Friday, June 29, 2007

Shift Happens, but is it news?

Nothing else is happening, anywhere in the world, all the British media can talk about in their 'politics news' sections is 'change'. The change that has happened since Brown took over, the question of how much change we should expect, or the comment that actually all change is continuity. When the first bits of news came out it was interesting, particularly how each story was being reported, now I find it simply repetitive and largely non-news. Now if I, as a self-confessed political anorak, find this boring, what about the average person in the street? I find the independent blog comments more interesting than the microscopic examination of 'Cabinet by numbers' that the BBC offered up at 10pm last night. Shouldn't news programmes actually report news in order of seriousness, relevance and impact, and not make a big deal about the fact that the average age of the Cabinet has fallen by eight years. The flooding in Yorkshire came afterwards as a news priority, does that strike as evidence of imbalanced news values?

1 comment:

David Phillips said...

I could not agree more. Is it a surprise that people seek alternative media? As convergence gains a hold, its going to get tough for broadcasters and as time shifting by the minute becomes possible, we will just skip the spin (and in this case it editorial spin).