Sunday 22 July 2012

BBC NEEDS TO BROADCAST PROPER NEWS, NOT DRIVEL.

Listening to this morning's BBC Radio 4 news at 9 o'clock, makes me wonder why we bother with 'News' on the BBC.

For the last week and more, we've been assailed by increasing hysteria about Bradley Wiggins winning the 'Tour de France'. Not that he 's actually won it yet and he won't until later today, but this inconvenience hasn't prevented the BBC from reporting, daily, that he's going to win it. Today's news broadcast was no different and was even repeated on television on "The Andrew Marr Show", with interviews and all. Since when have future events of this type become news ?

The BBC followed the non-news about Wiggins with an item about President Obama visiting the site of the recent shooting in the US; not that he's visited there yet, but he will do so later; this is not news. Item three was yet another non-story, something about a commemoratory day in Norway for the shootings there a year ago. How is this story worthy of being included as the third most important news story of the day ?

Finally, we arrived at  an item of real news. Increasing unrest in Syria has to be a serious concern to the whole of the Euro-Asian world and yet it ranked as only the fourth most important item in the minds of the cretins who determine such things in the BBC. It may be that the crisis in Syria is becoming a bit boring for the bright young things who run the BBC, but this is one of the few international news stories of the moment; for it to be relegated to only fourth place, after 3 non-stories, shows how little the Corporation values genuine news coverage and how much it panders to populist and sentimental tripe.

Sadly, it was then back to a story of little importance, the resignation of Rupert Murdoch from a number of directorships within his 'NewsCorp' group of companies. That Murdoch is 81 and well past retirement age seems to have been ignored and, in any case, why is this worthy of being considered national news ?

A story which seems minor but is probably an indicator of the ways in which successive governments in this country show a total lack of common sense came next. A Fijian man who served in the British Army for 13 years and has married and made his home her, has been told he must now leave the UK by 9th August. Having served in Afghanistan and Iraq, he left the army in June but a fight he had with a colleague in 2010 is deemed to give him a criminal record; accordingly, the Border Agency, an organisation of dubious quality and ability, has said he is debarred from settling here. That this is a grotesquely unfair judgement must be abundantly clear even to the jobsworths of the BA, but the real story has to be the utter stupidity and incompetence of its staff. One can only hope that this man who has given so many years to this nation will eventually have his application to stay approved by someone with a brain cell.

The Beeb then progressed from the insane to the desperate. Today, temporary trading laws come into force for the duration of the madness that is the Olympic / Paralympic farce.All shops, including the largest supermarkets, will be allowed to remain open on Sundays for the same hours as during the other 6 days. Small convenience shops are unhappy as they can see their customers drifting away to the larger shops and, no doubt, many of the staff of the larger stores are finding themselves under pressure to give up their Sundays. All of this is in an attempt to maximise the financial benefits of the Olympics though I fail to understand why longer Sunday opening hours will increase takings; surely this will only spread the existing spend over more hours. Of course, visitors here specifically for the Games may benefit, but they're likely to have only so much money which they'll spend, or not, regardless of the Sunday opening hours. The rest of us will just have to grin and bear it.

The last item deemed worthy of inclusion in the BBC's news was the death of the once beautiful actress, Angharad Rees, at the age of only 63. This story doesn't actually make it onto the headlines on teletext (not teletext noe, I know, but what else do you call it ?) and one would have to ask why it should. I well remember being enthralled by her portrayal of the elfin 'Demelza' in the serialisation of Winston Graham's 'Poldark' series on television in the 1970s and I still have videos of the programmes; Angharad was perfectly cast and must have been a fantasy 'love' for many, but she was, in all honesty, a minor actress. Her death at such a young age saddens me greatly and will encourage me to have another look at the great series, but it no more warranted inclusion in the country's main news broadcast than would have the demise of any of our bronze medal winners from 
the 1976 Olympics.

After listening to this broadcast, do I feel enlightened about the world and what's happened in the last few hours ? Are you 'avin' a larff ?! Three items were not even news, Bradley Wiggins, Obama and Norway; the amended Sunday trading laws was a reminder of something decided a long time ago, and the items about Rupert Murdoch and Angharad Rees were too minor to be included in a limited national news broadcast. Only two stories, about the Fijian soldier and trouble in Syria, were worthy of inclusion. What a joke.

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