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BBC Breakfast: International Women’s Day is NOT news

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Jane Osmond
WVON co-editor

At 6.30am on International Women’s Day I was just beginning my regular weekly exercise with my trainer.

While he tortured me, he had BBC Breakfast on in the background and he happened to remark during one particularly painful exercise that his wife had commented on the lack of coverage of International Women’s Day so far that morning.

This comment jerked me out of the pain I was in, and I started to listen to the broadcast.

After the session was over, I went home to get ready for work and continued listening.

And I got steadily more and more annoyed: there seemed to be extensive coverage of Pancake Day, but absolutely nothing about International Women’s Day (IWD).

I duly went into work and, after contacting Alison, the founder of WVoN, I sent in an online complaint to the BBC, which in essence asked why IWD was not considered important enough to mention on their Breakfast programme, which is watched by around 1.4million people.

Today, I received this response:

Thanks for contacting us about ‘Breakfast’ on BBC One. I understand you felt there was insufficient coverage of International Women’s Day during the bulletin on 8 March. Your concerns over this were raised with the Editors at ‘Breakfast’, and they responded as follows:

“The fact that it is International Women’s Day isn’t necessarily a story in itself for ‘Breakfast’. On a busy news day we didn’t cover it this year, but last year we did report on it with an item about the welfare of pregnant women in developing countries.

You might like to know that there are far more women working in the ‘Breakfast’ team than men – and four out of the five output editors on the programme are women.

Please be assured that your complaint will be added to our audience log, a daily report of audience feedback that’s circulated to many BBC staff, including members of the BBC Executive Board, channel controllers and other senior managers. The audience logs are seen as important documents that can help shape decisions about future programming and content. Thanks again for taking the time to contact us.

Now, am I the only one who thinks that this response is ludicrous?

What they are actually saying is that

a) IWD is not a news item (!)

b) they covered it last year (so that’s enough coverage for a couple of years then it it?) and

c) because 4/5 of the output editors are women the decision not to cover IWD is somehow legitimate (?)

Not being happy with this response AT ALL, I crafted the following: if anybody feels the need to add their voice to this complaint, you can complain using the BBC’s online form, using this case number: CAS-643886-KCHL5Q

Dear BBC

Thank you for your response to my complaint about no coverage of International Women’s Day on BBC Breakfast on March 8th 2011.

The response includes the statement: ‘The fact that it is International Women’s Day isn’t necessarily a story in itself for ‘Breakfast’. On a busy news day we didn’t cover it this year…’

My question is why Pancake Day, which was excessively covered throughout the morning, was seen as a news item and International Women’s Day wasn’t?

I fail to see how Pancake Day is more of a news item than International Women’s Day and find it quite incomprehensible that the BBC would make such an editorial decision when, according to the Census 2001, there are 30.2 million women in the UK, which is over half of the population. Is the implication that over half of the population would not be interested in such a momentous day for women?

I would appreciate a detailed summary of the editorial decision making process that resulted in the choice of Pancake Day coverage over International Women’s Day.

Again I would like a response I can print on Women’s Views on News.

Obviously WVoN will print any response, but I think my opinion can be summed up by Mariella Frostrup in the excellent Observer ‘With One Voice’ article on Sunday about IWD:

“My email to the BBC requesting some form of support for International Women’s Day didn’t get a reply. You could be forgiven for thinking that, in this country, what matters to women is still not considered a priority”.

Quite.

  1. Heather Kennedy says:

    “The fact” is that International Women’s Day is, amongst other things, an opportunity to highlight issues such as domestic violence, honour killings, etc, which are too commonplace to be rated newsworthy the rest of the year round. When the BBC fail to recognise this, (but fall into a stupor over the arrival of pancake day, which apprarently is a new story “in itself”), we have a problem.

  2. JANice connolly says:

    Just sent this comment to the BBC

    Plenty of talk about pancake day on 8th March none about International womens day . Disgraceful – The surest way to meet the global challenges we face is to create opportunities for women around the world to build better futures for themselves, their families, and their communities. All societies benefit if women have equal opportunities . It`s in evryone`s interest to mark one day a year to mark achievments and question inequalities and abuses . The likes of Rosa Parkes eclipsed by an egg and some flour ? thats a real worry and something that the BBC needs to address next year . Of course the dates won` t fall the same again but it has been useful to find out what The Today programme values most -and its obviously something that you can have with lemon and sugar .

  3. Hi – I’ve complained to the BBC using your reference. if I get a response, I will forward it on (redbuttongirl on twitter)

  4. It’s been a long time but I thought I’d share the response I had from the BBC.

    Response number one – basically a load of rubbish as it signposted me to a press release from last year:

    “I understand that you’re unhappy as you feel that we didn’t focus enough attention on International Women’s Day.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2010/03_march/08/womens_day.shtml

    The above press release outlines what programmes we had available to mark this day but I’m sorry that you feel that it wasn’t covered enough”

    So I e-mailed them back. Response number two in full:

    “I understand you were unhappy with the response you received to your complaint about the coverage of International Women’s Day 2011 because it directed you to information about last year’s coverage.

    The choice of events to cover or report on in our programmes is frequently very difficult. We’re more than aware that an event of great interest to one sector of our audience may be of little interest to another. Our audiences don’t look at events in the same way and there’s no one universal agenda that applies to all.

    The choice has to be selective and no matter how carefully such decisions are made, editors are always aware that some people may disagree with them.

    You may be interested in the following BBC sites marking International Women’s Day 2011:

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/waleshistory/2011/03/international_womens_day_global_centenary.html

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/walesmusic/2011/03/international-womens-day.shtml

    It was also included as an item on ‘Woman’s Hour’:

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00z629x

    We’re grateful to you for taking the time to raise your concerns with us and would like to assure you that we value your feedback highly. The comments we receive from our audience help to inform decisions regarding future programming and go towards improving our services”

    So there you go – important in Wales, not anywhere else.

    Mel

    • Hannah says:

      This, the morning after pill news story today, and their government’s position on tuition fees makes me pretty tempted to move to Wales. It’s clearly some kind of left-wing feminist enclave that’s somehow got attached to the rest of the gloomy conservative British Isles.

    • Jane Osmond says:

      Thank you Mel – I am still waiting for my 2nd reply from the BBC and will report back as soon as I get it.

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