Last Wednesday, 25AUG04, News Online featured a story headlined Gay group protests over Mobo list about the nominations of artists whose songs include allegedly* homophobic lyrics, as highlighted by the gay rights group Outrage! When I went back to look at the story after the weekend it had changed:
– the first paragraph used to end ‘allegedly include homophobic lyrics’, – the word ‘allegedly’ has now been deleted – so it has changed from being an allegation to an unarguable fact.
– the paragraphs after Police investigation used to read:
The BBC’s Julian Payne, who is organising the coverage, said: “The BBC will not broadcast any homophobic lyrics. A reggae artist is unlikely to perform such a track at the Mobos anyway.”
The BBC will use delayed broadcast to show the awards, rather than live coverage.
They now read:
A spokesman for the BBC said: “The BBC will not broadcast any homophobic lyrics.”
The BBC will broadcast the event on 6 October.
Curious. Why the changes? Why the sudden anonymity of Julian Payne? Why the excision of the bit about the BBC using a delayed broadcast? (maybe they feel guilty after all those jibes and sniggers about American prudishness after the Janet Jackson ‘wardrobe malfunction’). Why the change of heart about the probability of a reggae artist performing ‘such a track at the Mobos’? (as if a reggae artist would ever perform such a track!).
But, the main point here is, why the stealth? Why aren’t BBC News Online professional and honest enough to admit they’ve changed the article? The timestamp even says “Last updated: Wednesday, 25 August, 2004, 11:54 GMT 12:54 UK” – yet clearly the article has been updated since then.
As the BBC has seen fit to spend our forcibly acquired tellytax pounds on acquiring the rights to this event I hope that it goes off better than last year’s did, and that the various interested parties don’t fall out with one another.
* I’m unfamiliar with the repertoires of Messrs. Elephant Man and the Vybz Cartel ensemble, hence my use of the term ‘allegedly’. Perhaps the BBC did some research to confirm whether the lyrics are homophobic – although one wonders who the BBC are to judge such things when they’re so loathe to ascribe the term ‘terrorist’ to those who are clearly terrorists – e.g. the ‘militants’ (BBC One O’Clock News today) who’ve taken their armed struggle to a schoolful of children and their parents on the first day of term in Beslan, North Ossetia.
This highlights an interesting problem. If the BBC was an ordinary company, there would be no problem with them banning whatever they thought was unacceptable. As they are paid for by a legally enforced tax and are in theory “owned” by the general public, refusing to play popular music (assuming it is popular) looks a lot like restricting free speech.
it doesn’t look like restricting free speech when the lyrics in question may constitute incitement to violence, though.
Maybe they had a phonecall from Peter Tatchell upset that his support network was being less than decisive in its judgements.
“Terrorists” vs homophobes- it’s obvious which it’s easier to call.
Killing children in a school = Rebel + publicity for cause
Saying nasty things about gays = Homophobe + ban on coverage
?
I’ve no idea why the Mobo Award story was changed in the ways you highlight. But on the question of “why aren’t BBC News Online professional and honest enough to admit they’ve changed the article”, do you realise it’s a news website? If we flagged up every single change made to every single story we’d be doing nothing else with our time.
Someone Who Knows wrote:
“I’ve no idea why the Mobo Award story was changed in the ways you highlight.”
Oh.
As to the question of noting updates, the reason given for failure is pathetic. Nobody expects spelling and grammar changes to be acknowledged, but if the story is corrected for factual error then it is basic journalistic professionalism to acknowledge the change and why it was made. How long can it take?
“If we flagged up every single change made to every single story we’d be doing nothing else with our time.”
Is that insight? No, it’s more inadvertent irony.
Speaking of basic journalistic professionalism, it should prevent the howlers seen on BBC Online being published in the first place. As senior BBC personnel have noted, some of the material posted is so bad it’s potentially libellous.
Some of those who know need to get a clue.
.
Someone Who Knows wrote:
“I’ve no idea why the Mobo Award story was changed in the ways you highlight.”
Why in God’s name would we expect, or care, that you did?
As for the rest of your comment refer back to PJF’s skewering.
Thank you for taking the time to comment ‘Someone Who Knows’.
PJF has pretty much said all that needs to be said – major changes and corrections should be noted – it takes little time to do it, and would serve to enhance the integrity of News Online.
The absolute minimum that News Online should do is have the ‘last updated’ timestamp update automatically whenever a story is amended – then it needn’t take any of your time to change it (ideally you wouldn’t be able to do it manually anyway) and would give us, your compulsory customers, some indication that the story has changed.
It wouldn’t be hard, and it’s not much to ask, is it?
Actually, just updating the time stamp doesn’t give that much of an indication of change. Ideally there should be ‘first created’ and ‘last updated’ time stamps, as is similar with computer file systems.
But all this becomes irrelevant if BBC Online increases the use of web pages as ‘rolling news’ broadcasts; instead of treating them as discreet reports like newspaper articles. Then anything and everything can get chucked down the memory hole.
Part of the problem is that BBC Online is not covered by any ‘watchdog’ body. The BBC diverts hundreds of millions of pounds of UK TV licence revenue into a worldwide non-TV broadcast outlet that isn’t even covered by Ofcom. I think the lack of restraint this provides is very evident.
Far from having Ofcom regulate web sites, the best solution is to simply sever the link between the BBC and compulsory payment. Then it’s free speech all round.
.
The impression I often have about BBC Online is that it is a lot of Guardianistas running a leftie blogsite at vast public expense. Full of inaccuracies, full of bias, full of a lot of irrelevant stuff, largely missing out on any major story that does not fit their worldview, frequently performing stealth edits when they are found out in errors – and lacking decent editorial control for balance and focus, let alone any outside scrutiny.
I hope PJF has calmed down after administering his hysterical little “skewering” (thanks yoy – v constructive comments there) as he and others may be interested to know the corrections procedure should be changing in the next few months.
Perhaps it’ll go some way to meeting his standards of “basic journalistic professionalism”, the same as all those other mainstream media outlets that acknowledge corrections. Like… let me see now… some US news outfits (what shining examples of “basic journalistic professionalism”!) and who else… how about… let me see… surely not… the Guardian????