What’s the difference between a catfish and a current affairs journalist?
One is a scum-sucking bottom feeder, and the other is a catfish.
Photo by Rich Anderson, Creative commons license.
I have been recently commissioned to write a new work for amplified cello and orchestra for premiere by Li-Wei Qin and the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. This new work entitled Ictalurus punctatus will be performed on 11 April 2008 in the opening concert of the Adelaide Cello Festival, an amazingly diverse collection of music focussing on the cello directed by Janis Laurs.
Television programmes such as A Current Affair and their staffers operate in a similar way to catfish such as Ictalurus punctatus (channel catfish), communing in dark, dank, fetid places and waiting hungrily for any detritus to fall their way. I recently read an article about farmed catfish that had been trained to eat human faeces. This seems the perfect metaphor for current affairs journalism.
Early in 2007 I experienced first-hand the nasty, lazy, predatory action of these journalists who act as if they are above the law: setting themselves up as judge, jury and executioner. They thrive on the lowest forms of intellectual nutrition and are curiously undiscriminating when it comes to ethics or standards. The whole encounter was tailored to elicit the most cheap, short-term substance-devoid reactions. The journalist in question was interested only in sensationalist cheap-shots as opposed to balance or even accuracy in the final presentation.
This new work is inspired by my own experience, the experience of my family as well as the characteristics listed above. I offer my apologies to the catfish of the world: these limnivores do actually fulfil a useful purpose in the world, unlike their human equivalents.
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