According to the media, the recent snowy weather has been ‘treacherous’, John Terry is under ‘intense pressure’, the recession is something we constantly think about (even though we have just come out of it…just) etc. There are just some buzz words that get used by every media outlet in the land. Since when did snow become so ‘treacherous’ anyway? I usually associate the word with conditions in a heavy storm at sea rather than a few inches of snow. In fact most synonyms are more in relation to being disloyal or deceitful, making the idea of snow being unfaithful rather hilarious, as if after building a snowman it will randomly burst into life giving you a good kick in the crotch before laughing like an evil maniac and stealing sweets from various children and telling them Santa isn’t real.

The point is, journalists are supposed to be of the utmost intelligence with a wide repertoire of vocabulary, varied articulation is their job after all. So why can they not think of different words to describe topical events? I admit, certain words do sound better on a sensationalist level, after all you wouldn’t describe John Terry as being ‘in a bit of a kafuffle’. However, saying he was ‘under intense pressure’ was fairly obvious, considering it was mainly the media who was putting him under that pressure in the first place. The majority of football pundits and fans thought he shouldn’t be sacked, after all most of the England team have skeletons in their closet. Steven Gerrard; beat up a man in a nightclub, Ashley Cole; cheats on his wife, even the replacement Rio Ferdinand is currently serving a ban for elbowing another player in the face and was banned for missing a drugs test. Anyway, Capello was left with no choice really after being constantly bombarded by the media circus asking about Terry so much you’d have thought it was a group of obese journalists asking about the future of the chocolate orange (apologies for the awful Terry pun).

Such a fiasco highlights the annoying thing about sensational journalism. They all need to sell a story and if any kind of story can be drawn out into a scandal then that’s great for them. If there aren’t many stories selling the papers then why not escalate a story about an apparently flawless sportsman and turn him into a hate figure, especially when footballers are ridiculed for their extortionate wages. Might I add, I’m not defending John Terry, just merely stating. And don’t even get me started on the ‘r’ word. Did you know we were out of the recession? If you did know that then you probably read the pessimistic news reports focusing on how it wasn’t as big an improvement as was expected and that misery was still to come, rather than focusing on any sort of improvement, no that would be far too positive.

So to conclude, if I believe the media then the weather has stabbed me in the back, John Terry is under forceful weight and the recession is over but not really truly and fully over because that would be far too normal and wouldn’t sell any newspapers. I know the irony in reading this on a newspaper website, but it’s local so (in theory) I’ll complain about the press all I want!