I'm fed up with the BBC running very, very lengthy stories about itself.
Newsnight last night featured a huge piece about the job cuts about to take place at the BBC.
Some coverage was justifiable, but would Paxman have given the same prominence to an equivalent number of job losses at a) another broadcaster or b) a manufacturing company?
The today programme this morning was even worse I thought they started negotiating on air with Mr M Lyons Chair of the Trust
ReplyDeletePaul Smith
They are in a hard place because there would be whingeing from the right-wing anti-BBC people if they seemed to downplay negative stories about the BBC.
ReplyDelete1800 biased gravy train riding non-jounralists getting the sack? Best news ever!!
ReplyDeleteWell I'll ignore the saloon-bar ignorance of "dave" there, and try to flag up why this matters.
ReplyDeleteThe cutbacks at the BBC aren't taking place in a vacuum; they're part of a wider depressing trend of cost-cutting, short-termist trend-hopping and, in the private media, rapacious profiteering across the industry.
And the importance of this goes beyond a standard trade unionist's complaint to the denigration of public debate. The reasons for the Beeb's increasingly trivial coverage of politics and most local papers' dearth of informed local council coverage and the infantilisation of public debate in general are related to this lack of investment in, or interest in, journalism by the people that run the industry.
So Luke, as a good trade unionist, I hope you'll support the NUJ and BECTU in their campaigns against these cuts - this is about defending the very ethos of public service broadcasting.
http://www.standupforjournalism.org.uk/intro.html
Yes I'll support the campaign - I just don't want to have it dominate the news coverage.
ReplyDeletee10 rifle I accept what you say about the true context of all of this but the BBC doesn't exactly go out to win friends and allies.
ReplyDeleteUnbelievable amounts of money paid to 'super celeb and super borer' Jonathan Ross just as the BBC sounds the alarm about lack of income. A news production team on TV and radio that is over-focused on London and the South East; hence Paxman on a permanent whine about the temerity of the Scots wanting their own piece of the Neswnights schedule. And of course, a bit of heavy rain in London? - that'll be the 'entire country suffering washout reported' whereas thousands of Hull residents flooded out of their homes? - takes 24 hours to even get a mention on national news. The pathetic cave-in 'to Campbell et all over the Kelly affair'.
As for the appalling pro-English bias of their sports team that's broadcast at us in Scotland, Wales and Ireland by the BRITISH Broadcasting Corporation... well I'll just not go there:)
But still and all I think that one of the less savoury legacies of the Blair era has been a much weakened BBC. That's a bad thing for us all and not just the many world-respected people who work there.