Are the BBC aviators?

[ManOverhead]

You have a choice

Don't have a TV, don't pay the license fee! I haven’t had a TV for 11 years and I don’t miss it. And the first time I saw Sky News I thought it was an unfunny episode of Drop the Dead Donkey.

To be serious, over the years I have occasionally worked with reporters from different news organisations and they have generally been excellent. But, the men and women on the ground are being driven by agendas from editors and producers etc, and it seems to be getting worse (24 hr rolling news etc, as discussed above).

One little gem I picked up was that even radio news is driven by the visual – the story that gets picked up is the one with pictures (even if they use pictures of the wrong aircraft or just talk about them). And they can get much more mileage out of survivors than fatalities – we saw that last week.

The other thing is often forgetten is that some reporters are in the front line, trying to report accurately. And they take casualties – Frank Gardner survived, his cameraman didn’t. It seems that Alan Johnston may have been killed. I hope his report on Gaza is still accurate: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/6459521.stm