Politics for weeks. Extended news every evening. The run up to elections is dull. And the BBC keeps shooting itself in the foot with news coverage. They were reporting on plans to cut expenditure in public services and debating whether it was possible. For the next piece of news, reporting on how politicians appealed to the electorate, they started with a reporter standing live outside the House of Commons at night (to illustrate “parliament”). They moved to the home book-lined study of a writer on communication skills to interview him for a few lines (the books illustrated “writer”), then the cameras went to a dancing academy to mention that body language was important for politicians (dancing illustrates body language), and finally to a reporter standing in a boxing ring to explain that a contest was about to start. The reporter wore boxing gloves. (It illustrates “contest”).
That involved four location set-ups for film units, and like so much on TV news, insults the audience’s intelligence by banal over-illustration. The few minutes of script could easily have been done by one talking head in a studio. Add three researched still photos at most, if you really have to. It also undermined the argument that cuts can’t be made in the BBC as a public service when resources are ludicrously wasted on dumb location set-ups and the results patronize the viewing audience.
I believe the BBC is one of our greatest resources and that its independence and licence fee should be protected, but when producers show this sort of nonsense on a nightly basis, they seriously damage the case.
Peter Viney's Blog 
Leave a comment