18-07-2023, 09:49 PM
(18-07-2023, 09:31 PM)Hemsright Wrote: I think you're over-reacting, there is nothing wrong with having a very subtle bit of fun on a news channel, it doesn't have to be serious 24/7, you can have fun in a job.You can indeed - look at Ben Thompson the other day shielding from the snake he couldn’t bear the sight of…a good example of on-air fun that stays within the lines of professionalism. This is a bit different.
I’m also not suggesting that having a group of young people parading through a studio pulling silly faces at the camera is the biggest crime news broadcasting has ever seen. However it’s bloody lucky that Theo Leggett was doing a story about Jaguar Land Rover and not, say, a plane crash as he has in the past - how crass and insensitive would that have looked? The Mail would have had a field day.
It also speaks to a general impression of “anything goes” at BBC News at the moment. Why were those kids doing this in the first place? Were they on some sort of training day? If so, why hadn’t the senior team in Washington ensured that studio was offline? Why did the team in London responsible for those screens leave that OS up and visible? Why didn’t they notice when it continued appearing on screen for so long?
To reiterate, this wasn’t a televisual disaster. However it reinforces my view that people internally have stopped giving as big a stuff about the output of the Channel than they used to - and that’s a slippery slope..