In Praise of Radio Four Journalism

Yesterday, on Thursday, I had to make changes to my plans as I needed to go shopping. The previous Evening I had to get a take away from the Chinese, as I had run out of stuff to make a proper meal.

Therefore, I got the opportunity to listen to the radio in the morning. As my regular reader will know, I love to listen to the intelligent speech radio we have here in the UK, particularly Radio Four.

There are time though when some of the programmes and the news reports make for uncomfortable listening. A year ago there was such a report about a woman in Eastern Congo, who had been brutalised by an armed rebel group the Interahamwe. That original report made me feel physically bilious. So yesterday morning when they introduced that the reporter had returned to DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo) to reinterview the woman in that report, I knew that it was not going to be a pleasant or light hearted experience.

I will not go in to the details here, but here is a link where you can listen to both the original report and the one from yesterday.

The Today Web Page

One of the aspects of organisations like the BBC that I appreciate is the willingness to tell the difficult story and to tell it well. Further, this quality only really happens in the considered thoughtful reports rather than the instant reaction pieces of live television news.

The story stuck in my head as I went round the supermarket, and I was going to write this posting yesterday when I got back. However, when I returned, I put the radio on and there was another programme that I never miss, Crossing Continents. As this is available as a podcast, I now never miss hearing the broadcast.

Yesterdays programme was about the illegal logging of Russian timber for export to China. Not only that but, the impact of our buying of goods from China is fuelling this.

The Crossing Continents Web Page

While the two stories are very different, they actually carry a common thread, that of the way we in the West ignore what happens in the rest of the world.

Am I glad that here we have the BBC to prick our consciousness and remind us that we share a common humanity.