to hate it when famous people die

[2rebecca]

OK I'm in for a flaming, but I'm in my late 40s, I lived through the ANC/apartheid/ "free Nelson Mandela"avoiding S African fruit in supermarkets/ being delighted when he was released and became an excellent president, sad when his successor was an HIV denying plonker,and the fact that S Africa is developing corruption levels like the rest of Africa and still has a huge violence problem (mainly black on black), but find the wall to wall media coverage completely OTT.
Obituaries are interesting when they are brief and concern someone whose story you don't know. When they are endless and cover someone whose story has been extensively documented it just makes me avoid the media.
It's nothing against Nelson, when the queen dies it will be even worse , and every time a media luvvie dies the media goes into overdrive.
All I needed to hear today was "Nelson Mandela has died", not everyone and their dog repeating stuff I've heard before, especially as I heard it last night anyway.
Someone famous dying is news, endless anecdotes and preprepared staements aren't news.

[interregnum]

The BBB news website lists the most read stories, when I logged
on yesterday:

1)Storms hit Britain
2) Latest storm updates
3Westie and Doberman have pups
4)Mandela dies aged 95

Glad to see the public have their own priorities.

[Spiritedwolf]

I think that sometimes what makes a good story (angry young man turns into peace loving calm person after long stay in prison) sort of like Red in The Shawshank Redemption, isn't really the most accurate way of depicting his life.

He wasn't that young. He was already someone who prefered peaceful protest but had found it ineffective when faced with a violent oppressing force, and so had engaged in illegal sabotage. It wasn't necessarily being in prison that changed him (it must have had some effect on him obviously but I haven't read his own accounts, so don't know if it made him be reconcilatory or whether that would have been his inclination before) so much as time and as him being in prison changing other people.

I'm not a Mandela expert or anything, so apologies to the more knowledgeable folk on the thread if I have made errors. I think my point is that sometimes the story becomes simplified to meet our expectations of what should have happened (this happens with all kind of news stories btw).

We can acknowledge that the media works like this, without taking away from the achievements of Mandela.

[donnie]

Mandela was a great supporter of the Palestinians who are routinely called 'terrorists' by Israel.

Clearly the word is entirely subjective.

[mrsspagbol]

Flatpack:

"I think that's just as black and white and another stupid comment which denies the complexity of human violence and the myriad situations in which it has occurred between a group of people and the political structure they live under."

But you are the one who is insisting Mandela is a "murderer" ?! Surely that is THE most 1 dimensional comment of all?!

[donnie]

Also referring to a political giant like Nelson Mandela as 'someone famous' is a bit dim really. OP is your entire world viewed through the prism of celebrity?

If you don't like the coverage turn the telly off.

[smokeandglitter]

No one is entirely one dimensional. No one is entirely good for the whole of their lives. NM was a great man and fought for change.

Personally, I do condone violence. If someone was attacking someone I loved I would attack them to protect my loved one. If they died, then that would have to be the case. A very simplified explanation of my views but a basic idea of how I feel.

Personally, I feel that on the set news times (not the news 24 channel) it would be better to not put so much concentration onto a single topic for days on end. Considering NM had only just died, I don't think it was unreasonable for the (I watch BBC) news to give his death a lot of air time. However, I do feel that repeating the same topic again and again for the majority of the news isn't the best way to approach it. For example, when a typhoon hits, I feel it is very important to report it and to touch on it daily, but giving it a large amount of air time daily for over a week seems to end up desensitising many people to the situation. I haven't said this very eloquently, I just feel that it sometimes does less good to report on it so much.

I also had a thought about pp saying it's important to give coverage to NM death as some people, especially those who are younger and did not live through aparthied, don't know about NM or SA's history/current and can learn from the Documentaries and news reports. I definitely agree with this. My thought was perhaps the one positive about celebs being interviewed about him is that it does draw in younger viewers who have an interest in certain celebs and - after hearing the celebs not so important chat - they might go on to want to learn more about the situation. I know this is absolutely not the main thought behind interviewing the celebs but I just thought perhaps we could take that as a positive from it?

[BoneyBackJefferson]

Nelson Mandela was a great man, to rewrite any of his history would be an insult to him and his accomplishments, (it would also be an insult to write anyone out of that history)

[FyreFly]

The only trouble with saying "change the channel if you don't want to watch it" is that when it happened, on Thursday night, the TV was completely saturated with it.

The 10 o'clock news was on BBC1, and it was extended to squeeze every last little ounce of interest they could out of Madiba, whilst ignoring the storms that were mullering us here in East Anglia. BBCNews24 was also wall-to-wall Madiba. Question Time (which I'd stayed up to watch) was cancelled, then moved to BBC2 for half 11, and then didn't emerge until nearly midnight, because Newsnight on BBC2 was ALSO going on about Madiba.

That's one broadcaster, with three main channels, all on the same topic - it's overkill, pure and simple. It would have been much more respectful, IMO, to cover the story briefly, with extended coverage on the News24 channel for those that want it, and then to have a dedicated program later on. When you start seeing any old John Doe being dragged out and interviewed because they saw him speak once, and you hear the same trite, empty tributes over and over, it becomes to me a macabre exploitation of the life of a great man for ratings, rather than the reporting of facts. The news is to report the news, not to act as an obituary.

[JugglingUnwiselyWithBaubles]

I think tributes and obituaries when someone has died are much more interesting, inspiring, and informative than the regular very forgettable stuff that fills the news on a regular night.
I only agree that there is generally too much news.
It's usually very dull and depressing and at the same time not in enough depth or breadth. Something like Newsnight or Question Time is a lot more interesting.
Mainstream is cheap filler as bad as the reality shows.
I prefer watching "Come dine with me" - at least it might give you an idea for supper

[Fluffy40]

I visited South Africa in 1974, I was only 10 but felt ashamed to be a white human being.

I recommend you read long walk to freedom. It's a brilliant book.

[CaterpillarCara]

There is also a children's version of Long Walk to Freedom. I have read it to my children a few times, and my DS sought it out to read again when he heard the news of Madiba's death.

[creighton]

well to tell the truth i have spent more time arguing with you lot about NM than listening to the news. I heard 5 minutes on Thursday, 5 minutes on radio 4 on Friday morning and was already nauseated by it all, i flicked through a couple of news articles on the internet and have left it at that.

anyway, the fuss has died down on the tv news, just the funeral to get through, then it will be christmas.

[GoshAnneGorilla]

Creighton - I've just finished the other thread you were on, I really appreciated your posts, but feel sad it needed to be said.

[LaGuardia]

OP YANBU. Mandela condoned terrorism. Innocent people died because of him. He is not mourned by the South Africans in this family.

[squoosh]

Are you trolling all the Mandela threads or just the two I've seen?

[tinmug]

LaGuardia what do your South African relatives think Mandela should have done?

[creighton]

thank you Gosh

LaGuardia, the apartheid regime was itself a terrorist regime but your family clearly did well out of it so you are upset that an upstart African put a stop to all your fun and games.

I have to thank NM and his team for not chasing the whites out of SA although there are lots of them in England. If they had left en masse, this country would be full of them complaining that they have to wipe their own arses and clean their own houses and not kick black people in the face when they want to.

[tinmug]

Yes creighton - apartheid itself was terrorism. All choices available to black people under that regime were shit. I fully support the ANC's move to violence. Of course it's awful that innocent white people died, but nothing else was going to stop the government from killing innocent black people.

[creighton]

ahh but tinmug, i don't think any white people in SA during the ANC's campaign were innocent.

[AHardDaysWrite]

I just want to thank contributors such as tinmug and bigfatgoalie on this thread for your contributions (sorry, there have been more, but I can't go back through the thread to namecheck). I am a teacher and it can be hard getting teenagers to really understand why a 95 year old man who's just died was so important. You've expressed so eloquently what the reality of life under apartheid was like and I feel better able to discuss it with my students now. Thank you.

[OhWellWhatToDo]

creighton I know a few SAfricans with parents who brought them up against apartheid. White people aren't a homogenous mass. As a black SAfrican, the fact that they were brought up with some morals is why we're friends! Most SAfricans who are white arent innocent though. It feels weird when I go back home to visit my family (moved out a few years back) and that the 40yo in the local shop, who's white, was, most likely, part of that regime, that the old granny being helped by her grandson in the airport, both whitem was, most likely, part of that regime.

NM was no saint. He wrote an talked extensively about that very fact. Which is why I liked him, he regretted things, he mourned lives.

[creighton]

OhWell, most of them were happy to gain from other people's misery and had to be forced to stop.

[TreaterAnita]

I am shocked to the core that there are people on here who do not comprehend that the apartheid regime in S Africa was such an evil that it had to be overturned at any cost and any price.

My parents had a genuine opportunity to move to S Africa when I was a kid, would have meant a much better quality of life for us, but they couldn't bring themselves to even think about living in a society based on such a moral wrong.

I think the coverage of Mandela's death, while bordering on saturation, is important because it's a story that people need to hear. The only thing I really object to is the desperation stuff that they do, getting random people to trot out what Mandela meant to them. But then I listen to a lot of 'talk radio' (as in R4/5, not literally Talk Radio, if it still exists) and they were doing this last week over the JFK anniversary too.

Be glad we live in the UK, my friend has just been in Boston and the headline news there on Thurs was 'ice storm in Texas' with Mandela coming very much second.

[tinmug]

creighton I actually agree and after I posted, I was standing in the kitchen making a cup of tea and I had exactly that thought: the vast majority of apartheid-era white South Africans were not innocent. We had blood on our hands.

[creighton]

when i meet white south africans at work i find them 'creepy' they make me uneasy. in particular if they are my age or older.