One of the first victims of the credit crunch have been journalistic standards. In just the last week, there have been three examples of shoddy Welsh journalism.
First we have the story about Caerphilly council issuing 'guidance' to council staff about the use of the term British. Labour and Tory politicians jumped to attack the Plaid Cymru-led council (although if you read BBC news online that would be "Plaid Cymru led-council"). Indignation was widespread and Gareth Edwards and Simon Weston were used as unionist pawns to condemn the guidance.
It was only the next day that a crucial fact was revealed: the guidance was first issued by the Labour-run council in 2006. Did the BBC mention that fact? Oh no. The fervently anti-Welsh South Wales Echo, buried the correction away in the back pages.
Then yesterday the Western Mail published, very prominently, on page 14 a 'clarification', concerning this story about rifts in the Plaid-Labour coalition. Of course, the clarification is not published online, but for your enjoyment here it is:
"AN ERROR in yesterday's Western Mail created the impression that a Welsh Assembly Government spokeswoman had confirmed there was a rift between Labour and Plaid Cymru ministers over the devolution of powers relating to the suspension of the Right to Buy for housing tenants. No such comment was made and the Western Mail is happy to clarify this matter."
Finally we had this BBC story, reporting that "First Minister Rhodri Morgan is expected to agree to a recommendation to narrow and redraft a key piece of legislation on affordable housing. Welsh Secretary Paul Murphy is believed to agree with MPs on the Welsh affairs select committee to restrict the power requested by the assembly government. But it's understood Plaid Cymru assembly government ministers are refusing to accept a narrower bid."
It was flagged up throughout the day on the BBC's main broadcasts, then the story mysteriously disappeared from their flagship political programme "Dragon's Eye". The reason? BBC journalists didn't have enough sources to back up the story, so it had to be pulled from their programming.
The lesson? Be careful what you read.
Sexism and the BBC
3 hours ago
Posts
3 comments:
Not to mention Patrick "they're picking on me, guvnor" Jones, being invited to the Senedd after protests by Christian groups. Turns out he emailed the poems to them first, saying "I'm going to read these and there isn't a thing you can do about it, na-na-nana-na" (or words to that affect).
True Ramblings - nowhere near enough attention is paid to the nonsense made up by journalists in Wales
Journalists are now reduced to recycling press releases, often written by former journalists who have far more resources at their disposal but also have an agenda.
It's called churnalism.
The sparse resources on just about all our newspapers (from the Western Mail down to the smallest weekly), the failing news coverage on ITV Wales and the "play safe" mentality at the BBC means that we don't have the mature journalism we need here in Wales. The contrast with Scotland is striking.
Post a Comment
Post a Comment