to Her Majesty the Queen after showing journalists a preview trailer implying, actually, lying would be more accurate, that Her Majesty had stormed out of a photo shoot after a dispute with photographer Annie Leibovitz.
Naturally enough, journalists being journalists, saw this clip of the queen apparently storming out of the photo shoot for the major news story it apparently was, and splashed it all over this morning’s newspapers.
Unfortunately, the BBC being the BBC, the truth was very different. The BBC’s clip showed the Queen objecting to Leibovitz’s request for her to remove her tiara, then cut to a clip of the Queen apparently ‘storming out’ of the photo shoot, in which she is heard to say “I’ve had enough with this dressing, I’m not going to change anything”.
The reality was entirely different – the clip of the Queen ‘storming out’ was in fact footage of the Queen arriving for the photo shoot, with the Queen presumably complaining about getting dressed up (hence her quote). During the subsequent photo shoot, when Leibovitz asks Her Majesty to remove her tiara, the Queen appears to object by raising an eyebrow in what appears to be mock exclamation, the tiara being an important part of her regalia.
Following the wall-to-wall newspaper brouhaha the Palace complained to the BBC, who checked out what they should have checked out in the first place, and then issued a grovelling apology for publishing such a malign calumny.
Here are two of the BBC’s own lengthy reports on today’s events:
BBC News 24 this afternoon:
BBC News 24 this afternoon, with David Silitto reporting on the BBC’s apology
The interesting points in David Silitto’s report (above), include the BBC’s statement of apology:
In this trailer there is a sequence that implies the Queen left a sitting prematurely. This was not the case and the actual sequence of events was misrepresented. The BBC would like to apologise to both the Queen and Annie Leibovitz for any upset this may have caused.
…and him explaining that the trailer was a pre-season showing for journalists, at which one of the BBC people presenting the preview (apparently Peter Fincham, Controller of BBC1) said, after showing the clip, “yes, it looks as though she stormed out”.
Silitto also says:
The issue of deception and trust has been said to be an absolute number one priority for the BBC, in fact an email was sent out only a matter of hours ago saying we need to look at every programme over the last few years to be sure, absolutely sure, that in no way we have deceived the public (my emphasis).
It sounds like the email was sent out before this story broke, though that’s not entirely clear. What is clear though is that, if the BBC are to really check back in the way described, then they’ve got their work cut out for them. There are a lot of things they’ll need to check, a lot of them are featured right here in Biased BBC’s own archives. Somehow I expect they’ll just have the most cursory of looks and then report back that there’s nothing to worry about, so that’s alright then.
BBC One’s Six O’Clock News:
This clip has two parts – the first fifteen seconds are from the news headlines at the start of the programme, followed by the full report.
BBC One’s Six O’Clock News, with Razia Iqbal reporting on the BBC’s apology
Interestingly, in contrast to BBC News 24, where they said they couldn’t show the original trailer footage “for understandable reasons”, this report does include the footage shown to journalists, with the sequence in question about 53″ seconds into the Youtube clip.
The report goes on to include a clip of Leigh Holmwood of The Guardian (where else, Beeboids!) on press reaction, Ray Snoddy, a respected journalist and media commentator (also presenter of the BBC’s own Newswatch show), saying:
Ray Snoddy: Coming so soon after the fine over Blue Peter, you’d think somebody at the BBC might have thought this was a rather sensitive subject, and might have been more careful, and might have foreseen a possible row by feeding all of this material to the tabloids, who accepted it with the greatest glee.
…finishing up with a studio discussion between Razia Iqbal and presenters George Alagiah and Natasha Kaplinsky (perched together like Statler and Waldorf from the Muppets!), in which Razia Iqbal comes out with:
Razia Iqbal: The other point to make is that broadcasters on the whole feel that they really are up against it in terms of pressure to compete for audiences, so when they launch their highlights for the next season they all want to try and do the best, and clearly this is something that’s happened this time, in trying to highlight something that they think was a real scoop, they’ve not really looked carefully enough at what they were showing, what they were trying to highlight.
Really Razia, do you really think that they were just trying to do their best and that “they’ve not really looked carefully enough at what they were showing”?
Come off it – they manufactured a lie, as simple as that. There is no other way to interpret this devious manipulation of reality, damaging to the reputations of both Her Majesty and Annie Leibovitz. It was a straightforward manufactured lie, and yet you seem content to pass it off as people just trying to do their best and not paying quite enough attention!
Annie Leibovitz’s portrait of Her Majesty the Queen:
Annie Leibovitz’s striking portrait of Her Majesty – the finished product
Apologies for the delayed appearance of a post on this momentous story – it has taken some time to capture, edit, process and upload the clips, not to mention transcribing quotes and writing the rest of the post. More to follow tomorrow.
Unsurprising that this should happen given the BBC’s relentless, frenzied hyping of its own programmes. As they’ve become obsessed with ratings it’s just one small step in the BBC culture from carpet bombing viewers with hard sell trailers to manufacturing teensy little lies when cutting them (‘managed reality’ to coin a fashionable media phrase) in order to make programmes seem just that little bit more like ‘essential viewing.’ Anything to gain an edge over the competition, eh, Beeb?
This was a deliberate, intentional distortion of the truth. The Queen clearly didn’t storm out of the photography session but the trailer suggests she did. BBC1’s controller will almost certainly have to resign for this. At best he may indeed have known nothing but he’s still the person in charge & therefore he has to take responsibility. At worst he looks incompetent for being set up by a dishonest trailer produced by a morally bankrupt team of ‘creatives’ who imo should all be sacked.
It’s an example of a certain kind of arrogance amongst the media that they thought they could blatantly twist the truth like this & get away with it. The sad thing is that if the subject had been anybody other than The Queen they probably would have done.
I’d love to know who cut the trailer & why his/her manager let it go through without raising any concerns. They must have known it was a lie (how could RDF – the company which made the programme – not have done?) but no doubt they thought it was all terribly, terribly creative of them … stupid prats.
In a way I’m kind of glad that the BBC failed so characteristically and dramatically; it’s wonderful that B-BBC have put this beautiful photo of the Queen on the front page.
Funny, I thought that because of the unique way they were funded, the BBC didn’t have to chase ratings and that their output was more reliable than their commercial rivals.
they manufactured a lie, as simple as that. There is no other way to interpret this devious manipulation of reality
I wonder.
Do you know for sure WHO made the promo trailer shown to journalists?
Was it the BBC or a an independent?
Do you know who made the documentary – was it an in-house production, or was there an independent commercial supplier?
I don’t know – yet – but what I do know is that I’d want to check the facts before accusing people of being liars.
Bishop Hill | Homepage | 13.07.07 – 7:42 am
I thought that because of the unique way they were funded, the BBC didn’t have to chase ratings
If only!
Because of the unique way it is funded, the BBC has to make programmes that appeal to each segment of the audience – including the celeb-crazy tabloid reader.
Well Newsnight had a long interview with someone from the Sunday Times rather than the Guardian, Andrew.
The other point to make is that this is an independent production by a company called RDF. They supplied the footage for this highlights reel. The question is did they put events in this order or did the BBC?
Which then leads us into the interesting relationship between independent productions companies and the BBC.
The story (“Queen storms out”) was being heavily featured – studio guests etc – on ‘Nikki’ Campbell’s R5 morning show yesterday.
I iamgine the story fitted the BBC narrative so well that they just didn’t feel the need to check it. As Natalie puts it, they already had a frame to drop the picture into.
Well said Bishop Hill – lol!!!
Once again Biased BBC gallops off into the world of the conspiracy theory followed by no one else.
What this episode does show is the easy petulance of an over pampered octogenrian woman who’s not had to do a day’s work in her entire life.
The monarchy is just as damaged as the Beeb in all this. And a good thing too. Time to get rid of the monarchy.
Peter Fincham and the BBC press office – which has a legion of staff designed to ensure men like Mr Fincham don’t make mistakes at press launches – surely must bear a major responsibility for this debacle.
The corporation’s damage limitation exercise appears to be pushing the blame on RDF, the production company that assembled the footage in question.
However, the BBC is the actual publisher of information and it is its job to check and check again the veracity of material before dissemination to outside agencies. Before any programme launch is held, there is normally a very careful selection process (taking several weeks) in the press office to decide which programmes to promote, and why, and what to say about them.
It seems extremely slapdash that, given the time and resources available, no-one thought to check whether the material supplied by RDF was accurate, epecially as it was not at this stage a complete programme and rushes are notoriously unreliable as a guide towards the finished product.
For a Controller of BBC1 to go on the record with media journalists with claims that the Queen had acted in this way was clearly a serious error of judgement. And it chimes entirely with the current underlying mindset of the BBC that it would enjoy denigrating the Queen without properly checking the facts. That Mr Fincham did so is a disgrace and shows how far the BBC has sunk.
Of course, if RDF put the footage together with the aim of deceiving, it, too, should be censured. But if it was supplied by the company in good faith as a guide to the programme content, then attempts to blame it for the problem are also a disgrace.
Even if it is found that RDF shares an element of blame, the fact remains that it was Peter Fincham and the press office which disseminated (and amplified) the false information – something they are paid a lot of money out of the licence fee to avoid doing.
David Gregory
“The question is did they put events in this order or did the BBC?”
The implication of your argument is that since the BBC subcontracted the making of this programme and thus the making of the promo clip, the BBC has no (or very severely diminished) responsibility for the contents of the programme and the promo. The next time a building collapses because the (subcontracted) brickie makes a deliberate mistake or a train crashes because the (subcontracted) maintenance firm fails to maintain the tracks, will the BBC defend the developer or railway company from taking any responsibility? I don’t think so.
Also you forget that Mr Fincham apparently crowed to the journalists concerned that they had the Queen bang to rights on this one – and the journalists duly transmitted this crap to a credulous public. Forgive me for the unworthy thought that all the indications are that this was a deliberate stitch-up: probably by someone at RDF and connived in (through omission or commission) by Mr Fincham (whose job despite this episode, I think we can assume, is secure).
BenM: “What this episode does show is the easy petulance of an over pampered octogenrian woman who’s not had to do a day’s work in her entire life.”
You’re our kind of chap BenM. There’s a job waiting for you whenever you apply – just read the Guardian ads & take your pick.
The BBC lied (and lies) twice. The second time is in their apology- as if it was an accidental mistake, a mispresentation. I do quite a bit of editing work for the commercial sector and there’s no way this was made by mistake. In the editing process, you go through the footage multiple times (and I’m talking about 30 second clips here let alone a promo or a full documentary) checking and double checking, adjusting, fine-tuning etc. There’re also a lot of stages during the work n which you send and/or discuss WIP to ensure that the job is being done according to the script. I’ve never come across a client (however small the project was) who hadn’t checked the finished product before it was approved for release. In this case the client is the BBC. There’s little doubt it was to its satisfaction for sure.
There’s always the possibility it was a mistake- The original footage cut into smaller bits and dragged incorrectly into the timeline for example. This is highly unlikely, however, since we’re talking about a production company and given the number of people, editor, script supervisor, and most importantly the director who is involved in the process and approves the result.
There’s also the possibility of incompetence and/or the editor, director being total amateurs. Again, highly unlikely .In contrast to the BBC poor journalistic skills, their (and those independent production companies they employ) technical skills are quite impressive.
And Andrew, a post well done.
And a minor point. In the first clip, in the part the reporter describes the documentary he says:
…All sorts. We see George Bush talking about the queen…
Shouldn’t it be Mr George Bush, or US president George Bush? I mean, they do take care when describing other foreign dignitaries:
http://www.google.com/search?client=opera&rls=en&q=%22mr+bin+laden%22+site:news.bbc.co.uk&sourceid=opera&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
“I imagine the story fitted the BBC narrative so well that they just didn’t feel the need to check it”.
They have a negative attitude to the Royal Family.
For instance, during the build up to Her Majesty’s 50th anniversary on the throne, Jennie Bond and other BBC pundits insistently claimed that the Palace were worried about whether anyone would show up or not.
Or when Peter Sissons wore a purple tie to inform us of the Queen Mother’s death.
“Peter Sissons wore a purple tie to inform us of the Queen.” He might be a Roman Catholic, for whom purple is the new black.
I met Mark Thompson – the Director General of the BBC at a meeting last week. He seemed genuinely prepared to listen, even apologizing for previous DG’s blatant pro-European bias and trying to define impartiality as meaning delivering a full breath of opinion not just a “central view”
The deputy DG also appeared on Feedback last week redefining “impartiality” as moving away from the “lazy journalism” of just giving two opposing views about every issue without going into it in any depth.
It would be a great shame if some kind of conspiracy of Guardianista pigmies decided that the DG’s new (Shakespearian-type) mature view of the world – were the BBC news output can acknowledge that “villains” can do much good and “heroes” great harm – is stopped in its tracks and we go back to the BBC just being a tabloid version of the Guardian in its output. Just a left of centre agenda and a left of centre summary for the masses that annoys everybody on this blog so much.
If the DG is removed by this then dark forces really are afoot in the BBC and the country at large. The BBC trust Chairman (formally a labour councilor in 1980-83) did not seem anything like as onside.
(I had quite an angry confrontation with the DG and I was genuinely surprised by his willingness to listen to my right wing prospective of the BBC and his acknowledgment of the BBC’s arrogance in the past.)
We should expect nothing but deceit and crooked camerawork from RDF Media.
NOt long ago, they produced a show called ‘Little Friends’, where child actors went about shocking unsuspecting members of the public in ‘Candid Camera’ style stunts. They also carried out long interviews with members of assorted professions, which were then edited in such a way as to make the interviewees look incredibly stupid, and all for hilarious comic efect. It ran on E4 in full, and then on to Channel 4, when a storm of protest forced OfCom to ban it.
See: http://www.ofcom.org.uk/tv/obb/prog_cb/pcb_02/upheld
I speak with some authority on this: I was one of those interviewees.
I don’t buy the lefty, anti-monarchist conspiracy line on this story. What we have is something altogether worse. As with similar “cock-ups” in recent weeks (remember the “have you seen where are troops are? Please let us know so that we can publicse their locations to al-Quaeda” incident, and the cutting Blair’s goodbye speech before the end incident), this cock-up is the result of 3 things:
1) piss-poor journalistic standards at the BBC
2) “institutional” (rather than overt) leftyism – if it fits the beeboid group-think, then it gets little critical analysis
3) dumbing down the news in a way that Reith charmingly describes as to “appeal to … the celeb-crazy tabloid reader”
Something stinks at the BBC – and the stench is coming from the news department. Mark Thompson (BBC DG) knows he has to sort this out – and hgh level sackings seem his only option – with Helen Boaden first for the chop.
BBC,
What were the terms and conditions of your contract with the producing company, RDF ?
Did you stipulate the tone and ambiance that the programme had to show?
Did you say that the programme had to be impartial about the Queen?
Are you going to pay RDF for this programme?
Are you going to use RDF again ?
Stephen Pollard:
I’m loving this latest incident, watching the panjandrums squirming and trying to defend the clearly indefensible.
And how revealing it is in other ways, too. John Humphrys introduced an interview with an operative called Peter Fincham and Sir Michael Grade thus:
“The BBC gets lots of public money. It doesn’t have to grub around in the market place…”
There you have it. The authentic voice of BBC liberalism: profit is nasty, and tax funding is the only moral form of income.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/stephenpollard/46370/the-bbc-squirms.thtml
Did the arrogant BBC Execs think HM the Queen so thick she wouldn’t notice? Did they think she was fair game, easy meat for the BBC? Just like the other viewers they daily treat with contempt and patronise with their intellectual leftist republican leanings? So now even HM the Queen cannot trust the BBC, welcome to the club M’am.
The BBC on the Jeremy Vine show has just defended itself with the words, “We take tens of thousands of editorial decisions every day and some slip through” Oh Yeah? Isn’t that the defence of the bully? Look there is so much going on I can’t be bothered to check everything!
We know they can give it out but they can’t take it. The BBC will be quick enough, and they do every day, to criticise others, and to put their spin on any story that comes across their desk.
We know newspapers have views not news, but we can be selective and choose not to buy, but here we have a public service broadcaster which uses our licence fee money to broadcast downright lies, this time it has been exposed.
John Reith, Thom “with an h if you please” Boston, Hillhunt (RIP) and many other BBC apologists like to make out that we are a fringe group of lunatics and the mere suggestion of BBC bias is all in our heads.
In which case, maybe they can explain why, when the public were asked by the BBC whether they trusted the BBC, the answers were as follows:
http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?sortBy=2&threadID=6820&edition=1&ttl=20070713124037&#paginator
Looks like most of the population belongs on our lunatic fringe, fellers.
The high brow intellectually useful idiots who defend this sort of distortion may be made to feel a little more guilty if you accuse them of unethical behaviour, that usually gets under their skin. As for lies they have no shame, to these kind of people lies are a means to an end, their end, their utopia. They unconsciously preface a sentence with the words, “Do you know who I am?” or “Do you know who I work for?”
Just working for the BBC is kudos enough for these half brains but to get promoted and have control over BBC output is just like giving kids matches to play with. To be interviewed LIVE on the telly, even to defend yourself, gives their over inflated egos even more exposure. Stop giving them a fair hearing, they certainly don’t allow others who they criticise the same privilege.
Funny enough a BBC (5mins) short on video editing.
and the link
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=BBwepkVurCI
Gosh if I had another brain cell it would be lonely.
Am I the only one who smells a rat here?
We are told that the Queen is walking in to the photoshoot, muttering about not changing anything, but nowhere in last night’s 10 o’clock news did it say why she was saying this if going in. To me it was an obvious question to ask and yet the matter was completely ignored.
Could it be that the Beeb actually got it right and is now covering up what it should not have revealed?
we need to look at every programme over the last few years to be sure, absolutely sure, that in now way we have deceived the public
They could start by ceasing to refer to last year’s conflict between Israel & Hezbollah as a war between Israel & Lebanon.
(eg current HYS)
JR: “Do you know who made the documentary – was it an in-house production, or was there an independent commercial supplier? I don’t know – yet – but what I do know is that I’d want to check the facts before accusing people of being liars.”
Hi JR. As Max points out (9.55am), given the process of video editing, this is highly unlikely to be a mere mistake – far more likely is that the footage was arranged deliberately to make what was already a good story into an even better story. In other words, a lie, and not just that, a lie backed up with video to substantiate it!
I note that you and others at the BBC are also trying to suggest it was merely the work of an independent production company, taken on trust – a “what, who me?” approach to passing the buck.
Well, that doesn’t wash either – it was made for the BBC, to the BBC’s standards, by the BBC’s chosen supplier. The clip was then shown to journalists by the BBC, with Peter Fincham, Controller of BBC One saying, according to David Silitto, “yes, it looks as though she stormed out”.
So, Peter Fincham puts out a red hot story about the Queen to journalists, journalists go to town on it (including BBC journalists, as Laban notes), and then he says, in effect, “nothing to do with me guv’, it was them independents wot done it, i’m just a patsy!”.
Didn’t Fincham recognise it for the story it was? Shouldn’t he have checked it out, just to be on the safe side? Or do you think that, as others have suggested, ‘it fitted the BBC’s narrative’, so he (and others along the way) wrongly assumed it was the real deal?
Assuming that he was genuinely unaware of the fabrication (as I suspect), do you think a person that naive is the right person to be Controller of BBC1, the premier channel of the state’s premier broadcaster?
pounce said:
and the link
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=BB…h? v=BBwepkVurCI
pounce | 13.07.07 – 1:38 pm |
excellent demoonstration of the art of the edit.
– this should be compulsory viewing for ALL school children
Roland: “Am I the only one who smells a rat here?”
Would that be a Roland Rat? Sorry, couldn’t resist 🙂
Don’t you think though, that if there was any, even the slightest, suggestion that the Palace was lying, that if the BBC clip really was accurate, that the BBC would be trumpeting that (an even bigger story yet!) from the rooftops, rather than apologising abjectly at the feet of public opinion?
Well if the BBC believe that RDF hoodwinked them by faking a programme they should go to court for breaching the Trades Description act and sue for damages.
That is, if the BBC is a victim here and not a co-conspirator against the Queen.
“The monarchy is just as damaged as the Beeb in all this. And a good thing too. Time to get rid of the monarchy.
BenM | 13.07.07 – 9:07 am | # ”
Doesn’t matter the North end of a rodent going South,it is not the place of the BBC,a publicly funded organisation to meddle in politics.
Ray Snoddy is clearly right – the claim was so big that it should have been checked and checked again at a high level. If Fincham just accepts what is put in front of him, what is the point of him and does he justify his salary?
The apology was certainly inadequate – the BBC did far more than “imply” their version of events.
Fincham used on Newsnight the same style he used with Humphrys the next morning – “A mistake was made …” etc.
Fincham shouldn’t be allowed to resign, he should be sacked.
JR: “Do you know who made the documentary – was it an in-house production, or was there an independent commercial supplier? I don’t know – yet – but what I do know is that I’d want to check the facts before accusing people of being liars.”
As we now know, the program was made by an independant producer; RDF Media Group.
But how independant?
RDF CEO – David Frank – Before this he was a journalist and a BBC business reporter on programmes such as Newsnight, Panorama and the 6 O’Clock News.
Chief Creative Officer – Stephen Lambert – “..joined RDF in 1998 after 16 years at the BBC where he worked as an executive producer and editor..”
Chief Operating Officer – Joely Feather – “..joined RDF in 1997 as head of production after working as a producer and production manager on numerous series for Channel 4, BBC and MTV..”
http://www.rdfmedia.com/rdfmedia/about/people/
The truth is of course that the BBC has such a dominating position in the UK broadcasting industry that most of them are staffed by ex BBC employees. Even current employees of the Corporation are simultaneously involved in independent production companies. That surely begs the question – how independent are independent producers?
The second echelon makes interesting reading as well:
http://www.rdfmedia.com/rdfmedia/about/executives/
I especially enjoyed David Silitto’s opening line:
“This morning’s headlines and news bulletins were full of it.”
So is anyone trying to shift responsibility from the BBC for this one. Allow irresponsible behavior to go unchecked, even turn a blind eye at times, and this is the inevitable result.
Is it strange that I am the only commenter to look at BBC coverage of the photograph? It feels OT.
Annie Leibovitz unveiled the portrait on May 7th. As with most BBC coverage of royal portraits it received a page and then sunk into the ether. Even if the Queen had argued with the photographer and stormed out (the portrait was completed – so unlikely, even without the documentary) this is very old news.
In a side box i.e. strongly emphasized. It looks like something you might see in a catalogue offering the Queen herself for sale. Henry Allen, Washington Post Clearly negative :-:
This is new and it’s different. They have removed Elizabeth the woman and you have Elizabeth the Queen. Photographer Ian Lloyd Ambiguous. It’s not clear whether this is a good thing. ❓
Annie Leibovitz, the photographer, is not quoted about what she thinks about this portrait. Instead she is quoted about her intentions before even meeting the Queen. Ambiguous ❓
No one apparently liked it enough for the BBC to find a balancing positive quote and there were no follow-up links.
What do B-BBC readers think? IMHO the work is professional and no better or worse than most portraits of the Queen. It just doesn’t stand up to Leibovitz’s best work. I doubt if anyone will choose it as the iconic Queen.
Anti-monarchism and anti-Americanism are so ingrained in BBC mind think that they don’t even raise red flags with the gatekeepers paid to watch out for them.