From the BBC2 Newsnight page: Parliamentarian of the Year Peter Mandelson with George Osborne. You couldn't make it up.But they did make it up. Parliamentarian of the Year went to Vince Cable.
You would think that, what with all the money it has saved by suspending Jonathan Ross, the BBC would be able to afford some competent journalism.
Later. It is nearly eight in the evening and the faulty caption is still in place.
Today's Guardian deserves an honourable mention in this category. It claimed to be showing us a photograph of John Maynard Keynes at the Bretton Woods conference of 1994.
I think all is not well with Newsnight itself at the moment (very bad news when the BBC is taking a such sustained drubbing from "libertarian"/conservative headbangers).
ReplyDeleteMinor unprofessionalisms such as bizarre choices of shot, wobbly camerawork, clunky and hackneyed scripting, etc seem to keep growing in number and scale, and this week:
- Wednesday night a video insert slumps into a blue screen of death, then Paxo's intro to the hastily upscheduled discussion is graced by camera 5 sliding into then out of shot;
- Thursday night's lead story on the recession takes an angle -"this time it's white-collar suburban folk that are going to suffer, I mean before it's been mucky-fingered manual-labouring proletarians who should have known the dustbin of history was open for them, but now it's like serious and important and scary" - that is simultaneously shallow, incoherent, simplistic, offensive, evidence-free,..., all presented by some wild-eyed numpty in an anorak lurching round Surbiton blathering cliches about "archetypical suburbia, Good Life, Reggie Perrin, nice, comfy, safe, million-pound houses, all based on thriving financial/marketing/nice-peoples' enterprises, but now it's all going to Hell (or Hackney) in a handcart - ooh look this shop on the high street has shut!"
I am not going to get disappointed if a 60 second bulletin on BBC3 or Dave or Dogthorpe Community Broadcasting presents "news in brief" cliches, but I've spent years trusting Newsnight to offer thoughtful, substantial, reliable, professional news and features. Someone needs to get a grip!
Here endeth my rant.