The BBC/Newsnight
Posted by: JamieWednesday on 11 November 2012
OK, so the Beeb gets pilloried for not running a story which may have outed the circumstances around a suspected abuser. It then gets the same for running a story about other potential abusers, without naming anyone. And gets done for that!
Is it me..?
BBC set up to fall on its own sword......Dont look here look over there.
It’s just as well his Lordship didn’t make his statement at a press conference. Then qualified privilege would have applied – and journalists and bloggers could have named him in connection with child abuse without any risk of being sued.
In my years of running small businesses, I learned that staff started taking the P155 after a while, BBC staff, come to mind, seem to think they were untouchable!
KR
Tony
Don't tar the whole of the BBC with the misdeeds of the idiots in charge of it. I worked there for 32 years, until last December. The great majority of staff have a huge regard for the truth, work v hard to maintain journalistic standards, and work very long hours. Since Birt, the place has been run by ineffective and dangerous management who are more and more cut off from those on the coalface. There's a circle of management who exist solely to meet others in that circle. They're paid ridiculously inflated salaries - far ahead of the people who make the programmes - and they tend to stay only until a job is offered in the independent sector. Makes my hearts bleed because I know the next stage will be hundreds of hours of pointless "trust restoring" courses and seminars in-house which overstretched producers will be forced to attend. Tim Davie (aka "Pepsi Tim") is a marketing man. I've been at several meetings he's taken and the sooner they put somebody else in place frankly the better. I've worked for H Boaden. She was a good leader but she screwed up royally this time and is paying the price, just as the Controller of Radio 2 did when the Ross/Brand screw-up caused the last crisis. I don't know. Glad to be out of there but please look at the wider picture. BBC staff aren't untouchable - and, by the way, you couldn't put the "talent" on staff. They wouldn't go for it. And when they do work for the BBC they are bound by the same codes that the rest of the people working there abide by ... most of the time.
Dear Kevin,
I hope that the organisation can be cleaned up, but if is it not convincing, you will know that I shall not be convinced.
John Humphries did a real logic job on Entwhistle, and there was nowhere left for him after that. I listened to it on the Telegraph website. I follow two newspapers this way and the other is the Guardian, so somewhere between them I get a notion of the truth. As it went I used to believe that I could guarantee that truth from the BBC, but anyone with a brain to think will see that this has not always been the case. And when trust - formerly held - is lost it is far more damaging than if one never quite trusted in the first place. That is why what has been going on at the BBC is even sadder than it might seem otherwise. An organisation that has by its own actions besmirched itself, and by implication those who believed in its integrity.
I could never be quite so upset by dubious reporting by a private capital newspaper!
At its best the BBC shows the qualities that it must have to earn respect and trust in its uniquely privileged position.
If it can demonstrate that it has cleaned the stable, then it may in time take its position of honour, trust, and therefore moral authority once again after a period of exemplary actions - it will not be an overnight rebuilding of trust though. Trust can be lost in an instant, and must be rebuilt over much longer.
But in my view, it must come back in scale of operation to within what can be managed with complete control and diligence, and it is too extended an organisation for that currently, IMO.
And it is certainly true that the BBC is not the only organisation which has to answer questions regarding the child abuse scandal. It is something that is going to be a horrible mark on public life for a long time to come I would think, and for the victims the torment will never entirely pass.
ATB from George
George,
1.What would you replace the BBC with, knowing, as Im sure you do, that no-one really wants a commercial BBC or BBC replacement to take a huge chunk out of advertising revenues for commercial television, suffering already from a massive drop in advertising revenue from the economic downturn.
2, Do you propose abolishing the House of Commons as this has suffered an equally catastrophic loss of trust as a result of the expenses scandal and the continuing lamentable conduct by MPs( a la Dennis McShane ) Have they learned anything? What would you replace them with? Why should my taxes go towards paying these people when public trust in them is at an all time low.
3. In the light of the alleged Saville cover up in other public institutions, what sort of punitive action would you suggest?
Sister xx
1. Nothing. It is already superfluous.
Plenty of reliable media beside the BBC.
2. No, but I would have a few MPs in prison by now.
3. Savile is dead, so no punishment is now possible. But a very long time in prison in a rather Spartan regime would seem suitable for any others involved.
ATB from George
1.
Nothing.
It is already superfluous.
Plenty of reliable media beside the BBC. Save a fortune in he process.
2. No but I would have a few MPs in prison by now.
ATB from George
ITV 1, a dumbed down Channel 4 , Channel 5 and loads of Sky - and of course Dave. Classic FM for culture on the radio.
What a world you have to look forward to !!
Sister xx
George, Just as well, IMHO, that you are not in charge.
But if you were, what about Q3 ?
Cheers
Don
I gave up TV as being hopeless ten years ago!
I'd miss Radio Four, but no doubt I'd get over it.
ATB from George
PS: Please note the correctly re- edited post which you quoted after the computer ate a load of the original!
George,
The BBC is a whole load more than a news provider.
No more Have I Got News For You, Question Time or University Challenge............the list is endless
....ok, Eastenders - you win.
Cheers
Don
George,
Q3 related to the institutions, not the individuals within the institutions to which you seem to have responded.
Perhaps Stoke Mandeville and Leeds General etc etc have already carried out in-depth investigations, published their findings and punished those involved or turning a blind-eye etc I must have missed the reports on ITV and Al Jazeera and in the newspapers.
cheers
Don
Sometimes tough decisions must be taken, such as when an organisation starts casting very nasty aspersions without due diligence against an innocent person, having itself just bungled a cover up of a forty year sex scandal on its own premises. Something that was known about in certain quarters from the early 1970s, by the admission of some of the staff on Panorama after ITV blew the lid on the cover up.
What would there be to miss in comparison to that sort of thing? It is not one small error - it is horrendous.
ATB from George
George,
Q3 related to the institutions, not the individuals within the institutions to which you seem to have responded.
Perhaps Stoke Mandeville and Leeds General etc etc have already carried out in-depth investigations, published their findings and punished those involved or turning a blind-eye etc I must have missed the reports on ITV and Al Jazeera and in the newspapers.
cheers
Don
The thing is that we cannot do without hospitals, but instead of simply abolishing them - a valid option for the BBC as there are other perfectly fine media outlets - then very intensive measures must be implemented to prevent anything of the sort happening again as far as humanly possible.
ATB from George
What are the " other fine media outlets" George?
Sister xx
I thoroughly enjoyed part one of an excellent two-part documentary about Adolf Hitler on BBC2 this evening. Just part of my TV entertainment for this week's licence money.
The flow of an absorbing one hour programme was not disjointed by inane advertising. What really annoys me on commercial TV stations with a programme like this, is that we have to be given a re-cap of what it's all about after every ad-break.
"I already know that; you don't have to tell me again - I'm watching the frigging programme!"
John.
Having seen broadcast television in the States and Australia, a world without the BBC would be a much worse one I reckon. Constant interruptions, needless recaps (as John points out) and being force-fed a diet of advertisements for stuff we don't need or want... Terrible.
The fact that Murdoch so desperately wants rid of the BBC would be reason enough to create it if it didn't exist, let alone fight to preserve what we've got.
French television, because of its wholly commercial agenda, is complete crap. I really have tried, because I thought it would be an ideal way to improve my language skills, but it is intolerable and every hour spent watching the talking heads and vacuous game-shows ("Deal or No Deal" is a French invention - surely that is all you need to know) that fill every hour of French television is an hour lost listening to Radio 4, or music.
ITV and Sky are pretty dreadful as it is, but without the BBC, they would be a whole pile worse.
I am so thankful that I can receive British television (by satellite) in the South of France, and even more grateful for Radio 4.
Go to the Radio 4 website and 'listen again' to last night's "I'm Sorry I haven't a Clue", specifically to Barry Cryer 'singing' the words of "A Few of My Favourite Things" to the tune of "The Funeral March" and realise that the BBC is worth every penny, and its value is far deeper even than that.
Reporting the allegations of a mis-informed (but still genuine) victim, and covering up true - but at the time hard to substantiate - accusations against someone popular and widely regarded as a marvellous and dedicated charity worker, are simply not in the same league as hacking into the phone line of a murdered schoolgirl, or faking photographs of soldiers torturing people.
How dare Murdoch et al call for censure of the BBC over this.
Don't tar the whole of the BBC with the misdeeds of the idiots in charge of it. I worked there for 32 years, until last December. The great majority of staff have a huge regard for the truth, work v hard to maintain journalistic standards, and work very long hours. Since Birt, the place has been run by ineffective and dangerous management who are more and more cut off from those on the coalface. There's a circle of management who exist solely to meet others in that circle. They're paid ridiculously inflated salaries - far ahead of the people who make the programmes - and they tend to stay only until a job is offered in the independent sector. Makes my hearts bleed because I know the next stage will be hundreds of hours of pointless "trust restoring" courses and seminars in-house which overstretched producers will be forced to attend. Tim Davie (aka "Pepsi Tim") is a marketing man. I've been at several meetings he's taken and the sooner they put somebody else in place frankly the better. I've worked for H Boaden. She was a good leader but she screwed up royally this time and is paying the price, just as the Controller of Radio 2 did when the Ross/Brand screw-up caused the last crisis. I don't know. Glad to be out of there but please look at the wider picture. BBC staff aren't untouchable - and, by the way, you couldn't put the "talent" on staff. They wouldn't go for it. And when they do work for the BBC they are bound by the same codes that the rest of the people working there abide by ... most of the time.
+ one bazillion.
I've never worked at the BBC, but I know many that have and still do. CP's picture concurs with my own impression from observations and what colleagues have told me.
All I can say, after reading the posts since I last visited this thread, is that thank fcuk George (sorry George!) is not in charge of UK broadcasting policy.