21 March 2005 - 1:43pm
Another hit for real news
Following the massive cuts in news gathering staffs in the corporate media (because, after all, real news is not profitable enough), the BBC is cutting 4,000 jobs.
Whether this is related to the BBC's coverage of Prime Minister Tony Blair's handling of the Iraq war is unclear at this point. The rationale offered is that they've been running deficits.
What's clear is that the BBC, one of the few real news organizations in the world now, will follow the footsteps blazed by the profit-hungry corporate media networks -- more reliance on government propaganda, corporate press releases and talking heads, and less getting out there and learning what's really going on.
I'm sure governments and international conglomerates will consider all this good news.
media girl also blogs at other places.
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Comments
As someone who works in the British media occasionally for the Beeb, I can tell you that there is a lot of dead wood there. A lot of people who are BBC 'lifers' do little more than push pencils around. The vast majority of jobs going, however, are not production jobs. Also the BBC is required to commission a higher percentage of its programmes from independent production companies rather than from in-house. The people losing their jobs will go freelance, start up production companies and get commissions from their old colleagues still inside...
Within the telly industry here in the UK not many people are that upset. In fact most freelancers are rather pleased to be honest... There is a deep love and respect for the BBC here in the UK (except with right-wing Murdoch paper readers, natch) and we've been rather upset in the last few years when the BBC has turned away from what it does best and started competing with the commercial networks.
I think this is just letting a little air out of the over-inflated balloon and will allow the Beeb to get back to its roots.
Thank you, gia, for clarifying that. As you know, we over here Stateside get a very narrow and distorted view of the world. Ironically that means that we really don't "get" how the BBC works -- just that the BBC seems to offer one of the best half-hour newscasts available on PBS. (I wish I could say the same for BBC America.)
When I was in London x years ago, I got the impression that the UK was filled with artists but not a whole lot of producers. The film industry seemed flat not for lack of trying, but for lack of people who knew how to make things happen. The system was sclerotic. Or so it seemed to this arrogant Yankee lass.
It's good to learn that what seemed like bad news actually could be good news.