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The BBC Guide to Post-Modern Journalism

This guide is intended to present the key skills to those who want a career in the BBC as a journalist, news reader or current affairs host**.

As a post-modern journalist remember that the story is king.  Draw out the differences and conflicts between people because these are the substance of story telling.  Do not get immersed in "the facts".  Remember, the audience does not know these "facts" and will be bored to death by them anyway.  Remember that there is always a "moral high ground", think carefully about which viewpoint is most easy to portray as "saintly" and then either take that position yourself or, in a current affairs program, draw one side towards the saintly and suggest the other side is evil. If you want one side to appear stupid recruit a fool to represent it.

This approach can be applied to any reporting and discussion from sport to missing cats and it saves BBC journalists hours of anxious research and structuring of articles.  Here are some hints for story telling and creating drama in a current affairs program:

Green issues

Whatever Green issues are about everyone agrees that any danger is decades away.  This gives you total freedom to portray green issues as the story of "warring parties".  Invite scientists, let them confront each other with their "facts" and then say "can you be absolutely certain that there is no room for error in these findings?" and "how can we believe what you are saying when it has been shown that some of your supporters have suppressed publications?", introducing the moral high ground of academic freedom.  The debate can then get away from the "facts" and concentrate on the conflict and you do not need to know anything yourself.

The EU and alliances in general

Current affairs at the BBC deals with alliances on a daily basis.  There is always a larger group and a smaller, dissenting group so the story is always "David and Goliath" or "foolish, isolated outsider".  Which of these you choose depends upon either the moral high ground or which will create the most drama in your current affairs show.  A good example is the recent Cameron veto - no-one at the BBC really knows why he vetoed the treaty but you do not need to know.  The obvious choice here is "foolish isolated outsider" because everyone can understand this as a drama. Imagine Tory, Labour and Lib-Dem spokesmen around the table and you lead with "Hasn't Cameron burnt his boats and moved to the outside of the European Club where no-one will listen?" - immediate pandemonium ensues without anyone being any the wiser about the treaties or vetoes. You do not even need to know what the EU or a veto is!  There is no need to even mention the birth of a huge new nation in Europe.   The story is king, it is better to be warm and cuddled up with Mussolini, Franco, Stalin and Hitler than isolated in the cold.  When it was obvious that Chamberlain was a fool no-one blamed the journalists for being beneath the plot of "caring Chamberlain versus belligerent Churchill".  The "facts" of what the various parties are doing do not matter to us, the journalists, we are below such things.

Globalization and the free movement of labour

Under this heading come international trade, foreign ownership, immigration, ports and airports etc.  The moral high ground is always about openness, accepting others, freedom so the story is "Miser racist hermit against the modernising, forward looking, internationalist saviour".  See how this works, suppose a Japanese company wants to site a parts manufacturing works in the Midlands next to already established British competition.  Around the current affairs table are a union boss, a Tory free-trader and woman from the CBI.   You ask "how can we protect jobs if we are not prepared to compete with the best in the world?".  The union man splutters and you are off and running without any need to discuss Japanese and British government subsidies to the Japanese company.  Anyone can do this, you do not need to know anything about economics.

Here is another example, suppose there is a Tory who wants to cap immigration across the table from a Labour MP. Globalization is almost always a moral high grounder so rather than discussing the free movement of labour the story is "Xenophobe versus saint".  Your question is: "isn't diversity the strength of this country?".  Instant drama ensues, there is no need for stupid "facts" such as UK immigration in the last decade being one of the most epic mass movements of people in world history or the enlarged population of the UK being utterly unsustainable in the long term.  Even if these "facts" turned out to be "true" no-one would blame you.


Summary

So, in summary, you too can be a lazy, ignorant entertainer and have a clear conscience about destroying democracy by hiding the truth.  Now we have taught people to believe that the "moral high ground" and who is strongest in a conflict is all that matters there is no need to give them any information at all. No-one will blame you, after all, you just wrote the hilarious story, you were not its theme!

Postscript

Impartiality is not the same as objectivity.  A news agency can be objective about genocide yet still condemn it.   Impartiality always favours evil, for example, three mercenaries might be asked to kill a family, only the mercenary who says NO! avoids the evil, the mercenary who says YES accepts it, as does the mercenary who says I am IMPARTIAL.  The BBC is proud of its impartiality: "Impartiality lies at the heart of public service and is the core of the BBC's commitment to its audiences" (BBC editorial guidelines).

There is an interesting report on BBC attitudes in the Daily Mail article: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-411846/We-biased-admit-stars-BBC-News.html  and an extraordinary insight into BBC views in Andrew Marr's article:

"And the final answer, frankly, is the vigorous use of state power to coerce and repress. It may be my Presbyterian background, but I firmly believe that repression can be a great, civilising instrument for good. Stamp hard on certain 'natural' beliefs for long enough and you can almost kill them off. The police are first in line to be burdened further, but a new Race Relations Act will impose the will of the state on millions of other lives too."

See:

Should the BBC be privatised?


Postmodernism-poststructuralism-postmarxism

The London Riots and the Mediocracy

A ranking of social evils

** Just in case you were fooled, this article is not written by, or on behalf of the BBC.  It is satire.

Written: 14/12/2011

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