Categories: uncategorized
Date: 20 September 2007 18:47:20
So it appears from this BBC article that the BBC has lost even more of it's integrity - (if it had any left). However, whilst we are all jumping up and down in dispair and arguing Blue Peter was / is one of those British institutions that has made this nation what it is I think we need to pause.
Ok, for longer than I've been alive it's been Auntie Beebs flagship kids programme but it's got shadows in the past we choose to gloss over. I remember being in a Sociology of the media lecture at uni when I first heard deception and Blue Peter mentioned in the same breath. My lecturer pointed out that Shep, the Blue Peter dog of my childhood had actually been a series of dogs, replaced at regular intervals as was required to keep the whole John Noakes and Shep thing going.
However, does there being a precident already for conning kids make it right. Of course it doesn't, what Blue Peter have succeeded in doing is teaching a generation not to trust people and to become even more cynical about the media - again if that is possible. Kids today see quite enough of the effects of adult lies and betrayal they need something to believe in. Will it be God? I doubt it, again the kids are taught there all is not as it seems as many of them realise they're only there to get into the high school of their choice (or perhaps that's an unfair interpretation of the increase in under 12's back in church that the Baptist Times reports this week).