asked when does artifice become deception about the tricks, sorry, techniques, used in making TV programmes, in advance of a segment on Thursday’s Newsnight.
On Friday, Peter reported back that Noddy’s not dead at Newsnight, and neither is the much more dubious ‘reverse question’, where questions are re-recorded after an interview, but of course with no guarantee that the questions haven’t been changed, revised or differently emphasised from those in the original interview.
One trick, sorry, technique, that Peter didn’t mention is one called ‘dodgy editing’, one that Robbie Gibb, Peter’s deputy, tried to explain away under the guise of Putting things in order back in July.
I fisked Robbie’s mealy-mouthed article thoroughly at the time, asking:
Why not show events chronologically then? Or explain in the film about the re-ordering of events and the reason for doing so? Anything else would, at best, appear highly questionable wouldn’t you say?
And:
Why did you purposely change the order of events? Presumably there was a purpose. What was it?
With all the hoo-ha at the time and the pressure of work one presumes, neither Peter nor Robbie had a minute to answer these very easy questions about Newsnight’s use of the ‘dodgy editing’ technique at the time.
However, now that Peter is interested in what is and isn’t acceptable in the making of Newsnight, perhaps either he or Robbie could take a minute now to explain the reasons for Newsnight’s use of the ‘dodgy editing’ trick, sorry, technique, just a few weeks back.
P.S. I’ve posted a comment (at 1.34am today) asking about this on Peter’s Noddy’s not dead blog post. Let’s see if it gets published and whether or not we get an answer this time.
Update, 11am: My comment responding to Peter’s post has been published. Let us see whether or not we get an answer to our ‘dodgy editing’ questions this time.
Andrew, I’m amazed that they posted a few comments on the Editors blog late on Friday night and Saturday afternoon. This plays havoc with my theory that the blog dies over a weekend. Or partly, anyway, since they still don’t have any comments up from Sunday – presumably there were a few – and yours has not yet appeared. I bet they take till tomorrow to put it up. Have to recover from the weekend and all that, you know. Besides, they have other things to do, what with all that bias to pump out and obfuscate by careful omission and distortion of inconvenient facts.
I wonder if the editors read all the comments themselves or that task is farmed out to the “moderators”.
Andrew
I’m puzzled. What are you complaining about? Is this treatment of Gordon Brown’s press officer an instance of ‘right-wing bias’ on the part of the BBC?
Just another example of apparent BBC dishonesty – if they do it to Gordon Brown, who else are they doing it to when they’re not called to account?
Hopefully this time Peter and/or Robbie will give us an account as to just why the sequence was changed in the film – it’s not a difficult question, and it certainly wasn’t answered by Robbie in his ‘confessional’ piece.
I recall you were also strangely absent at the time too! Perhaps you could give us an opinion on just what Newsnight were seeking to achieve with this manipulation of events…
John Reith 11.09am,
The BBC is to the left of Gordon Brown.
‘John Reith:
I’m puzzled. What are you complaining about? Is this treatment of Gordon Brown’s press officer an instance of ‘right-wing bias’ on the part of the BBC?’
And I’m EVEN MORE puzzled.
Having established what this blog does by virtue of what’s on the tin (its name), and having read it a while found its value (to me at least) was in citing very poor reporting standards erring on agenda driven influence (be it for personal or professional reasons, agenda, rating-driven or otherwise), do I take this to mean that it can only be employed when it conforms to the rigid definition of a BBC* ‘us’ vs. a ‘them’ that should not have the temerity to ask questions?
*I’ve only been reading a few weeks so forgive me, but is this ‘John Reith’ a real person or a department at the BBC, like Bisto’s ‘Katie’?
I just ask as he seems to be ‘on duty’ pretty much 24/7.
And while any and all employees of any an all entities are entitled to comment, debate and defend their own and their employer’s practices in sincere debate, as a licence fee payer I wonder who is covering the time commitment of this function financially?
Peter Martin 03.09.07 – 12:23 pm
I have no idea what this means:
do I take this to mean that it can only be employed when it conforms to the rigid definition of a BBC* ‘us’ vs. a ‘them’ that should not have the temerity to ask questions?
But perhaps it’ll help if I say that my last post should be seen in the context of the following sentiment being expressed many scores of times on these pages:
How come the bbc is never accused of bias towards the right?…..
as a licence fee payer I wonder who is covering the time commitment of this function financially?
Since you are new, I suppose there’s no reason why you should know.
I do.
I speak for myself, not the BBC.
I see it’s been stealth edited into the comments now.
Thank you for your answers. The matter of attribution can often be helpful if it is offered.
Yours must be a full time job, which is why I popped back to see if you were there by return, sadly not always an option as I do the day job thing. You did not, I must say… disappoint.
Just to clarify as I remain a little unsure from the way you phrased your answer: you are not employed by the BBC? In which case this must be a labour of considerable love. And a big up for the passion and belief, as I would accord all who take the time to challenge in their own time what they think can be improved with constructive, honest critique.
Meanwhile, sorry if I in turn was not clear with the rest of my last post.
While I have already gone on record as being uncomfortable with the notion that the BBC is institutionally biased by policy, I see this blog as a very useful resource in citing – when clearly obvious by addition of missing or counter facts I was unaware of – examples of downright sloppy reporting that can legitimately be seen as excessive bias on occasion. Especially if it misleads.
And this often seems only to be explained by a lack of balance personally, professionally or both by the individuals involved (journalists, editors, bookers of ‘experts’, etc), many of whom who seem to be in the employ of the BBC.
So while the views of those who contribute here are obviously more often than not conservative, I felt it to be a rather stereotypical and not a little narrow attempt at pigeonholing to infer – at least as I took it – that all comments need to come from a ‘right-wing’ perspective to qualify, or to be mocked (if only on directional origin rather than fact) if not. I stand ready to be corrected if that is the case.
If there is factually incorrect manipulation or clear evidence of an overt narrative agenda in favour of Attila the Hun I’d expect it to be here too, if it is ‘biased’.
Doesn’t seem to happen too often, mind. However it may interest you to note that my outrage at the facts of the Newsnight ‘Gordon Brown report’ and the subsequent mis-‘handling’ of the fall-out from that was what put me on the trail that brought me here.
Hence, as I have mentioned on these pages in my introduction on ‘joining’, I find such labelling to be unhelpful to the progress of any reasoned discussion, be it from any directional leaning, political colour, etc. And would wish it was avoided if used only as a means to shape the way things are viewed.
I hope that clarifies sufficiently.
If the BBC wants to show that they do nothing wrong,they can puplish the raw unedited footage of interviews on a site. People could judge for them self if the editing was fair or not.
In this gigabyte-server, IT-access age, why not?
Seems like a plan. Actually I was reading a blog on The Telegraph just now about how Google News will only offer info up from source in future. No more, as the scribe put it, ‘expertise and opinion’.
Now I quite value intelligent expertise and opinion so it would be a shame to lose it. Hence this suggestion has an attraction (it’s what most bloggers do anyway – give your the source, or various often competing sources, and then offer a view on top) as it gives you the skilled edit which, if you have doubts or need more, can be verified for true representation. If one has the time.
But then (SFX: ominous), what if they only upload the unedited bits they want us to see?
See what a lack of trust does to you;(
John Reith
“I speak for myself, not the BBC.”
Still a little woolly for me. Are you actually employed by the BBC?
Would it not make sense for the BBC management to insist that all interviews have displayed on them a time/date (like your camera) so we can see when each clip was ACTUALLY done?
JR has I believe, confirmed in the past that he is in receipt of tellytax-wedge, i.e. that he is employed by the BBC, somewhere around the newsroom it seems (given his rapid access to information), but that is as much as we know. He also comments from BBC IP addresses a good deal of the time too.
By the way JR, suggesting that this isn’t the kind of bias you think I would be interested in isn’t a terribly good defence of the main charge, i.e. that the editing in this case was dodgy.
You’ll need to try harder!
“JR has I believe, confirmed in the past that he is in receipt of tellytax-wedge, i.e. that he is employed by the BBC, somewhere around the newsroom it seems”
I do hope he is not using the corporation’s time and bandwidth to post here? Unless he does so with their blessing of course..what better way to make use of the BBC’s vast number of newsroom staff?
To be fair to JR, I think he has denied on several occasions that he is a BBC employee, but confirmed that he does do work for them occasionally.
I for one don’t care if he is a full time employee, he is useful in providing a BBC mind set that pretty much confirms my views of the inherent bias that I perceive in a lot of BBC output.
I have several friends who read the Guardian, they do not perceive it to be remotely biased, because it largely agrees with what they think. JR appears to be the same regarding the BBC.
Thanks for the clarifications, and apologies as a ‘newbie’ for turning over old sods.
I don’t really care who one is employed by in matters of debate either, but it often helps with context.
However it is of interest to me who gets paid by whom to do what, especially when it’s coming out of my pocket.
‘confirmed that he does do work for them’
For free? And to do what? One presumes not much as the presence here, plus background research and crafting of replies must require near total commitment. In another world I do get very interested by the trend towards government funding quangos who in turn hire consultants, all using the public purse, to create accounting trails, layers of blame and deniability for slews of extra expensive heads, because no one can make a decision, let alone a decent one any more.
To be fair, ‘the BBC’ can’t really win, as having an official reply system (or ‘fessing up that it exists, if unofficially) to every critical forum would open them up to criticism of using feepayers’ money on self-justification, so it’s a tricky one.
While such as Newsnight does on occasion see a reply to a question actually considered and posted, it’s not often and not much in the spirit of great debate. I note one recent effort that didn’t exactly get me back onside.
Other posted ‘feedback’ is not worth much if you don’t know how it has been moderated in (out is moot) and/or edited. Hence why this forum exists in part, I guess.
So one has to take what you can get and, as noted, let the replies to questions or defences of stances stand on their merits. Or otherwise.
Peter Martin
I don’t mean to be unhelpful, but I am reluctant to give too much information about myself because of long and bitter experience of seeing things misunderstood, misreported or distorted by some commenters here, who have a habit of putting words in my mouth or reading into what I say things I haven’t said.
Suffice to say that I – for the sake of frankness and what you term ‘context’ – declared an interest when I began to frequent this blog: I do receive some part of my income from the BBC for work of a journalistic nature. I am not paid by anyone to comment here or for any PR-related finctions. Any work that I do for the BBC, to which you make a contribution, is always delivered on time, within budget and to more than a satisfactory standard. Normally, I use one of my own computers to access this site. Sometimes, however, I am on BBC premises for several days at a time and may sometimes access via a BBC IP. When I do so, I observe the corporation’s guidelines about internet-access, blogs etc.
And that’s my last word on the matter.
JR: “…PR-related finctions…”
That would be a typo for PR related fictions then… 🙂
For the newer folks around here, JR has said almost as much before.
Please, as I have asked before, respect his position on this subject – Biased BBC’s comments wouldn’t be the same without JR’s ‘contributions’ (them’s BBC style quotes by the way) – even if he’s often absent when the BBC is really up against it…
Mea culpa.
I asked, and cannot argue that it was answered.
And that does of course get my respect, and thanks, especially as it was so graciously provided despite being so before.
I did say that such information was not mandatory (arrogant and/or foolish if I had), but useful and welcome if provided.
Now I have context I can apply greater reason to things that may be written, but may not be meant as I read them.