Choice for today: rubbish, or another kind of rubbish

A tad worrying that some in the chatterati classes seem to be buying into the the 'enemy of my enemy...' approach of the MSM a tad uncritically.

From setting up Murdoch as the alternative the BBC, to allowing the BNP onto QT, two wrongs still do not make a right.

Or maybe that's more 'inviting on an extreme right' does not make for 'balance'.

Yes, the BNP should get its platform equally to show its colours and be judged accordingly.

But if we are talking QT... on the BBC... any notion that it will be more than an agenda-dripping, rigged ratings-fest farce of heat over light is risible.

As with any 'panel' put up by the MSM today, especially when audiences, and their responses, are still in the hands of the few, who can invite on, and moderate off according to personal whim.

Getting the results you want...

Why are we in Afghanistan?

A poll carried out for BBC Newsnight and the Guardian

As a matter of interest, as my experience is that polls often tend to reflect the views of those who commission them, how often has our objective national broadcaster shared itself in this way with the Guardian, and how often with other major national dailies? In the interests of balance, that is.

It sort of becomes pertinent when such as the Guardian rather defensively point at extensive coverage of one their pet campaigns across the BBC as justification for the rest of the media firmament (and, or perhaps with a hint of why, the public) not being quite as excited as the sisterhood has managed to get itself. In fact I'm rather expecting this coverage being covered back and forth enough on the basis that if it gets repeated enough...

After the last horro show that was the Politics Pen, might it not be an idea to stay away from any possible suggestions of pre-determinancy?

I would love to know if (and if so, how) Aunty has ever shared herself with, say, the Daily Express. Or, maybe more appositely, the NoTW. A slightly larger readership than the Guardian (in fact at either end of the ABCs' I believe) and, possibly, more empathy with the squaddies on the ground perhaps?

There are polls, damn polls, and 'Tonight, polls show...'.

We've dug up something from our Berlin correspondent...

... along with him:

The biggest media story in years - so why the silence?

I rather suspect they are in the process of answering their own question.

Junkketeer
13 Jul 09, 12:19pm (1 minute ago)

...the story went to the top of the BBC's bulletins and website. Andrew Neil, former editor of the Sunday Times...

And now presenter with...?

Not sure that quoting the heft accorded by another complementary media source works any better than trying to make a story out of something a bloke told you another bloke might have said.

Mind you, we might end up with Aunty quoting you quoting them so that, in the end, if it gets repeated enough it ends up true.

It has worked before.

A question of balance

I bang on a lot about reporting standards.

There is also bias by omission.

And then there's the simple, inescapable fact of 'agenda'.

Though from a BBC-critical blog, this piece could apply to most in our rather tainted MSM.

graphic-illustration-of-imbalance

It's hard not to feel that who you are is more significant that what you do, or is done to you, in too many from our 'professional' 4th estate.