I say, I say, I say

BBC's HYS is one of the more discredited 'we're listening' outposts of the government/MSM establishment.

And that is saying something

It goes up, and down, with monotonous regularity, but always rather suspiciously when the narrative seems to be erring on curiously inconvenient emerging truths...

Fixing the Have Your Say fault

'...for the BBC it is a highly valued way to listen to what matters to our audience and to find out what they are thinking about key stories, which we then feed into our journalism.

...we will still offer an opportunity for you to Have Your Say on one or two of the big stories of the day. You'll be able to email in your views and experiences on those subjects and the HYS moderators will publish a selection of them.... But we hope that it will provide you with a least a flavour of what everyone is thinking...

Bless. I'll have to add 'a flavour of what everyone is thinking' to 'enhancing the narrative', 'interpreting events' and other gems.

dotconnect wrote: Have your engineers considered the possibility that an overdose of bile had clogged up the system?

That'll be it.

Also worth checking the one way/non return valves.

Feel the love. Only.

Death by a thousand drips

Mixing my Chinese tortures a bit there, but the effect is as deadly, if not deadlier.

I was just watching SKY news (BBC is getting hard to stomach purely on content alone these days), when the topic of the latest horrific murder in NI cam up.

As part of this, there was a guest commenter, a journo from the Sun, invited on to give his reaction. Safe to say he was John Bullish in his views.

Now, for the sake of 'flavour', I have come to accept, if not condone the practice of getting on often extreme views, in isolation, to provoke responses, which indeed is what transpired.

Because, almost immediately, we had the inevitable 'Have Your Say' read out, by the host's blonde offsider. Thing is, she read out three, which were pretty much damning of the guest's views. Oddly, they also seemed pretty in keeping with the rebuttal the host (hardly an interviewer by any definition I would suggest) had expressed whilst 'debating' with the guest. In fact, the host went on to say that 'evidently no one agreed with [him]'.

Well... no. Three people evidently did not. But how representative were/are they? And how is that reflected by the selection process that goes into what does, or does not get read out?

I already have deep doubts, across the MSM board, about the selection and portrayal of 'guests' (a pretty thin pool, too) and their views, and this is more than compounded by what editors and moderators then sift to portray as public opinion on top.

Frankly it is all so rigged, either in the causes of agenda or ratings, as to be worthless.

But such carefully honed voices and messages, in the drip-drip way they are shared, is surely pretty influential and dangerous in shaping the opinions of others.