Whilst reading some of the responses on the MeFi thread, chill said what I've thought about how young people are portrayed in the media. 
OK, BBC3 sucks but don't just pull the plug, look at why it sucks (it is indistinguishable for Sky One/E4 and forgets that some "Yoofs" actually have brains) and improve upon it.
Too true. BBC3 seems to offer nothing - the 'news' on there consists of celebrity meandering (who needs the Hutton Inquiry when Justin Timberlake substitutes so well for real news?). The channel seems intent on inflicting enormous amounts of Fame Academy on the world.
My problems are endemic of how young people are dealt with by the media - as if they are idiots. Children's TV is filled with vapid personalities with little to say and big booming voices to say it in. Subtelty is a lost cause in TV-land: if it isn't wrapped round a brick and smashed through people's eardrums at maximum volume they won't "get it". And whatever problems the rest of the media has, it's amplified by childrens programming.
I don't claim to be a mastermind, but why is there some commonly held belief that all "youths" are mobile-phone toting, Max Power reading retards decked out in stripy sports gear listening to 'four to the floor' dance music. News has to be repurposed for a Radio 1 audience - given a 'beaty' background and screamed.
Perhaps we're genetic mutations, but it's nice to think that we'd be given a little bit more credit than being told that "you are interested in Justin Timberlake - no objections". The BBC is supposed to stand for more than that. Unbiased reporting and balanced, intelligent commentary. That's what I've come to regard the BBC as standing for. On BBC3 tonight, there is one and a half hours of Fame Academy, a movie, a "shocking" documentary of a U.S. GUM clinic, some tedious programme about 'beauty'. Probably all packed in typical 'punchy' style necessary to hit the youth market. And all bathed in the beautiful lack of content that distinguishes the youth media market from anything for the older generation.
I haven't really been following the Hutton inquiry, but from the little bits I've read about it, it sounds a hell of a lot more interesting than the MTV Music Awards. How fucked up is that? I'm finding more interest out of the going-ons of a government inquiry than I am for the "cool, hip" MTV that I'm supposed to spend all day worshipping. Why? Because the former is relevant to what's actually going on.
The message that needs to be learnt by dumb media execs is this: "kids aren't dumb - they don't suddenly grow brains when they are twenty-five. Stop acting like it."
