Pushing the Journos Out onto The Street and Gossip onto The Screen
Posted on September 27, 2006
Filed Under Error and bias |
Sacking journalists is becoming a bit of a rage even in organisations that could do with more manpower. I know the Irish Times has been lining up a round of redundancies and today the BBC over in the UK announced it was getting rid of 108 journalists.
I’m amazed. The BBC’s news coverage is becoming a joke - this week they reported the rumour of Cherie Blair calling Gordon Brown a liar - and it was a rumour. Once upon a time the BBC did not report a fire visible from its own studios because it could not find a second source to confirm it, in time. Today they take rumours and peddle them on nightly news.
The Brown story was all rumour yet the basic principle of journalism is get confirmation from two sources. That’s our credo. It’s what makes one journalist’s account reliable and another’s gossip.
What it indicates though is that TV and I’m afraid newspapers too have already given in to personality reporting and are dumping not just the journalists biut also the principles of professional reporting.
I think bloggers do a lot of this work better simply because they care more about principles.
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You’ve targetted the BBC several times over the last week or two - fairly, in my opinion - for their decline in journalistic integrity. Is this decline pandemic across TV and newspaper journalism? Are there any bastions of hope?
Hi Laurence, couple of things.
I think the BBC carries a standard as do papers like the New York Times. You have to jduge them by those standards.
Second strange though it may seem I believe the BBC’s online news serice is far more credible, balanced and traditional in its approach to news values. Can’t explain that in any way other than you get better results away from the limelight.