Quote:
Originally Posted by Maggy J
I think some of you should read Flat Earth News by Nick Davis.
You might start to appreciate just how the gathering of everyday news has been cheapened by the cut throat press barons who demand high turnover and churn at the expense of actually ethically sourcing the news.
This is the reason why every newspaper and news channel and radio news has exactly the damned same news stories.They basically all go to the same flawed sources where cutting costs is the motto rather than getting the news.At least the BBC has had the financial ability to try and source news ethically.That is up until Murdoch putting his size 9s all over influencing the present government over the cuts to the BBC's funding.
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I remember reading in an article by Private Eye about the myth the 24 hour rolling news is good.
Well, on a basic level, and ignoring the repetitive nature of it, it is. It is handy to be able to turn on the TV at any time and get a quick run through of what's happening in the world.
The problems start when there is a big news item. Private Eye gave the example of the BBC's coverage of the last Gulf war. The BBC and Sky apparently both had so much footage coming in that they were both playing footage on the channel without anyone with journalistic experience seeing and verifying it to be correct.
Part of that problem was a complete lack of qualified journalists.
I remember one night, I was watching ITV news, and for 45 minutes, their complete news coverage was live night vision video of a road in Iraq, which the news reader not apparently knowing what was happening but furiously scrambling to come up with "facts" to keep the viewer interested.
Anyway, I digress..
Part of the problem for the BBC is that it's competition is very powerful (or was
). The Daily Mail and Murdoch in particular. Two organisations that will happily use their complete range of media outlets to publically criticise the BBC whenever it does anything even slightly dodgy while remaining oddly uncritical of each others own transgressions. Think about that for a second.. When have you *ever* seen a tabloid (apart from the Mirror, which does seem happy to criticise others) criticise another tabloid?
I think this thread indicates something i thing is a problem for the media in general. It takes time, money and personnel to investigate good stories. Indeed, it can take months and thousands of pounds.
The broadsheets do apparently still do this, but the tabloids have worked out it's cheaper to fill their pages with pictures of z list slebs doing any kind of random crap that will get them a column inch or two, and fill the rest of the paper with Sport and their own agenda disguised as news.
I just hope the BBC don't do that.