Here’s the spin:
BBC News highly regarded and trusted but needs to act to maintain reputation with audiences, BBC Trust review finds
Here’s the actual report:
Review of BBC Network News and Current Affairs
Here’s the Big Changes acoming your way:
As a result of its findings the Trust has set out a number of actions for the BBC Executive, including:
- Developing its online and mobile news provision so that it remains relevant for audiences in a rapidly-changing market;
- broadening the agenda and tone of BBC News to address audience concerns that it can sometimes feel ‘distant’ from their lives. This includes making more use of regional and local reporters on national network news, and making further progress in creating a more diverse workforce both on and off air;
- Increasing the impact of its current affairs output, with commissioning decisions driven by the significance and relevance of the subject matter and the insight offered to audiences;
- Ensuring that a wider range of international stories are available to audiences in the UK, making better use of the scale of the BBC’s foreign newsgathering resources.
Sounds like they had a good meeting. Lots of good wine, good food, bit o’gossip, tips on tax efficient pay scams..er…. schemes….and oh yes…better dream up a few worthy management targetty type things to make ’em look productive, on the ball and with it.
Do like that bit about ‘current affairs’……improve their impact by making them significant and relevant…along with some insight…..do they really need to be telling the journos to do that?
Sounds like not a lot is going to change.
I wonder why this review of BBC news and current affairs has been made available to the Public….shouldn’t it be under lock and key? Have they not heard that all such reviews are ‘eyes only‘ to be shrouded in secrecy behind the veil of ‘For the uses of journalism, literature or art’?
I wonder what the difference is between this review of BBC journalism and that conducted by Malcolm Balen. Maybe the BBC, in this age of austerity, decided it couldn’t afford to spend £300,000 covering up its mistakes….or perhaps it’s just because no Israelis get killed as a result of the journalism examined in this report.
My local news produces some of the most pro Labour output for the BBC. As the output comes from a major city I guess they would justify their left wing bias on that basis. But the area has a huge rural hinterland that returns many Conservative MPs but they get little air time and are interviewed used the ‘sneering technique’ but it usually fails because the front man just isn’t very good at it.
But I have been at meetings where the Trust has sought the views of the Members of the public. At least 95% (and that means I am the one in the twenty there who vote Tory) would well suit any BBC/Labour Party meeting and I have to carefully drip any gentle criticism otherwise I am shouted down. The Trust holds meetings where it gets the answers it wants to hear.
Which is the standard BBC tactic – cf. Any Questions etc.
“broadening the agenda and tone of BBC News”
Since when did News have to have an ‘agenda’?
So basically 75% of the report says the Evil Empire needs to expand into new media, continue to use its free money to undercut local outlets and open even more overseas bureaus?
How unexpected!
This self-serving drivel is the perfect example of how the BBC Trust is nothing more than a fig leaf for the BBC.
I’ve seen some new faces lately on the TV news. ‘Regional and Local’, what’s that? When is the BBC going to recognise England as a nation, it’s still only a group of ‘regions’ to them. We had an item this morning from ‘the south coast’. South coast of Wales? No of course, the south coast of England – Chichester – but England was not mentioned, does the BBC assume everyone everywhere knows where Chichester is? If the report had been from a town in Wales you can be sure Wales would have been mentioned, but not when it’s from England, BBC guidelines require that England, the nation, should not be mentioned.