The BBC demonstrates how to milk a news story to death by running the Hindu cow story again today.
The bullock in question has tested positive for TB.
Perhaps BBC Wales will bring their brassy reporters and cameras in a few months time and televise bullocks coughing-up blood should TB take hold in the area.
Photo : Screenshot of the BBC Wales online news website today. The BBC has devoted endless hours of coverage to this story during the past few weeks… all very generously funded by you, the TV license-paying public!
The BBC continues to subsidise the Labour Party’s Welsh Assembly Election campaign by flogging the Rhondda AM
Leighton Andrews’ Burberry story.
Last weekend, the BBC Online website’s section for Wales ran the Burberry ‘news story’ as leading story from Friday 26th January until Sunday 28th January 2007.
This weekend, they’re back on the ball and Leighton Andrews’ Burberry story re-emerges into the limelight at the Wales section of the BBC Online news website. This weekend it is a “discussion”.
Dear Old Aunty wants to know “Is fashion chain Burberry right to close its Rhondda factory?”
We want to know, “Is the BBC right to subsidise the Labour Party’s re-election campaign?“
Rhondda’s dynamic duo Chris Bryant MP and Leighton Andrews AM attempt to bully Burberry at a press conference held at the Welsh Assembly this week. They are photographed looking steely faced and determined whilst holding a Burberry poster alongside their own “Made in China” poster. They aim below the belt, hitting Burberry hardest where it hurts : the Burberry brand name.
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Like a bitch on heat the BBC in Wales wants a fling… with independence.
BBC Wales political editor Betsan Powys is not alone singing the praise of the indy thing.
In Wrexham there are BBC personnel working on a project to establish an independent media centre for Wales. The independent media centre aims to be a part of the world-wide Indymedia network.
Wrexham Assembly Member John Marek’s party – Forward Wales – is also involved in the project, along with the Wrexham Peace and Justice group, anarchists, socialists, pacifists, and many other “ists” … including our very own endangered species the Welsh journalist.
On the eve of the Welsh Assembly election the people of Wales have no independent media network to articulate their political aspirations. The old “Indycymru” news system died in March 2006, leaving Wales without an independent platform besides the Welsh blogosphere.
Those involved in this media project in North Wales should be honest with themselves and others. They can hardly be independent when they earn their crust from corporations and push political parties and secret agendas. That is not media independence.
BBC Wales is overstepping the mark and this indy fling may turn bitter.
When Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio told lies his nose would grow longer.
“How do you know I am lying?”
“Lies, my boy, are known in a moment. There are two kinds of lies, lies with short legs and lies with long noses. Yours, just now, happen to have long noses.”
Pinocchio, not knowing where to hide his shame, tried to escape from the room, but his nose had become so long that he could not get it out of the door. - from The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi (Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini)
When employees at the Cynon Valley Leader tell lies something grows for them too. Their pay checks.
Reading the Cynon Valley Liar one would be forgiven for thinking that the Welsh Assembly Government or indeed the Westminster Government had no responsibility whatsoever for the downturn in the economy and increasing costs faced by small businesses like Ferrari’s.
According to the Cynon Valley Liar, Ferrari’s Bakery of Hirwaun are facing difficulties due to the success of the Welsh Assembly Government’s healthy-eating initiative!
Trinity Mirror, the owners of Cynon Valley Liar, have a monopoly on printed newspapers across much of the South Wales Valleys. They derive a considerable income from the Welsh Assembly Government and therefore will not criticise the Welsh Assembly Government’s economic strategy.
Biting the hand that feeds one is not good for business.
Furthermore, one of Trinity Mirror’s principal sources of advertising revenue comes from the house-building industry. In the Cynon Valley Liar reporting there is no mention of the words “house” or “land” in relation to the Ferrari’s Bakery story.
The bakery is situated on prime land in a desirable part of a house-building hotspot. How many tens of millions are going to be made out of Ferrari’s Bryngelli site ? This is a question that the elite ask themselves, it’s not a question to be posed to the “stupid and ignorant masses”.
Noam Chomsky captures the media mendacity succinctly in his book Deterring Democracy, in Chapter 12 entitled ‘Force and Opinion’ :
A properly functioning system of indoctrination has a variety of tasks, some rather delicate. One of its targets is the stupid and ignorant masses. They must be kept that way, diverted with emotionally potent oversimplification, marginalized, and isolated. Ideally, each person should be alone in front of the television screen watching sports, soap operas, or comedies, deprived of organisational structures that permit individuals lacking resources to discover what they think and believe in interaction with others, to formulate their own concerns and programs, and to act to realize them. They can be permitted, even encouraged, to ratify the decisions of their betters in periodic elections. The rascal multitude are the proper targets of the mass media and a public education system geared to obedience and training in needed skills, including the skill of repeating patriotic slogans on timely occasions.
For submissiveness to become a reliable trait, it must be entrenched in every realm. The public are to be observers, not participants, consumers of ideology as well as products. Eduardo Galeano writes that “the majority must resign itself to the consumption of fantasy. Illusions of wealth are sold to the poor, illusions of freedom to the oppressed, dreams of victory to the defeated and of power to the weak.” Nothing less will do.
The problem of indoctrination is a bit different for those expected to take part in serious decision-making and control : the business, state, and cultural managers, and articulate sectors generally. They must internalize the values of the system and share the necessary illusions that permit it to function in the interests of concentrated power and privilege - or at least be cynical enough to pretend that they do, an art that not many can master. But they must also have a certain grasp of the realities of the world, or they will be unable to perform their tasks effectively. The elite media and educational systems must steer a course through these dilemmas - not an easy task, one plagued by internal contradictions. It is intriguing to see how it is faced, but that is beyond the scope of these remarks. - Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy (Vintage Books, London. 1992. 369-370)
Carlo Collodi’s original tale of Pinocchio was an intensely moral tale, later bastardized and appropriated by Disney. As the story of Ferrari’s bakery of Hirwaun unfolds over the coming weeks, we should bear in mind what forces are really pulling the strings in the background : capital, powerful business interests and their allied political representatives and spokespeople in the local media.
The BBC demonstrates how to milk a news story to death by running the Hindu cow story again today.
