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Monday 13 December 2010

Daily Mail Overinflates Non Story

Next year – at the end of April – there is going to be a Royal wedding, featuring Prince William of Wales and the future Princess Catherine of Berkshire. We’ll get a bank holiday and no doubt there will, even in this less deferential age, be an amount of celebrating.

So will anyone be concerned about who is leading the BBC commentary for the event? Doubtful. But, as usual, the opportunity for Beeb bashing is a temptation that the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre and his obedient hacks at the Daily Mail cannot resist.

The basis for the Mail’s overhyped piece is that the lead anchor for the ceremony will be Huw Edwards. And, so what? We know him, he fronts the main evening news, and he’s a safe pair of hands. But Dacre’s finest have decided that “the decision is likely to surprise many BBC viewers, who are used to ... David Dimbleby”.

They are? Did “Daily Mail Reporter” bother to ask even one of them? How do the hacks at a paper which specialises in putting the boot into the Beeb have any idea of audience preferences, when they invariably shoot first and ask questions, well, very occasionally?

The answer to the Mail’s implicit question – “why oh why Huw Edwards” – can be found in their own article. Edwards is 49, and Dimbleby is now 72. He might just have decided that time and tide wait for no man, not even a Dimbleby.

But that conclusion would not have given the obligatory Beeb bashing opportunity.

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