On the BBConline UK frontpage we see “Row looming over cannabis grading”
To its right, a survey is highlighted: “Third of staff ‘hungover at desk’“
Surveys and political “debates”- two of the BBC’s favourite things.
Well, what I am suggesting is that such tie-ins between a feature about the classifiction of Cannabis and the deleterous effects of alcohol is not coincidental- the BBC want to emphasise the old talking point about all drugs being equal (except the really hard ones).
Of course it’s manufactured news, opinion rather than reporting events, politicised rather than straightforward- the usual BBC thing.
People might hold all sorts of views on this but they don’t have to force the issue, whether there is a political demand to or not, through the media. Social experience is largely determinative, in my view. Against the BBC survey I would place my own experience- a cousin of mine died through mental ill-health which followed youthful cannabis usage. But, like, whatever…
http://www.alcoholconcern.org.uk/servlets/home
“The fact is as GC stated that “coincidences” repeated become less and less coincidental and more and more of a pattern.”
As noted before, you’ve only produced one instance of a story in the ever-changing right-hand collection of links being in any way associated with the more constant picture lead on the same page.
One instance can’t produce a pattern.
And quite frankly, given the number of completely unrelated stories listed in the same block as that alcohol story at the time, and the number of stories in that block unrelated to the lead story, any attempt to subliminally link the two by listing the alcohol story in that block would be doomed to failure. If the BBC was shrewd enough to be that subtle, surely they would relaise that too?
“Meanwhile the other story was from a survey- we all should know by now that surveys are commissioned, and the commissioners of surveys to be published usually for one reason or another have in mind the news cycle.”
Sorry for jumping around a bit in your comments, but I wanted to make sure that I responded to his bit: I agree completely. The number of press releases we get in to our newsdesk that are based on surveys is staggering. We could easily run far more news stories both in print and online if we regurgitated them all. I do think they’re something of a blight on all sectors of journalism, and the BBC is certainly far from immune (given its high profile, it’s also far more obvious when it does it, which makes it all the more frustrating). It’s not alone, though: try reading pretty much any national paper on a Monday morning following a slow news weekend…
Given what you’ve found on Alcohol Concern’s website, I can appreciate why you feel there’s an increased chance of some sort of link with the timing. However, I would suggest that if there is a link between the timing of AC’s report and the cannabis one, it’s probably more likely to have come from their end than the Beeb’s. Although given my experience of the public sector, I’m not really sure they’d be that organised 🙂
Don`t forget,that first half of lager shandy could well be the `gateway` to two bottles of vodka a night.
“Biased BBC is, as I’ve said before, a worthy concept in theory. In practice on this site, though, it fails because of the poor level of quality control” –
LOL. So you say. What else would be a beeboid say? It seems to be a requirement for the job that one cannot discern patterns – or that one wilfully refuses to discern patterns.
Peter Hitchens, ‘Mail on Sunday’:-
(extract)
“I wonder just how many civil servants, BBC and Guardian journalists, ‘respected academics’ and politicians are concealing serious current drug habits from us.
“Given the condescending tone of these people towards anti-cannabis spokesmen during the past week, I think BBC presenters especially should be asked outright on air if they use illegal drugs, or allow their children to do so, if only so that we can enjoy the awkward pauses that follow.
“The snivelling claim that they are entitled to a ‘private life’ applies only if their greasy personal habits have no influence on their public behaviour.
“But they do. On two of the rare occasions when I was allowed to make the case against dope on the airwaves, I found myself subjected to a stare of pure, undisguised hatred from one BBC presenter, and was angrily harangued after my appearance on a commercial station by a journalist who had been in the studio.
“This, you see, is the thing they truly care about.
“They pretend to be worried about dictatorship in Burma or hunger in Africa or the oppression of women in the Muslim world. But that’s just dinner-party fake concern.
“The real issue for the 1968 generation has always been their right to have fun, however much it costs other people.
“So they have promoted ways of behaviour, sexual rules and a drug culture that were bad enough on the college lawns of Oxford and Cambridge in 1968, and that are plain disastrous among the dead mattresses and burned-out cars on the sink estates of post-industrial Britain.
“But rather than give up their delights, they are content to see the poor go to hell.”
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/