Monthly Archives: October 2009

F-Bombgate News

By | |
2 Comments

Ben Jacobs hits back:

BBC freelance sports broadcaster Ben Jacobs, the alleged prime suspect in a high-level BBC inquiry into the sabotaged early Saturday morning precording for a 5 Live sports news bulletin that contained inserted obscene material from the Beeb’s bloopers file, will take legal action if necessary to clear his name.
Jacobs says in an email to BBC colleagues: ‘I now face being barred from potentially all BBC outlets for something I fervently, vociferously can swear I did not do, nor could ever conceive of doing.
‘I will take the matter to a law-court if I have to, because I have worked hard and honestly for the past five years and some idiot has ruined my reputation and career overnight.’

(Listen to the sabotaged broadcast.)

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

"Institutional Terror"

By | |
7 Comments
Lengthy article by Stephen Robinson in the Evening Standard: Fear and loathing inside the BBC. Some snippets:

Bennett is Head of Vision, which is another way of saying she oversees the other executives who oversee television and the BBC’s internet output, for which she is rewarded with a salary package of £536,000.
She is one of the 47 BBC executives who is paid more than the £197,000 earned a year by the British Prime Minister.
“She was standing surrounded by a bunch of her acolytes as she held forth. They weren’t quite bowing in her presence but they were certainly fawning over her. It was ridiculous. And I thought, what does she actually do for the BBC? What is the point of her?”…

There is an institutional terror of talking publicly about the fears that have dominated the conscious hours of everyone who works there…

“Where on earth are these dozens of executives on more that £200,000 supposed to be going?,” asks one BBC reporter. “They are literally unemployable outside the BBC.”…

Vine and Jeremy Paxman are said by BBC colleagues to be locked into an ultra-competitive contest about their respective salaries…

One veteran BBC presenter, a household name who does not want to be identified, says the central problem with the corporation now is its size. “We have become so big, so dominant, that there’s nothing institutional left for us to aim at,” he says…

One of the oddest things about talking to BBC people is that they will spend half an hour sounding off about the horrors of the institution, of its bureaucratic culture, of the shameful way its senior executives reward themselves ludicrous amounts of public money.
And then those journalists will say: “I hope you’re not writing a Right-wing newspaper attack on the BBC.”…

An on-air reporter says it is the second-rate programme-making staff who get shunted up the management ladder.
“It’s insane,” he says. “We have one of the largest media organisations in the world run by jobbing journalists who couldn’t hack it.
“In any private organisation they would eventually be fired, but in the BBC they just keep on climbing up the ladder.”…

“The warning here is Gorbachev. Once you start trying to reform an organisation such as the BBC, it collapses, just like the old Soviet Union,” says one well-known presenter. “Who, as director-general, is going to say, let’s make this place smaller, let’s reduce all the salaries, including mine?”

“just like the old Soviet Union”. Heh.

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

RESPECT, RESPECT

By | |
3 Comments

Did you catch Hillary Clinton being “interviewed” by John Humphyrs on Today this morning. Note the deep respect afforded to the US Secretary of State and the absence of interruptions. I can’t quite recall the same toadying silence afforded to representatives of the Bush regime, do you? I wonder was Humphyrs on his knees during the series of monologues from La Clinton? It’s amazing to observe the difference in tone from the BBC now that the Nobel Laureate is in the White House. Of course they have always been in love with the Clintons.

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

MANDY ON MONDAY

By | |
5 Comments

So, the Conservative Party conference finishes and up pops Lord Mandelson on the Today programme to explain the genius idea by Gordon Brown to flog off various State owned assets. I think he was given a very soft ride not least on the fact that selling assets at the bottom of the market is unlikely to realise the prices Brown imagines – Davis could have pressed a lot further. He also might have wondered why a fire-sale that at most will realise £3bn over two years would deal with a deficit that it £16bn and growing? Mandelson must have been grinning from ear to ear as he was also allowed to entirely misrepresent the economic position taken by Japan over the past twenty years. Surely with his economic background, Evan could have interrogated Mandelson a little harder? Or is it all hands on deck to try and save Gordon?

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

PEACE, PERFECT PEACE.

By | |
4 Comments

Today marks the 25th anniversary of the bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton by the Irish terrorist group the INLA. (Good article here by Lord Tebbit, btw for those who care to read)

Yesterday, the BBC covered the news that this terror group was “renouncing violence” just in time for Hillary Clinton’s arrival in Northern Ireland. Now I am glad when any terror group ceases to kill and maim BUT isn’t it odd that the BBC does not report the allegations that the INLA claims it will be in receipt of £7 million from the British Government for graciously agreeing not to kill us?

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

THE DEBATE IS NOT OVER..

By | |
28 Comments

Here on B-BBC we regularly (and rightly) chastise the BBC for it’s assiduous cultivation of AGW, but by way of contrast, and in an attempt to be fair, this seems a decent item by Paul Hudson. Worth a read. However I wonder will this sense of better balance make it into the mainstream? Somehow, I doubt it. I feel that for too many in the BBC, the debate IS over.

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

HAIN ON BBC BIAS…

By | | ,
Comments Off on HAIN ON BBC BIAS…

Did you read that Peter Hain is to make a formal complaint to the BBC Trust over the appearance of the British National Party leader, Nick Griffin, on BBC1’s Question Time?

This follows what insiders described as a “robust” meeting between the Secretary of State for Wales and the show’s executive producer, Ric Bailey, during the Labour Party conference. “Mr Hain said yesterday: “I fundamentally disagree with the BBC’s decision. I fully understand why colleagues feel they have to appear, but I certainly wouldn’t appear with a racist, fascist representative – I think it gives them legitimacy.”

Glad to see that Peter Sissons rebuffs the pain Hain.

“Instead of bleating to the BBC Trust, why doesn’t the great campaigner offer to go on the programme and dismantle the BNP’s policies himself?”

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

HITCHENS ON BIAS…

By | |
4 Comments
Here is Peter Hitchens on BBC bias..

“Here, I believe, is proof that the BBC is institutionally biased against male conservatives. Not long ago, I received a call from a BBC Radio 4 person. It was not very flattering. They were having a big debate about Afghanistan.

And, as they were having great difficulty in finding anyone else to support Britain’s immediate withdrawal, would I please, please, please take part?

I said yes. Several days later, the same functionary called me and said they had now found a ‘female person’ to do the job instead – as if that person’s femaleness was a clinching argument.

Curious, I asked who this ‘female person’ was. ‘Erm, Lindsey someone,’ she replied. I’m still not sure if she was embarrassed or genuinely didn’t know who she had hired.

It turned out my replacement was Lindsey German, until a few months ago a member of the Central Committee of the Socialist Workers’ Party, a revolutionary Bolshevik organisation.

Does a Marxist Leninist Trotskyist really represent the 57 per cent of the British population who are against this daft intervention better than I do?

The BBC thinks so.”

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

EASY LIKE A SUNDAY MORNING

By | |
6 Comments

Nicky Campbell on “The Big Question” asks “Should Christians be Socialists”. First few guests assert Jesus was a lefty.

Andrew Marr virtually hugs Alan Johnson on his programme.

BBC World Service declares “Heart and Soul – the 99 beautiful names for God in Islam”
Not biased. Naturally.

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.