I caught only the last ten minutes of Today this morning. The main item was that Bob Dylan has released an album of Christmas songs. This was the cue for an inconsequential ageist chat about his career and whether he’s lost it. Yawn. What is happening to Today? This is the self-declared flagship of the BBC’s £800m-a-year news operation, but increasingly it fills its airtime with trivia about non news. I did analysis recently that shows that such Dylan-like content has risen from 2% of Today’s feature time five years ago to more than 14% now. No doubt the BBC news bigwigs believe that this is what people want, that the audience is interested in arty-farty stuff that fits in with their worldvew, and that wall-to-wall news is a bad thing. People such as Dylan are just as important in this picture because their lefty hogwash views are about changing the world. But meanwhile, coverage of the real issues that matter, such as the slow motion coup d’etat by the EU, are virtually ignored.
DUMB AND DUMBER
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Leftist BBC Radio 5 in full anti Geert Wilders mode today.
You missed Harriet Harperson wriggling out of a question about Jackie Smith i.e. why is she still an MP? No answer was the deafening response.
Because she’s a woman.
Hi Norman, I commented on this piece in the open thread.
The arty farty nonsense on the Toady programme is good value – at least as far as the BBC is concerned.
It’s cheap, relatively harmless, is popular (innit) and is easy i.e. journalists do not have to make waves by upsetting friendly/favourable/tame politicians.
This non-journo work has been the norm since Zanulabour took over. All the stories you need are fed to you, re-write in your own words (if you can be bothered) and repeat ad-nauseum. Fill the rest of the space with cobblers like the Dylan non-story.
Easy, now sign my BBC expenses.
“But meanwhile, coverage of the real issues that matter, such as the slow motion coup d’etat by the EU, are virtually ignored”
Robin, I thought that was the point.
Could we see your report? I mean how often is Bob Dylan brought up himself, and what defines Dylan-like? Musician? Leftie? or just non-news – if so I’d say we’re making a case that the Beeb’s news coverage is getting worse, no doubt due to budget cuts to all their proper journaism in recent years – but rather different to ‘lefty hogwash’