Saturday, 20 February 2016

For the sake of completeness


The next couple of items on today's From Our Own Correspondent were 'very BBC' too.

First was a piece from Fergal Keane about a Bosnian town where Serbs massacred Muslims during the Balkans War. 

It was pure Fergal Keane - emotive, somewhat finger-wagging. 

I know it's cynical of me but the phrase 'award winning' and its cousin 'award-seeking' just keep coming to mind whenever I think of Fergal Keane reports like this. 

Then came an American journalist talking about gun control. 

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the issue, what's pretty much guaranteed on From Our Own Correspondent is that this journalist would most definitely not be anti-gun control. That would never happen. Here the speaker was in favour of gun control and, of course, blamed money, the NRA and the Republicans for it not being enacted. 

The other two pieces were 'and finally'-type affairs. One about a boat on Lake Malawi, the other about a BBC reporter who lives in France and had a favour done for him by a left-wing mayor/deputy he likes - or something like that.