Countryfile and Propaganda

The BBC loses all sense of balance when it presents countryside issues. The reason for this is that the Countryside Alliance has a well coordinated practice of getting its members, who obviously have plenty of free time, to write in protest about every item in any programme that does not represent its very self-serving point of view. And the BBC, in certain departments at least, hates to offend such groups. Farming Today at 5.45 in the morning does an effective job at reflecting the view of the NFU while occasionally mentioning alternative views always as something rather marginal and eccentric.

Countryfile, is in my view, always appalling, frequently sentimentalising the farmers and landowners to a shameless degree and rarely showing alternative views or the basic reality of what happens. That's made even worse by its being scheduled at a prime time, the cosy family hour on Sunday evening. If the CA and the CLBA had paid for the propaganda in Countryfile it would stretch the resources in even their ample coffers.

A recent item on Countryfile was about burning heather. Mark Avery wrote about it on his blog in the form of a letter to the programme makers.

Dear Countryfile
I’m pretty sure I am the type of person you think you are appealing to – interested in nature and the countryside – but I rarely watch you because you have such a blatant agenda of trying to paint a small subset of those of us who live in the countryside as hard-working, suffering, brave and splendid people whom we should all want to clasp to our bosoms and to whom we should continue to hand our taxes.  You appear to be the media arm of the Country Land and Business Association.

So I tend to watch bits of your programme on iPlayer – and usually when someone else has gone bonkers about them on social media – and that was how I came to watch your piece on last night’s Countryfile about burning heather moorland. Now there is nothing wrong with showing Ellie Harrison and a bunch of hunky firefighters on a Sunday evening but quite how you managed to show such a long piece without mentioning grouse shooting is completely beyond me.  Do you think that you were really educating or informing the public by this omission?  You do know (and this is a trick question), that the primary reason for burning heather in the British uplands is to produce ridiculously high densities of a gamebird for people to shoot for fun? It’s only a trick question because if you say ‘no’ then you look a bit dim, and if you say ‘yes’ you are left having to answer the question of why you failed to mention it?............................................

Full article here:

http://markavery.info/2016/04/11/dear-countryfile/