And that's that

Just as a coda to the BBC's Nelson Mandela coverage, here's some more statistical evidence that the BBC went OTT with its coverage.

Comparing the number of BBC website articles that were published about Margaret Thatcher over the ten days between her death and funeral (8-18 April 2013) with those published about Nelson Mandela over the ten days between his death and funeral (5-15 December 2013) reveals:

287 News articles about Margaret Thatcher on the BBC website following her death

451 News articles about Nelson Mandela on the BBC website following his death 

...which is 57% more BBC online coverage about the former South African president than about the former British prime minister.

Burbling away

I feel a bit like the BBC at the moment: All I can talk about is Nelson Mandela. So here's another post on the same subject.

Tomorrow will see extensive coverage of the great man's funeral on  BBC One, the BBC News Channel, the BBC World Service, BBC Radio 4 and 5Live and, frankly, it's even getting too much for the BBC's Kate Adie.

DB at Biased BBC has transcribed part of an interview she gave to the BBC World Service: 

Paul Henley: Kate how are you taking to the Mandela coverage that has been pretty much across all the airwaves for the past week?

Kate Adie: It’s not been “pretty much” across it, it HAS been across and it’s been an example of eventism in television. Hours and hours of, as it were, a camera placed staring with no great reason for it to be there.

Paul Henley: But it’s the death of a world figure who perhaps inspires more people across the planet than any body else.

Kate Adie: Indeed, but that doesn’t mean you spend hours staring at nothing and with people burbling away. There is a fascination amongst the media with big events. They’re a kind of modern drama and they’re unscripted and they go on forever. And at times I think they do a disservice to the actual central figure in the sense that they turn it into this long-running soap opera and it devalues it. And certainly with Mandela what you have is an extraordinary life and when it comes to the end of it suddenly the media turns into this quasi-religious fascinated-by-individual-grief monster which in a way does not reflect well on the man and his particularly simple approach to life.

Couldn't agree more, Kate!

Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary

Both this afternoon's Feedback on Radio 4 and tonight's Newswatch on the News Channel led with the 2000+ complaints about the BBC's coverage of the death of Nelson Mandela. Those complainants felt (like me) that the BBC has gone Malala...Madiba mad in recent days. 

Also on both programmes, the BBC's Head of News, Mary Hockaday, was wheeled out to say that the BBC always takes viewers'/listeners' concerns on board but that, despite that, those viewers/listeners are all wrong and the  BBC's coverage was absolutely spot-on. 

Moreover, she made it perfectly clear that the corporation will continue to completely ignore those complainants' concerns and carry on regardless, clearing its schedules on Sunday (for example) to cover Nelson Mandela's funeral in full - however long it takes - on both BBC One and the BBC News Channel. 

'Isn't that too much?', asked Samira on Newswatch.

No, replied Mary, as BBC Two will carry Breakfast (and presumably the Andrew Marr Show) - as if that means that viewers who don't want to watch the funeral in full, live, can find alternative BBC viewing. 

I have to say that such asylum-seeking viewers are extremely unlikely to find that this Sunday morning's Breakfast or Andrew Marr Show (if it's on) will be havens at all. Both programmes are bound to be just as full of Malalamania Madibamania as the live coverage on BBC One and the News Channel, to be sure, to be sure.

She also said that the BBC has had good stats about the license-fee payer's interest in their coverage, citing (among other things) the BBC News website...

...but we here at Is? and commenters at Biased BBC have been presenting regular snapshots of what is interesting BBC website readers through the site's 'Most read' function (featured on their homepage) ,and that has revealed a staggering lack of interest from BBC website readers, with Nelson Mandela stories almost entirely absent from their Top 10 for much of the time.

[The sign-language interpreter has sparked some interest though!]

If you're wondering what's interesting BBC News website readers now it's:

1: 'Shooting' at school in Denver, US
2: Explosion in Cathedral Quarter
3: N Korea purge sparks stability fears
4: Prince Harry reaches South Pole
5: James Bond is an 'impotent drunk'
6: The death of an aspirant journalist
7: Pupil, 14, found hanged at school
8: BT apologises for 'poor' TV service
9: Nigella 'lied in court', PA says
10: Failing free school ordered to close

By the by, foreign news stories aren't always a pull, but I have noticed that whenever a news site (and not just the BBC) offers its readers a juicy North Korea/Kim Jong-fat story, they do seem pretty eager to read it.

I can understand that as I almost invariably click on North Korea stories. There's something about that murderous, communist-monarchical madhouse with it's young, fat, oh-so-ronery leader that just makes articles about it very hard to avoid clicking on.

Talking of which, a joke...

BBC foreign correspondent: "So, how's life in North Korea?"
North Korean citizen: "Well, I can't complain."

Update 8.45 (14/12/2013)

The BBC website is again leading with Nelson Mandela. The most read articles now are:

1: The map that caused a century of trouble
2: Lord Roberts of Conwy dies, aged 83
3: Forecasters predict 'severe gales'
4: 'Left for dead' dog makes recovery
5: Alcohol link in Briton's US death
6: Man and woman found dead in house
7: Online scam targets ski tourists
8: Readers' radical solutions to protect cyclists
9: Bomb explodes in Cathedral Quarter
10: Shooting in Colorado high school

Good for the goose

Charismatic figures notoriously neglect personal relationships and benevolent, child-focused professional persons have a habit of ignoring their own children and carpenters‘ houses never have any decent woodwork.

So Nelson Mandela was a bad dad, and before being imprisoned, a violent political activist.

After his lengthy incarceration he did indeed show an astonishing lack of bitterness or resentment, considerable wisdom and apparently a great deal of charisma.  However, the way he has been elevated to a level of other-worldly sanctity is regrettable. It’s probably counter-productive too, if the aim was to achieve a sort of harmonious, cohesive, rainbow nation chorus of adulation.

The BBC seems impervious to the audience’s irritation, if the comments on the BBC website are anything to go by. I bet they regret facilitating comments.

I object to the way the BBC pounced on the non-attendance of the Israeli PM. So, even if his excuse wasn’t one hundred percent genuine, (and couldn’t the BBC themselves do with a spot of financial expediency) was there any justification for what I heard from Kevin Connolly (on Today) and read by Bridget Kendall on the BBC news website:

“Among those not attending the memorial events will be Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who cited high travel and security costs.However there will be suspicion that he wishes to avoid the potential for anti-Israeli protests, the BBC's Middle East Correspondent Kevin Connolly reports. Israel had extensive links with the old apartheid regime and many South Africans identify strongly with the Palestinian cause, our correspondent adds.”

So. If the BBC is prepared to dredge up political events that allegedly occurred during the time of apartheid SA, should they be sanitising Nelson Mandela’s inglorious past in quite such a thorough fashion? Goose and Gander again. 

I don’t know the ins and outs of Israel’s supposed ‘links’ with the old apartheid regime - i.e. if they existed or not, and if they did, whether they were any more extensive than any other country’s links, but I do suspect the BBC’s decision to use that reference to the apartheid regime in this context was gratuitous. It looks like an attempt to associate Israel with ‘apartheid’, and a none too subtle way of reinforcing the topsy turvy allegations that present-day ‘rainbow nation’ Israel is the apartheid state, and not the genuinely apartheid Islamic and (proposed) Jew-free Palestinian states.

They may as well have said “Israel has extensive links with apartheid politics and the BBC identifies strongly with the Palestinian cause” our correspondent adds.

South African whispers

Hmm, an article has just (i.e. about thirty minutes ago) sneaked its way onto the BBC News website. (I only spotted it because it popped up on the sidebar here at Is?):

BBC News chief defends Mandela coverage

(By 'sneaked', I mean it appeared in the 'Entertainment' section of the BBC News website rather than on its homepage.)

Breaking news? 

Hardly. It's merely a recycling of a Newswatch interview with BBC News boss James Harding from last Friday. 

Maybe the BBC wouldn't have even bothered posting an online article about it but, five hours ago, the Guardian - also pretending it had 'breaking news' - posted an article headlined BBC boss defends Nelson Mandela coverage after 850 complaints. That would have got the BBC's attention!

Google News is great for allowing you to track the spread of a story. The Daily Telegraph website must have spotted the Graun's piece and posted its own version four hours ago. The Independent joined them an hour ago. 

With the Guardian, the Telegraph and the Independent all after them, the BBC must have reasoned that they'd better publish their own online spin about this three-day old Newswatch interview.

It mostly consists of quotes from Mr Harding. There's very little on the actual criticism of the BBC's coverage from Newswatch viewers - and others. (For that you can read our post from two days ago!)

Hugh Can Call Me Nelson

Naturally, this morning's Broadcasting House began with Nelson Mandela. 

If it hadn't started with Nelson I'd have died of shock. This is the BBC, and BH after all. Some things are simply inevitable (like Kian from Westlife winning I'm a Celebrity tonight). 

The BBC's highly opinionated Hugh Sykes had been dispatched (at license fee payers' expense) to join the other 15,000 BBC reporters down in South Africa at the moment. 

Hugh did what Hugh does, expressing his impeccably left-of-centre personal feelings with some panache.

Apartheid v Nelson Mandela - ironically, a totally black and white issue. Hugh exalted in the latter, the light. 

His final barb laid into Mrs Thatcher's government with a sharpness even Neil Kinnock or Peter Hain would have been hard pushed to rival: 

The world owns Nelson now, as will become clear when all those world leaders arrive.

Including a representative, possibly Prince Charles, of a nation where a former government conspired with Apartheid by dismissing Nelson Mandela as a terrorist. 

A sharp word that, 'conspired'. 

Good old BBC impartiality.  

If you can't picture Hugh by the way, here's a photo of him wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh:

God, that man is so impartial!!!

Nelson and Margaret

This morning's Sunday on Radio 4 did seem like a Nelson Mandela special, but first impressions (and, perhaps, my own biases) misled me into thinking there was more of it than there actually was. 

Counting up all the time devoted to Nelson Mandela revealed that Sunday devoted just over 38% of the programme this morning to his memory. 

I wondered how that compared to their coverage of Margaret Thatcher's death back in April. 

Well, doing the sums on that edition of the programme revealed that they devoted 34.5% of that edition to her memory.

Which isn't radically different.

The real difference between those two editions of the programme, however, lies with how their respective subjects were commemorated. 

On today's programme we heard nothing but admiring voices about Nelson Mandela - ranging from a Labour shadow minister to the Chief Rabbi, from a former Archbishop of Capetown to a reverend from the Dutch Reform Church.

Contrast that with the Margaret Thatcher edition back in April. 

Back then we heard from three guests - and only one of them was an admirer of the Iron Lady (namely, Harvey Thomas). The other two guests were a left-leaning bishop (not a great admirer of Mrs T) and a historian who's an active member of the Labour Party! 

That kind of says it all, doesn't it? 'Bias by guest selection', wouldn't you say?

Read more

You really should check out this morning's BBC News and Sky News website home pages. They are strikingly different, and have to be seen to be believed.

The BBC is still leading with Nelson Mandela, and its home page is heavy with Mandela stories. I count 31 separate articles (of one kind or another) on the home page alone.

Sky News is leading with match-fixing claims instead and has just one Nelson Mandela story (in third place in its running order). Only when you get to the bottom of their home page do you find three comment pieces (none of them new today). 

The BBC's home page looks like a shrine to Nelson Mandela. The Sky News home page looks like a proper news site.

Is the BBC feeding an infinite public interest in Nelson Mandela then? 

Well, the BBC homepage has a 'Most popular' section which shows the ten most read stories at the time - and this is what people want to read right now:

Read

1. MPs set to receive 11% pay rise

2. Most people in poverty are 'in work'

3. Are Christmas trees getting worse?

4. UKIP councillor defends video remark

5. Eight hurt as car hits market stalls

6. New Labour, Nigella and 'no-fly UK'

7. Missing Pakistanis appear in court

8. Warning as flight schedules resume

9. Why do we value gold?

10. More men chat in girls' 'dialect'

So, the public's appetite for Nelson Mandela news doesn't seem to be quite as huge as the BBC's.

Incidentally, Radio 4 this morning is hardly less of a Mandela shrine than the BBC website - so far there's been a Something Understood Mandela special, a Mandela-dominated Sunday and there's a Mandela-related Sunday Worship still to come. At this rate Shula is going to be giving us her Mandela memories on the Archers omnibus later this morning, and Graeme, Tim and Barry will be singing ANC anthems on Pick Up Tune.

****

Incidentally, I see that Rod Liddle hasn't been cowed by the Twittersteria over his criticism of the BBC's Nelsonmania; indeed, he appears to be warming to his theme.

Here's an extract from today's Sunday Times (£):

Late last week I watched BBC News at Ten in the hope of seeing what the Beeb did with the story about its chairman, Lord Patten, refusing to testify before a House of Commons committee about alleged political bias over Europe within the corporation.

I rather hoped that Patten himself would be interviewed: there is something about the man that makes me want to join a secretive Marxist revolutionary cell and start blowing things up.

It’s that aloof disdain, I think, plus the epic self-regard.

Sadly News at Ten, all of it, was otherwise occupied with the death of Nelson Mandela. Maybe it’ll be on Question Time, I thought — but that programme had been moved to make way for more stuff about poor old Nels. So I took the dog for a walk, had a few drinks, collapsed into bed and rose late the next day and switched on the BBC to see if maybe Fatty Pang, as Patten was known to the Chinese, was now getting an airing.

Nope. The lead story informed me that, mysteriously, Nelson Mandela was still dead and that his regrettable state of being still dead, at the age of 95 after a long illness, was more important than anything else happening in the world.

Mandela was a great man, beyond all doubt. But for the BBC — and plenty of other news organisations — someone has blurred the line between “respect” and “absurd, interminable over-indulgence”.  I felt much the same about the news coverage when Margaret Thatcher died, just in case you think I’m one of those far-right zealots who think Mandela should have been hanged as a terrorist. I don’t think that. I just weary at the predictable relentlessness of the coverage.

What he said.

UPDATE 15:45 

The BBC News website is still leading with (and saturated by) Nelson Mandela stories - and their readers remain pretty uninterested.

Here are the 'most popular' stories at the moment:

1: Body parts found washed up on shore
2: MPs set to receive 11% pay rise
3: Second match-fixing probe launched
4: Men freed after 'slavery' raids
5: Clutha hate comments investigated
6: Inmarsat begins global roll-out
7: Are Christmas trees getting worse?
8: New Labour, Nigella and 'no-fly UK'
9: Most people in poverty are 'in work'
10: Why do we value gold?

UPDATE 20:15 

Yes, the BBC News website is still leading with Nelson Mandela, though there are now a mere 23 separate articles on their homepage.

And, gosh, the British public still aren't interesting in their coverage. Here's now's list of the 'most read':

1: Boyle reveals Asperger's diagnosis
2: Crash man suspected of drink-driving
3: Chemical alert after tent death
4: Body parts found washed up on shore
5: Second match-fixing probe launched
6: Why do we value gold?
7: Men freed after 'slavery' raids
8: Are Christmas trees getting worse?
9: Huge pro-EU protest in Ukraine
10: MPs set to receive 11% pay rise

Where's Nelson?

On the Sky News website, Nelson Mandela doesn't even make their Four Big Stories -

(1) Six Held Over Football Spot-Fixing Claims
(2) 'Slaves' Rescued In Bristol Police Raids
(3) Lenin Statue Toppled By Protesters In Kiev
(4) Temperatures Drop To -29C In Deadly US Ice Storm

Re-trending

As Sue alluded to in the previous post, poor Rod Liddle has felt the heat from an 'outraged' Twittersphere (and the Daily Mail) over his criticism of the BBC's OTT coverage of the death of Nelson Mandela. 

Rod wrote:

But for Christ’s sake BBC, give it a bloody break for five minutes, will you? It’s as if the poor bugger now has to bear your entire self-flagellating white post-colonial bien pensant guilt; look! Famous nice black man dies! Let’s re-run the entire history of South Africa. That’s better than watching the country we’re in being flattened by a storm.

From the comments below his Spectator article (and the Daily Mail's article), it's clear that a lot of people feel the same way. As do I.

Indeed, this week's Newswatch mentioned that they'd received "nearly a thousand complaints from viewers concerned that the extensive coverage of Mandela's death was at the expense of vital reporting on the developing weather situation" [here in Britain].

A typical e-mail read:

Major stories such as Mandela's death need to be dealt with, but a balance has to be struck. His death was not unexpected. He was an elderly man who has been seriously ill for months. Other significant news was neglected, such as the storm which had claimed two lives. I gave up watching, as the programme content had become so repetitive.

A typical tweet read:

It was very scary last night. People in and outside the areas needed live information. Mandela important but comment could have waited.

What Sue describes as the Dianafication of Nelson Mandela has been described, elsewhere in the Spectator, as "quasi-religious" coverage. 

Melanie McDonagh spotted the worst case of that yet - and it comes courtesy of the Today programme:

And this morning, the Today programme brought the thing to its logical conclusion when one presenter, Justin Webb posed the question: given the moral example of Nelson Mandela, ‘why is the world not a better place?’ So it was over for an answer to former US president Jimmy Carter, a member of a group known as the Elders, who travel the world to spread the Mandela message. This was the question: ‘Some people have compared Nelson Mandela with Jesus. You’re a religious man. Would you?’ (Don’t you love that distancing – ‘Some people…’?).

To Melanie's delight, Mr Carter would not and, as a result, helped "cut the cultish aspect of the BBC coverage down to size a bit."

Lead Stories

Hmm. I've been out and about this evening and have come back to find that the obviously newsworthy matters of tax, the Philpott welfare row, Fatboy Kim's North Korean madness and the British lady murdered in Kashmir are dominating the news headlines. Understandably so.

The Guardian, as you might expect, goes on the tax issue with Families 'to lose £4,000 a year' under tax changes (quoting that nice Ed Balls). The paper's second story is N Korea warns embassies over safety.   (Apparently young Kim is threatening to eat them. The Grauniad seems a bit behind the curve on that one, as that was yesterday's big story.) 

The Telegraph goes for Kim Jong-un inspect rocket planes. (There's an accompanying picture of him eating the rocket planes). Their second story is Arrest after British woman killed in India. 

The Times goes for Coaltion rift deepens over Philpott welfare debate and British tourist murdered on Indian Houseboat. 

Sky News goes for India boat murder 'may have been sex attack', with North Korea: US Deploys Spy Plane To Japan as their second story.

What does the BBC News website lead with though? Mandela discharged from hospital. 

I'm inclined to quote David Vance at Biased BBC here:

OK, you can breath a sight of RELIEF! Nelson Mandela has been discharged from hospital and is BACK HOME! It’s the single most important story on the BBC news web site as I type this. Naturally…they DO love Comrade Nelson, not that it influences the editorial weight they out behind this non story, no way…..altogether now “Free Nelson Man-dela..”

There are lots of good things to say about Nelson Mandela, but it's hard not to agree with DV here.

Why is this the lead story on the BBC News website?