Election news? New media of course

Somebody told me that the best way to obtain news about this presidential election is to get it via the new media. Yeah right. As if I was daft to get the news via the state media for instance.
I mean I want even the propaganda I read to come to me without the giggle factor.
New media besides, is a whole basket of options. You can go from blogs to websites to e-mails and then to the entirely exciting area of You Tube videos and net-based television and even sms.
Conventional media has no chance they told me against these kinds of devices. A friend of mine who is a new media fan simply said that the mouse on your table is a mighty mouse.
I couldn’t do much, but agree with him. Mighty-mouse indeed with all these possibilities, and all this scope, given to me with one or two humble mouse clicks.

New media

So ring in the new media for me I said — out with the old.
Now I’m neck deep in it. New media gives news with salt, pepper and the whole cupboard of condiments believe me. For example, I heard Hudson Samarasinge is blushing at the colour of the language used in the new media. Wham bang it goes —- folks using the Mariyakade on You Tube, sms, message boards, you name it — the whole of cyber space filled with Sri Lankan Mariyakade dialect. “Adey, oka is a blackguard, araka the candidate is a @#$***@$$$&’’ etc.,
But ok. So what if the new media is more nuanced that Hudson Samarasinghe? Somebody might say it is after all more organic.
But look at the plus side, my friend said, of the new media.
It’s a mine of information. Not the sort of thing you get in conventional media.
Sure I said. With such a plethora of media devices at its disposal it has to be.
So I started getting my election news from the new media.
Phew!
You wouldn’t believe this. Everybody is not only a crook in the new media, everybody is a crook -- plus their brigandry is riven with references to their mothers, their mother’s mothers, etc.
Definitely this new media is not for the faint hearted. On the average the reputations of candidates and 12.5 other people are destroyed here — in cyber space — - every minute.
Just like that.
They tell me this is the news, but if this is the news, this must be the news with the Terminator.

Juicy details

While they give the news, scores of men are flung through the windows, crash bang — you can hear the window-panes go kerplunk.
You need to have a stomach for blood if you read this new media. If you get an e-mail saying such and such a fellow is a rogue, next minute you’ll get ten sms messages and five You Tube videos via e-mail and blogs etc., saying not only that such and such a guy is a rogue but also that such and such a guy’s mother slept with the entire town, and that his wife is the city tart and other such juicy details such as these.
I asked my friend why I need such details with such news. He says don’t be daft. We are at the cutting edge he says. Before he finishes the sentence there is a twitter update saying that all so and so’s followers are descendants of a Sinhalese harlot.
I tell you.
Nothing beats the new media for election news.
If this is the news, I dread to think what the new media calls slander and hearsay. But somebody told me that new media does not need slander and hearsay.
This is the primordial soup. NEWS stands for Nobody Ever Was Safe, and the alternative definition is Never Edifying Whopping Slander. New media - brother, sister, it’s my thing.
News? Yeah right.