10 Other things that have happened this week.

If you live in the UK, and don’t live under a rock, you’ll have been aware of the media frenzy surrounding the broadcast of an edition of the Russell Brand show. All of the major newspapers in this country have run with it on their front page at least once this week. Here are some other things they could have been focussing on in the past few days:-

1)    Nearly 600 square miles of rainforest was destroyed.
2)    The situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo has deteriorated.
3)    132,000 children died.
4)    35 Iraqi civilians were killed.
5)    The global economic recession continues to worsen.
6)    We came closer to reaching peak oil production.
7)    45 Afghanistani civilians were killed.
8)    The US continued to base its troops in 150 countries around the world.
9)    The US national debt exceeded $10 trillion.
10)     The US came one step closer to electing their first black president.

Now obviously many of these stories (although certainly not all) have been reported in the UK media this week, but front page space is scarce, and for every day that Brand or Ross gurned out at us from those covers, the faces of dead innocents did not. I’m not blaming the media. I work for the BBC; the Brand/Russell affair has been of great interest to me, as it has obviously been for much of the country. It’s fine to take an interest in stories like this, but it would be nice if they didn’t distract us from the things in our world that need our attention.