I'm quite prepared to accept that the Glasgow office is hog-tied by London. Never forget, when the big debate started about whether Scotland should have its own News at Six, the editor of Newsnight was quoted as saying it would be 'over my dead body.' Now, I've never been self-employed. Always had a boss so always had to ask myself: How will this go down with the boss man? I can't imagine having the freedom or the brass neck to express an opinion like this. Maybe he had his boss's permission to say it or maybe he just thought that despite being an employee of the BBC (paid for by you and me, as you know) he had the right to say this. Same with numpties like Jeremy Vine and Andrew Marr. Several times lately, I've heard myself wondering: Who cares what you guys think? Your opinion counts for no more than the view of the punter in the street. Whatever your ego may tell you.
I know some of the BBC Scotland journalists and they are able and intelligent people, but they have to follow the direction of the man in charge of the news. Funny how it's ay a man in charge but quite often women fronting the news on TV and radio. And I'll admit I was a bit surprised when an item on the enquiry into the Edinburgh trams was introduced by BBC News Scotland with the words: 'the Edinburgh trams fiasco.' Is that what we should expect from the impartial BBC? Really?
Just recently, I've started having a closer look at the BBC news website. It's a mess. Go ahead and check for yourself.
Scottish news is dominated by items from Police Scotland handouts. That, I guess, is because the information is free. Prisoners on the run, road accidents, people convicted by the courts earlier in the day. They're all there. Very little by way of real reporting. And none of it is updated between about 9pm and 9am, I'm guessing because the poor soul who maintains the page goes home then. Or is locked up in his padded cell for the night. And, of course, there is no news at all on a Saturday. Except the footie.
The UK news pages are just as desperate: a wee bit of politics, a couple of murders. Total trivia.
No attempt in either the regional news page or the UK news to offer any kind of analysis. Mind you, if you watch the BBC news on TV, it's much the same.
Remember James Robertson's The News Where You Are:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhL57cjN8xY
But it's the World news pages that are the pièce de cacking résistance. Again, no attempt to analyse events anywhere in the world. No comment on what Donald J Trump said to the parents of a Muslim soldier who died serving his country or what Barack Obama said about that. He said Trump was unfit to be president. It's a pretty alarming statement. I don't remember any president making such a comment in the past. Was it wise to say it? Could Obama's words come back to haunt the Democrats as Republican voters dig their heels in and decide they were right that Obama is a Socialist who is out to destroy the USA? We'll never know, not if we only read the BBC news website.
And stereotypes. If you want to see what's happening in Australia and suspect it will have to do with
cricket and sexist comments from yahoo politicians, the BBC website is the page for you. There will be no news from New Zealand because apparently nothing ever happens there. Don't expect to find any news about Canada on the North America bit of the website either. If you're looking at the Latin America page, get ready for items about Colombian and Bolivian drug barons, the zika virus in Brazil and bad economic news from Venezuela. Nothing about police death squads in Brazil killing people they think might be opponents of the government threatening the Olympics. For that information, you'll have to go to a serious website.
The other thing the BBC news website offers is the weather forecast. I don't bother with that because the map only shows the weather in Edinburgh. I live on a different coast served by different weather systems. I follow Windy Wilson's Weather on Facebook.
So what is the BBC up to with its news website? The BBC website is organised in a way that isn't seen in Sky or RT. Their websites keep their news reach fairly limited but what they do, they do well. The BBC seems to be trying to do everything. And as a result they don't do anything very well.
The website probably costs millions to run and employs well-trained people who could otherwise be working at the cutting edge of technology. I'd love to hear from them but I suspect I never will.
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