incompetent broadcasting

Andrew Gilligan pointed out in the Evening Standard yesterday that Ken Livingstone cannot seem to open his mouth without lying about something:

Both the Mayor, Ken Livingstone, and his main rival, Boris Johnson, recently made separate appearances on the BBC's Vanessa Feltz show.

Each answered questions from callers and from Ms Feltz for the same length of time. Allowing for the questions, news and travel bulletins and station promos, Mr Livingstone spoke for approximately 35 minutes. In that time, he said 36 things that were untrue or misleading, an average of one every 58 seconds.

Over the same length of time Mr Johnson said 11 things that were untrue or misleading, an average of one every three minutes 10 seconds.

What has really annoyed me is that if the evening standard can work out that they are saying untrue things, then why did Vanessa Feltz let them go unchallenged for 30 minutes? Surely as a broadcaster with a large audience, funded by the tax payer naturally, she has a duty to pull them up when they spout shit? Or is she just completely unaware of politics, in which case, why is she presenting a show which deals with politics? People use the media to find out about candidates and the position of London Mayor is an important one. I happen to think that when people read a paper or listen to the radio they should at least be able to get some semblance of truth rather than listening to a crook and a giggly fat bottle blonde. At least Boris is intelligent.

It's like when we were calling people up about the vote on the Lisbon Treaty in the European Parliament. Most people working in broadcasting didn't have the first clue it was going on, or even that MEPs were voting on it. Some didn't even know that MEPs did vote on it, let alone that the parliament actually has a bigger say than Westminster over it. And they decide what news is and what people get to listen to. It worries me, it really does.