Meathman's Diary: Broken down by the endless cycle of breaking news

Michael Keaveny

My grandad used to tell a story of how one evening after a day’s work on the farm, news broke through the wireless that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbour, effectively bringing America into the Second World War.

In a pre-multimedia age where newsflashes were conversations held over hedges, the idea of one global superpower attacking another would have been truly monumental, a “remember where you were moment”, proven by the fact that he could recall the event over 50 years later.

The first such moment that I can remember was the attack on the World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001, (forgive me for not remembering the death of Princess Diana, I had just turned four).

Other notable 'Remember Where You Were Moments' (RWYWM) that spring to mind was the death of Michael Jackson, the inauguration of Barack Obama and Joe Sheridan’s (legitimate) goal in the 2010 Leinster Final.

Sadly although I have vague memories of my granny telling me and my siblings that Meath had won the 1999 All Ireland Final, my knowledge of most of Meath’s glory years are based on programmes like 'Reeling in the Years'.

The intervening years between the advent of modern telecommunications has meant that news has been commodified to such an extent that all news has become breaking news and therefore not news at all.

Our rapid churning 24/7 news cycle means that events and non-events are being blended up and spat out into public consciousness at a rate that makes it impossible to take nothing but take a bite out of it but not digest it properly.

The biggest RWYWM of my lifetime and arguably of the last 40 years happened last week when Vladimir Putin went full rogue when he invaded Ukraine (although some would argue that process started when he annexed Crimea in 2014).

While waking up on Wednesday morning to a push notification that the invasion had taken place wasn’t a bolt from the blue, it was jarring.

Putin’s activity on the border of Ukraine had been well documented in recent weeks, to such an extent that despite the repeated warnings that an invasion was imminent, people were still ruminating on it to the point of dismissing it as mere posturing of another deranged world leader.

By the looks of things, world leaders took the same approach, though parallels can be drawn between Macron’s meetings with Putin and Chamberlain’s attempt to appease Hitler.

You can’t help but recall the famous words of philosopher George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”.

Lessons weren’t learned back then. Will they be learned now? I wouldn’t count on it.