I would love to be a fly on the wall at the conferences where the items for BBC television and radio news are decided – to try and work out why some stories make it and some don’t.
Murders are a case in point – there are about a thousand a year over the United Kingdom – three a day. Yet not only do 90% of them not make the national news – many of them aren’t even reported on the BBC web site.
At the same time, every single death of a serviceman in Afghanistan is reported on national news.
Yet the BBC finds the resource to report a non-fatal traffic accident on the same day that it ignores a homicide.
Again, as should we all be, the BBC are very down on rape – and also on torture (especially if MI6 or America may be involved).
Yet this deliberately planned rape is featured, while this deliberately planned rape and torture is ignored. This unpleasant rape and assault also seems to fly under the BBC news radar.
Two knife-wielding burglars who gang-raped a young mother in her home as her young son begged them to stop have been locked up. The drink and drug-fuelled pair took turns to rape the woman after horrifically killing the child’s pet in front of him.
Is that not “news” ? If you stab a child’s pet, does it not bleed ?
I cannot think* why the murder of James Houliston and the crimes of Reon Hall and Aaron Fitzgerald Gelly, Mansoor Shah and Stefan Reed, should not be considered worth even one report from the organisation that gives us “city tram restrictions continue“. Would anyone from the BBC like to comment ?
* (well I can, but it reflects so badly upon the BBC that I hesitate to air it).