Feminine fripperies

'Women buy clothes and fashion is important to them.'

This is the justification given by a senior BBC News suit for its 360 degree coverage of the launch of Kate Moss's range of clothing for Topshop.
Yes, that's right, some clothes went on sale. Big news eh? But this is the age of 'consumer journalism', in which people spending money on something puts the news value of that thing beyond debate. And obviously the little ladies like their fashion fripperies, so who are we to bother their pretty heads with dull Darfur or the yawn-worthy United Nations, when we can look at floral blouses and lame waistcoats instead?

Speaking to News 24, the BBC man continued: 'Are we bringing our editorial values, scpeticism and judgement to it? I think we are. We have to bring the same kind of rigour and sense of analysis to it [as we do to other news subjects] and if we weren't doing that then I think we'd have a problem.'

In what sense one can scrutinise Moss's garments 'analytically' is not apparent, but it's clearly supposed to distance the Beeb's coverage from that which 'news consumers' may have encountered on other outlets - gossip weeklys and the tabs, mainly.
So, the BBC execs can say at their Islington dinner parties, let's pat ourselves on the back for managing to justify running an extremely facile, lowbrow story - while being snotty about it. Clearly they've been taking lessons from the Guardian.