The BBC’s Selective Outrage

BBC: Smashed windows more newsworthy than smashed skull

http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3256

http://wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2658

By News Team

We today invite readers to consider an example of the BBC’s priorities in news reportage. The extract below is one of today’s BBC’s “Top Stories” from its national site. The other is their latest report, in full, in respect of the Hammer Attack case currently before Bristol Crown Court, which only made it as far as one of the BBC’s regional sites! Are we to infer that the BBC really considers the breakage of half a dozen windows more newsworthy than the cracking of a 15-year schoolboy’s skull with a hammer? Judging from the length and prominence of the broken windows story, compared to that of the assault on the http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=403 schoolboy, what other conclusion can any reasonable person come to?

In addition, the BBC has on no occasion ever labelled the hammer assault on the young Wiltshire lad as “racist” – yet the breaking of the windows automatically is labelled so!The “Stephen Lawrence site vandalised” story begins:

“A building dedicated to the murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence in south-east London has been vandalised only a week after being officially opened.  Six large windows at the Stephen Lawrence Centre, in Deptford, were smashed in the early hours.  A Metropolitan Police spokesperson said it was being investigated as a racial incident as a “matter of routine”.  

http://www.bnp.org.uk/2008/02/14/bbc-smashed-windows-more-newsworthy-than-smashed-skull/

2008-02-15