7 Responses to I’ll try to catch up

  1. billg says:
    January 2, 2004 at 3:38 am

    A report on the BBC news site earlier today about a man rescued alive from earthquake rubble in Iran included the word ‘saved’ in quotes in the headline.

    Now, this is inexplicable.

    And, yes, if someone ran up to me and shouted “I just saw someone shoot Natalie Solent”, I’d assume there was one less blogger in the world.

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  2. Johnlouis Swaine says:
    January 2, 2004 at 3:48 am

    Had a similar experience with the BeeB today, watching News24 *wretch* and a review 2003 piece in which Suicide Bombers who strike civilian targets in Israel are, “called ‘terrorists’ by the US and Israel” as if this was an unjust lable, or one particular to the opinions of the US and Israel.

    How long before they drop the word ‘terrorist’ entirely from their broadcasts?

    What about “religious activists” or “martyrdom enthusiasts”?

    It seems I can’t go 10 minutes without seething at some piece of idiotic BBC spin on News24. Why can’t I get a _decent_ 24 hour news service? At what point did the British Public require all their news to be spun by legions of editors and commentators and correspondants in order to be considered digestable?

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  3. Eamonn says:
    January 2, 2004 at 12:32 pm

    Robin Lustig presents a religion special on “The World Tonight” last night. The programme focusses on how religion changes politics and world events.

    So, do we get an analysis of how Islam has been hijacked to promote terrorism? No we don’t, and so predictably we instead get an analysis of how Bush etc have hijacked Christianity to mould the world according to “fundamentalist” Christian principles. Then we have a panel of left-liberal windbags who tut-tut about Bush, the USA etc. You know the script…

    The maddening thing is that the programme BEGINS from the assumption that there is something wrong with having strong biblical beliefs (though oddly not Islamic beliefs). It then effortlessly moves on to rubbish Bush and the republicans.

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  4. Eamonn says:
    January 2, 2004 at 12:45 pm

    Another example from last night’s BBC Radio 4 coverage. Bel Mooney interviews Linda Smith about faith. Basically, Linda Smith doesn’t have any so the programme was a bit of a waste of time. However, the BBC probably thought it was interesting because Smith was able to say such things as (roughly translated):

    Socialism is more in line with Christianity than “right wing parties”

    No true believer could be a monetarist or conservative

    Bush is bad, partly because he is a fundamentalist Christian

    Etc, etc, etc

    Anyone else get annoyed by this type of thing? All the Radio 4 news quizzes and comedy slots seem to assume the listeners follow the same Guardian Editorial line. I can assure them we do not.

    On the other hand what joy to see the “Tony Martin” bill winning on the Today programme. That’s one up the arrogant rears of Naughtie and Humphries. However, it didn’t take them long to develop a conspiracy theory – that Tony Martin’s supporters have hijacked the vote. S

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  5. Peter Bolton says:
    January 2, 2004 at 5:26 pm

    Asked by Ed Stourton why South Africa has such an apalling road accident rate Fergal Kean advised Radio 4 listeners that it was ‘a legacy of the aggression of the apartheid years.’
    No mention of the following
    a) best, therefore fastest roads in Africa
    b) the state of South African cars
    c) over one million unregistered cars
    d) mini bus drivers being paid by number of jouneys made per day, encouraging them to drive fast
    f) the naturally competitive nature of local drivers, and their ‘life is cheap’ attitude
    All this would be honest, but would never do in the eyes of an ‘on message’ reporter like Fergal

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  6. JohninLondon says:
    January 2, 2004 at 9:01 pm

    Eamonn

    You touched on a sore point there, in passing.

    No BBC “comedy” programme like The News Quiz would be complete without a left-winger like Linda Smith ready to have a pop at Bush, WMDs etc.

    The idea of giving Linda Smith a whole half-hour to spout her left-wing rubbish under the guise of discussing religion is a new slant !

    Peter Bolton – yes,you can always bank on Feargal Keane to come up with some self-flaggelating sanctimonious nonsense.

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  7. Sonofhades says:
    January 4, 2004 at 10:30 pm

    Well, sex and violence sell the news of today’s world. It does sound more exciting to say “x shot at y” instead of “x fired tear gas on a group of y”, doesn’t it? Would you have checked the page 122 if it had read the latter and not the former type of headline?

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