I got to work early morning, the police were there completing their investigation, outline of the body chalked, crime scene tape etc. Then they took down the tape and just left the body on the tarmac. Seemed weird, but soon came the news reporters. Each group got their turn.
 
First group moved the body so the photos didn’t have to show the chalk marks. Sky 9 or whoever from the TV landed their helicopter, set up shop and had the blond in a mini skirt prepped for the live coverage. They were discussing the dramatics of the photo op and decided that the guys arms and legs would look better if tweaked a certain way so they made adjustments.
 
This must have been common practice because when Sky 10 arrived with their cover girl, they bent the body around for their best effect.
 
By about midday when Sky 11 showed up, the guy had been frying in summer heat for several hours on the asphalt. He was starting to bloat and get stiff making it a harder to get him to lay flat, but they done a fine job getting the photo op in the end.
 
About 1 in the afternoon, they finally came in to take the body.
Have never really trusted anything I see on the news from that time on.
 
John

Is it just me who thinks that the problem here started with the mentality of the person who having discovered they were in building that was very much on fire decided that the first thing they should do was to get their phone out and film it so they can put it on FB.
 
Hey wake up and get out of here quick -  the whole building's on fire......
 
Ok thanks. I'll be out as soon as I've put that on Facebook.
 
 
 FFS! 
 

I guess I'm not quite as cynical and hard-bitten as I like to think I am,  I couldn't watch more than a couple of seconds of that video.

Ya, the NYP are pretty gross with that kind of crap. Reminds me of the Toronto Sun. Used to read it back in the day (there was always a copy of the TO Sun around in restaurants/bars and shiz) and it was at least somewhat informative about local events/issues even if you had to kind of read through some of the bombastic slant they crammed in there. Eventually though it became unreadable. Just constant nonsense designed to enrage and manipulate.
 
For big stories and generally get an idea of what's up in the world and in Canada I mostly read the CBC site but they of course have their own brand of slantiness (just not quite as bad as other outfits) and I find their coverage of events isn't as thorough as I'd like (as in they simply don't cover certain stories but I guess they can cover EVERYTHING). From there I'll research things more on my own to cobble together a reasonable image of the truth. Usually a lot of hunting around for raw video/audio feeds without a pile of talking heads and editing trying to tell THEIR version of the truth.
 
It can be very difficult to get to the meat of a matter/topic/event these days without getting sucked into talking points/agendas but with some effort and a concerted effort to not succumb to "confirmation bias" (which admittedly I did suffer from quite a bit when I was younger) I think it is possible to remain informed from an objective perspective. It's a lot of work and requires a HUGE amount of general skepticism/knowing your news sources and how they tend to slant things.
 
Related to this topic though this was on the CBC this morning...
 
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/london-fire-grenfell-tarling-expert-1.4163560
 
It's an interview with a building surveyor/official discussing the cladding issue and how this type of event was foreseeable (and he made it known well before the event). It jibes with (and explains) some of the posts we had here and I've seen elsewhere about the "cladding" and why it's so dangerous (and the crappy UK building codes that allow it).
 
When I kept seeing "cladding" I didn't really know wth people were referring to (and I used to do building contractor stuff) but I guess it's like aluminum siding and (in this case) filled with chemical insulation. The insulation being the flammable material. Worth a read... and for those in the UK a call to your members of parliament to improve the building codes.
 
Completely preventable this was.

Beepster
Ya, the NYP are pretty gross with that kind of crap. Reminds me of the Toronto Sun. Used to read it back in the day (there was always a copy of the TO Sun around in restaurants/bars and shiz) and it was at least somewhat informative about local events/issues even if you had to kind of read through some of the bombastic slant they crammed in there. Eventually though it became unreadable. Just constant nonsense designed to enrage and manipulate.
 
For big stories and generally get an idea of what's up in the world and in Canada I mostly read the CBC site but they of course have their own brand of slantiness (just not quite as bad as other outfits) and I find their coverage of events isn't as thorough as I'd like (as in they simply don't cover certain stories but I guess they can cover EVERYTHING). From there I'll research things more on my own to cobble together a reasonable image of the truth. Usually a lot of hunting around for raw video/audio feeds without a pile of talking heads and editing trying to tell THEIR version of the truth.
 
It can be very difficult to get to the meat of a matter/topic/event these days without getting sucked into talking points/agendas but with some effort and a concerted effort to not succumb to "confirmation bias" (which admittedly I did suffer from quite a bit when I was younger) I think it is possible to remain informed from an objective perspective. It's a lot of work and requires a HUGE amount of general skepticism/knowing your news sources and how they tend to slant things.
 
Related to this topic though this was on the CBC this morning...
 
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/london-fire-grenfell-tarling-expert-1.4163560
 
It's an interview with a building surveyor/official discussing the cladding issue and how this type of event was foreseeable (and he made it known well before the event). It jibes with (and explains) some of the posts we had here and I've seen elsewhere about the "cladding" and why it's so dangerous (and the crappy UK building codes that allow it).
 
When I kept seeing "cladding" I didn't really know wth people were referring to (and I used to do building contractor stuff) but I guess it's like aluminum siding and (in this case) filled with chemical insulation. The insulation being the flammable material. Worth a read... and for those in the UK a call to your members of parliament to improve the building codes.
 
Completely preventable this was.

They go nuts with that cladding in the UK. Even when I last lived there over 15 years ago, I was aware of older buildings being retrofitted with that cladding stuff. Local councils have gotten obsessed with two things: firstly, the environmental bandwagon in which anything which increases "energy efficiency" is seen as a good thing regardless of what other consequences it might have, and secondly the idea that they can transform these old eyesore council towers at relatively low cost. I saw a few towers in Newcastle done out with it. For example, there was a notorious tower in Newcastle city center called Bewick Court which was an eyesore and was associated with a lot of crime and people falling to their deaths out of windows etc. Here's what it looked like: 
 

 
And so the council had their customary "something must be done" meetings and decided upon a facelift of cheap looking cladding, which I'm sure is probably the flammable type too:
 

 
I remember when they did that, and we thought my God, it just looks like they've slipped a plastic sheath over it. It looked flammable, especially compared to the old 60's concrete. I have a soft spot for that concrete now - it has that sort of gritty urban chic, and the added bonus of not turning entire buildings into roman candles when you hold a flame to it. I bet everyone in Bewick Court is having sleepless nights since seeing the news the other night. 

The hilarious (well... in a "laugh or you'll cry" kind of way)... those old 60's/70's tower block building with concrete/cinder blocks between the units are/were the ultimate in fire containment. My last place was in one of those older buildings and they literally said to me the safest thing I could do in the event of a fire was stay inside my unit.
 
Those concrete firewalls are also great for soundproofing.
 
My current place, which is a newer building (and they lied to me when I asked them what was separating the units), has single frame aluminum stud walls, Roxall insulation and a single sheet of 3/4" drywall on either side. It may TECHNICALLY meet firecode (not even sure about that) but it doesn't meet sound code. At the very least it's supposed to be doubled up 3/4" on either side.
 
So we all have to be quiet as frack to respect each other and any new tenants generally have to be told to STFU after they inevitably think the place is "normal" as far as sound transmission.
 
Total rip... but we seem to have a good crew in here now.
 
 
 

I would disagree with some of that infographic. Specifically, the middle section. Like NPR and the BBC have both a political and cultural bias. The BBC has admitted its own bias on many occasions. NY Times, Washington Post, both have their agenda as well. 

Voda La Void
I live in Oklahoma and on the day of the Oklahoma City bombing, it only took a few moments for the local news stations to put a graphic in the lower right corner of an mushroom cloud with red lettering being blown up "Terror In The Heartland" like a movie advertisement. You'd think they were running a commercial for a bad Bruce Willis flick.
 
They loved it.  Couldn't me more excited 168 people were killed and we were all glued to the tube trying to find out what was happening.
 
The media has always been honest, we just don't listen.  They have always told you that they tell "stories".  Not facts, not events, not accurate information about what's happening around you - stories.  They tell stories.  Everything is a narrative, complete with drama, good guys, bad guys, conflict and end game.  
 
And that's how it reads.  Caricatures, not people.  Archetypal good and bad, cardboard characters. Like children writing about adults.  Never understood why the media is revered for anything.  They sell stories and drama for profit.  Corporate profits off of others misery and human failure.  

Strangers writing about other strangers to be read by yet more strangers.  Nobody knows anybody - everyone in all their complexity and life span are reduced to a handful of paragraphs by a stranger who's mission is to tell a story for profit.

Put well

Apparently someone from the Sun pretended to be related to one of the victims so he could get to him in the hospital for an interview.
 
The Sun are denying this though.