Euro-election coverage: was the BBC’s graphical overkill a violation of its charter?


The increasing domination of BBC news coverage by ever more expensive, elaborate and distracting graphics is an issue that I’ve touched on several times since starting this blog.

Last night’s Euro election coverage saw this graphical mania plumbing new depths, as we had to watch Jeremy Vine groping his way around a virtual studio, with maps on the floor and walls, as bar charts kept springing up from beneath his feet and one incomprehensible circle after another kept materializing behind him.

Does anyone at the BBC (other than their computer graphics nerds) seriously believe that viewers like watching this kind of stuff, let alone find it useful?

According to the BBC’s Royal Charter, the corporation has an obligation to ‘inform, educate and entertain’.

Have a look at the following, helpfully described on the BBC's website as 'The figures explained', and see if you think it achieves any of these objectives.

Then click Play again, close your eyes and see if you’re any more or less the wiser when you can’t see Mr Vine or his graphics.



2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The BBC are certainly not informing (but not on their own). Nowhere can I find the breakdown of votes within the reigons. I want to know how people voted within Yorkshire and the Humber. The only reason I know how Barnsley voted is because that's where the BNP vote came from.

To answer your original point, the circle fiasco was neither illustrative nor legible, and I was sat there wishing Dimbleby would stop talking over the beginning of candidate's speeches with irrelevant or superfluous information.

Rowan Manahan said...

Just dire. Propellerheads run amok! Just because you have the technology doesn't mean you should use it.