All The News, All The Time

If you think about it, The United States of America doesn’t feature quite as much on British television news as much as you might think. We, for example, take even less interest in their sports than they do in ours, and even on the news, they seldom make the headlines (unless George W Bush has come up with something especially made, like trying to petition the Russians to let him use nuclear weapons and train them on Moscow, or something) often, considering the way in which they dictate every single aspect of our political and cultural life.

With this in mind, it was something of a surprise to switch on BBC News 24 to find that the top news story was the the wild fires that are currently raging out of control in Southern California. I don’t particularly wish to comment on the ensuing events there, but some aspects of the BBC’s coverage of it were, I would suggest, somewhat troubling. First up was the mention of the rescue operation being “bigger even than that implemented during Hurricane Katrina”. Now, over 1,800 people were killed in the United States of America during Hurricane Katrina. So far, the news reports are saying that (and I’m quoting the BBC less than thirty minutes ago, here) “at least six” people have been killed in this fire. I am somewhat surprised that the BBC’s reporter in America decided to mention this in the manner that she did – at best as an afterthought, at worst with a nodding dog approval of the work being done there, which, if we’re honest with ourselves, shows up the American government’s lack of positive action in New Orleans for what it was. I would expect such a comparison to be made pejoratively. Is America now such a divided country that a major disaster in one country kills thousands of people whilst, in another, more wealthy part it it, something of a similar scale kills less than a dozen? If it is, I would expect BBC coverage of this to be critical, to say the least.

By and large, of course, BBC News 24 isn’t anything like Fox News. It is, on the whole, reasonably balanced, and the demands of 24 hour rolling news must, if anything, cause a drop in quality control standards. On the whole, watching rolling news services  is a strange experience. During the day, it’s something of a last refuge – if there is nothing on any of the other channels, then you can turn to BBC News 24 in the knowledge that there will be something going on in the world that will be mildly diverting. More diverting than the trash that everyone puts on during the day, anyway. On the other hand, it is a strangely unsatisfying experience when, as is the case 90% of the time, nothing much is happening. There are only so many times that you can watch the weather report in the course of one day without starting to think that you are going insane.