The global mass media are singing in jubilation today, after a religiously and racially motivated suicide bombing carried out by two interracial handicapped Ebola-infected pregnant lesbians killed 253 people in a mall during a hurricane last weekend.
Current death estimates now include at least 182 white people, three famous premiere league footballers, eighteen children with adorable family photos and one middling pop star.
“This really is the story of a lifetime,” said Chief News Editor for SkyNews Miss Leigh Dzew. “Just look at it: it ticks all the boxes – sex, death, religion, race, football, pop culture and the weather? I mean, we would have been just happy with such a death toll of white faces – especially when they’re children – but we also get dealt a hand that includes themes of gun control, terrorism, sex and football stars AND celebrities? It’s almost too good to be true!”
“The space for news coverage here is infinite, endless,” said the CEO of SkyNews while trying to hide an enormous money-erection. “We can have on-air debates between violently disagreeing sides. We can open up comments sections. We can cover minute details of each of the victims’ lives. We can go on a no-holds-barred in-depth expose of the killers’ histories, childhoods, favourite brand of breakfast cereal, everything. This is billions of pageviews. It’s innumerable online comments, reaction blogs and reader flamewars. It’s thousands of hours of television. God, just think how much advertising revenue that is!”
Many editors have welcomed the news with huge smiles, saying what it a relief has been – particularly in light of the news dry season they’ve been suffering.
“We’ve had a bit of a tough time these past few weeks,” said editor of the Sunday Times, Tabby Loids. “Sure, we’ve had Boko Haram, Ebola, shooting sprees and Russian missile strikes to keep us busy cranking the arm of our fear machine, but what with Mandela’s death naught but a distant memory and Oscar’s trial now having a reached a premature end, we’ve been grasping at straws. I mean, we have been coping – you know, derailing focus from massive scientific achievements and simultaneously throwing a smoke bomb over the real, invisible issues of an entire scientific industry by having pages-long coverage of an ugly shirt – but it’s been hard.”
Many other news editors agree.
“This is more than we could have dreamed of,” said another. “I mean, I was crossing my fingers for a school bus full of children to be kidnapped or their school shot up by a psychopathic madman, or maybe for a corrupt oil company to cause a massive spill that utterly devastates hundreds of miles of pristine coast line and drives an entire species of marine birdlife into extinction, but this… we’d never thought it would come like this. This is Christmas, Easter, Hanukkah, Eid, Thanksgiving, Martin Luther King Day and all of our birthdays wrapped in one beautiful, rare package.”
Editors’ only fears, they now say, is that they have too much on their plate.
“We are an industry of capable of creating a planetwide system of unnecessary panic and baseless fear around a disease 99.999% of all humans will never get (we do this every few years, even though you’re more likely to die choking on this blogsite),” said Loids. “So how are we supposed to deal with such extensive and rich subject matter?”
News analysts now say that this coming coverage could potentially cause mass riots, copycat attacks and global hysteria by perhaps as early as next Friday – a prospect that has editors on the edge of their seats.
“We have to be very careful with this story,” said Lee. “One word out of place, one misplaced fact, one incorrect quotation… and we could miss out on what may be the news event we’ve all been waiting for.”
Pic: Public Domain, from US National Archives (524396 NARA National Archives and Records Administration)
