"Just Look At These Scenes"

I woke up this morning on Wednesday the 13th of October 2010 and picked up my laptop. I then went onto Facebook and had a little look at what people have put on their status in an attempt to seem more interesting than they actually are. Then after this went on to the BBC website and saw that the 33 Chilean miners had started to be rescued from the mine that has kept them prisoner for the past few months.

Now this was genuinely emotional and quite beautiful to see a working class guy who has gone through a terrible ordeal finally reunited with his wife and children. The thing that did slightly spoil it was the fact that it was being broadcast on the most annoying of news formats ,that I am sure you are familiar with, BBC News 24.

The main reason I get annoyed while watching Live rolling news is because nothing happens for a long time and there is air time to fill so the commentator has to endlessly fill the void in excitement with inane musings and shear conjecture about what may or may not happen.

I don't know who the guy was that commentated on this but I found myself being taken out of the moment and its genuine emotion and catapulted into an irrelevant, disposable, shamelessly and needlessly heart string pulling, manipulative, disgracefully over hyping and sometimes incomprehensible sentence filled reality show.

I was actually annoyed while happy and touched at the same time which was odd. It seems to be the case on news channels that things don't happen quickly live and it is the job of the person commentating to fill the gaps of nothing happening with stupid rhetorical questions and endless suspense building finally culminating in removing all emotion and actual excitement from the sometimes quite extraordinary scenes by saying such insightful things like "he looks happy" or "she is crying" which are obvious to even the most dimwitted of news viewers of which I am sure there are many.

So thank you live BBC News coverage for spoiling what could have been a beautiful moment of TV history by having a posh bloke saying "Just look at these faces around here, everyone watching these moments." and "look at these moments now the men embracing each other, the men exhausted". I mean we get it. We understand how fucking lucky they are to get out alive and how big a deal it is to be freed so why endlessly hammer home that point with all the eloquence of a drunk toothless cabbie from Essex!

There really should be an option to turn off the stupid guy ruining most live news broadcasts. Then I suppose there is and its called the mute button.