BBC North East: I despair

The Guardian, damn them, ran an article telling the world that Runswick Bay is the best place for beachcombing in the country (and therefore the world). It’s a lovely place, but the article was bollocks: the beach is a sheltered one, gets little in the way of flotsam (I walk it most days) and the transport links they talk about just aren’t there (unless there is a railway station in the village I have missed.  I found a hairdressers I didn’t know about the other week.).

Worse was to come from our ‘local’ BBC TV, which splashed the news on its evening TV programme and showed aerial pictures of the village of? Staithes. 3 miles away. Close, but no cigar! We don’t like Staithes, we call Staithes people Ringers because the place has a rep for keeping certain things in the family. Like sexual reproduction.

So I email the BBC. A delightful reply. ‘The pictures were edited in Newcastle…don’t know that area of coast…our reporters do…’

1. You get a lot of license payers money to employ high quality people who should be expected to know their area and do basic, very basic journalistic shit like fact checking and research and know about…

2. Google Earth! I can find a friend’s house on the far side the of Atlantic, the BBC, which employs tens of thousands, can’t find a two mile wide bay that’s 60 miles away.

3. You’re not sure, so you make it up.

Not reassuring. Look North had a pretty low rating in our house even before this. Had I done that as a rookie newspaper reporter, I would not have been looking forward to the subsequent interview with the editor.