As people have been pointing out in the comments (thank you very much), The Feral Beast has revealed that emails which led to the exposure of ex-London mayor Red Ken Livingstone’s racial right hand man Lee Jasper had already been handed to the BBC’s Tim Donovan and rejected as “of no news value”. One year after Donovan’s rejection, this “non-news value” was turned into scoop-of-the-year by an old friend of this blog’s, Andrew Gilligan*. Jasper resigned, Red Ken lost the mayoral election- and the BBC were left counselling their public “And what is your concern about Boris?”
I wonder why the BBC didn’t consider Red Ken’s corrupt crony a newsworthy story. Maybe, in the light of recent stories about BBC junketing, they just thought it was business as usual in NuLabour’s Britain? As DB rightly points out in our comments, Donovan certainly considered it a story later on, but I did notice that in Donovan’s account the potential criminality of Lee Jasper and misuse of hundreds of thousands was well in the background of the story.
*This blog-member is happy to acknowledge Gilligan’s success, having rather worried about putting the boot in when Gilligan was floored by Hutton.
I commented on this on another thread, and was pleased to see it given its own slot here.
It does seem a matter of some relevance when it comes to our national broadcasters’ coverage, or not, of certain things the public may be interested in, but are deemed ‘not newsworthy’.
What’s intriguing is that there are no posts save one indicated (2 if this works?), yet that does not seem to register on the page either.
So… testing… testing. Very testing?
Peter – it is precisely that gives the lie to those BBC apologists who take each line of a report and defend its factuality and therefore its supposedly consequent impartiality.
Bias is demonstrated in what they choose to report and what they choose not to, not merely in individual word choice.
Looks like the BBC has been in touch with the Feral Beast column.
This was the original version:
I’m told that his source within City Hall, a Conservative member of the London Assembly, initially offered the leaked emails to BBC London’s political editor, Tim Donovan, who rejected the story as being of no news value.
Here’s what it says now:
I’m told that his source within City Hall, a Conservative member of the London Assembly, initially offered the leaked emails to BBC London’s political editor, Tim Donovan, who I’m told by the BBC “handed it straight to BBC London, who set about substantiating it in an entirely diligent manner”.
It’s hard not to laugh.
The thick plotten.
And here was me just reading a piece in the Guardian about what counts as fair post-creation revision.
http://elburrohotay.blogspot.com/2008/05/corrections-after-time-of-printing.html
Often it’s the attempt at retroactive truth re-emerging that becomes the bigger issue.
DB, that link seems wrong. .. Imagine the jamboree the BBC would have had if even a slither of the evidence against Lee Jasper existed against Ray Lewis!