We just had a look at the BBC’s own review into how it handles statistics, a review that conveniently and not unepxectedly found the BBC to be somewhat right-wing and reliant on the Tory government for the facts. The review started off with this statement….
At the heart of BBC journalism is a mission to deliver an accurate and impartial news service. Whether drawing on the expertise of its journalists or from external sources to interpret events or issues, the BBC aims to enhance audience understanding and knowledge about what is happening in the world. Part of the remit includes making sense of the blizzard of statistics that infuses so much contemporary debate, from the latest crime figures, to trends in the health service or the numbers claiming welfare benefits.
I don’t know if any of you have been listening to the BBC’s coverage of the Junior Doctors’ strike plans but from what I have heard, and it’s quite extensive, I’d say that accuracy and impartiality play little part in the BBC’s reporting aims and that enhancing the audience’s understanding and knowledge, making sense of events, is the least of the BBC’s concerns.
There is nothing new in this of course...we’ve been here before….
Junior doctors put patient’s lives on the line so they could get more saturday overtime whilst all the time claiming the strikes were about patient safety. And the interest from the BBC now? Zilch.
Exactly the same scenario is playing out now as the BBC neglects to inform us that the only, the only, issue is saturday pay…the health and safety of patients, the survival of the NHS, are not in the slightest genuine considerations for the Junior Doctors. It’s all about pay. But does the BBC tell us that?, does the BBC challenge the numerous Junior Doctors who fill the airwaves with their heartwarming assurances that this is all about saving the NHS and keeping patients safe? No.
Here’s Nicky Campbell’s analysis (42:30) of the situation as he tries to educate a caller….
Do you understand their (junior doctors) concerns, not just about their working conditions but the situation within the NHS and the long term threats that many of those junior doctors perceive to exist?
Pretty one-sided there and not dealing with the real issue at the heart of the dispute…saturday pay…and not long after he also insists on giving the ‘alternate view so we can balance it.’ to another caller who is also against the strikes.
Peter Allen the day before insisted that the government’s contract be torn up and scrapped as it was clearly unworkable..in his opinion…this was a view repeated quite frequently on 5Live over the next couple of days.
The BBC’s coverage of the issues surrounding this strike is highly misleading and uninformative and without doubt pro the Junior Doctors side.
And one last thing…those doctors who say they have the safety of patients and the survival of the NHS at the forefront of their minds and then tell us they will leave the NHS if things don’t improve, ie, they don’t get more money, just where do these moral crusaders troop off to? To private companies that pay far better and are all too often in lovely, warm, sunny climes. So much for the doctors’ horror of the supposed privatisation of the NHS….not so terrifying when it comes to padding out the pay check…or as more colourfully put by one doctor…
“I don’t care about anything apart from extracting the best contract. Don’t give a shit about anything else.”
Good analysis, Alan. I have a feeling that the junior doctors have put themselves way out on a limb with this one, to the extent that the general public sees right through the obfuscation and it is plainly all about extra money for an already well remunerated set of workers.
Has the BBC picked up on this? Of course not.
What do you expect from snowflake central also known as the BBC? This proposed strike will lose the public sympathy but our dear little snowflakes don’t get it. Bring it on .It is and always was about money. It always is.
The bBBC thinks it is the same as the NHS – a taxpayer-funded monopoly that thinks (wrongly) that it is the ‘envy of the world’ – so we’ll never hear anyone at the bBBC say anything truthful about the NHS.