The object of my animosity today can begin with our home grown British media giant, the BBC.
I'd like to start by making it clear that in general, I like the BBC. They make Top Gear (inarguably the best program on TV- excuse my shallow nature), and Radio 4 comedies like The Now Show (inarguably, the best program on the radio). I don't even mind the idea of a license fee. In general the program quality is pretty decent, especially when compared to the festering affront to human decency that is the likes of Channel 4's Big Brother, or similar "here's some twats being twats: let's watch them and waste valuable brain power" dross that so often excretes its way onto our screens.
What I do have against the BBC is something very specific. It's their news reporting.
Actually, it's a certain aspect of this reporting, one which for the most part could be extended to newspapers and other TV news slots: I'm simply lugging this onto one broadcaster as they happen to be my foremost source of the news.
What I'm driving at is the kind of news reporting that makes no mention of the shocking and frankly disgusting incident in London where a taxi driver committed suicide by beheading himself; and yet has a news article listed on their front page as "Brown knackered says Downing street". I should bloody hope he's "knackered". He's getting hundreds of thousands of taxpayers pounds to sit on his fat Scottish arse and stick his oversize, flabby fist into every aspect of society in a vain attempt to fix the catastrophic damage his useless, thick headed party has caused over the past decade. If he gets anything less than a stress induced stomach ulcer he should be immediately fired and subject to the despicably inadequate state pension he's responsible for.
This is the kind of news reporting that favours the death of a deluded, faintly paedophilic, plastic pop star over human rights atrocities in Africa. That runs week after endless week of stories on how his doctor is clearly a murderer, how he may or may not have killed himself after all, and how two weeks later, he is in fact still dead. Obviously the public are as much to blame as the company here- by caring more about the death of a celebrity than of mass tortures, rapes, murders and all manner of inexcusable human atrocities in other parts of the world.
This is also, the BBC that yesterday ran a decent sized television slot about two people who've died of E-Coli in Wales, and ignored the plight of thousands of Burundians who may now face prison for homosexuality.
This is the BBC who (thanks to Marcus Brigstocke for this one) ran articles on how the weather was not quite as sunny as we'd like, and has NOTHING on their website or on their shows about the woman in Sudan facing 40 lashes for wearing trousers. Even the GUARDIAN managed to write about this one.
Four people died in the Rhine yesterday because of flooding. Did anybody here even know Germany was flooded?
I think my point's hopefully been made here. This is a broadcaster who badly needs to re-examine what it considers to be a worthwhile news article. This is a broadcaster who needs to learn to prioritise. And sadly, this is a public who needs to get it into their collectively ignorant skulls that there is a wider world out there where people are suffering badly; that things CAN be done about it by everybody; and that Jade Goody was a fat, stupid, bigoted racist and socially useless pustule who didn't in any way deserve the vast media coverage she garnered by doing us the favour of dying.
Incidentally, if in any way this has made any minute impact on you as a reader, I'd ask that you have a look at this.
