SCRUTATOR this week nearly suffered heart failure after stumbling, while travelling on a public taxi to town, upon a midday news bulletin on one of the local radio stations.
In fact, I was lucky to have a friend nearby who had to perform CPR on me after the bogus news bulletin almost sucked the last breath out of me.
I still remember I was sitting next to a school kid who, like most passengers on the taxi, was listening attentively to the wireless tuner.
It was just after 12 noon on Tuesday.
“It’s good to give. I always feel good when I make a difference in someone’s life and say ey she’s a nice person,” I recall the announcer saying.
“She did this for me she did that for me. Isn’t it nice to put a smile on someone’s face? It brings joy.”
At that time I thought it was just one of those shallow presenters gushing nonsense in one of the many Mickey Mouse programmes shamelessly passed off as fit for human ears.
Then she continued.
“In other news . . .”
I fainted.
If anyone knows what happened to the child who was seated next to me, please do not hesitate to contact me.
I’m dead worried and prepared to spend a fortune to have the child undergo trauma counselling.
Right now, I’m contemplating a lawsuit against the radio station for unleashing poison disguised as news on unsuspecting listeners.
Could this be the result of expelling seasoned presenters and replacing them with greenhorns who until they were recently employed by the station had never seen a mic?
And to imagine that such mediocrity is funded by taxpayers boggles the mind!
From what was forced into my ears on Tuesday, it’s clear the presenter or whoever put together the news knows zilch about broadcast journalism.
Yet we were told the station was employing only people with degrees.
What bunkum!
It’s high time a commission of inquiry was set up to probe why radio stations are allowed to air scatological nonsense without issuing warnings first.
Of course we all know who else needs to be probed.
For now, though, my hope is that sangomas will come up with a concoction to rid the print and broadcast media of nonsensical and dirty copy, as well as mutilated English.
When I began writing this column sometime last year there was a hullabaloo from fellow scribes who shamelessly accused me of promoting hate language and commotion within our journalism fraternity.
Not pleased with how I exposed their mediocrity these journalists wailed and moaned about imaginary foreigners who they claimed were out to disrespect Basotho.
The truth of the matter was that local journalists were in some kind of false comfort zone until I, the daughter of ‘Ma Scrutator, said enough was enough.
They had lived and learnt to accept mediocre copy which they shamelessly deemed fit to be read by people with something between their ears.
I fearlessly rejected their charges, realising that these journalists were in fact a threat to themselves.
Now, almost a year later, all the noise about Scrutator has died down.
In fact, our biggest rivals across town now have an even more acerbic column, “Radio This Week”, in which they are bashing left, right and centre the shoddy presenters at local radio stations.
We have now gone full circle, haven’t we?
The producers of Big Brother Africa have done it again.
For some strange reason the reality show, now in its fourth season, continues to treat Lesotho like a province of South Africa despite the fact that the rest of the world recognises this country as an independent and sovereign state with a government of its own.
When the producers of Big Brother Africa promised a bigger and revolutionary version this year, Scrutator thought these fellows had finally seen the light and decided to involve more countries including the Mountain Kingdom following our protests after being left out for the third time again last year.
A check of the list of housemates in the current edition, dubbed Big Brother Africa: The Revolution, has left Scrutator heartbroken yet again.
Yours truly has checked high and low and is certain that there is no Mosotho in the house.
Instead there are countries like Nigeria and Namibia with three housemates apiece.
Granted, Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country with well over 100 million people.
But how do the producers of Big Brother Africa justify Namibia having three housemates when Lesotho has zilch given that our populations are more or less the same at around two million people?
Scrutator is still trying to understand what could be revolutionary about increasing the number of contestants from the same countries that have provided boring housemates in the past instead of bringing in people from new countries in order to give the show a truly African outlook.
After increasing the number of housemates from the usual 12 to 25, it’s shocking that 22 of them are from the traditional 12 countries while three are shared between Mozambique and Ethopia – the two new entrants this season.
Scrutator can hardly see anything revolutionary about this damp squib.
To make matters worse, some loony in the creative department has decided to give Big Brother a female voice.
We have always thought that “Big Brother” is supposed to be male.
Maybe the latest edition should be aptly called Big Sister Africa 4: The Revulsion.
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