“News”
Title is in apostrophe’s for a reason.
When I lived in America, I found the BBC News website an absolute godsend. That, and the nightly BBC World News on BBC America was the lifeline I needed to keep me in touch with reality. Away from all the sensationalist nonsense churned out by the American news media.
Even when I came home, the BBC News is a website I checked many times a day. It was great, for all the local news you can get (I can check my parents area, my local area, where I am going to visit friends….), it was updated regularly throughout the day. Okay, it was starting to get a bit annoying in that, more often than not it was a ‘newsbite’, and not actually a ‘news report’, but I can accept that.
However, over the last few months I have been getting more and more annoyed.
It’s not just the BBC. I can’t blame them for the breakdown in the ability to report news any more. But I do blame them for succumbing to it.
There is not much news nowadays. There are witch hunts.
12 months ago it was bankers.
6 months ago it was still bankers. However, there was nothing new about what they were reporting, it was an out and out witch hunt for every one who worked for a bank.
Then along came swine flu. At least it gave the bankers a respite.
But really. Come on. It was not the huge deal the media made of it.
Thankfully, that didn’t last long. But not because someone came to their senses. Oh no. Something else came along. MP’s expenses.
Now, I am not suggesting any of these shouldn’t have been reported. I think they should all have been reported to the general public. I am suggesting that they are the huge attention grabbing (well, maybe some of the MP’s stories) headline makers the media made of them.
In desperation I turned away from the BBC. I check it maybe a couple of times a week now. But I am desperately trying to find something that will give me news, without giving me the tabloid sensationalist bullshit.
Today I was looking at the Guardian. To be honest I am not totally sure why - it has irritated the hell out of me the last fews days - really, I do not need, as one of the main front page headlines, at 4 o’clock in the afternoon, “London Tube Strike - LIVE!” - again, while this is news, most people just need to know it is happening, the reasons why it is happening. I have no idea what was actually being reported live, I shudder thinking it was just comments from disgruntled people sending in texts…..
Anyway, sorry, went off on one there.
There was an article about mortgages going up. Well, that’s hardly surprising is it, this is not major news (a bit like the pound dropping to $1.50, it’s really not that alarming, that’s probably more ‘normal’ than the $2 it’s been sitting at for the last couple of years).
This is a paragraph from the article (emphasis is my own) -
“The Bank’s nine-member monetary policy committee will be alarmed at the rise in mortgage costs. After slashing interest rates to just 0.5%, their lowest level ever, they embarked on the drastic policy of quantitative easing buying up billions of pounds worth of government bonds to bring down borrowing costs and boost lending to cash-strapped families and businesses.”
This is the kind of language I would expect to find in some tabloid such as The Sun.
Help! I need some ‘proper’ news!