A report on this morning's news about a UEA professor appearing before a House of Commons committee saw the chairman of the science committee called "Phil Willis MP (Lib Dem)" labelled on screen as "Phil Woolas MP (Labour)". The very fact that Mr Woolas is a government minister and is therefore not able to chair a commons committee would have sent any decent journalist scurrying for the keyboard to get this changed, but it does show the level of journalistic knowledge at BBC East.Remember, it was BBC East who invited the Green Party to the Norwich North debate but excluded UKIP. The BBC claimed the "Main four" were represented, but the Greens trailed in a poor fifth and UKIP came fourth.
Of course, the BBC did get the name right of a Green Party Councillor in another report.
Why do the BBC employ people to report on politics who quite clearly don't understand it ?
2 comments:
I quite agree Nich. Not to be too partisan, but the BBC's treatment of UKIP in Norwich North was appalling and held us back from what I think could well have been a third place finish. To be fair though, the likes of the EDP and Norwich News were similarly unbalanced in their coverage of UKIP, especially compared to the coverage the Greens got.
All is not lost though. I know the BBC do muck up from time to time but they do at least try and make it up and as I understand it were fairly apologetic after the whole sorry episode. No excuse for Mickey Mouse journalism like you describe, though.
To be honest it really doesn't surprise me. The BBC can't be held to account for their actions and errors by the public, as they still get the same funding no matter how many viewers they get. And the government are quite happy with the love fest they get whenever they appear on BBC shows. It's only the other parties that suffer
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