Cliché Patrol
A tragedy occurs somewhere outside Dublin. Let's say a car accident, involving several deaths. The media gracefully swoop, vulture-like, on the area. Since the main subjects of the story( the victims) are dead, and their family are most likely too traumatised to speak to the press (how inconsiderate;we're the MEDIA, you know), local residents who are almost invariably not directly affected are the TV reporter's best chance for 'a few words'. These few words imbue the reporter with a near-mystical and entirely comprehensive understanding of the locality he/she is just about to leave at high speed in the TV network's van.

He/She closes the report with the following statement: Everyone in this CLOSE-KNIT COMMUNITY is DEVASTATED by this TRAGEDY. I imagine that TV reporters automatically lose their jobs or are demoted to working on Nationwide or somesuch if they do not obey this cardinal linguistic rule of reporting tragedies on TV.

The words 'close-knit community' are particularly important, although it is sometimes permissable to follow 'close-knit' with the epithet 'rural' . Remember, all communities are 'close-knit'. Sure, wouldn't they just unravel completely if they weren't? 'Rural' communities are the most closely-knit of all, however. You'd be hard pressed indeed to wriggle out of a rural community. They're like boa constrictors.

If Paddy Power opened a book on this, I'd bet my (cliché alert) bottom dollar that next time you see a tragedy reported on RTE, the words close-knit, (rural), community and devastated will appear in the piece. Don't these people have any imagination? Or, failing that, a decent thesaurus.