In the Guardian today, Roger Mosey, head of BBC Television News defends the corporation’s coverage of last week’s bombings. Well, he would, wouldn’t he?
Facetiousness aside, he makes some interesting points:
“First, our scheduling and the question of whether there was too much about the London bombings on terrestrial television. News 24 was carrying rolling coverage from the start of the incidents, and we first did a news report on BBC1 just before 10am. At that stage all broadcasters were reporting that the cause of the tube disruption was believed to be a power surge – but as soon as we’d confirmed the reports of the bus explosion in Tavistock Square we moved News 24 onto BBC1 and our coverage continued until 7pm. We have two sources for believing this was right. Audiences were more than double the normal level; but we’ve also asked a representative cross-section of viewers whether they thought the coverage was proportionate and by a large majority they thought it was.”
Okay, this was a judgement call and that was the judgement made on the day. It is easy with hindsight to criticize, however, my belief is that it was overdone. Terrorist attacks of this nature feed on the subsequent publicity – ongoing rolling news featuring images of a bombed bus played straight into their hands. Also, much of what was being said was either repeating what little was known or speculation – even though they state that they tried to avoid this.
“However, we will not report mere rumour and nor will we run casualty figures, as the most obvious example, without being able to verify them.”
Despite their best intentions, they did stray into the muddy area of speculation – about the bombers’ intentions, about how the attacks were carried out and whether this was a suicide bombing or remote controlled detonation. This was not news, it was opinion and guesswork. Yes, I agree, people need to be informed. However we did not need blanket coverage on BBC1 – News 24 would have been sufficient.
I do agree with Mr Mosey when he says:
“From a smattering of radical websites comes the argument that we are being hypocritical in mourning the dead of London when we allegedly gloried in civilian deaths in Iraq.
This utterly misrepresents the BBC’s reporting of Iraq, where we have always sought to portray the whole picture of events in that country.”
I have never noticed any gloating on the part of BBC reporters during coverage of Iraq and the charge is grotesque. Indeed, so to is Fox News:
“A contributor to Fox said after the London bombings that “the BBC almost operates as a foreign registered agent of Hezbollah and some of the other jihadist groups”. On the Fox website today there is an opinion piece, “How Jane Fonda and the BBC put you in danger”.”
Not called Faux News by its critics without reason, this is pure sleaze. Whatever my criticism of the BBC, they at least do not stoop to the sewer depths where Fox News lurks.
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