BBC News values

Forget the BBC's current spot of bother. You only have to look at transport and road carnage to see that the BBC's insistence that it is the finest and most objective and impartial news service in the world is complete tosh. BBC London news didn't regard a single one of last year's horrific lorry/cyclist fatalities as being newsworthy. But this same news service repeatedly focused on stories about motorists wrongly getting parking tickets.

Ironically, one of the top stories on today's BBC London news is this: An inquiry has begun after three parking wardens issued fines on a car parked in a bay which had no sign listing parking restrictions.

Tim Cowen from the company [NCP] said the ticketing "mistake" had happened on two occasions because the sign in the bay where the car was parked had been removed.

Not much of a story there, you might think. Someone nicked the 'no parking' sign and so the parking tickets had no validity. But notice that the BBC sees fit to enclose the word mistake with apostrophes, thereby insinuating that it was not a mistake at all.

Why is it a story? I rather suspect it is because the journalists responsible for prioritising London news stories are all motorists with a string of parking tickets to their name. These same journalists don't regard a London cyclist being crushed to death by a lorry turning left at a junction as worth a mention. The major form of violence in British society, road violence, is consistently marginalised by BBC journalists and news management.

Here's another current story which BBC London news has chosen to ignore:

SOCCER star John Obi Mikel was busted for drink-driving at 5.30am — just hours before Chelsea’s FA Cup match. Mikel, 21, was pulled over by cops who spotted him driving his Range Rover “erratically” outside the club’s ground on Saturday. The £40,000-a-week midfielder was given a breath test and put in a police cell. He had been charged and bailed by the time Chelsea beat Ipswich 3-1. He faces a minimum of a year’s driving ban and a maximum of six months in jail with a £5,000 fine — less than a day’s wages.