Comments on: ‘BBC refused Guardian G20 protest vid’ – too much of a London story?

By: Nick Jones: Newspapers’ approach to video gives them exclusive edge | Journalism.co.uk Editors' Blog

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 08:24:27 +0000

[...] Thanks to video evidence The Guardian, for example, was first with exclusives about police involveme…, he said. [...]

By: JimBob

JimBob — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 09:23:05 +0000

If you used to work for the BBC I would have expected you to be a little better informed. This has been the top story across the BBC for a couple of days. As the BBC’s response above says, it was shown. The idea that it’s a London story only is preposterous. ‘Sympyomatic’ is right, symptomatic of ill-informed internet ranters. Stupid.

By: MarkGay

MarkGay — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 20:40:31 +0000

Thanks for highlighting the BBC’s error of judgement in this story. For a marginal broadcaster it would not matter. For the Beeb it is, sadly, symptomatic.

I hope you don’t mind me shamelessly quoting from my blog:

“I used to work for the BBC. We were often told not to run London stories, meaning – precisely – that we were not to bore the nation with stories about how badly the London underground compares with the Moscow, Kiev or Paris metros.

This is an important issue so let’s be clear. The idea of not reporting London stories means this: The vast majority of BBC staff live in London but we were not supposed to let our daily concerns bore the rest of the country.

Now when the BBC decides that Gordon Brown hosting the G20 summit is such a big story that it goes live, internationally, for two days, covering every tiny segment of the story, how come the death of a man caught up in the protests is not a story?”

Add the misleading original statements from the police and the new laws allowing almost anyone with a camera to be arrested and even the BBC might think this was a story.

http://markgay.blogspot.com/2009/04/my-first-venture-into-criticism-of-my.html#links