I had planned on writing about Katie Couric’s awful interview with the captain of the jet that landed in the Hudson River (and I still might), but I came across the following video in the meantime. It was filmed three years ago in and around a Baghdad hospital by an Iraqi doctor. In the film, he describes what it is like to work in the middle of the constant violence between the Sunni and Shiite populations and how difficult a job he and his colleagues have. If you have about 40 minutes to spare, I would suggest watching this. Because I’m not hosting the video, and with Google shutting down its video service, I can’t guarantee how long it will remain online.
The most striking scene comes towards the end of the film when an injured Shiite woman, riding in the back of an ambulance after a car bomb went off in the local market, is screaming out that she wishes Saddam were back in power, even though the Shiite population was persecuted under the former regime.
This film, originally aired on the BBC in the U.K., shows just one story of many and certainly not something you would have the opportunity to see on network television in the U.S.
Dougal, over at the blog “Looking Out to Sea“, wrote a very entertaining and informative piece on the BBC’s own attempts at entertainment and news. The difference is that Dougal referenced his sources, made a clear argument and backed it up with examples. Now, he wasn’t trying to be scientific in his critique (as the BBC was), merely questioning why it is that the BBC feels a need to “entertain” instead of inform.
Dougal – I have news for you: The word of the day is “Irritainment” and it is done because it sells. As we’ve written before, this has nothing to do with informing the public, it has to do with selling the public and anytime a media outlet loses sight of its objective to report and inform, this crap happens. You asked if the BBC and others think readers are morons? To be honest, yes, they probably do to a certain extent. But the craft of journalism is so far lost at this point, that the BBC and others would rather regurgitate irritainment as a method to sell ads, instead of report on stories with solid content. As you stated,
“The lack of references in news stories really annoys me. I’ve probably even written about it before. It can be pretty difficult to track down the source of a statement when all we have to go on is “scientists said” or “experts have found”. If these same news stories can now be relied upon to state the opposite conclusions to the source, what use is science reporting at all?”
However, something just as sinister, which you alluded to briefly, is the use of “anonymous” sources. How often have you seen or read a news story which cites “sources within…” and then bases the entire story off of people who are unwilling to act as a reference. In most stories, the use of “anonymous” sources can be chalked up to pure laziness to find an official source willing to talk on the record. In this case, the reporter (and editors) simply didn’t find it necessary to source their information. The litany of hidden agendas and blind attacks that can occur from using anonymous sources is often not truly weighed by the reporter or his/her editors and that is a shame.
This trend is part of a larger quest to optimize the news, so while the consumers of news continue to go “tweet-tweet” for more of the same crap, the BBC is following in the ranks of the trailblazers who checked their journalistic integrity at the door.
