PANIC! (Don’t panic)
Following on from last week's panic-porn in the Mail about swine flu comes this story in the Daily Telegraph, a newspaper which, if you aren't familiar with it, can be best described as the Daily Mail on bigger sheets of paper, but without the charm and liberalism.
There's a bit of a whopper in the headline. See if you can spot it:
More than a million callers to flood swine flu helpline
Yes, unless the Telegraph have managed to construct a time machine and go into the future - in which case why haven't they seen that cheapening their newspaper into a crappy celebrity-obsessed Tory shoutrag will see sales fall even further? - they can't possibly know that a million people are definitely going to 'flood' the swine flu helpline. No, the million callers is the total number per week that the helpline has been set up to deal with, as the Tele is quick to acknowledge:
More than a million calls a week are expected to flood the new swine flu telephone helpline set up the Government, it has been estimated.
It's an estimate now, is it? A minute ago it was definite! Ah, but this is the way of the swine flu story: scare the shit out of your readers in the headline, then quickly withdraw the panicky stuff in the first or second paragraph.
You'd expect more from a quality broadsheet newspaper than this, but then of course, that would be to assume that that's what the Telegraph is.
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Hello. I'm a Bristol-based writer and soon-to-be-redundant journalist. You can read more about me and the Enemies site here, or follow me on Twitter. Email me if you like - antonvowl at live dot co dot uk
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July 23rd, 2009 - 12:48
I think my favourite headline from this week has been this treasure on the cover of the Express
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/115512/Migrants-man-swine-flu-helpline
July 23rd, 2009 - 13:13
The time travel logic of their sentences make my head hurt.
It's just like Terminator.
July 23rd, 2009 - 14:44
did you see the Express front page yesterday? A work of masses riling genius, it combined sine flu and immigration. Headline was SWINE FLU HOTLINE TO BE STAFFED BY MIGRANTS with the subheadline 'and some of them don't even speak English'.
Yes, the government is so pc they're hiring people who can't speak English to man phone helplines.
July 23rd, 2009 - 17:26
It's been set up to deal with 1 million calls a week, so… is this a bit like saying PINT OF BEER TO FLOOD PINT GLASS?