OBAMA WINS, BBC GETS RASPBERRY.

With Barack Obama now safely re-elected for a second term as US President we can look forward to much of the same. Although the Democrat has won the Whitehouse race and the Democrats also have control of the Senate, the Republicans have maintained control of the House of Representatives; this means that for Obama to achieve anything of real note, he will have to convince his opponents in the House to vote for it. The chances must be that little of real note will be achieved in the next 4 years, the US economy will fail to ignite, and could even collapse, and we can look forward to an increasingly 'lame-duck' administration with every reasonably prominent politician beginning to position themselves for the next election in 2016.

 

While the political developments, or lack of them, in the US are all very interesting, my own attention has been caught by the extent of the BBC's coverage of events. For a corporation with huge financial issues to address, one has to question the way in which it seems to have sent everyone, and their dogs, on holiday.

 

Some programmes have done the right thing and relied on reports from accredited US correspondents such as Mark Mardell and Laura Trevelyan; others have thought it necessary to despatch their own presenters. As far as I can tell, Jeremy Paxman, David Dimbleby, Emily Maitlis, Huw Edwards, Jeremy Vine, Martha Kearney, James Naughtie, Bridget Kendall, Jane Hill, and some goon from the 'Breakfast' programme have all been spending time in the US at taxpayers' expense, with, no doubt, their associated personal armies of technical and other support. I also have no doubt that this list is nowhere near being exhaustive.

 

I don't deny that a US Presidential election is an important event but, in common with much that the USA does, it's an overblown event. That the BBC, with all of its difficulties, finds it necesssary to waste a significant amount of money on transporting so many of its 'big names' across the pond demonstrates just how far from reality its management are. With the technical abilities that we possess today, did they really need to base all of their election coverage in the USA ? Surely, transatlantic links by telephone, internet and satellite would have sufficed.

 

The USA now faces 4 more years of troubles while the BBC faces questions on many fronts. Obama will obviously survive his 4 years; whether or not the BBC will still be alive and kicking in 2016 is another matter entirely.