In a move that would make Joseph Conrad cringe into his grave, the BBC has dispatched a platoon of pasty-faced reporters to the epicentre of the latest Ebola outbreak. Their mission? Not to document the horror, the weeping, the weeping of weeping sores. No, they are on a jolly little quest to capture, and I quote, 'joy amid the dead.'
Let that sink in. While Liberian nurses in hazmat suits are stacking bodies like cordwood in a deforestation nightmare, some ponytailed producer from Islington is waving a boom mic at a man whose entire family has just liquefied internally, demanding he smile for the cameras. 'Give us a beam, old bean. We need some positive B-roll.'
This is not journalism. This is necro-tourism with a humanities grant. The BBC has become a kind of palliative care unit for its own conscience: 'Oh, we can't just show people dying in pools of their own haemorrhagic fluid. Where's the balance? Fetch me a child with a balloon. A cadaver clutching a cupcake. A choir singing 'Always Look on the Bright Side of Life' over a mass grave.'
I imagine the editorial meeting. A man in a tweed waistcoat, sipping Earl Grey from a bone china cup, saying: 'The baseline is too grim. We need to Netflix-ify this. Give it a spin. The Ebola outbreak is a story of community spirit, of resilience, of... yes, joy. The joy of purging bodily fluids with strangers.'
And so the BBC packs its bags. They fly business class to Monrovia, then helicopter to the red zone. They disembark, wincing at the smell, and immediately start filming a woman who has just lost her children. 'Do you feel any joy, Mrs. Kamara? Even a tiny glimmer? Perhaps from the knowledge that your suffering is being documented for a global audience?' The woman stares. She has no teeth. The journalist moves on, muttering about 'difficult talent.'
This is the logical conclusion of the Beeb's decades-long drift into milquetoast mediocrity. They no longer report on reality; they curate it. They filter the apocalypse through a lens of ambient light and gentle acoustic guitar. Ebola is not a horror. It is an 'experience' with a redemption arc.
But here's the truth: there is no joy amid the dead. There is only the dead and the soon-to-be dead and the dread of those who will be next. To pretend otherwise is not just irresponsible. It is obscene. It is the journalistic equivalent of a clown applying makeup in a morgue.
So, bravo, BBC. You have achieved the impossible: you have made me long for the days when your reporters were stone-faced depressives in safari suits, smoking in war zones and drinking whisky from flasks. At least they didn't ask for a smile.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I need a very large gin. And not the joyful kind.
