Fake News
The Head of the Dorset Press Association - A.P. Reuter - has today hit out at claims that the absence of any news is itself news by insisting that "news that there is no news is fake news". The news that there was no news to report was broken yesterday by several newspapers including the Mappowder Mirror whose headline "No News Day" dominated the non-news across all media and news outlets on a day which many admitted was a quiet day for news. Even the recently somnolent professorthrupiece.com - the digital info-portal controlled by media giant the Threadbone Corporation - emerged from its slumbers to report news of the absence of news on its moderately influential news platform, having been accused itself of prolonged radio silence due - many say - to an absence of any reportable news.
Breaking news expert - Bray King-Knews - believes that the validity of the claim that the absence of news yesterday is in fact fake news rests entirely on an interpretation of precisely what constitutes news and whether the absence of what normally constitutes news [assuming there is a consensus on the matter] is "in and of itself" news. "It's rather like the argument about absence and presence", he contends. "Does the absence of a presence signify a true absence or the presence of an absence?", he asks, "and if a presence can indeed be absent, then what constitutes pure absence".
To answer that question, we asked the University of Afpuddle's Virtual "Visiting" Professor of Practical Hermeneutics, Logic and Recycling, Professor Con Katen-Ayshon to supply a layman-friendly view. He writes:
"Philosophers, logicians, rationalists and metaphysicians have long debated the thorny questions of presence and absence and it would be fair to say that considerations of absence and presence have rarely been absent from - which is to say ever present in - our thoughts and our public discourse and debates. Ever-present, they have been absent only in the sense that the sometimes taken-for-granted nature of their presence in ALL of our considerations has provoked an unremarked sense of virtual absence which is to say an unfocussed - perhaps even a taken-for-granted - presence at a subconscious level. In the absence of any better explanation I hope that clarifies the matter for your readers - at least for the present ".
Meanwhile in other fake news, the Mappowder Mirror is today reporting that lockdown will end "at some time in the next decade". Happily no one seems to have been taken-in by that particular pre-April Fool message.