News Broken

The news is broken, it was discovered today in the small hours of the morning. The damage is said to be irreparable.

Alarmed TV news presenters have, in recent years, warned the public that the news was breaking on numerous occasions. However, at approximately nine minutes past four this morning a loud twang finally signalled the long-feared, catastrophic breakage.

"I was just having my make-up adjusted before Politics For Insomniacs went on air when I heard the sound every journalist dreads," said a shaken Andrew Neill. "I ran into the News 24 recording cupboard and there was the news lying face down on the floor - broken."

It was the same all over the world, with fragmentary stories coming in from every corner of the globe. Meanwhile, as the massive clear-up operation begins, the chances of repairing the news are said to be extremely slim.

"The problem these days is that so much of the world's news is cheaply manufactured by PR companies," sobbed Jeremy Paxman, who is now facing a lifetime of unemployment. "There simply aren't any journalists left with experience of constructing stories from scratch, using just the facts they found for themselves. Nowadays, frankly, you're lucky if they've even tinkered a bit with some pre-packaged rubbish that's probably been churned out by China."

Emergency services are already trying to find out just who actually broke the news for good. US authorities initially arrested News International tycoon Rupert Murdoch, over frequent claims by Fox News Channel that it was the first to break the news - but he was released without charge when investigators uncovered no traces of news at all in the station's studios.

Now the finger of suspicion is pointing towards the United Kingdom, as forensic specialists piece together mounting evidence that the last story the British media were covering at the time of the breakage was about Celebrity Big Brother having been won by a man who pretends to be a very angry budgerigar for a living.