conflict of interest from yesterday, Biased BBC reader ‘Al the Hat’ coments:
A few weeks ago, Radio 5 Live had an extensive discussion on who should replace Michael Vaughan as captain of the England one day cricket team.
Guest and former England cricketer Alec Stewart made a long and considered argument in favour of Paul Collingwood, without feeling the need to tell us that he is, in fact, Collingwood’s agent.
If this is so, I wonder if this is something the BBC was aware of at the time of the interview? If so, someone at the BBC needs to be re-educated, again, about the apparently confusing difference between right and wrong. If not, then the contributor in question should be blacklisted from appearing anywhere on the BBC for a lengthy period to discourage such abuses.
There seems to be a good deal of plugging of one product or another across the BBC, most noticeably on programmes like Breakfast, ever desperate to fill up those vacuous hours, with plugs for books, plays, shows, gadgets (Apple products especially!), etc. I doubt that many of these are sought out by programme researchers.
I wonder just how often this sort of product placement happens for friends of BBC staff or with the help of former BBC staff turned PR flaks – probably a lot more often than we’d like to think would happen with an honest and impartial broadcaster. But then we are talking about the media luvvies who ‘own’ the BBC.
Don’t forget the slogan from a year or two back: It’s not your BBC, it’s their BBC! At least I think that’s how it went.
Given the choice of captain is made by the selectors rather than the public, I am not sure this quite falls into the same boat as dressing up commercial or political plugs (where customer or voter views are important) as editorial or expert comment.
Selectors usually have a pretty high opinion of their own judgement, so I doubt they were swayed one bit by Stewart’s views.
I do think there is a wider point on the way the BBC routinely advertises. I have no problem with advertising or commerce as such. I do have a problem with subsidising a media outlet that provides such advertising to some (but not everyone) for free.
The big beneficiaries are surely the big football clubs. Hands up anyone who doesn’t think Man U, Arsenal etc don’t benefit enormously from the FREE wall-to-wall coverage they get on BBC 5 especially. The free advertising must be worth millions to them, and they don’t pay a penny towards it • we do.
Surely the former captain was right .
I’m for one am glad that, thanks to the unique way in which it is funded, the BBC is so free of commercial interests and considerations.
Now, where’s Nurse? It’s time for my medicine again…
Now what was that health company [product?] the BBC was plugging a while ago? Struck me as v suspicious – as if it was a favour for a friend. They released a company publicity leaflet as ‘news’. Anyone remember?
If BBC employees are as fond of biggish brown parcels as they are for phone competition scams? You can bet your TV tax cash that there are plenty at the BBC with far more then just a few fingers in this particular pie.
In my business experience most large amounts of corporate back handers get “kicked up stairs to the top brass” in various proportions.
People at the top of large corporate organisations do not get to this possition by either being stupid or by thinking their current level of renumeration is ever enough, however large it is.
The New York Mafia could only dream of having this amount of ‘free scam potential’ at their personal mercy.
The dream at the BBC continues and prospers in deep contentment.
You may ask that maybe, just maybe, some at the BBC have had good reason to believe that for some time and possible forever that they where/are behond the LAW itself.
You could ask such a thing. However about this matter, I could not possibly comment.
Ask yourselves this. Who do you really think Ian Blair is more ‘sensitive’ about as far as his job and reputation are concerned. Brownshirt Brown, Call me Dave Cameron, not even if the entire contents of the house of commons was wiped out by a giant flying herring, Ming, or the BBC?
Dont text your answers to the BBC on 0782….234. Calls might only be £2 each. But you will win nothing but an even richer criminal at BBC.
The is no correlation at all between the BBC staff all having private personal Mac Pro books and the latest run of Apple Promos, it’s just a vicious rumor.
Now lets decide which car we want to drive.
Regards Mr Bagel
[Satire]