The great journalismo

The mainstream media are despicable. Take the BBC for example. The headline they pompously reiterated today was that Royal Whatsisface and that lass who’s been groomed since birth to be his bride are going on honeymoon, and they’ve requested the media to leave them alone and give them privacy after two billion people watched them kiss. Sounds fair to me.

So the channel spent five minutes waxing lyrical about how brilliant it was that the happy couple were off to a secret location and the media have been told to leave them alone.

They then cut straight to an excited reporter chimp outside the couple’s hotel and the anchor asked who had left the establishment, with whom, when, and requested conjectures over where the pair were going on honeymoon. Excited reporter chimp gleefully listed all possible destinations he had researched.

Then they cut to someone else and tried to coerce similar information out of them, asking them to speculate if necessary on a likely endpoint. And so it went on, interspersing fishing exercises with statements over how the destination was secret and should remain so. It’s pathetic the lengths they’ll go to; on one hand pretending to be an upstanding media outlet and in the next breath scrabbling around in the dirt for a shady exclusive.

Middle of the road(ish)

As if duplicity wasn’t enough, the BBC charter promises to bring us unbiased news: a laughable aim, but let’s entertain it for a moment. On the wedding day they boldly claimed that “everyone” was wishing the pair well and “the nation” (even “the world”) were behind them. Really? Why would I care to watch two strangers get married on TV? I’m not crazy enough to drive to London and wait five days to catch a three-second glimpse of their car going past. I mean, thanks for the day off and all that, but my allegiance to the unelected spongers (as Bill Bailey so eloquently described them) only stretches so far.

The BBC controller probably realised late last night that they were only showing one side of the story and panicked, fearing reprimand over allegations of extreme nationalism. So today — the day after — the station arranged two blokes who were willing to roll out of bed at four am for hair and make-up to appear on breakfast TV and claim that endless hours of live coverage and false assertions about the scale of support was, perhaps, a little over the top and didn’t quite represent the views of six billion people — only an estimated third of whom gave a toss.

Way to appease your media conscience. I presume all your reporting is equally neutral when it comes to, oooh let’s pick a topic, war for instance?