: Peter Fincham (the quintessential frightened man in a suit) and Jane Fletcher, his head of press, are expected to resign today following Will Wyatt’s inquiry into the Crowngate affair – the faked footage suggesting the Queen had stormed out of a photo shoot. An excerpt from MediaGuardian’s report:
They have decided to quit because they knew by 5pm on the day of the BBC1 press launch on July 11 that the story was untrue. But they did not correct it until the following morning, allowing the media – including BBC News – to run with the story.
The BBC did not apologise until July 12, when it admitted the sequence of events in a BBC1 documentary about the Queen had been misrepresented and would not be shown that way in the final programme.
Today’s report is expected to be equally critical of Jana Bennett, the director of BBC Vision. Mr Fincham told the inquiry that he made it clear to Ms Bennett in an evening meeting on July 11 that the story was untrue. She disputes this, and is expected to survive for the moment.
The creative director of production company RDF Media, Stephen Lambert, who admitted to the Guardian that he had wrongly edited the footage of the Queen that led to the Crowngate scandal, has also resigned.
See A Tale of two train wrecks for Biased BBC’s coverage of BBC Views Online’s typically poor coverage of the original scandal. See also Peter Fincham in his starring role on Newsnight – “I don’t think I should resign to be absolutely honest”:
BBC Newsnight: Peter Fincham – “a frightened man in a suit”
Paging Noddy Yentob, paging Noddy Yentob…
Update: As expected earlier this afternoon, it’s been confirmed: BBC One boss quits over Queen row.
Thank you to Biased BBC reader Rockall for the spot.
How has Mark Thompson survived? After all the recent scandals, his survival seems incredible. Only in the BBC!
It does not seem just that they are allowed to resign when lesser mortals at the BBC get sacked.
Can you IMAGINE the BBC hubris and mock outrage if any government minister was similarly compromised? The double standard is simply breathtaking!
The Wyatt Report itself is available at the bottom of this page:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2007/10_october/05//investigation.shtml
From page 10, which deals with the BBC’s publicity team in the run-up to the launch, it says:
“Neither of the two publicists working on the series had seen the launch
tape nor a single frame of the series.”
Well on the BBC six pm news it said he HAD gone.
Needless to say on News 24 they had a studio interview with a “sympathetic” media reporter who said theBBC had had an unfair kicking and that it was time to draw a line under the whole thing.
Nothing like getting a reasoned view from the BBC is there?
I’ve been a journalist for 24 years and, in that time, covered the geographical area where Tony Blair lived, and for which he was local MP. Whenever any story about him, let alone one so potentially explosive as this, came into our newsdesk, we all but sh** ourselves.
Caution was not just our watchword – whenever we were dealing with a tale which might impugne the reputation of a leading figure, we checked, checked, checked, then checked again, up to, and well beyond, the point of paranoia. (And, yes, let’s admit that, before anyone points it out, stories about ordinary Joes scared us much less. Such is life, eh?)
Even if the story had come from a third party (as is the case here), the magnitude of the tale, and its potential consequences, would have meant that we would have put that third party through the wringer.
We would have demanded: are you sure? Prove your claims.
AND IF THERE WAS A SCINTILLA OF DOUBT, THEN WE WOULD NOT PUBLISH.
How in the name of God did the BBC allow this alleged story of the Queen’s (the Queen, for Christ’s sake) “huff” go through the system without checking at the highest level?
This is beyond the realms of mere incompetence.
The only feasible explanation is deliberate misrepresentation. The suggestion that Liz Windsor had stormed out of a photocall fitted the BBC’s default anti-monarchical mindset so perfectly, that it seemed logical to them – as evident as night following day.
Can you seriously imagine the BBC being so ‘cavalier’ if the person who was storming out of a photocall was, for example, Cherie Blair?
No way!
The BBC’s simpering ‘apology’ is so much bull.
Fincham should think himself lucky that he is escaping with mere resignation. The BBC deserves to be sued by the Queen for malicious, pre-meditated libel.
I just can’t believe it, Kirsty Wark has just asked former GD Greg Dyke how the BBC can gain the viewers’ trust back.
The gist of the Dyke interview was that the Queen footage manipulation (no, he didn’t use this word, I do) was RDF’s (the independen production company) fault and Peter Fincham was unlucky. Then he went on to say that of course, Fincham didn’t react quick enough.
I’m also wondering why was Greg Dyke asked anyway?
Oh dear – Newsnight gets Greg Dyke to comment on the BBC shenanigans [aka lies]. ‘Tired and emotional’ or what? Get it up on Youtube and we can all laugh at Dyke agonising about how you can make staff ‘feel valued’ as they are sacked, and its impact on ‘molale, morare, err moralllle’. Hic!
Triples and copies of ‘Das Kapital’ all round.
But then Fincham was on the News saying ‘ mea culpa, my responsibility so I resigned’. Funny how it took so long for him to summon the courage to jump before being pushed. Still wondering how many other Beeboids will resign (thus keeping their lovely bonuses and severance pay etc) or will there now be a strange silence on the subject from the Beeb?
Greg Dyke’s bit on Newsnight was quite interesting. He blamed the trailer on RDF and said Fincham had to go because he didn’t react quick enough. From what I saw he never addressed the point that BBC people publicised a contentious trailer without ever having checked it. That was not RDF’s fault. That was Fincham’s or his subordinates.
Both he and Kirsty Wark seemed, at times, to be more interested in discussing forthcoming sizeable redundancies and morale rather then attempting to regain the trust of the viewers and listeners.
Has there been any follow-up of Ric Blaxill’s resignation? He jumped at the first opportunity, unlike many of the others so far, especially Noddy Yentob.
Something rarely more then briefly mentioned about 6Music’s problems is that it is Lesley Douglas who is ultimately in charge. She’s been very quiet of late.
I just watched BBC Breakfast with (and forgive me if I didn’t quite catch the name, title and quote precisely) Matt Grey (?) the Media Editor of the Gordian (good old Spell-check… I decided to leave that in:) ) Online, who said something like “It seems these days you only have to turn up late at the BBC to get fired”.
I do hope it has not come to that. But as I concern myself mainly with facts (still waiting to find out what actually happened – and when – backstage on the Newsnight 9/11 ‘rewrites’ that bumble along) I do find that hard to reconcile.
Few have been sacked I believe (except a person who ‘fiddled’ a cat’s name, which seems an odd level of priority in comparison), and this case the chap is deemed ‘to have done the decent thing’.
However, and again as I understand it, this not so pretty pass was reached not so much for him not being in the room when appropriate, but for knowing something was plain wrong and allowing it to go out anyway (and get shared with for publication by the rest of the media). That, if so, seems a bit more than a lack of oversight. And, personally, as one who appreciates how errors can happen but can and should be guarded against, avoided and/or corrected immediately with professional alacrity, it’s when this doesn’t happen with good, or for other reason that the eyebrow gets cranked up.
I also learned that the main protagonist’s friends are ‘furious’ that others did not share the burden of carrying this clattering can. Well few even here have been so feral as to be quite so overt in suggesting the logical additional fall-out, but at least those in the BBC are joining the dots as well as any now. So ‘witch hunt’ diversionary pejoratives cannot be solely directed at the usual ‘ist/inger/zi’ conspiracies du jour.
Trouble is there are few above left. Apparently there was a lady whose conduct was met with some lack of credulity and above her…. a chap who could have been interviewed but what we got was Mr. Dyke instead from the sub bench.
As damage control goes, about par for the course, but I can’t say a sterling performance.
Which continues to serve poorly the many thousands of troops in the corporation who do conduct themselves as well (all sorts of noble journalistic, editorial and simple human nature nice words here) one would wish, and simply want to do a good honest job.
ps: Just watched Newswatch. Catch it if you can. The ‘explanation’ of a senior BBC lady of how and why a valauble answer to a question posed about Northern Rock was curtailed (‘that’s all we have time for being one of my most loathed wrap-ups in a news programme) in favour of a slot on Elvis impersonators was choice.
Kirsty Wark / Greg Dyke interview — hey lets differentiate between hopeless information-free moments on factual / current affairs telly and real bias.
LPG
Re the interview with ex-top BBC wallah Greg Dyke on Newsnight:
I was astounded by Dyke’s casual approach to Fincham’s scandalous lack of professionalism. According to the Times, Fincham knew at 5pm on the day in question that the footage had been doctored by RDF. Despite this, he and his hench(wo)man continued to air it throughout the evening leaving viewers – and the national press whose attention was specifically drawn to the scoop by Fincham at an earlier news conference – to infer that Her Maj had swept out of her photoshoot on a tidal wave of hissy fit.
As soon as Fincham knew that the film was out of sequence, and the story he’d gleefully spun to the national press was wrong but failed to correct it, he became a liar by omission.
As to his claim that he wasn’t sure how the story would be taken up by the newspapers – pull the other one! As far as he was concerned the publicity this story would generate too tempting, and (in his eyes) the target too deserving to correct the error which he’d diseminated.
He wanted the story to be true, and couldn’t let it go even when he knew it wasn’t. Highlighting such unprofessionalism is well within BBBC’s remit.
Greg Dyke called Fincham ‘unlucky’! He also said that ‘television is not real life’, thereby implying that tv panjandrums have the right to present ‘reality’ as they see fit. But when BBC editors demonise Israel, or claim that Iraqis murdered by Islamist terrorists are somehow the victims of the US, you can be sure that they want us to believe we are seeing ‘real life’. Dyke can’t have it both ways.
As to the story not showing bias – why not read the latest BBBC entries on the BBC coverage of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro . Can you imagine the BBC permitting stories which cast Fido and Che in a bad light to pass without checking – because I can’t.
And that’s where the bias lies.
Peter | Homepage | 06.10.07 – 10:42 am
“ps: Just watched Newswatch. Catch it if you can. The ‘explanation’ of a senior BBC lady of how and why a valauble answer to a question posed about Northern Rock was curtailed (‘that’s all we have time for being one of my most loathed wrap-ups in a news programme) in favour of a slot on Elvis impersonators was choice.”
I didn’t see the Northern Rock interview in question.
Does anyone know if the piece on Elvis impersonators was another one of those non too subtle BBC adverts for one of it’s own shows (The World’s Greatest Elvis) dressed up as news? It irks me when they do that.
Does anyone know if the piece on Elvis impersonators was another one of those non too subtle BBC adverts for one of it’s own shows (The World’s Greatest Elvis) dressed up as news? Gareth | 06.10.07 – 4:49 pm | #
Sorry, as it was Newswatch it was more by way of a quick example to put a complaint in context. So whether it was what you describe was hard to judge without more footage pre or post with the blonde and the bouffant doing the pitch session.
I actually thought host Ray S did quite well today. It even ended with a well-deserved critique of the practice of cutting away from actual news to ‘live’ footage of a bloke/babe/gaggle of WAGs taking off/arriving somehwere.
Sadly no defiant, defensive mid-level operative to say that they didn’t see a problem, so what, it’s common practice… and why had they been dragged out at dawn for such as this????! by those irritating folk who pay their salaries and should be grateful for what they are given.
I’d love Ray to one day point out that it could always get a primetime slot when more than six people are awake to view it, and then see how much they like dealing with the feedback.
Does anyone know if anything happens once the complaint has been aired on Newswatch and inevitably dismissed with an airy wave? Is there any follow-up if warranted? Or is just looking like you’ve mea cupla’d a bit deal with it every time?
I’ve just watched Newswatch online.
Towards the end of the explanation it was described that they had headlined the piece about Elvis at the beginning of the show, and so they had to stick to it appearing exactly when they said it would. This meant stopping the Northern Rock interview.
The footage to go with this part of the explanation was a trail for The World’s Greatest Elvis.
Consider me irked.