Entertainment, and crass consumerism have eclipsed dignified information-gathering

A review of Junk News: The Failure of the Media in the 21st Century over at the Huffington Post.

Written by Tom Fenton,he relays an interesting anecdote.

more than a year before 9/11, when he wanted to go to Afghanistan with his London producer to interview Osama bin Laden, the networks that paid Fenton to report from abroad refused to finance the trip. These same networks, he contends, have downsized to such a degree that investigative journalism is now extinct, news is recycled, packaged, and rebroadcast, and media consolidation has all but destroyed the Fourth Estate. Entertainment, and crass consumerism have eclipsed dignified information-gathering.

Was the BBC correct to lead with Jade on a "quiet news day"?

I was interested in Peter Horrock's comments on the BBC editors blog.

The BBC has been criticized for the so called Jade Fest on Sunday as it led many of its news bulletins with the demise of Jade Goody.

What came in for particular criticism was that it led on Radio 4,for some the monolith of quality news.

So was the BBC setting the news agenda or having it set for them?

Horrocks defends the critics by saying that

the circumstances were that the early part of Sunday was relatively quiet - when, later, Ken Clarke made his comments on inheritance tax, many parts of the BBC News output then led on that story.

Some have written that Gordon Brown must have been quite happy about the timing of her death as it took the Paul McNulty second home scandal out of the early bulletins.

Horrock defends the decision on the grounds of internet traffic

We know that from the statistics that we have on a minute-by-minute basis from the news website that many more people visited than normally would on a Sunday - and the Jade Goody story was overwhelmingly the most popular story.

Is that the purpose of the BBC?

BBC accused of pandering to infotainment in its newspaper review

An interesting point of view about the many paper reviews that the BBC gives during the day.

It comes from Jim Dodd writing at Labour Home and he asks

as the BBC has a responsibility (as set out in its mission statement) to “inform, educate and entertain”.

why does it insist on reviewing the tabloid papers which are according to

are part of the entertainment remit

and that

No reasonable person believes any of those “newspapers” are reasonable, credible or reliable sources of information - certainly insofar as that information is presented to fit a sensationalist, commercial or predetermined agenda.

Incidentally besides the usual culprits he includes the Daily Mail as part of the tabloid family

BBC challenges youngsters to set the agenda

We had a seminar yesterday which discussed the challenges for quality journalism.The usual suspects were aired,economic arguments,churnalism,the internet etc.

Perhaps its greatest challenge is getting the younger generation to participate in hard news.

Helen Shreeve writing on the BBC's editors blog today asks

Can the gap be narrowed between how teenagers create and broadcast their own content via the internet and mobile phones and the traditional news broadcasters?

And tells of a project tomorrow where

BBC News is working with more than 250 schools across the UK to turn thousands of teenagers into news broadcasters for the day.

Some of the topics being covered are,living with cancer, and campaigning on Darfur.No mention of Heath Ledger or Britney Spears.I wish them well

I wish them well