BAD NEWS SELLS PAPERS: BUT RADIO PROGRAMMES TOO?

Please indulge me, dear reader, if I take a short canter on one of my favourite hobby-horses. We all know that the thing that best sells newspapers (after sex) is bad news. I once listened to a media consultant speaking at a conference here in Bristol, saying: “News is what somebody, somewhere, doesn’t want you to know. Everything else is advertising.”

OK, so newspapers have to be bought or the publisher will go bust. (alongside “bought”, you can now include subscribing to a website pay-wall, in the case of the Times group of papers). If we complain, as I often do, about the relentless sensationalism of which our media is so fond, the remedy is in our own hands: don’t buy that particular paper.

What really gets my goat (Why “goat”? Answers please!) is when the same policy is adopted by the BBC, which, the last time I checked, is funded by licence fees.

The thing that got me going was just a snippet and I am not even 100% sure of the motivation of the presenter in this case … but I can make an educated guess. The subject was, I think, the London Olympics.

Presenter: “what do you think of these recent rule changes?”

Interviewee: “I am sure that the people who are responsible for those rules have made the changes for a good reason, so it’s up to us to get on with it.”

Presenter: “That’s a very diplomatic answer.”

(Presenter’s thought-bubble: “Rats! No controversy? Very disappointing answer.”)

OK, the presenter’s actual response to the answer was spoken softly, in the very polite voice that particular presenter always uses for her most penetrating questions. I could be adding two and two and making 57 … but I doubt it.