BBC Journalists’ Strike Reveals Extent Of Dependency On Agency Newsfeeds

What is it these people actually do? muse BBC managers

With journalists from the BBC on a 48-hour strike, the extent to which its once-respected news service now relies on simply cutting and pasting content from news agencies like Reuters and Associated Press was revealed by its utterly unaffected website and teletext pages.

However, a sudden shortage of presenters capable of sitting on their backsides in a studio and reading aloud at a steady three words per second has forced the cancellation of Radio 4’s Today programme and several Radio 5 Live shows, a BBC manager told an agency journalist whose subsequent report was instantly pasted onto a web page by a non-striking BBC technician.

BBC Director General Mark Thompson fearlessly took to the blogosphere to tell the world: "We believe that much of the output on the BBC will be unaffected by this action.”

Viewers and listeners are now eagerly waiting for some sort of explanation of just what it is that the corporation’s 4,100 NUJ members actually do.