Post by Patrick Torsney on Mar 7, 2011 11:41:28 GMT 1
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has instructed its senior editors to use the word “savings” instead of “cuts” in its news bulletins and other programs.
The UK state broadcaster has been under pressure to favor the word “savings” over “cuts” wherever it refers to the government's spending review program in its news bulletins, reports and other programs to reduce the negative impact of the massive spending cuts launched by the coalition government to slash the country's record budget deficit since World War II.
A major progressive news website that revealed the instruction reported that BBC staff are under increasing pressure to color the political bias of their reports.
The Liberal Conspiracy website's editor Sunny Hundal said sources in the BBC had told him they had been pressed to use the word "savings" rather than "cuts" as much as possible, particularly for on-screen graphics and the plasma screen behind presenters, newscasters and the guests in live programs.
“Staff had been told the term 'cuts' made their news coverage appear too negative," he said.
However, a spokesman for the state-run BBC claimed that no instructions had been issued about the terminology used in their coverage.
“No discussions had taken place and the BBC was reporting impartially on reductions in council and government spending,” he claimed.
This is while that a cursory search on the BBC website found several news items in the past six days which featured the word "savings" when dealing with government cuts.
This item originally appeared on PressTV. You can view the original and other PressTV articles, here:
www.presstv.ir/detail/168587.html