A striking contrast

As the BBC is crippled by a journalist's strike Meejit ponders news without the journalists.

On Monday, as Irish people tuned into their national broadcaster to learn more details of the terrible Meath bus crash, British people were enduring, or enjoying, a day of broadcasting without most journalists on the BBC, where a one-day strike crippled newsrooms.

The conjunction was salutary. As the Beeb continued to churn out "news" without the services of the majority of its ostensible gatherers, Ireland's hunger for information on the tragedy in Yellow Furze, and the media's key role in feeding it, was a reminder that flesh-and-blood professional journalists do a unique job. Blogging, indymedia and all the other facets of the internet information overload can provide no substitute.

Whether the journalist's job is socially desirable in such circumstances is perhaps another matter: how important and helpful, really, were cameras at the scene and overhead; microphones in mourning faces; headlines about seatbelts that we all knew already weren't in use? How dry and inadequate were reports that led with "three investigations" or "floral tributes"? How incapable were media, yet again, of asking wider questions about the ferocious over-development that sees thousands of new residents, and their cars, populating small country roads?

And yet audiences have an unquestionable appetite for "tragedy reporting" as it is practised, and within its constraints many journalists are moved to do their best and most beautiful work – as well as their most invasive and cynical.

Journalism without journalists

By and large, it is trained professional journalists and well-resourced media organisations that are in a position to get to the scenes of disasters, to know the angles to pursue and have the nous and neck to pursue them, as well as the skill to tell the story. This is, in part, what is at stake in the dispute over cuts at the BBC. Bosses don't like to say this out loud, but there is a feeling afoot that with new technology and multi-skilling, journalism can be done on the cheap, without a whole lot of journalists.

A few years ago Meejit met the then-bosses at Dublin's NewsTalk 106 a few weeks before the station went on-air – and they hadn't got around to hiring any journalists yet. They subsequently did so, of course, but their belief that programming on a news station could be pre-planned without the involvement of any journalists was worrying. (It was some relief, frankly, when the station then flopped with audiences.)

BBC viewers and listeners didn't get the full effect of journalist-free news on Monday, thanks to the efforts of what we old-time trade-unionists used to call "scabs". At BBC Radio 5 Live, the all-day news station, it seemed in particular that many sports reporters (including many freelances, most likely) took the Terry Wogan approach and "passed the picket", either bodily or down a phone line.

The station's 3pm news bulletin featured a particularly unlikely voice – that of the general secretary of the National Union of Journalists, Jeremy Dear, who perhaps didn't know whose microphone was before him. (The clip was gone from subsequent bulletins.) Between bulletins, the station relied heavily on pre-recorded programming, where you could hear Labour stalwarts like Polly Toynbee unwittingly beefing up the strike-breaking shows.

Back to the future

So, there was a day without Today, a night without Newsnight. In between there was a lot of old stuff, an unusual emphasis on international news and some more-than-usually cack-handed newswriting. And when 5 Live threw in a half-hour of last week's film reviews, and billed it as "a round-up of recent film-related output", you knew Auntie was missing her usual brio.

The union was rightly pleased with the proportion of stay-aways. But as the dispute heats up and further strike days are planned, management may push harder to get a few "personalities" onside and try to broadcast news as usual. What's at stake for the future of the craft of journalism has implications that go well beyond the BBC.