BBC News getting as shite as ITV's...

[Roadkill]

I think Jon Snow is great.

Of the Beeb's presenters, I rather like Evan Davies, the economics editor. He certainly knows his stuff, and he manages to be lively without being patronising. I'm also reliably informed that he's known in certain circles as 'Tinsel tits' because of his pierced nipples.

 

[editor]

There's currently a total of *four* pieces about Anna fucking Nicole Smith on the BBC 'news' home page. Four fucking links!

There's her 'life in pictures,' an article about her life, plus a video and an audio stream.

If I wanted an onslaught of this kind of flippant minor-celeb based rubbish, I'd go and buy a copy of Heat or something.

*'angry of Brixton' email sent. You can complain here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/

 

[Relahni]

I think Jon Snow is great.

Of the Beeb's presenters, I rather like Evan Davies, the economics editor. He certainly knows his stuff, and he manages to be lively without being patronising. I'm also reliably informed that he's known in certain circles as 'Tinsel tits' because of his pierced nipples.

I like Jon Pienar <sp?> I met him once and he was a thoroughly nice bloke - very funny, approachable and down to Earth. Have met the Scottish woman that sometimes does Newsnight - she seemed ok.

 

[Relahni]

There's currently a total of *four* pieces about Anna fucking Nicole Smith on the BBC 'news' home page. Four fucking links!

There's her 'life in pictures,' an article about her life, plus a video and an audio stream.

If I wanted an onslaught of this kind of flippant minor-celeb based rubbish, I'd go and buy a copy of Heat or something.

*'angry of Brixton' email sent. You can complain here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/

They do a top five most read
MOST READ
1) Former Playmate Smith dies at 39
2) Life in pictures: Anna Nicole Smith

 

[editor]

They do a top five most read
MOST READ
1) Former Playmate Smith dies at 39
2) Life in pictures: Anna Nicole Smith

The BBC isn't charged with a lowest-common-denominator tabloid news brief though, is it?

 

[ATOMIC SUPLEX]

C4s pretty good. I quite like the way they lose money on every show.

 

[Dirty Martini]

The BBC isn't charged with a lowest-common-denominator tabloid news brief though, is it?

No, but BBC online has to compete with all the other news sites, and stuff like Yahoo. There have already been mumblings from the tories about reviewing the BBC's online services, I guess they have an eye on the number of people reading the site.

 

[rekil]

A few non-freaks died yesterday too.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A U.S. airstrike Thursday killed 13 insurgents in a volatile area west of Baghdad, the military said. Local officials said 45 civilians, including women and children, died in the attack.

American forces launched the attack after intelligence showed suspected insurgents were assembled in two safe houses for foreign fighters northeast of Amiriyah, 25 miles west of Baghdad, the military said.

 

[editor]

No, but BBC online has to compete with all the other news sites, and stuff like Yahoo.

With its unique funding, it shouldn't have to sink to the depths of the shittiest celeb tabloids and be filling up their NEWS homepage with four stories about an American D list 'celeb.'

I could understand it if the articles were in the entertainment home page, but her death is being presented as a newsworthy event of major significance. It's not.

Oh, and Yahoo's only got one front page story on her.

 

[maomao]

It's not so much the celebrity news that winds me up as the insistence on having live newsteams camped out absolutely everywhere in pursuit of live 'breaking news'. I just put on News 24 for the 11.30 weather which I waatche every day before I go to work only to have it cut off to break to a picture of a police van screeching down the street followed by a two minute discussion on how long it took to drive from Birmingham to London. I actually shouted at the TV.

 

[Dirty Martini]

With its unique funding, it shouldn't have to sink to the depths of the shittiest celeb tabloids and be filling up their NEWS homepage with four stories about an American D list 'celeb.'

I could understand it if the articles were in the entertainment home page, but her death is being presented as a newsworthy event of major significance. It's not.

Oh, and Yahoo's only got one front page story on her.

In an ideal world. I'm not defending it, it's annoying, but that unique funding is not secure and if someone goes after the BBC in the future, it'll be the online services first. It's more difficult to do that if they have the 'viewing figures', which is provided by celebrity shit like this.

 

[maximilian ping]

its a good measure of a news outfit when you have broken a story and see what they do with it.

a colleague and i came out with the story of a load of prisoners a couple of months ago who were to recieve compensation from govt for going cold turkey in prison. the BBC lunchtime news used it i think as their top story, but, by the way it was reported, it seemed that either no-one at the BBC had a clue as to what it was actually about or that they were dressing it up as something it wasnt.

the story ran as 'prisoners will get money off the govt because the nasty prison service stopped them taking drugs in their cells'. whereas the real story was 'inmates forced to go cold turkey/buy drugs in jail because when they were banged up they had their methadone scripts stopped'

i could not believe that the best media org in the world could be so dumb

mind you, compared to what i see the Independent do with news stories, the BBC look imperious

 

[nino_savatte]

Unfortunately for us, news editors in this country are taking a leaf out of the US's book. More often than not, what is presented as news is, in fact, celebrity gossip, marketing, feelgood stories (which are sometimes combined with marketing) and a lot of bad or useless information. The presentation is lightweight and there is too much emphasis placed on entertaining the viewer. A lot of hard news or international news stories have literally been purged from the main news bulletins.

When the BAFTAS or the Oscars happen, I expect BBC News 24 to fill much of its time with crap about the winners and losers.

For proper news, I tend to watch either Newsnight (itself a victim of the dumbing down process) or TV5 (now that my French is better).

I was watching CBS News last night and, oh what a pile of shite! I heard one reporter use the phrase "fess up" when describing a congressman who had admitted to something he should have done earlier.

 

[Macaroni Pony]

Have you also noticed the way the BBC "Breakfast" shoehorn a "cost to the economy" figure into everything as well?

Thursday: £400m cost to the economy due to the severe weather.

Friday: £8.3m cost to the economy per year due to the amount of time people take off work to mourn their pets death.



Rumour has it that BBC News have been thinking of introducing an "entertainment news" section to their broadcasts as well.

 

[beesonthewhatnow]

I fucking hate news presenters stood up.

You should never see a newsreaders legs*.

Get back behind a desk where you belong








*Angela Rippon excepted of course.

 

[Relahni]

I don't see why we should pay for the BBC? *

It's shite imo.

sport is shite
news - shite
strictly fuck off dancing - shite
other shite - shite


*actually, I don't and never have entertained giving money for a tv licence. They never caught me even though I subscribed to Sky.

Detector van my arse.

 

[untethered]

Have you also noticed the way the BBC "Breakfast" shoehorn a "cost to the economy" figure into everything as well? ...

Someone should calculate the "cost to the economy" of the BBC presenting entertainment as if it were news.

 

[nino_savatte]

Have you also noticed the way the BBC "Breakfast" shoehorn a "cost to the economy" figure into everything as well?

Thursday: £400m cost to the economy due to the severe weather.

Friday: £8.3m cost to the economy per year due to the amount of time people take off work to mourn their pets death.



Rumour has it that BBC News have been thinking of introducing an "entertainment news" section to their broadcasts as well.

Aye and as for them introducing entertainment news, there's plenty of it on BBC Breakfast...godawful marketing shite dressed up as news.

 

[nino_savatte]

I fucking hate news presenters stood up.

You should never see a newsreaders legs*.

Get back behind a desk where you belong








*Angela Rippon excepted of course.

I reckon some of them think they're The Avengers the way they ponce about.

 

[Macaroni Pony]

Aye and as for them introducing entertainment news, there's plenty of it on BBC Breakfast...godawful marketing shite dressed up as news.

Yup. I think it was somebody on here who said "the writing was on the wall the minute they dropped the word 'news' from the title of the programme" !

 

[AnnO'Neemus]

And then they transferred 'newsreader Barbie' (aka Natasha Kaplinsky) from BBC Breakfast to proper evening bulletins. I don't watch the Six now. And if she's on the Ten I turn that off too.

 

[DrRingDing]

Newsnight is still good though.

At times and at others it is black propaganda.

 

[hendo]

Some of you may know I work for BBC News. I read the criticisms and I think this: that personally speaking I'm proud to work for Aunty. It remains, in my view, and many others, the best around at what it does.

We may get beaten from time to time, but no outfit is invincible. I've worked for ITN and an ITV region before that, and the Corporation has no monopoly on people of quality. But we have some top class correspondents deployed in places the competition is nowhere near. People like David Loyn who managed to get embedded with the Taliban last year; John Simpson whose reputation is unrivalled. I just pick two at random. There are many others who I'm proud to know, never mind work with.

The audiences for News 24 are increasing. We used to lose out to Sky; those days are gone. People are turning to us. They like the fact that the flexible technology means we can be live whereas before you'd simply see a tape package, that they can drop in on us at any point in the day and see headlines.

As we enter a time of fractured audiences, accessing the news in a myriad of different ways, the Beeb remains an outpost of quality which many people continue to trust. BBC Radio 5Live has its fans and for me Radio 4's Today and PM are must-listens if you want to know what's occurring.

Nobody would say we're perfect but audiences are getting more of a say in what we do. If you don't like what we do, then e-mail us. The people who make the real decisions here are listening more closely than they've ever done, and freely admit that the complacent days of us serving people with what we think they should see and hear are over.

 

[editor]

Nobody would say we're perfect but audiences are getting more of a say in what we do. If you don't like what we do, then e-mail us. The people who make the real decisions here are listening more closely than they've ever done, and freely admit that the complacent days of us serving people with what we think they should see and hear are over.

Don't worry, I've done that!

Thing is, I've often championed the BBC, but four features on an American D List celeb on the BBC News front page is utterly indefensible in my book, and this trend towards cheesy, chummy news presenters describing a bit of snow as "The Great White Out" is plain ridiculous.

 

[DrRingDing]

I still can't get the picture out of my head on the eve of this Iraq war.

Newsnight was having the big 'debate'. On the pro-war side a young greedy flashy Blair sycophant and on the anti-war side?

Michael Foot, with apprently missing one eye (that Paxman looked horrified with), with his walking stick plonked on the table gibbering incoherently.

This might be due to the far right liberal politics of the producers and/or darker influences. But otherwise a distgusting show of carelessness on a mind bending scale.

 

[Barking_Mad]

deleted - double post.

 

[Barking_Mad]

The audiences for News 24 are increasing. We used to lose out to Sky; those days are gone. People are turning to us. They like the fact that the flexible technology means we can be live whereas before you'd simply see a tape package, that they can drop in on us at any point in the day and see headlines.

Problem is you're comparing yourself to Sky, which is quite frankly terrible. Chasing the lowest common denominator to the bottom of the barrel isn't really a good idea in my view.

My girlfriend was ill a few weeks ago and sat and watched BBC24 and Sky on and off all day. I got home and she asked why they run the same few headline stories all day ad infinitum. "isn't there anything else happening in the world?" she asked. Apparently not.

As I gave in the link on the first page, the US apparently killed 45 Iraqis in an airstrike the other day, yet there was nothing on the BBC news or indeed on the website. However if you wanted to see lots of pictures of snowmen and wintry conditions then you'd have had a field day.

If you feel the urge spend a few days week reading articles gathered by www.icasualties.org (run privately via donations) and then compare the number of stories the BBC could have covered to the number it actually did - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/middle_east/2002/conflict_with_iraq/default.stm

Pretty soon you wonder why the 'world's best website' with its massive budget can't manage to 'out do' a small bunch of enthusiastic amateurs.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Another UK soldier died in Iraq today, nothing on the BBC website, or as far as I have seen on the BBC news bulletins

British soldier killed in Iraq
9 Feb 07

It is with deep regret that the Ministry of Defence must confirm the death of a British soldier in Iraq today, Friday 9 February 2007.

We can confirm that there was a roadside bomb attack on a Multi National Forces patrol south-east of Basra City that resulted in the death of the British soldier. Three other soldiers have also been injured, one of whom is described as critical.

The injured soldiers have been medically evacuated to a field hospital by helicopter and are receiving the best possible medical care in theatre.

We are currently in the process of informing next of kin. Further details will be released once this process is complete.

Still, we have the snow to talk about, right?

 

[Dirty Martini]

Another UK soldier died in Iraq today, nothing on the BBC website, or as far as I have seen on the BBC news bulletins

It's here

 

[Barking_Mad]

apologies, I looked on the main Iraq front page on the website but couldn't find it - looked on the Middle East section, couldn't find it, world news (where it apparently is) and couldn't find it - maybe I should look harder?!

is there a link to the story via the website rather than just a search for the article - maybe my eye sight is going?!