Spot the difference
Guy Herbert (London) Media & Journalism
A weekend co-optition. Here are two BBC stories about politicians promising to reduce regulation. Let's see how many differences in presentation we collectively can spot.
May 24, 2005: Brown pledges law to cut red tape
August 12, 2007: Tory plan for business 'tax cut
Let me start:
1. Headline: the first is personal; the second is treated as the collective decision of a party.
2. Comparing standfirsts, the first talks about cutting "the burden of red tape on business'" as if an altruistic act, in the second the cutting is "radical" and "for UK businesses" hinting that this is a dangerous scheme undertaken on behalf of business.
3. In the second story, there is a direct quote from a political opponent; in the first, no criticism of the proposal appears.
4. Indeed, in the second story the boxed quote is ad hominem party-political criticism, whereas in the first it is a press-release quote about the policy from its proponent.
Over to you.
samizdata.net
Iain Dale on How the BBC Does Labour's Dirty Work:
I don't know how this is being covered on other networks, but the BBC are starting all their news bulletins about John Redwood's Competitiveness Commission reports with the words...
The Labour Party has today criticised...
This has happened many times before. Instead of concentrating on the substance of a Tory policy announcement the BBC seem to revel in giving Labour Ministers the microphone to explain how whatever the policy happens to be is making the Tories more right wing than Michael Howard. It is a disgrace. This morning they wheeled out John Hutton to slag off Redwood's report, without even carrying any information about the report itself or indeed any comment from John Redwood or any other Tory.
Meanwhile, in Tory plan for red tape 'tax cut', Biased BBC reader Towcestrian notes there are three 'pull-quotes' highlighted in the story - all of them quotes from Labour and the TUC.
* "Cameron is letting the old guard sing the old tunes again", Cabinet Minister Andy Burnham
* "The Conservative Party will put itself on the side of bad employers and undercut the good who are happy to obey these legal minimum standards", TUC
* "If these reports are true the Conservative Party will put themselves on the side of bad employers", TUC Spokesman
- the last pair of which appear to be two versions of the same quote - probably some Beeboid trying to spin it different ways, forgetting to get rid of one of them.
Biased BBC reader Tubby Round has spotted the BBC trotting out John Redwood's cringeworthy first attempt at singing Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau in Welsh from waaay back in 1993 as suitable library footage for their reports today on policy announcements - a clip that is getting a bit hackneyed even for satirical programmes like Have I Got News For You, let alone for BBC News. By the same standard, every mention of Lord Pillock, sorry, Kinnock, would be accompanied by footage of him falling in the sea at Brighton and audio of his intemperate outburst, as Leader of the Opposition, at James Naughtie that was so scandalously hushed up by the BBC at the time.
Good old unbiased impartial BBC.
biased-bbc.blogspot.com
Both links found at
adamsmith.org |
