Neither fish nor fowl
Monday, June 9th, 2008
Surprisingly, MPs do not actually watch much television but many do watch programmes like Newsnight, Andrew Marr’s Sunday programme and Question Time. Radio 4’s Today Programme is compulsory listening in the mornings.
Because it is so widely viewed, I do try to watch the BBC six o’clock TV news from time to time, and did so on Thursday evening. The whole session was extraordinary. We started off with a long piece about an Englishman who is going on trial in the United States – for allegedly murdering his wife: pretty graphic stuff. Then we moved on to three Britons missing off the Bali coast whilst diving – happily all is well now and the subsequent story about toxic dragons was terrific . Then the third item was a tragic story of a young boy who had hanged himself because of the deaths of his mother and grandfather.
Now there were indeed all powerful and exceptional human interest stories. In presentational terms, however, it was the television equivalent of tabloid newspaper journalism.
This was on the same day, for example, when the news from Zimbabwe was really very grim indeed, yet it fell into fourth place.
The BBC is entitled to put on popular viewing programmes, and it does. But surely, as a public service provider, the main evening news should be a serious exercise in prioritising what is really happening in the world we inhabit, whether here or abroad. After all, the BBC boasts a unique number of foreign correspondents, and they are of world-beating quality, as indeed are their commentators on the local political and economic scene.