Complaints about the objectivity of BBC reporters seem to be getting through to them - if Today chief correspondent Matthew Price's latest online piece is anything to go by.
It contains the following passage:
I think that some of the questioning of BBC reporters concerns (a) their overwhelming focus on unrepresenative migrants/refugees - i.e women and children - and (b) their apparently completely trusting/unquestioning attitudes to any migrant/refugee whose story they broadcast.
The first of those criticisms is something else Matthew Price appears to have picked up on. He ends this piece by citing the story of a young male migrant (i.e. someone who is representative of the vast bulk of young, male migrants/refugees travelling up through Europe at the moment):
His telling of that young man's story, however, doesn't dispel the second concern. The man's story seems to have been accepted at face value by the BBC reporter. Is the story true? Is he really from Syria? Does he really mean to go back to Syria one day? Does Matthew Price know?
Musicians seem the new doctor/lawyer/rocket engineer.
ReplyDeleteNot sure too many are any more persuaded.
Maybe Simon Cowell can run a 'Calais's Got Talent' special?
Matthew Price, like a lot of BBC journos seems not to understand the difference between empathise and sympathise.
ReplyDeleteIsn't it suspicious that out of all the human stories that the journos decide to air on TV, there are none concerning migrants who want to help spread Islam in Europe and who approve of Sharia. Are there really NO such migrants.
Actually I've noticed there appears to have been a directive gone out to BBC journos about this and they all now end their reports with a kind of legal disclaimer along the lines of "While we have seen these appalling scenes of inhumanity, it is the case that some sad deluded people back in Blighty are still concerned about migration." (I paraphrase of course) - so that in the event of complaints they can claim they did not forget to register people's concerns about migration.
When they focus almost exclusively on the small minority, and deliberately attempt to convince the public that the majority is not important or relevant, and make the minority the face of the big picture, that's not balance. It is bias.
ReplyDeletePrice is lying to himself, and lying to you.
Let me take you back to the start of the war in Afghanistan. A BBC reporter ( it might have been Stephen Sackur) would stand in front of a ruined building, a building which looked like it might have been a ruin since Soviet times. Then he would say something like this : 'The Taliban say sixteen people died when this building was bombed, including three women, six children and two old aged pensioners. We have no way of verifying this'.
ReplyDeleteSo no, don't expect the BBC to verify sob stories from Syria. How very dare you.
Thanks to the BBC and other news agencies I think empathy has become a devalued currency. It's very sad. It means the public are being innoculated against compassion - I mean real compassion - because we are being asked to sign up to cultural suicide on the back of selective, biased and naive reporting...and most people can see that isn't right.
ReplyDeleteWell said. And it's not the first time something important has been devalued by their laying it on too thick.
DeleteAs a former volunteer for a listening charity, I learned that our natural empathic response can be honed to cast light on the predicament of others, but that it should augment - rather than replace - our rational response.
ReplyDeleteIn our current climate, however, empathy has been hijacked by those who believe that civility is the product of legislation rather than moral choice.
You cannot be bullied into caring however, and empathy has to cut all ways; it's not just something that we can apply to designated victims on demand, and it's certainly not something to be worn like a badge.