From the Telegraph: "BBC apology over suggestion that Norris McWhirter was a fascist" "David Baddiel and Alan Davies discussion about Norris McWhirter on Radio Five Live was in breach of the BBC's editorial guidelines." Cranmer points out that when he and others complained to the BBC about the comments they were informed: "The Alan Davies Show is a live, light hearted, entertainment programme and in this context we are satisfied that no broadcasting guidelines were broken." One can just imagine the conversation at the BBC: "Bunch of f***ing right-wingers - fob 'em off with any old crap." It was only following the intervention of MPs that the BBC looked into the matter further and admitted its guidelines had indeed been breached. Cranmer asks: "Will the BBC now be apologising to those of us whose complaints they summarily dismissed out of hand?" Don't hold your breath, Your Grace. (H/t George R) Not sure if this was mentioned in the comments, but ex-Panorama journalist Tom Mangold unloaded on his former employer in Sunday's Independent:
BBC Admits Editorial Breach Over McWhirter (Eventually)
Mangold on Panorama
Primark's objections were investigated by the BBC's internal Editorial Complaints Unit (ECU); its admirable report, completed last summer, was, at the request of Primark, never published – because the retailer thought it would jeopardise its appeal to the BBC Trust. Remarkably, senior BBC managers used that decision to put an aggressive public relations operation into action: someone authorised the press office to brief several newspapers that Panorama had been exonerated, when, in fact, the report had done nothing of the sort. In fact, the ECU, set up after the Hutton inquiry, specifically highlighted the suspicious nature of the footage in question. It is only now, three years after the programme was broadcast, that the BBC Trust has forced Panorama to admit the error of its ways. In the meantime, the BBC's arrogant refusal to admit it was wrong has resulted in an editorial catastrophe not only for Panorama, the flagship, but for all the corporation's journalism.
And this from Tim Black on the self-righteous moralising behind the Panorama programme is good too:That ethical consumerism is almost solely concerned with using the lives of the world’s impoverished to chastise those crowding the aisles of Tesco or Primark was clear from a particular segment in On the Rack. There, Panorama reporter Tom Heap confronted shoppers across Britain with the now infamous child-labour footage. This, as Daniel Ben-Ami remarked at the time on spiked, was ‘the contemporary equivalent of forcing someone to confess a sin’. It was a moment that captured the deeply elitist, profoundly snobbish core of ethical consumption. That is, it’s all about elevating those who shop ethically above those who shop on a budget: the masses can have their cheap chic, runs the barely concealed logic, they can even look good - but we are better than them.
So sure of their superiority, in fact, that they think it's OK to fake a crucial scene and then bullshit the papers about it later.
Tuesday, 21 June 2011
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