The BBC will admit today that it has uncovered irregularities in the operation of its Children in Need charity, The Times has learnt, after an appeal to staff to report instances where viewers were misled in the wake of controversies over Blue Peter and the editing of a programme about the Queen.
The revelation — which will be one of several errors that the BBC is expected to own up to this afternoon after a meeting of the BBC Trust — risks plunging the corporation into its greatest crisis since Mark Thompson took over as Director-General in the wake of the Hutton affair.
The anticipated cluster of admissions amounts to what appears to be a culture of lax compliance in certain parts of the corporation at a time when all the major broadcasters are in the dock amid a series of phone-in scandals.
And, more ominously still:
This morning details were sketchy about the exact nature of the problems surrounding Children in Need but BBC insiders are hinting that the Corporation is bracing itself for a major revelation, the impact of which was more serious that previously thought. There are also expected to be several other instances of phone-in and editing irregularities.
Oh dear. Mark Thompson statement due around 3pm according to Sky News. Would anyone care to bet on how many heads won’t roll today?
“Would anyone care to bet on how many heads won’t roll today?”
Let me guess
0? Nil? Zilch? Nada?
When Major Whatisface was thought to have fiddled the outcome of a game show he found himself facing criminal charges of conspiring to obtain a valuable security by deception.
I would hope that similar criminal charges would be levied against any BBC employee who had conspired to rig a phone-in competition. Everyone who phoned in was defrauded by the BBC of the cost of their call.
Once a precedent has been established for that being a crime, the scope could be broadened to include the BBC’s practice of deceitfully obtaining £135.50 from every viewer despite not providing the fair and balanced news service its charter requires.
How I’d love to see mass imprisonment of the likes of Orla Goering, Neboola Kaplinsky and Jeremy von Bowen.
Sorry, did I say “£135.50 from every viewer”? I meant, of course, “£135.50 from everyone who owns a TV, whether or not they ever use it to watch the BBC”.
The BBC put fake winners on air during phone-ins for Children In Need, Comic Relief and Sport Relief:
http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,70131-1275757,00.html
“Would anyone care to bet on how many heads won’t roll today?”
dupe, fall guy, goat, mark, patsy, sacrifice, substitute, sucker, target, victim, whipping boy Roget’s New Millennium™ Thesaurus
IMHO the BBC is running scared enough now to find someone.
Couldn’t make it Woss, could they? They’d save a fortune.
if we cant trust them on “children in need”, you cant trust them on their news output.
They keep going on about ‘mistakes’. But it was a series of deliberate actions and not “mistakes” – they fully intended to take these actions! What is the betting they will come up with the ‘but all these progs are made by small firms we hire etc’….defence
more info on the ‘mistakes’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6905095.stm
“SPORT RELIEF – 15 JULY 2006 ON BBC ONE
Viewers were led to believe that a member of the public was involved in and won a competition open to the public, whereas the caller was in fact a member of the production team.
The BBC has found evidence that this action was planned as a contingency in advance and that the physical infrastructure of the competition meant that it would have been impossible for it to be run as was described on air, and warnings about potential difficulties in conducting the competition were ignored.
This incident was not referred up nor was it declared to a BBC audit in March. ”
This seems a clear case of conspiracy to defraud? any lawyers present?
All these incidents are scandalous but expecially the March 2007 event.
Although the Blue Peter debacle occurred in November 2006, it was only in March that the sh*t hit the fan:
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/broadcasting/a43922/blue-peter-admits-to-phone-in-error.html
You’d have thought that in that same week the BBC would have been on their best behaviour, but no Red Nose Day happened on March 16th:
http://www.rednoseday.com
They employ some really stupid and/or dishonest people!
amazing. all this happened on mark thompsons watch.
well, either he starts firing people , or he should fall on his sword.
with such widespread and DELIBERATE fraud, its glaringly obvious just how much contempt the Beeboids show for average Joe Public -the people who actually pay their wages!
no wonder there is such a huge disconnect between public opinion and the P.C. crap that oozes out of the BBC.
A few (very) junior heads will roll. Then the BBC will “move on” with loud regrets, profuse apologies and . . . er . . that’ll be it. Nothing will change.
The concentration is on, and will remain on, the trivia. Who really cares that some completely trivial competitions were fiddled? Next week or next month the BBC will claim that it’s cleared out its Augean stables and it’ll be business as usual. Bowen and Simpson and Frei will still be spouting their meretricious “analyses”, MMGW will still be the BBC religion, Gore will be hailed as the saviour of the planet, Brown will still get his easy ride from Marr, the “I” word and the “M” words will still be omitted from reports of terrorism etc etc.
Mark Thomson tells them off. No wonder BBC staff and producers feel they can get away with misleading the general public. A ticking off from Mark has all the attributes of being savaged by A SHEEP. He cannot bring himself to ‘suspend’ staff, he has ASKED then to ‘stand back’. On full pay?
Mark is SO angry, not about treating viewers and listeners as suckers, but because “these lapses have cast a shadow over the wider integrity of the BBC”
His main concern is about BBC image, a once respected institution now rolling in the gutter.
From Eureferendum
Tory MP, Bob Spink, has seized the moment to table an early day motion (EDM) in the House of Commons, broadening out the debate to remind members that there are bigger issues at stake than the petty corruption of rigging phone-in contests and the like
Spink is asking for examples of BBC bias and he can contacted here
spinkr@parliament.uk
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2007/07/corruption-of-beeb.html