Monday 11 January 2016

Jane Garvey defends Woman's Hour


Going back to the question of whether Woman's Hour has ignored the mass assault of women in Cologne and other European cities...

DB has put the question to Jane Garvey via Twitter:


Now, as the Woman's Hour website, which supplies pretty detailed information about each of its segments, didn't include any mention of the subject, DB wondered whether it had been briefly mentioned during another discussion.

So I thought I'd better check.

I've now thoroughly checked all last week's editions of Woman's Hour and, yes, Jane Garvey was correct. It was "mentioned one day last week" during one of the programme's discussions. 

If you click on Thursday's edition...

...which had 'chapters' on (a) Who are the women to watch in 2016?, (b) Alessia Cara, (c) Parenting In The Digital Age, (d) Mazi Mas: The restaurant offering work to migrant women living in the UK; and (e) Jessica Raine...

...and go to 5:14, midway through the 'Who are the women to watch in 2016' segment,...

...you will hear guest Anne McElvoy mention the attacks in Cologne during the bit on Angela Merkel's 2016. 

Anne McElvoy talked about it for precisely 44 seconds. 

Jenni Murray then moved the discussion on to another politician. 

And that was it!

I think that makes it even worse, don't you? A guest brings it up and the presenter moves it on.

(The phrase 'watertight oversight' springs to mind here.)

4 comments:

  1. 44 seconds? That's about 0.5 second for each victim. Well done WH.

    The point is that there was NO planned coverage of the issue.

    ReplyDelete
  2. They mentioned it once, so got away with it.

    Job done.

    ReplyDelete
  3. In situations like this I always try to imagine how the BBC's of coverage would be in an alternative scenario. Suppose masses of white German men had assaulted hundreds of Muslim migrant women. I suggest the BBC would have whipped up a furious storm on all channels day after day. Yet as it is all we've had initial evasion, reluctantly reporting and a women's programme pointing at a brief mention.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You only have to see how they treat shootings of black people by Police in the USA (but not South Africa or Brazil for some reason) to know how much they would have gone to town on it.

      There has been some CYA activity in recent days by BBC reporters so they can point to cursory references to what actually happened, but we all know the coverage has not been balanced for such a horrendous event, which is deeply relevant to the ongoing controversy over uncontrolled mass migration into Europe.

      Delete

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.