Scare tactics
I am becomming increasingly concerned by what I see on the news every day.
Terroroism, riots, Avian Flu, MRSA, extreme weather, dirty bombs....
However, none of these worry me, What does concern me is the trend to report scare stories constantly. It has been said for some time that Governments are now playing on our fears rather than appealing to our hopes to remain in power, but previously I thought I could trust the news to give me both sides of the stories, but this is no longer true. Now I have to go searching the net & doing my own research to get the other side of any story.
Here's a classic example: while we are regularly told of the rise of Muslim terrorism - both from abroad and within western societies, I have not seen the 150,000 strong march in Morrocco against Al Quaida mentioned anywhere on the tv/in newspapers.
One of the big attractions of living in the UK is our variety of news sources, and the unique position of the BBC. If this one-sided reporting keeps up I think we will need to seriously re-consider the use of the licence fee.
Terroroism, riots, Avian Flu, MRSA, extreme weather, dirty bombs....
However, none of these worry me, What does concern me is the trend to report scare stories constantly. It has been said for some time that Governments are now playing on our fears rather than appealing to our hopes to remain in power, but previously I thought I could trust the news to give me both sides of the stories, but this is no longer true. Now I have to go searching the net & doing my own research to get the other side of any story.
Here's a classic example: while we are regularly told of the rise of Muslim terrorism - both from abroad and within western societies, I have not seen the 150,000 strong march in Morrocco against Al Quaida mentioned anywhere on the tv/in newspapers.
One of the big attractions of living in the UK is our variety of news sources, and the unique position of the BBC. If this one-sided reporting keeps up I think we will need to seriously re-consider the use of the licence fee.
posted by Juggling Mother @ 7:33 pm
4 Comments:
At Monday, November 07, 2005 10:46:00 pm,
Paste said…
You may like to try:-
http://biased-bbc.blogspot.com/
At Tuesday, November 08, 2005 9:52:00 am,
OldLady Of The Hills said…
The news that is disseminated here in the states is pretty awful in the same way, and locally, it's all shootings and rapes, and kidnappings, etc! I hate to think that the U.S. has corrupted the BBC but, it certainly could have! Because of what we are fed, I rarely watch TV News; I read some political blogs; and The NY Times on the net, every day, and sometimes I watch cspan, too.
At least I feel that I can balance out what I get fed that way, you know?
I truly enjoy coming to both you and Mr. A's blogs, very very much!
At Tuesday, November 08, 2005 12:26:00 pm,
CyberKitten said…
Always a good idea to get your News from as many sources as possible.
But totally agree with Mrs A - Both the Government & the media seem to be trying to constantly terrorise us. I guess that a fearful population is a maliable population....
At Tuesday, November 08, 2005 2:41:00 pm,
Juggling Mother said…
Hi OldOldLady - good to get a comment out of you at last:-)
It's was specifically in comparison to the US media that I considered the BBC reasonably impartial (not so much unbiased, but willing to give an alternative view to stories where possible). But they do seem to be becomming more americanised of late.
CK - I try to use as many sources of info for my world news as poss - which is how I came across the article in the first place, but I don't always have the time to scour the net - I expect to get a basic understanding from the MSM - and always thought they did the job reasonably well until the last couple of years, which have been getting progressively worse.
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