A Chequer-Board of Nights and Days

The BBC is a taxpayer funded service in Great Britain. To get Beeb service, one must pay the necessary tax or else, one's television watching is curtailed, to say the least. And what are the effects of this quasi-monopoly status?

Well, this:

Last Sunday wasn't the most eventful one in world history. But it wasn't short of news either. In the United States, the Democratic infighting takes a dramatic new twist with Senator Obama's guns-and-religion gaffe. In Britain, there was open talk of Labour disenchantment with Gordon Brown, the party's prime minister. In Italy, a general election looked likely to bring Europe's most colourful politician to power. In Africa, regional leaders chose to sit on their hands as Robert Mugabe's thugs clubbed their way to keeping him in power, yet again. Food riots in Haiti symbolised the soaring price of the world's basic grains. In Washington, top officials of the seven leading economies gave grim warnings about the credit crunch.

So what does the British Broadcasting Corporation pick on to lead its evening television news? Five young British women have been killed in a bus crash in Ecuador.

Minute after minute--four or five, I'd guess, in a 20-minute bulletin--the report drags on, complete with (justifiably) sorrowing parents, the usual tributes (equally justified, let us trust) and the plastered-on solemnity of journalistic grief in which the BBC is now so expert. For five unlucky travellers: OK, five, at a blow, young people, on a gap-year tour bus, eager to do good, in a far-off foreign country. Yes, it's sad, but five is, on average, roughly half the number of Britons killed on British roads every day of the year.

To be sure, the article notes that other editorials rushed in as well, but this is what happens when an institution is largely protected from competition by government safeguards. It gets lazy and complacent and standards go out the window.

I like a fair amount of the BBC's coverage and Stephen Hugh-Jones does a commendable job of giving credit where it is due. Imagine how much better the BBC would be if it was actually subject to the kind of market competition that other news services must contend with as well.