. He has discovered that:
Five senior BBC production staff were suspended yesterday as Britain’s most senior policeman raised the prospect of a criminal investigation into the corporation’s rigging of phone-in competitions.
The staff, all senior producers or editors, were the first casualties of the row over viewer deceptions involving a series of flagship charity and children’s shows.
A fraud inquiry now seems inevitable after Mark Pritchard, the Tory MP for The Wrekin, wrote to Scotland Yard to demand action.
“Please could you confirm that the Metropolitan Police will fully investigate allegations that a very serious fraud has taken place within the BBC,” he wrote. “These financial irregularities are a serious matter and should be treated as such – not least because the BBC is a public corporation, funded by taxpayers.”
However, it seems there is disquiet among the ranks:
But there was growing anger among some BBC employees that Peter Fincham, the controller of BBC1, who showed to journalists an incorrectly edited trailer of the Queen apparently walking out from a photo session, is still at work.
And of course we have the obligatory ‘senior BBC insider’ to spin things for Peter Fincham:
One senior BBC insider last night predicted Mr Fincham was safe. “Peter was given a trailer which he assumed was edited properly. His mistake was not being more vigilant.”
So that’s alright then – no harm done! Carry on Fincham!
Andrew Pierce also reports that the Commons culture committee has ordered Mark Byford, the deputy director-general of the BBC, Caroline Thomson, the chief operating officer of the BBC, and Michael Grade, the former chairman of the BBC to give evidence next Tuesday at a televised hearing into the crisis. Should be fun!
So his mistake was not doing his job properly. If I took that attitude in my job people would die. Oh, they do when the BBC spreads its lies around the world too. But no-one is responsible, no-one is held accountable.
The word “mistake” is being stretched to breaking point.
Imagine if Fincham had pressed “rewind” instead of “play”. That would be a mistake.
Saying “this is the Queen being grumpy” and then pressing play is not a mistake.
Still waiting to hear why RDF’s trailer was edited in such a blatantly deceitful manner. If it was an accident then I’d like to know how a high profile trail for one of the biggest BBC programs of the autumn, featuring no less a subject than the Queen herself, somehow escaped vetting by a layer of senior executives at both RDF & the BBC. And if the trailer was for RDF’s internal use only & got out ‘by mistake’ then what was the purpose of editing the trailer like that in the first place? What purpose was it supposed to serve? Of course there might be a third reason; that RDF & certain BBC staff are lying bastards who’ve been caught out & are now wriggling like fish on a hook. ‘Course I’m much to much of a gentleman to believe that.