Peter Sissons has had another excellent pop at the BBC.
Peter Sissons, the retired BBC news presenter, last night attacked the corporation for paying huge executive salaries while allowing BBC newsrooms to become “factories” run by “poor kids”. The presenter, who left the BBC during the summer, also said that there was far too much opinion on BBC news programmes, and not enough straight reporting of facts.
Sissons, 67, who is writing an autobiography covering his career first at ITN, where he was happiest, then from 1989 at the BBC, told a Media Society dinner last night that the huge gulf between the salaries paid to the top tier at the BBC and everyone else was a real problem, especially in the 24-hour newsroom at BBC Television Centre…
“And then there are these panjandrums on huge numbers. If you tried to devise a way of undermining morale, you couldn’t find a better way. They [top executives] are working in the public service, and all this is taking place after we’ve found MPs with their snouts in the trough. Public service is taking second place to their pecuniary interests.”
Sissons also criticised the growing tendency of BBC journalists to offer analysis and opinion on news stories. “I say go back to basics. Report on the news,” he said. “The term reporter is the noblest word in the language, not this term ‘correspondent’. Increasingly, reporters are being invited by presenters to give their opinion. Far too much opinion is creeping into news reporting, with pay-off lines, to steer the viewer into what to think. Let them make up their own minds on the facts.”
See also: The BBC became too PC for me, says veteran Sissons
Well good for him, but to say that the ” word reporter is the noblest word in the language” suggests he is still living in media fantasy land !
That bit in bold should be added to the sidebar.
Are we surprised? The beeboid vermin that write their website news have often been thought of by many hear as spotty little arts graduates with no brains. The quality of beeboid journalism has been going down the pan for years and it was never that good to start with.
I take it you have a degree in advanced mathematics or some such then, Martin?
Something like that Bob yes, what’s your point? My point is the BBC employes little wet camp left wing arts turdes. Do you have a problem with that view?
Grant that struck me as strange as well. He seem to have some romatic idea of the modern reporter as akin to the scribes of old rather than the semi-literate hacks many of them are.
Besides, I always thought a journalist was a notch or two higher than a reporter.
Talking about ‘too much’ BBC one-sided opinion – iId include the BBc campaign for Guantanamo inmates, past and present, including its poster boy, Ethiopian Binyam Mohammed, now resident in UK.
Where is the BBC’s campaign for the release of Israeli Shalit from Hamas’ captivity?
“Tape shows Shalit safe and well”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/8286206.stm
TooTrue 13:55
Funny how in all opinion polls journalists come at the bottom along with politicians. I wonder why ?
At least journalists are not public servants funded by… oh…