See, I think the stump arm girl, along with the disabled children on ‘Something Special’ really help with youngsters views on what is normal. For instance, due to the two examples above my daughter (nearly 4) has never asked why someone is in a wheelchair, or if they look a bit different etc, as she is used to it, which is great.
However, I’m not sure what the BBC are hoping to get out of pushing women’s football more vigorously than both the quality and popularity deserves. Maybe they’re as sick as I am of hearing the high pitched screams coming from the crowd in the stands everytime the ball goes near the 18 yard box. However, if they want more men to attend and take notice, I really wouldn’t recommend showing clips of the football, as that is what put’s me off…
What is the point on pushing news stories about it, when the majority of people aren’t interested? The problem with women’s football isn’t that it’s played with women, it’s that the quality is pretty crap. The same as women’s cricket. So why try to artificially make it more popular?
Oh, totally. I mean they’ve promoted her prob over people with two arms, who might be better at the job, i.e. holding up paintings of twirlywoos that Olivia, 4, from Stourbridge has done, but I’m all for it.
There was a kid at our school with a Stump Arm, and cos I’d never seen a Stump Arm, I found it Quite Funny. And he was always a bit off balance, so we used to spend Quite A Lot of our school days pushing him over, which is Bad. But now, right, kids today if they saw a stump arm, they would just think, Oh, a Stump Arm, that’s quite normal. This is a normal person, except prob they hold paintings crooked, but that’s ok too. Which is Progress.
Can I put a vote in for Channel 5 being more shit than ITV? Have to say never felt that they promote more women’s football but then not often in the sports section.
I don’t think I’ve ever watched much Channel 5. I think the only time it is on in our house is during Big Brother, and that is my cue to depart to one of my dens.
I see that Radio 5/ Nicky Campbell has also lost a few hundred thousand. It seems news programmes have lost out to music. There’s a bit in that report saying that the news is slow and that’s a contributory factor… not sure about that at all.
Maybe the news is just too depressing? I don’t listen to radio 4 in the morning as much as I used to because they started to have a feature where listeners set maths challenges and I fucking hated it.
It did always “amaze” me how the msm only ever focus on bad news.
When you add that to fake news no wonder people give up.
Last Thursday, the lead story on Newsbeat was some “geezer” telling everyone how 27.2C was “killing” him.
No, they could not be bothered to resear h or visit true “at risk” people, they just found some geezer on the street innit.
So even my eyebrows were raised.
Next day the news was how to take advantage of the heat. Buy a winter overcoat. Buy a Christmas Tree. Meanwhile hundreds were dead or missing in Lombok and real stuff was happening - like Germany running out of beer
You could say that about all news sources though, couldn’t you - which begs the question, what are we to believe?
Every news source is partial - some considerably so. At least the Beeb tries to aim for impartiality and is self-reflective. The hand-wringing can become a bit much but it is certainly better than the arrogance of many news sources.
The one thing I find annoying is the time given to very minority views in the name of balance. An example that springs to mind is the space given to that fucker Andrew Wakefield and his MMR hoax. But even this issue (minority interests sometimes being given too much space) is debated and discussed across the Beeb.
Overall, in terms of impartiality in reporting the news, I reckon they’re the best we’ve got. They’re not, by any means perfect, but certainly better than most other news outlets.