This is not news

I remember watching a very good clip years ago--I think it was of Channel 4 News--in which the leading 'story' was that a small toddler who could just about walk had escaped from his kindergarten and walked home, crossing two heavily-trafficked roads on the way. That item was a couple of minutes--possibly as much as 5. It was nauseating how they kept looking at this thoroughly insignificant event from all angles and wasted proper news time on it. Towards the end of that clip, someone started to show, by text scrolling across the screen, all the things that they could have chosen to report on that day, but didn't. The usual--50-5000 dead here and there, earthquakes, famines, wars--nothing important, really.

Part of the problem to me has always been the Anglo-Saxon approach to a news 'story' Many journalists indeed see their role as in telling 'stories'--literally 'stories', not news, with news bulletins seen as a kind of entertainment programme.

The BBC has let itself be pushed into a pseudo-crisis about its role as a public broadcaster owing to relentless attacks by those who don't want public broadcasting, in the public interest. Mind you, I've never rated the BBC very highly, and I don't watch TV much, but from my limited recollection, it used to be miles better than it is now.

I'm glad to report that in Germany, for instance, the role of a public broadcaster is still understood better and while TV news bulletins always have notoriously few items, there is still the ethos that there is a public service being delivered. There are attacks on that in Germany now, too, led by the usual villains in the private broadcasting spectrum. I'm not really up-to-date with it, but so far I think they haven't come to much.

there was a similar thing to this last night..

A lamppost fell on a pram and an old lady, whilst tragic i'm pretty sure it didn't deserve the 10 minute slot it was allotted. You could tell they were short of ideas because all they kept saying was "This area of pavement is used by many young families" swap these young families with an endangered Orangutan or a magical sea horse and it might, just might be a story!

Of course its not like there is any real news, i mean the the northern Kuchin Provence of one of the most geographically important nations on the planet isn't preparing for civil war or anything like that...

Rant over.