Thank God for the serious papers

I thought that today's front cover of The Independent was brilliant. With just three words it said so much - classic newspaper journalism. However, the excellent stuff that is written in some of our papers is overshadowed by some of the lesser quality ones. Take a look at the front of some of the other papers on that link. Some of them completely fail to mention the US election! It's only one of the most important things to happen!

You have to despair sometimes that the most popular newspaper in this country is The Sun. To be fair to them they did actually mention the election (despite supporting Bush), but you can hardly call it an educational paper. I don't think there is anyone to blame for this really. It is a sad fact of life that some people are just selfish and don't really give a toss about anything outside their own lives, so what would they care about world news? Sure, they'll complain if petrol prices go up because of war, but they really couldn't care less about 100,000 dead civilians in Iraq or genocide in Rwanda.

It's not lack of education, poverty, or anything else that is to blame - morals are something that is intrinsic to the soul. The tabloids, with their stories about naked women etc, cater for this. They are not all bad of course - despite its faults, the Daily Mirror does try to actually show people what's going on. Even the Daily Mail and the rest of the right-wing press do try to inform, even if it is just to make its readers hate black people or whatever. Until people actually care about our world though, genocide, destruction of the planet and gross injustices will continue. There is no easy solution to this, and that is the depressing thing.