BBC News 24 cocked things up big time last Monday when they interviewed respected technology commentator Guy Kewney on the outcome of the Apple Computer vs. Apple Music case. Except, rather than place Mr. Kewney in front of lightweight Karen Bowerman, they chose his taxi driver for her to interview instead.
Bowerman proceeded to interview the taxi driver, whose Frank Spencer style expressions, when he realises their mistake, are priceless! Gamely though he had a go at answering her questions, while she, alert as ever, presses on (that said, for all her faults, she remains far preferable to squealy, squealy twelve-year old Julia Caesar, another so-called business correspondent).
Watch out for the cabbie’s hilarious facial expressions!
This sort of cock-up beggars belief – that all the highly trained and expert BBC staff failed to spot the taxi driver, who looks and sounds nothing like Kewney, a BBC regular, earlier. Do none of them watch their own news programming? Do none of them have the gumption to tell the difference between a taxi-driver and a well known technology expert before they get him live on air?
| A handy cut out and keep guide for BBC staffers: |
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| This is a taxi driver, not Guy Kewney. | This is Guy Kewney. |
Still, it could have been worse – the mother of all right-on BBC cock-ups remains the Bhopal hoax of December 2004, when the BBC were easily tricked into broadcasting a story they wanted to broadcast by a pair of conmen. For more details of this see my earlier Biased BBC post, Blink and you’ll miss it.
Strangely, whilst this latest cock-up is featured on Raymond Snoddy’s worthwhile Newswatch programme (256Kbps, WMV, or see clip above), it has yet to make an appearance on the BBC’s Newswatch web site, which, we were promised when it launched, all of eighteen months ago, would “publish all mistakes of a serious nature across the BBC’s platforms – TV, radio and on the web – and try to explain what happened“. I expect the BBC Views Online people will attend to this omission in due course, since they’ve already covered a couple of other items from this week’s Newswatch show.
More coverage of this story is available from The Times, BBC falls for ‘expert’ cabbie’s banter, by Jack Malvern.
P.S. If Sky News or ITN had done this I’m sure it would have been mentioned for a day or two on every BBC News programme, with barely concealed mirth, purely in the interests of reporting the news of course!
Update: See also Mail on Sunday: The BBC’s latest star – a baffled cabbie.
Update: It turns out the ‘wrong’ man was a job applicant – see News 24’s ‘wrong Guy’ is revealed above.
Not David Blunkett?
Thank you for your suggestions Ashley re. a couple of word changes.
“squealy, squealy twelve-year old Julia Caesar, another so-called business correspondent”
Yes, ghastly.
The whole business report format on News24 is poor, with the business reporter addressing the 2 desk hacks leaving the audience as eavesdroppers.
You also get the impression that they are not business specialists. This also applies to frustrated pantomime performer Adam Shaw on “Working Lunch”, he introduces a piece on the stock market without having looked at its performance in the hour before broadcast. Any market specialist would be getting a constant feed.
Andrew:
In terms of gross incompetence and credulity the BBC’s belief that they had unearthed proof of contingency plans by the Soviets to invade Blackpool in 1955 – no, I’m not making this up – takes some beating.
It turned out that the Beeb’s startling evidence on which it had pinned its Timewatch-like exposé – a map of the town in Russian – was actually the product of a publicity wheeze by the Council’s imaginitive tourism officer Harry Porter to induce the Soviet ambassador to pop up and switch on the town’s Illuminations:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1594493,00.html
And then there was this howler:
“BBC rapped over porn documentary
“THE BBC has been rapped by media watchdog Ofcom for showing a documentary about prostitution, drug abuse, brothels and the pornography industry in the morning.
“Some parents complained that they had been watching with young children when Britain’s Streets of Vice was screened at 9.15am.”
http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/entertainment/filmandtv/tv/s/169/169850_bbc_rapped_over_porn_documentary.html
But there again, it’s only what we’ve all come to expect, isn’t it?
“BBC reports ‘littered with errors’
“A significant number of BBC news reports are untrustworthy and littered with errors because the corporation’s journalists fail to check their facts, according to e-mails sent by one of the BBC’s most senior news managers. His messages reveal that the credibility of the news service is “on the line” because of a climate of sloppiness.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/07/04/nbbc04.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/07/04/ixhome.html
Not exactly on topic but all grist to the mill anyway:
“Auntie’s Latest Crime: Graffiti
“The BBC has received a rap on the knuckles from a clean-up charity – for plugging graffiti.
“Keep Britain Tidy is incensed that the Beeb’s latest radio station – 1extra – is promoting the supposed “propa fresh” world of urban scrawl – with a new animated series Taggerz, aired on its web site. The cartoon glorifies the unwelcome world of tagging (names and symbols tattooed on other people’s property) and makes spraying your mark seem cool.
“Alan Woods, Chief Executive of Keep Britain Tidy said: “It comes to something when a publicly funded organisation promotes crime – just so it can “get down with the kids”. I doubt the Director General of the BBC would enjoy graffiti appearing on Broadcasting House and I know exactly what any license payer would feel should their house be tagged as a result of this site – DISGUSTED!”
” “Graffiti is not ‘quality’, ‘ripe’ or ‘cool’. It costs over 27 million pounds a year, is the bane of people’s lives and even makes some people feel unsafe and intimidated in their own community.” ”
Quite. But hey, I guess graffiti isn’t a problem in the leafy suburbs where all the licence-funded Beeboids live.
http://www.prnewswire.co.uk/cgi/news/release?id=142740
The taxi driver dresses more smartly than the expert.
Will said: “The whole business report format on News24 is poor, with the business reporter addressing the 2 desk hacks leaving the audience as eavesdroppers.”
BBC business reporters — actually, all BBC news reporters — also have the ghastly tendency of addressing each other using their Christian names, for example: “That’s it for China. Back to you, Sally.
— Thank you, Kim. Now the stock market. How’s the situation in America, Kelly?
— Nothing new, Sally.”
Why do they have to do that? Are there intricate affairs or love plots among the BBC reporters that I’m missing out on?
Grumpy Troll
Do you think this is the BBC trying to ape Sky news?
Sky news have adopted a new opening to their news on the hour which shows people rushing aimlessly around a studio as if they were messengers bearing earth-shattering news.
Very much ‘Drop The Dead Donkey’ with Kay Burley as the donkey.
For afficionados of the ‘Drop The Dead Donkey’ series — any resemblence between Sally Smedley and Kay Burley?
Very much ‘Drop The Dead Donkey’ & “The Day Today”
It seems that parody goes right over the heads of the broadcast news designers.
What is wonderful is how anyone with a braincell would have noticed something was wrong but Karen Bowerman goes on regardless.
It used to be the case that we had one newsreader sitting at a desk.
Then somebody (ITN?) had 2.
Then Five had 1 standing up.
Then the beeb had 2 – 1 sitting and 1 standing.
Then beeb24 had 2 sittting and 1 standing.
Now Sky has 3 standing (around a tiny little table!).
Or something like that – you get my drift.
What a silly “arms race” mentality these pathetic “journalists” and “editors” have.
Mind you it’s not much different with the printed press. 1 gives away a free cd/dvd and now they are all doing it.
I suppose it’s all “marketing”. (So that’s alright then?)
In France, they used to have two newsreaders standing at a lectern. Why? Who knows? And for their most erudite discussion programme, they had the participants sitting in what looked like a mock-up of a train club car, with plush seats sideways to the wall. So they had to crane their necks round to discuss a point with the person behind them. It was the most ridiculous thing I’d ever seen. But in their minds – so clever! So daring! No one’s ever had a discussio programme before where the particpants can’t look at one another except by contorting their necks. The intellectual preening and self-congratulation came oozing out of the TV set.
Also reminds of Question Time.
New editor takes over, wants to make a mark, increases panel to 5. Complete boring failure.
They now seem to have reverted to 4 – a great improvement made by returning to the past!
Also reminds me of Question Time.
I am amazed by the lack of self-awareness these drongos show.
(Actually, I’m not an Aussie so I shouldn’t have used the word “drongo”, especially as it’s an anagram of Gordon.)
“If Sky News or ITN had done this I’m sure it would have been mentioned for a day or two on every BBC News programme, with barely concealed mirth, purely in the interests of reporting the news of course!”
If the BBC reported every inacuracy on breaking news first, check the facts later Sky, there would be no time left to interview cab drivers!
“No one’s ever had a discussio programme before where the particpants can’t look at one another except by contorting their necks.”
You fool! They only had one camera!
” “Graffiti is not ‘quality’, ‘ripe’ or ‘cool’. It costs over 27 million pounds a year, is the bane of people’s lives and even makes some people feel unsafe and intimidated in their own community.” ”
Quite. But hey, I guess graffiti isn’t a problem in the leafy suburbs where all the licence-funded Beeboids live.
I’m surprised that Keep Britain Tidy have not been hauled over the coals for racism, bearing in mind that this hideous scrawling and ‘art’ was popularised in African-American ghettos and is a mandatory backdrop to rap-with-a-silent-C videos.
Raido 1Xtra manages to be both insulting and patronising, as if beoming a rapper or a spray-can artist is the best career an Afro-Caribbean or African can hope to achieve.
Wayne Marshall is a renowned classical organist of Afro-Caribbean stock, having made many recordings to his credit and bucking the stereotypical ‘victim’ trend so beloved of Beeboids.
He has been identified
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4774429.stm
It is interesting the Mail assumed a Black man waiting in the BBC foyer would have to be a mini-cab driver. Seems it’s not just BBC journalists who don’t check their facts.
From what I’ve read it was an anonymous BBC source that was quoted as identifying the wrong Guy as a cab driver – not an assumption made by multiple journalists.