The BBC; how the mighty have fallen

There was a time the BBC used to broadcast on our local station from 8 to 9 in the morning and 8 to 9 at night.  People would gather around the radio and listen to every word.   The British Broadcasting Corporation was news; pure news, complete news.

The pattern the BBC followed was one we adopted for exams.

Tell them what you will tell them;  tell them, and tell them what you have told them; in short, the BBC would give a sentence on each of the news stories it was covering as an alert, then would go into each of the stories in depth, then, would summarise what had been said.

Broadcasting twenty four hours a day on Shortwave, many radios were purchased with that feature so we would virtually get up in the morning, turn on the radio, listen to the BBC, until it was time to go to school or work, then come home, and listen to it because we needed to know.

Sure, we listened to our local programs, and watched television, (if we had it) but I would say that until about 1999 the BBC was the core.

The BBC was made up on News; Sports News, Business News, any kind of news.  Amid this was in depth educational programs.   For example, if the Dali Lama was mentioned, there would be a programme of roughly twenty six or so minutes on Tibet, and the Dali Lama so that people would understand the News.

If someone had died, there would be a programme on the life of the deceased, so that one could use the BBC as education.

Many people learned proper English from the BBC, they got their basic education from the BBC.

Then it changed.

The BBC began to broadcast on FM radio and over the years has changed its pattern until the garbage it has become today.

Firstly, the BBC broadcasts about 8 minutes of News every hour and about 3 minutes of News every half hour, so the remaining 49 minutes is taken up by blah blah.

By this I mean interviews with world figures where the reporter does most of the talking, and said interview is repeated about three times a day for two days.

By this I mean interviews with no one in particular that anyone wants to hear; some quirky slow paced blah blah  from a female boxer, a blind diver, some body somewhere in the world who has nothing much to say.

Then there are empty reports in which one would have to go to another source to get the facts, if one wants them.

Hence, I turn on the radio on the hour and the half hour, and usually turn it off at the end of the News, because there is nothing to hear on the BBC.

The fact it has to cut and paste the news to ‘fit’ into the slot, since they have to rush to an interview with a window washer, causes so much to be left out, that one can’t rely on it.

There is no real investigation, no in depth reporting, just sound bytes.   And sound bytes are not reliable.  They may sound more or less certain than they are, they leave out the necessary modifications.  Many stories have to be skipped because they don’t fit into the brief block of reporting.

Online sites are hit for the news, and this is where it is a coin toss.   Are they reliable?  Where are they located? So one would go from one to another to check and verify.

In ancient days, one went as far the BBC and felt quite correct in announcing the source of the information.  After all, the BBC was held in high regard.   Today, it is no better, and in some cases worse, then local news.