Enemies of Reason Poundshop potshots at the media moral maze.

Cereal abuse

This is an update on the Kellogg's story the Mail covered in credulous "Err, ok then!" terms earlier today. I had at first thought it was a simple bit of concealed advertising that was taking place - that the Mail had been paid in order to run the completely bogus story about cornflakes being branded with a fucking laser in return for a bit of money, or the promise of some advertising, or whatever.

But maybe not, as the story's gone all over the place now and it's not just the Mail bringing you the news by the letters C and V.

Telegraph journalists, too, can hold their heads up high in the knowledge that they've covered the laser-etching of bits of corn - seriously, a laserbeam etching a brand name onto each and every fucking piece of corn, somehow, probably - as something that's definitely happening:

The new technology enables the firm - which makes 67 million boxes of Corn Flakes every year - to burn the famous signature onto individual flakes using lasers.
Kellogg's plans to produce a number one-off trial batches of the branded flakes to test the system.

But how, Mr Telegraph, how? How will they be doing this?

Mirror galvanometers are then used to steer the beam creating multiple vectors that reflect the laser from different angles and ultimately make up the image.

Ah, I see! I thought mirror galvanometers might be involved at some stage, so thanks for clearing that up. But is there a handy quote from someone to bulk the story out? Yes there is!

Helen Lyons, lead food technologist at the company, said: 'In recent years there has been an increase in the number of own brands trying to capitalise on the popularity of Kellogg's corn flakes.
'We want shoppers to be under absolutely no illusion that Kellogg's does not make cereal for anyone else."

That's the same Helen Lyons who told the Mail:

Yesterday Helen Lyons, lead food technologist at the company, said: ''In recent years there has been an increase in the number of own brands trying to capitalise on the popularity of Kellogg's corn flakes.
''We want shoppers to be under absolutely no illusion that Kellogg's does not make cereal for anyone else.

The Daily Record, meanwhile, quoted a 'spokesman' who said:

"There has been an increase in the number of own brands trying to capitalise on our popularity.
"We want shoppers to be under absolutely no illusion that Kellogg's does not make cereal for anyone else."

The Guardian were, however, a little more circumspect:

It's being put about by their PR team that Kellogg's are to individually laser etch each of their cornflakes with the company logo. Is it too much to suggest that this might not be absolutely true?

Now of course there'll be some who'll say: "Aha! But it's got people talking about cereal hasn't it? So therefore it's worked and it is you who is the silly one, whereas the clever people at Kellogg's are all the brains." To which I say the following: interesting hoax stories might be good, but this one's just bollocks, not even funny or intriguing. And newspapers unquestioningly putting it alongside genuine stories about real things make themselves look like fuckwits.

Besides, own-brand cornflakes are much cheaper and you can't tell the difference. It's a piece of mashed-up corn and starch, for fuck's sake; it's not bloody Guernica. Save some money and buy anything other than Kellogg's - why pay more for people to spend on insulting your intelligence?

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