TV News Review - Friday 22nd June

I only covered the ITN late news at 10.30pm yesterday where the leading feature was a paedophile sex case in Edinburgh.

This story has been running locally for a few weeks, the position being that a young lady has come forward and told how she was raped by several of her parents friends as her parents watched. This abuse took place over a number of years. Her father has since died, however yesterday her mother and one of the abusers received lengthy prison sentences. Another is expected to receive a similar jail term when he appears.

Images of the abusers were shown, they are not the prettiest individuals in the world, it must be said. One could imagine them appearing as some sort of extra in the hobbit, perhaps living under a bridge. The victim her waved her anonymity in this instance and as such we were treated to a lengthy interview.

Next up was the European summit and ongoing negotiations.

Guantanamo Bay is to be closed, we saw a lengthy feature on this, including images of inside the detention centre.

The last feature was regarding a curious case of missing children in China. We were told how boys had been stolen from their mothers and now worked gruelling shifts in brick factories, similar to the conditions we had in this country only 100 years ago. This story told how Chinese television has broken through its government censorship and as such is now able to report on stories such as these.

There are at least two underlying points being made in this report -

The first is that we in (the UK) have moved on from slavery and are above that.

The second is that television news is a good thing for humanity in the long run (Look how it has exposed and helped those poor, skinny, overworked, Chinese, child-slaves.)

Both these points are actually wrong and condition our thinking. That is all I have to say today, sorry this is so short.

cheers

A long story on chinese slavery.