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Bombs and terrorism are increasingly becoming a fact of life since Tony Blair held hands with George W Bush in Iraq, before heading into Afganistan, and so on.
Thankfully, no-one was killed in the latest incident, in which a bomb failed to go off properly at the Parsons Green tube station in London, but my reason for posting is in reaction to the a couple of tweets where pictures from the incident were posted online.
The first I saw was from @EmmaStevie1, which just shows a lot of commotion outside the tube station, while there also came one from @andyjohnw (account now deleted), which shows the actual device post-explosion, including its protruding wires.
Before long, every reporter, pseudo-reporter and his dog were after these pictures… for free…. for their own clickbait, whether from the BBC, Sky News, Huffington Post or foreign news companies I’d never heard of before. Emma happily gave them free access but forgot to ask for any money.
Thankfully, Andy saw sense. Why? Because as well as generating clickbait for free, all these media companies are absolutely loaded, and they’re absolute cheapskates when they want to be. Plus, when you check their comments on the tweet, you’ll see that they talk about getting the image BEFORE saying they hope everyone’s okay(!)
In addition, what’s the point in every man and his dog (other animals are available) reporting it? If everyone says the same thing, then the lack of uniqueness will ensure that those smaller sites don’t even get noticed, so their clickbait won’t have worked.
Last year, I filmed a road rage incident when I suffered a ton of abuse from an absolute Ronnie Pickering-style fruitcake in Salford. The Manchester Evening News wanted to use it.
“Fine”, I said, “So how much will you pay?”
“Nothing”, they said.
Okay, MEN, well, get bent. How rich are they?? They’re owned by Trinity Mirror, who publish the Daily Mirror and other tabloid junk!
You can see my video for that below, but back to the case at hand, and below are three tweets which summed up where Emma got it wrong, and where Andy got it right.
Hi Emma. Glad you're okay. I work for a microbrewery in Dalston. Can we use your picture and name as design for new pale ale ?
— Benny Green (@Benny_Green_) September 15, 2017
Hi, I'm from 'insert name of media outlet' I don't really care if you or the passengers are okay, let me use this image to get more clicks.
— Richie home is where the Hart is (@therichardhart) September 15, 2017
https://twitter.com/TheGamesDead/status/908600242874064896
Meanwhile, Theresa May has told us: “Remain vigilant”… aka “Live in fear, proles, like with that so-called ‘man-made global warming’.
As for the picture I have used, I see the BBC have pictures, but those come from news agencies who charge you an arm and a leg to use them, so I’ve stuck with the BBC’s own London graphic, above. You can see all the pictures of the device from this link, if you haven’t seen them already on the news.
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.