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What has happened to the BBC?

Posted on 24th July 2013

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What on earth has happened to the BBC News? The BBC were once the bastion of good English, but those days seem long past; they have gone the way of CNN and Fox News.

Nowadays the reports, whether online or on TV, are full of ungrammatical headlines (e.g. "Thousands attend Brazil youth Mass"), typos and spelling errors, American English and journalistic mistakes.

So-called private jet

I am not sure which category of error to file this under, but in this story By Emma Simpson (the story has now been corrected - about 12 hours after being posted) it was stated that the fraudsters spent their ill-gotten wealth on extravagances including a "private jet". A cursory examination of the photo from the story (left) shows a twin-engined plane with propellers!

The text description of the photo, provided by the City of London Police, is still "private jet", which also makes me worry about the quality of the UK police force.

I thought it was a little odd, as I was reading the story, that they paid so little for a jet (£350,000), which prompted me to look again at the photo.

Another annoying trend is that of talking down to the audience, especially on the TV News. I know that most TV channels have a target English comprehension level (like a "reading age"), and that they limit the complexity of the grammar and vocabulary to meet this target, but I am getting awfully tired of being talked to as if I am 12 years old (or even younger on some channels).

Does someone know of a TV news channel where grown-ups can go to get their news?