The world's most powerful broadcaster was at it again last night, confusing the role of news reporter, priest, advocate and self-publicist. On its main evening news the BBC ran an item about cognitive behavioural therapy claiming it could help cure the 1 in 6 British people who suffere depression.
Not even Mrs Freud would have made that claim for Sigmund.
Apart from ignoring the rules of balance, the item was an extraordinary implementation of feel good TV. There really is nothing to worry about Britain. Depressed you might be but it will all come right in the end.
No mention of why people might be depressed (the destruction of the British social fabric from Thatcher onwards).
Executives at the BBC have decided that making british people feel good about themselves is its best strategy for getting more licence fee money and for retaining audiences.
When I was wroking on a film there last year, the relentless message was to make programmes that make people feel good about themselves. The message clearly came down from on high.
There is one more extraordinary feature of the BBC's coverage and one that carries a lesson for how the media landscape is changing.
On the BBC's website there is not CBT story carry-over from the main evening news. There in new media BBC land CBT is treated with the appropriate level of reason and moderate scepticism.
In other words even within an established media behemoth, the new media hacks address issues with a degree of fairness and critical acumen that's disappearing from television.
What's happening, and a point I've made before, is no that technology is driving new media forms (that much is obvious) but that it is unleashing traditional values that the maisntream has reneged on.
technorati tags:bbc, media policy, content, IPTV, new media
