Have You Read The News?

Whoever decides on the brief headlines on the SkyNews ticker that runs across the bottom of the screen needs to think to themselves: Who is going to be reading this, and will they understand it?

Today I went with my sister to King's College Hospital in London. She had a car crash four years ago and after several operations and many visits to the hospital, had her final visit to her consultant today. The visits always involve a lot of waiting around for blood tests and X-rays etc.

In the waiting area for X-rays is a wall-mounted TV that shows hospital-related messages with a SkyNews headline ticker running below. Some of the headlines were only comprehensible if you knew part of the story, for example:

Fresno Chicken Plant Shootings: Three Dead. I thought it should say three dead, coated in eleven herbs and spices and cooked to the Colonel's secret recipe. But that's because I have a sick sense of humour.

Busy campaign for Rocker - this is great if you know which Rocker they are talking about. Will Blues gamble? Darned if I know. Who are the Blues exactly? Or what?

There was also "Jack has staying targets" which not only assumes that we know who Jack is, but doesn't actually make any kind of literal sense. What is a staying target? Is Jack perhaps running a hotel for archery equipment? Or perhaps some of his hotel guests are wanted fugitives?

Then my favourite one: "Americans vote on gay marriage and marijuana". Now I know you all know what that's about, but when I first read it I thought it sounded like it was all one thing - gay marriage and marijuana, as if you had to be stoned to marry your same-sex partner. And not 'stoned' in the Biblical sense either.

But then there was one that didn't make sense any way you sliced it.

Missed opportunity indeed.