Oops, Auntie Beeb, You Buried a Lede
Rachel S. Kovacs
Professor, Arts Reviewer, Author, and Presenter at City University of New York
Yesterday, I listened to BBC Newshour with total incredulity. I have admired everything about the BBC since the time I was a drama student at Manchester University. As a graduate student in the U.S., I spent nearly four years studying how the post-communist media systems of East/Central Europe and former Soviet Union sought to emulate the BBC’s objective coverage and its Constitution. In my dissertation, I studied the strategies and impact of activist groups that tried to change BBC policies and programming. During that process, and my ongoing research, I interviewed those at the BBC at multiple organizational levels, including the Secretariat, journalists, executives, and others, in London, the Regions, and the Nations. I am a member of Voice of the Listener and Viewer, an organization concerned about the future of the BBC and U.K. public service broadcasting. I listen daily to BBC Newshour on National Public Radio and enjoy other BBC programming of diverse genres.
And yet, today, after listening to Newshour in its entirety, I wonder, I truly wonder, what is going on in the heads of those who make decisions about what content is fit, or unfit, to broadcast on that programme.
OMG, I buried the lede! Here we go!
As one who is quite private about her political views, but cares deeply for the BBC, the minimal (please do the math---25.09 to 25.19, and then 44.47 to 44:51 and 50:03 to approximately 52 minutes into the broadcast) Newshour coverage on Oct. 9 of the heinous and deadly attack in Halle, on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year (Oct. 8 evening and Oct. 9), coupled with the lack of any Newshour coverage the following day (Oct. 10), is outrageous. This anti-Semitic hate crime (and let’s not mince words, because that was what it was), live-streamed by the attacker, and reminiscent of the horrific Christchurch, New Zealand shootings, happened in Germany. The attacker could not enter the synagogue, so he killed those outside and nearby the synagogue, and wounded others, which is truly tragic.
The incident took place in Germany, which has strict laws about Holocaust denial and hate speech, but where anti-Semitic crimes have increased more than 20% in the last year. Germany, post WWII, has been one of the more philo-Semitic Western countries. Could not the BBC have expanded on the original news headlines and contextualized this incident in the broader global surge in anti-Semitic violence?
The significance of Turkish incursions into Syria, and the human toll therein, are no doubt newsworthy, as is much of the content on Newshour. To be frank, though, the fact that Newshour reported extensively on Oct. 10 on the Nobel laureates for literature and failed to mention at all, during the same broadcast, the dead and wounded in Halle, and the targeted, thwarted, but thoroughly recorded and streamed efforts to massacre Jews inside the synagogue, is an egregious omission.
I studied newsworthiness for nearly five years in a college of journalism, have made it part of my own work, and now teach it to my students. I ask you--should a story, part of an ongoing saga that amplifies the spike in global anti-Semitic violence, die a day later in one of the world’s most respected broadcasting establishments?
The New York Times (“All the News That’s Fit to Print”) reported on the Halle shootings and updated the story the following day.
Please, Auntie Beeb, we who root for you, care about you, and rely on you to “inform, educate and entertain” expect no less from you. So please don’t bury a lede. Maybe you don’t think it’s THE LEDE, but it is most definitely newsworthy. Do your due diligence and give an incident that is far from a one- off its just coverage. Please provide depth, context, and follow-up where appropriate. Live up to your reputation as the longest-running, most conscientious, most admired, and most credible public service broadcaster.