And now Brian Hanraha-hanrahan's dead too!

Brian Hanrahan was a decent, reliable BBC journalist who made his name covering the Falklands war, and was on the scene for Tiananmen Square (oh dear, that's me blocked from China).

He was immortalised as the face of churnalism - perhaps slightly unfairly but irresistibly by Chris Morris in The Day Today:

This is the newsssss… God I wish it wasn't

Over at Blossom's place, she's bemoaning ITV News' apparent assumption that their viewers are utter morons. Coincidentally, I gave a lecture this week on genre, mostly contrasting Miss Marple with The Wire to discuss generic conventions, but I did start with a quick discussion of news conventions, starting with the music and credits. I showed the punters these clips:



This is ITV's News at Ten: a classic piece of work which packs authority, hegemony inconsequentiality and pomposity into a few seconds.



Now this is Chris Morris's spoof, The Day Today. When it was made many years ago, it seemed to be an achingly funny spoof of the desperate rubbish masquerading as TV news. Now it looks like the source of modern broadcasters' ideas. Does that make it even funnier or depressing?

Chris Morris: Bow Down, Mortals

As sophisticated media-savvy types, you'll know all about Chris Morris: The Day Today, On The Hour, Brass Eye, Nathan Barley - the scourge of the vacuity of modern media, politics and culture.

I thought I'd share with you an extract from Blue Jam, his hypnotic, disorienting, freakish and sometimes nightmarish mid-period radio monologues, from the days when Radio 1 actually had a brain. These were on late at night, always soundtracked with this vaguely ambient stuff, so that I would doze off and the monologues would leak into my already disturbing dreams. It's a very unpleasant experience.