BBC Radio News Style Guide
BBC Radio News has posted a very helpful guide online to writing for radio. It’s concise, clearly written and covers things such as getting the tone of story right and using only spoken English. The guide also includes a link to a detailed list of alphabetical rules about such things as the overuse of the word “but” and the misuse of the word “ironically.” Some of the advice is specific to British journalists, such as the rule forbidding the use of the word soccer for football. But most of the advice would be valuable to Canadian journalists and journalism students.
BBC Radio News has posted a very helpful guide online to writing for radio. It’s concise, clearly written and covers things such as getting the tone of story right and using only spoken English. The guide also includes a link to a detailed list of alphabetical rules about such things as the overuse of the word “but” and the misuse of the word “ironically.” Some of the advice is specific to British journalists, such as the rule forbidding the use of the word soccer for football. But most of the advice would be valuable to Canadian journalists and journalism students.
October 1, 2007
Oh, that Canadian reporters
Oh, that Canadian reporters had this as a guiding principle:
“Be sceptical at all times. Be particularly sceptical when dealing with assertions dressed up as facts. ‘The government has announced a breakthrough in tackling inner-city crime’ is what the government would like us to say. But we cannot judge whether there has indeed been a breakthrough, or whether a mass of statistics has been cunningly arranged to give that impression. So pin the assertion on the government. We should be even more rigorous with claims about medical and scientific advances.”
I can’t begin to count the number of times when I heard absolute twaddle repeated verbatim in a news report.