THE LIVING WAGE…
THE IMPARTIAL NHS DEBATE…
THE END OF DEBATE and THE SECRET 28
THE END OF DEBATE and THE SECRET 28
“Far from the Jimmy Savile scandal, the director of BBC News Helen Boaden took the witness stand in London today.A squad of Beeb legal staff, including two barristers, crammed into a small court room to support the£354,000-a-year news chief against her opponent, a North Wales pensioner who was accompanied only by his wife. The case is a six-year freedom of information battle in which the BBC is refusing to disclose who attended a seminar it held in 2006.This seminar is historically significant. The BBC’s global reputation for news reporting stems from its unshakable impartiality; even in wartime its commitment to maintaining evenhandedness has occasionally enraged British politicians (and sometimes servicemen). Following that 2006 seminar, however, the corporation made a decision to abandon impartiality when covering climate change – and that’s according to the BBC Trust. This was an unprecedented decision for the BBC in peacetime.