Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Do the BBC hate the disabled?

I am growing increasingly incensed at how much it seems the BBC do not care for the disabled.

The coverage of the Paralymics is derisory.

I have just watched the sport report on BBC News 24.

The lead item was very brief, Lance Armstrong making a comeback.

Then football news.

Then the very briefest mention that we may have a passing interest in an event involving some cripples.

Well, cheers. F*cking cheers you useless mindless bunch of ignorant left wing useless w*nkers.

I, and several other able bodied friends are actually quite interested in the paralympics, our team our doing us proud thank you very much though they would be doing very well to beat their performance last time, when they came second in the medal table.

I mean, for pities sake, we have a one legged cyclist who's record beats the Los Angeles Olympic record of 1984, and is but 5 seconds behind Chris Hoy's record. I would love to be able to tell you his name, but alas it is not clear on the BBC's website, nor is that fact noted there that I could find.

The medals table is not there in an updated form either.

Mind you, the BBC has form for hating the disabled. You may recall the other day seeing a blind correspondent. He stuck in my mind because I had never seen one on TV before. He was not the best looking of people, and his obvious all white eyes were striking, but then so what? The BBC has plenty of not that good looking male reporters, (though now I come to think of it, not that many not so good looking women ones, are they sexist as well?) who cares if he is blind? His name was Gary O'Donoghue. His report seemed fair enough.

Well according to Private Eye, and indeed his wikipedia entry he was the man on the scene about to break the news of the political fallout over foot and mouth last year. He is after all an experienced political correspondent and was the on duty man at the time.

So there he was about to broadcast to the nation on the Friday night 10 o'clock news, a blind man, and as an observation, the first one to do so that I can recall, when, according to both Private Eye and Wikipedia, an hour before he was due on air the deputy editor, Daniel Pearl decided he did not want a cripple on TV.

The BBC has had to pay lots of money for that, as they were sued. Daniel Pearl looks set for promotion.

So there you have it. The BBC promotes those who discriminate against the disabled, and treats the paralympics as so second class it can't be arsed to give it air time, outside its good coverage on BBC2 for 1 hour in the evenings. (The Olympics had the same but on BBC1).

This is wrong. So very very wrong.

And whilst I am at it, I listen to the very good correspondent Peter White on BBC Radio 4, why don't we see him on TV?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Quite shocking. Publicity about the Paralympics has been noticeable by its absence, not just by the BBC but by the media at large.

Benedict White said...

Yes Ian, you are right, the coverage is naff everywhere, but the BBC are the only ones who get to dip there hands in my pockets whether I like it or not.

The thing is these people are inspirational. There is someone who has triumphed over adversity, so there is no point whinging about having a cold and so on.