Lost out there in the media jungle

It's a Lost world. We were doing fine with it but then the series started on British TV and their media went loopy and nearly did our heads in with talk of how unrealistic it is and what a crock we've been sold. Truth is, we want to be sold a crock. Unreality is where we live. Guide price, my eye, we'll give you another million for it. Lost and all its money (it spent £6m on the first episode) puts up nothing more outrageous than life does.

It can not be blamed for having too many extras on set, unlike this week's drama in Gaza where there are 6,000 media personnel on hand to report on the forced evacuation of 8,000 Jewish settlers. The BBC reported that there is one media person "for every one-and-a-third evicted settler". The pressure must be tremendous. On the media, I mean. On Monday night, Sky's Emma Hurd, looking impossibly chic in blue jeans, did a piece to camera where she suddenly turned sharp left as she spoke from Israel and then, next shot, wasn't she walking in from stage left, except that now she and her long skinny legs were in Gaza. Still, what's a girl to do when there are 5,999 other media personnel about and, God knows, not much space.

And the casting! I ask you. RTÉ's Richard Crowley looks all tanned and Middle Eastern (and, let it be said, a fine thing) and Ariel Sharon looks like he's never had a sun holiday in his life. And there are a few wardrobe problems too. Sky's Tim Marshall had a jacket on. In the studio in London, he looks like he falls out of bed to come in and analyse the latest happening for us but there he is in Israel, with a jacket. A kind of a sports coat job. In August.

And what about the hair and make up elsewhere in the unfolding drama of the world? This week, Japan commemorated the 60th anniversary of its surrender at the end of the Second World War by issuing a new apology for its invasions of Asian countries. And did you see the feck of Koizumi? Nothing about that haircut says sorry, now does it?

Story lines don't add up. Take poor old Robin Cook dying on the mountain. Much was made of the fact that he and his wife had no mobile phones on their hill walk and that another walker used his to call for an ambulance and medical advice. And then, in his funeral coverage, we hear of the text message he sent his son an hour before he died.

And how many millions of people all over the world paused on Sunday to ponder the message sent by the passenger on the ill-fated Cypriot plane which crashed into the Greek mountainside. "Farewell, cousin. Here we're frozen", it said, or words to that effect. Except there's reason to believe it was never sent, never received and was instead a fiction created by a man from Thessalonica who called Greek television stations.

While we have overload from coverage of some of the world's dramas, we have an astonishing dearth of information with regard to other stories. While we keep hearing that in the time before (and indeed subsequent to) the arrest of the Colombia Three, the bomb-making capabilities of Farc increased dramatically and that distinguishing features of bombings differed from before and mirrored our own home-grown expertise. However, there is a curious lack of faces and names of those killed and injured in those attacks. Why is that? Caught as we are in the midst of a massive spin about those three men, you'd think that some media person would seek to redress the balance with a few stories of what the real cost is, in human lives, in suffering. Or is Colombia a step too far. Too much real jungle and not just the prettified one in Lost. And it's not like Gaza, with the American Colony Hotel and the cocktails and the cooling breezes from the Jerusalem hills never more than an hour away.

And, this week, while we are so heartened that the missing Claire emerged from the scary undergrowth in the last moments of Lost on Monday, it was something of a joy to hear that, on Saturday, the missing 15 year old from Co. Derry 'phoned home. She didn't know where she was but it turned out to be Charleville, Co Cork. Truth is, anywhere can be a jungle. Be careful out there.