An enjoyable element of Madeleine Sumption's review of BBC (but not World Service) coverage of UK immigration stores are the anonymous quotes from News insiders. Here's a few.
"Particularly in daily news coverage, particularly over the last 15 years or so, we’ve been utterly dominated by the Westminster news cycle. So the Newsroom takes so many of its daily cues from what’s coming out of Westminster politics […]. And [we will be told], “Millbank are deploying on A, B, C, D stories”. And I’m sitting there thinking, “Well, C and D aren’t really stories. They’re just things that politicians are doing today.” (Internal)"
"Because the Millbank machine is like a huge part of the BBC with masses of resources, its tanks just start rolling in the morning. And [some of us] are sitting there thinking, “Are we sure we’re on the right story?” But by that point it’s too late. (Internal)"
"There are times when it’s so obvious the government is literally saying to the pol corrs, ‘This is what we want to talk about this week.’ And then we do! (Internal)"
"Structurally, I feel that there could be benefit in trying to reassign coverage [on the same topics] to people so that it’s not someone jumping in and out of a policy issue. (Internal)"
"In the Newsroom it’s all about a hard top news line. It’s all they want to care about: is there a news line, is there a news line, is there a news line? I think we’ve got to think a bit differently and think, ‘What does our audience think about what is a news line? Do they even know what a news line is?’ Probably not. (Internal)"
"What do I film? So, which business wants to come on the telly and say, ‘I need more migrants’? They don’t. They want to hide. […] You want to record in a hospital. You can’t get in. NHS England won’t let us in. […] The reason we cover politics is because they’re desperate to talk. It’s easy. You just shove them in front of the camera. (Internal)"
I'm so not surprised. The media in general, but the BBC in particular, fawns on power. 'News' is defined primarily as 'what someone powerful has said or done.' If someone with no power has said or done something - eg a protest (perhaps one of the 2,000+ in London alone each year), it's a 'non-story'. Because they're just people; what difference will what THEY say make?
ReplyDelete