How Popular Was the Pope's Visit?
I ask this because time and time again the Catholic church and the BBC refer to Ratzi's visit as 'highly successful' and 'very popular.'
I will [not very happily] accept this judgement if they would give me something to back it up. There were opinion polls and surveys before the visit - have there been any public attitude surveys since? Well, if there have, they have not been publicised, which makes me extremely suspicious.
Were the venues packed out? No. There were precisely the numbers expected at the venues (often children bussed in from Catholic schools) and if you drive down Oxford Street or Princes Street there will be a lot of people who stop and look.
What about the viewing figures? Again, it is impossible for a general member of the public like me to find out because none of the Outside Broadcasts made it into the top 30 on the BBC. I've checked. Certainly less than 3 million.
What I do know is that the BBC received a great many complaints about the amount of coverage, that Have Your Say (often a right wing haunt) was full of people complaining about the cost even after the Pope had left, and that Points of View had several threads complains about the amount of coverage - threads that ran on for thirty pages, yet were never addressed by either Points of View or Feedback. As might be expected, CiF on the Guardian website was also full of complaints.
Popular? Successful? Come on, gimme some evidence... any evidence...
I will [not very happily] accept this judgement if they would give me something to back it up. There were opinion polls and surveys before the visit - have there been any public attitude surveys since? Well, if there have, they have not been publicised, which makes me extremely suspicious.
Were the venues packed out? No. There were precisely the numbers expected at the venues (often children bussed in from Catholic schools) and if you drive down Oxford Street or Princes Street there will be a lot of people who stop and look.
What about the viewing figures? Again, it is impossible for a general member of the public like me to find out because none of the Outside Broadcasts made it into the top 30 on the BBC. I've checked. Certainly less than 3 million.
What I do know is that the BBC received a great many complaints about the amount of coverage, that Have Your Say (often a right wing haunt) was full of people complaining about the cost even after the Pope had left, and that Points of View had several threads complains about the amount of coverage - threads that ran on for thirty pages, yet were never addressed by either Points of View or Feedback. As might be expected, CiF on the Guardian website was also full of complaints.
Popular? Successful? Come on, gimme some evidence... any evidence...