The Rising Tide of Media Mayhem

I had 20 minutes until deadline and the news editor told me that my story was going to be the front page splash.

This induced a horror in me like I'd never felt before. Previously I'd chatted to the mother and father of a 12-year-old who, a day earlier, had melted his brain with a heavy session of glue sniffing. I'd listened to a single mum whose only child, a victim of some obscure disease, lay in a coffin in the centre of the living room where we sat with a cup of tea. No horror here. Just my best attempt at dignity, and 100-words-a-minute shorthand.

I filed this front page splash, knowing full well it wasn't front page material but too terrified to say so (since we had nothing else), and I duly got the news editor on the line seconds later. He said: "Can you put some top-spin on it?"

I saw the recent BBC TV coverage of the tidal surge and predictions of flooding that was set to wipe out vast swathes of East Anglia, and this phrase, "Can you put some top-spin on it?" came back to haunt me.

I put "top-spin" on my story and, through the pressure of having to make something up to make a small story a big story, misquoted someone. We had to print an apology to avoid getting sued and I nearly lost my job. I never told anyone that I'd been asked to put "top-spin" on it. I reckon someone owes me one.

Anyway, it occurs to me that journalists have a new rule. This rule is very similar to the "top-spin" argument. It is no longer enough to tell the news as it happens. Now they have to tell the news before it happens. It involves guesswork, and adds more weight to the phrase, "Never let the facts get in the way of a good story."

News has evolved in three stages. First we had news after the event had occurred. Then we had news as it was happening. Now, heralded spectacularly by the BBC's coverage of the catastrophic flood that wasn't, we have news that's going to happen shortly. And there's going to be more of it. Why? Well, anyone charged with the task of raising the alarm to protect the public is going to do so more frequently and more openly, for fear of being criticised for not doing enough. So journalists will get plenty of warnings of impending disaster. The words "precaution" and "vigilance" might define the 21st century.

Journalists are a dwindling breed. The bloggers, the PRs, the man in the street with the video camera on his mobile phone are the new generation of reporters. So it's not enough for journalists to report on something as it's happening. We're already there. They have to beat us to it. Be better informed. Be the first one to say it.

Journalism has always been this way, of course. But reporting on news before it happens will only lead to gross exaggeration, "sexing-up", adding "top-spin" - whatever you want to call it. The only question is, how many East-Anglia-flooding-catastrophies-that-never-were will it take before the six o'clock news turns into an interactive "push the red button to choose the manner of your death" with some macabre Mystic Meg?