I have complained long and often before about the abysmal performance of BBC’s News 24 which is rather like a rudderless ship driven by endless loops of the same bits of film as its guiding force.
Today News 24 hit a new low demonstrating its complete lack of editorial judgement, its appalling left-wing neo-Liberal bias and a studied lack of concern for the viewer in preference to endless pointless interviews with its own correspondents and anyone else who would support the socialist agenda.
I am referring of course to the wall-to-wall coverage of the eviction of law-breaking gypsies who have defied laws that everyone else has to obey for more than ten years at Dale Farm in Essex. The whole tone of the BBC coverage – unbroken for more than 40 minutes as if there was nothing else going on in the world – was to engender sympathy for the law-breakers and the yobs who poured in to ‘support’ them in the hope of having a jolly good punch-up with the police.
The pathetic questions of the two female presenters were all couched around ‘what is going to happen to these poor people whose lives have been disrupted by Essex Council ?’ Hardly a word about their cynical breach of the planning laws which are so hotly pursued for the rest of us. No mention at all of their luxury cars and mansions in Southern Ireland. No questioning of the likes of ‘Davie’ whose rantings were repeatedly shown as representative of the travellers who probably didn’t even know who he was. Not one question was directed at him. Who is he ? Why is he there, interfering with the due process of law ? Is he unemployed ? If so, why was he not out looking for work ? Why isn’t his benefit going to be cut for rioting against the police ? No, no difficult questions like that.
Instead he was allowed to rant on uninterrupted – several times.
We don’t want wall-to-wall coverage of what is essentially a minor spat between incompetent council officials and determined law-breakers who want their own way regardless of the rest of us.
There were more than 50 OTHER stories on the BBC News website this morning. NONE made it on to News 24 because countless camera crews and multiple correspondents were dramatically exploiting what was a very minor news story in Essex.
Of course, it was not a very minor story if you are a card-carrying Guardanista,which is compulsory before you get near a BBC Newsroom.
This was piss-poor journalism, a disgraceful waste of BBC resources and an insult to the licence-fee payer who tunes into News 24 to get balanced reports on the news – not a polemic on social injustice according to left-wing writers and broadcasters. Thank heaven for the Conservative MP who had to forcefully point out to the two presenters that the travellers were breaking the law which everyone else had to obey.
There was no sight of their Porsches, Bentleys and the like which they use to ride back to their mansions in Ireland at Christmas having robbed the Treasury blind in this country for benefits to which many of them are not entitled.
Director-General Mark Thompson, you should hang your head in shame at this charade of a news service. Balance, what balance ?
