Harrabin, Roger

[marky]

Name: Roger Harrabin
BBC Position: Senior Journalist (Environment)

"In areas of public policy where government is asked to intervene there is often a perverse pressure on politicians through the media to act on issues which appear more immediate but are ultimately of lesser public significance." (November 2010)
When exactly is our winter of discontent?

[Teddy Bear]

Good job Marky, setting up this section was a great idea.

I'm going to declare a 'law' which I'll call Teddy's Law.

It states that there is no way for the BBC to approach the subject of truth, morality, or integrity without at the same time demonstrating how distorted, immoral, and corrupt they have been.

To explain the relevance of Teddy's Law in this instance I'll insert Blastlands full quote concerning Harrabin's statement;

But is this fiction, or real? Enter the strange media world of Harrabin's Law, and decide for yourself. The media does sometimes seem to be a place where what you hear most is often what happens least.

I've named the phenomenon after the BBC's Roger Harrabin, who puts it like this: "When considering societal problems over the long term, news-worthiness is often in inverse proportion to frequency. If problems become commonplace, they are not new - so do not qualify as 'news'. This means the media often guides politicians to focus on less serious acute problems at the expense of more serious systemic problems."

This is the crux of the problem here - but not the way these BBC types want to evade it - If problems become commonplace, they are not new - so do not qualify as 'news'.
WRONG!

If serious consistent problems continue to pervade our society then the fact that they have not been dealt with in any satisfactory matter IS THE NEWS. That's if the media who's responsibility it is to report news is indeed doing it in a responsible manner. It is the job of the journalist to present it in as interesting a manner as possible, which is what we pay and grade them accordingly for.

One thing I learned in school; any subject is interesting, any subject is boring - depending on how it is presented. Every good teacher understands that.

When I was younger there was a sensationalist 'newspaper', who's name I no longer remember but along the lines of National Enquirer, that used to make up all kinds of bizarre stories in order to sell their 'comic'. While most sensible people knew that these stories were bullshit, they did indeed have some 'entertainment' value, which is why people bought this paper. This manner of 'sensationalism' has gradually pervaded into our mainstream media to a greater or lesser degree, so Harrabin's revelation is neither new or rocket science.

However, we have one media outlet that does not have to compete in the marketplace in order to continue selling their stories, and we compulsorily have to pay them to report the news with the interest of our society at heart - yes everybody knows who we're talking about.

So what is it to have a society that through recognition of the need to have a particular service, and is forced to pay for it, then finds that it is not only NOT getting the service that is being paid for, but what is provided is largely to serve the perceived interests of that organisation and not our society?

Does it improve our society, or merely becomes another factor that denigrates it - regardless of what is reported?