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A.O.B.
Concerning concerns concern
Published: 14 December 2011
The English, however you define them, fashioned the English language. But the BBC is robbing that language of some of its savour.
That, at least, is my suspicion, or anxiety, fear, objection, uneasiness, consternation, regret.
All are terms the BBC is now throttling in favour of the bland ‘concerns’.
It is now the BBC fashion to lump together any less than ecstatic reaction by the market, voters, pressure groups, foreign powers, anybody. There’s just ‘concerns’, this one vague, imprecise mealy-mouthed buzzword, devoid of nuance or shades of intensity.
They’re all at it. The editors, and therefore the reporters and anchorpersons of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, the newly-extended World at One and P.M., as well as of BBC1-TV’s Ten O’Clock News (national and regional).
I tried counting the number of ‘concerns’ on one five-minute BBC4 radio news bulletin this week. I lost the will to live – or at least listen – after ‘concerns’ number four.
Broadcasters like buzzwords such as ‘concerns’ and, running a close second, ‘process’ because these fashionable but vapid locutions use up airtime without their utterers having to think.
It’s pretentious waffling, and it leaks down from the upstairs floors where the infinite layers of BBC bureaucracy while away the licence-payers’ money passing ‘concerns’-laden memos to and fro.
Buzzwords such as ‘concerns’ numb the listener’s brain by the monotony of constant repetition. Such time-wasting should go no further than the studio door.
Ross Davies is a Partner of The Governance Partnership