I’m so over (to use the modern phrase) these Today Tonight and A Current Affair shows. Masquerading as informative, magazine-style shows they are in fact nothing more than infomercials. It wouldn’t be so bad but isn’t it funny how the competing channels often run almost identical stories every night? They always have a ‘plug’ at the end for a website, a book or some product that we just can’t do without.

On Monday night we had the ‘medium’ (this one of course, is plugging her book) who says she can see, talk to and good gracious - take digital photographs of dead people. Why the hell the dead would hang around a graveyard is amazing to me anyway but this medium (I’d say she’s a little under-cooked, but that’s just my opinion) tried to convince the reporter that an orange glow above his head was a a ghost or some kind of spirit energy, don’t they love to use that word?

I’ll tell you what it is - and any amateur photographer will tell you the same - it’s lens flare (see an example to the right. Just look at those ghostly EYES, ooooo spooky…).

That’s all it is, not a ghostly entity, a spirit or any bloody thing else. Light entering a camera lens at certain angles can create a flash of colour. It used to happen with film cameras and it happens because of the same reason with digital cameras too.

I’m sorry to disappoint the ‘believers’ who think that tarot cards, palm readers, faith healers, numerology, spirits, demons, ghosts, mediums, gods, devils, astrology - any of it - actually pertain to something real. It’s nonsense. Silly, childish nonsense that should, by now, have been left firmly in the ignorance of the dark ages along with the Ju-Ju man with his bag of bones and the witch doctors. But no, it still persists and is believed by the gullible with absolutely no proof whatsoever here in the 21st Century.

Why? Money. That’s what this whole deal is all about. There’s a sucker born every minute and it’s a no-brainer to pretend you have a talent and convince someone who really wants to believe that you have a message from their recently departed love one or that staring into tea leaves is going to give someone a meaningful sign of what their future holds for them.

Isn’t it funny how this latest crop of ‘ghost whisperers’ suddenly found their talent after watching one of the TV series that have been and are on our screens now? Some people simply refuse to understand that these shows are fictional - yes, that’s right - they are made up.

I really have my doubts when some of these ‘real’ mediums say ‘the police departments ask me for help’. I simply don’t believe it anymore than I believe the ridiculous ‘Sensing Murder’ series, which has been shown to use, shall we say, ‘creative editing’ to make us believe the psychics actually come up with anything correct at all. As for these mediums that draw large crowds and produce messages from the other side for the audience,  just investigate cold reading yourself,  you would be amazed how accurate someone like Derren Brown (a magician and medium debunker) can be using the technique.

Call me skeptical, but I have better things to do than watch this tripe. If I want to be entertained I’ll go and see the latest Star Trek movie, if I want to be informed I’ll watch the ABC and SBS.

If it wasn’t for MasterChef Australia and So You Think You Can Dance (which are actually damn good reality shows) - oh and Good News Week of course too, I’d never bother with the other channels at all.