reports the Grauniad:
Listeners outraged by a BBC Radio Five Live debate on Madeleine McCann forced the station to change a phone-vote on her disappearance.
Victoria Derbyshire’s morning phone-in today asked listeners to vote on whether they still had sympathy for Madeleine’s parents Gerry and Kate after they were officially made suspects in the case by Portuguese police on Friday.
Dozens of listeners contacted the programme to say they did not think it was a suitable subject for debate while the legal process was still ongoing.
And the BBC head of TV news, Peter Horrocks, who was interviewed by Derbyshire, also appeared to question the station’s coverage of the McCann story.
The weight of the negative reaction was such that producers were forced to change the vote to whether the station should be discussing the case at all – and listeners voted by 68% to 32% that it should not be.
Good old BBC. Tasteless and inappropriate, whatever one’s feelings about Gerry and Kate McCann and the fate of poor Madeleine. And just yesterday one of our resident Beeboids was holding forth about the BBC’s need to be careful about prejudicing legal proceedings!
Thank you to Maureen of A View from England for the link.
That’ll be the same Beeboids that say they obey style guides before they disobey them…. do as we say not as we do for the Beeb!
I listened to the debate as well. I wanted the station to actually discuss the media coverage. The BBC’s Peter Horrocks was correct in the BBC’s very informal interview style with the McCann’s and the need to report every single movement.
My biggest complaint has been with the use of female journalists (such as Jane Hill) who OPENLY sympathised with Kate McCann on her very first interview, suggesting that dumping 3 kids alone in a hotel room was “Ok and we all do it”
What I want from the media is clear consise factual reporting. Fat chance me thinks of getting that from the bunch runnig the BBC at the moment.
What a bunch of morons.
“whatever one’s feelings about Gerry and Kate McCann”
Is there any justification for having anything other than sympathetic feelings for them?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2007/09/on_the_mccann_story.html
Wrong again BBBC!
BJ, I presume from your IP address that you’re on the Biased BBC Blog Monitoring & Rebuttal Desk at White City this evening… 🙂
Your assertion of course relies on the word of Radio 5 Li(v)e’s Head of News, who has subsequently said:
“From the beginning, we planned to offer Victoria’s listeners the opportunity to pass judgement on yesterday’s phone in topic. As the debate intensified, with some listeners berating us for the way we had framed the discussion, we put it to their vote – should we continue with the discussion or should we stop it? By a margin of about two thirds to one third, they said we should stop it – so we did.”
– which is kind of funny – surely, if that was the case, the question of “should we debate this?” would have come before the debate itself got started – but it didn’t.
I haven’t listened to the programme yet, but I expect that the “should we debate” this aspect of things wasn’t mentioned on air (let alone a vote on it) before the going got heavy with complaints from listeners.
Perhaps in your copious freetime this evening you could have a listen and report back with quotes and times in our quest for the truth… ta very much!
Kevin: “Is there any justification for having anything other than sympathetic feelings for them?”
I don’t think we should get into a protracted discussion of that here, though since you ask, the one person in all this for whom there is no question of sympathy is poor Madeleine.
One aspect of the UK media’s coverage that I have always thought dubious was the (earlier) oft repeated idea that “it could have happened to anyone” – I don’t know any parent who would leave children of that young age unattended to go and have dinner out of sight some distance away. Kids of that age are vulnerable even in an empty room.
One other media related aspect of this case: As ever, Martin Brunt of Sky News shows the BBC up when it comes to getting the news first on big crime stories. He even has the furtive looks that fit the popular notion of a crime reporter! I thought this was funny, via Wikipedia:
“When a hack from [a] newspaper phoned Suffolk police press office with a query on the serial killer case, he was told: ‘Call Martin Brunt. He knows everything before we do.'” 🙂
[Deleted. Careless talk and all that Susan. The Moderator.]
Kevin:-
[i]Is there any justification for having anything other than sympathetic feelings for them?[/i]
Well, apparently so – in some quarters it has been suggested that they’re getting more sympathy than they deserve because they’re middle class.
So yes, class hatred would be grounds for not sympathising with them.
But Andrew — I can’t make fun of Beeboids for being stupid? That’s 95 percent of the reasons people post here!
Of course you can Susan – I’m hardly innocent of that myself. Just don’t give them ideas – no matter how obvious – whilst making fun of them. 🙂