I was sent some of the detailed comments from Mark Thompson’s Edinburgh Festival lecture. Reading it he comes across as an arrogant man suffering from BBC cabin fever. What do you think of his comments? There is a stunning lack of humility in what he says, combined with the delusion that if one is antagonistic to the BBC the fault cannot lie with the BBC!
“Systematic press attacks on broadcasters, and especially on the BBC, are nothing new of course the first hostile campaigns began back in John Reith’s day but the scale and intensity of the current assaults does feel different. So what’s the effect of all this relentless negativity?”
Not the public interest. Not accountability. They just want to trash us.
We should remain vigilant.
Commercial and political forces are undermining the independence of the public broadcasters ….In the UK, they know that a frontal assault will fail so they adopt different tactics. Exaggerated claims about waste and inefficiency. Nit-picking about the detailed mechanisms of governance and accountability. Even some – not all, but some – of the calls for greater transparency.
Transparency is as important for the BBC and the other publicly-owned PSBs as for any other public institutions. But sometimes calls for transparency turn out to be a cloak for something else.
Everyone knows that such proposals have nothing to do with the public interest or real accountability and everything to do with an agenda of weakening and undermining the public broadcaster. In the UK, the tactics are usually subtler, the language loftier.
Too often the underlying purpose is the same.’
Forget the bias (as if I could) but I really don’t think Mark Thompson understands the sort of waste the rest of us see
spending £1,000,000 on a studio for the football world cup
spending on lots of trashy programmes rather than fewer good ones eg 101 ways of leaving a game show
eg an excellent programme about cooking with food waste but then inviting Ken Livingstone as one of the guests to eat the meal – is he a man of influence?
eg from Evan Davies increduality about cutting that National Audit Office when he couldn’t believe that the employer wouldn’t buy (and maintain?) the office pot plants I can only assume that the BBC pays for plenty.
I have worked both for the Civil Service 25 years ago and now local government and in both the employer paid only for the electricity to boil the tea urn and to run the fridge – the rest we have to pay for ourselves because it is tax payers’ money. If we want pot plants we bring them in ourselves etc etc. I really don’t think Mark Thompson and the other bods earning more that the Prime Minister understand this.
My reading of his comments make me think he is showing signs of a Paranoid delusion of the ‘their all out to get me ‘ conspiracy type! he should really be placed somewhere for his own safety ! 😎 .
This common purpose freak claims “that calls for transparency turns out to be a cloak for something else”?
Er…so the public who pay for the BBC have some kind of dark agenda for expecting that the BBC is open and transparent in its corporate dealings? This highlights the defensive nature of all people engaged in shady dealings, the light of day shining down on the grubby dark corners of the BBC is not something Thompson wants at all!
What has the BBC got to hide? What secret dealings and covert collaboration with secret gangs like common purpose/the labour party/NUJ/SEJ/WWF/greenpeace/OXFAM and all the rest of the tranzi shadow gangs that haunt the corridors of power?
Sunlight is the best disinfectant and thats why Thompson are so frightened of transparency and hionest open dealings, these scumbags breed in secret and they feed and thrive in secret, they love the darkness, they spread their evil creed in secret and when that secrecy is threatened they fight to protect the darkness that surrounds them.
Secret meetings where stitch ups and frauds are born, secret deals between common purpose partners creating poisonous smears against their enemies.
We know the truth, we have these scum clocked now, we know who they are and what they are doing, we know who their allies are and who their enemies are, sooner or later the can of worms will be opened and laid bare for all to see and it will make the masons look like girl guides.
Yes, typical Alinsky-type tactics. Avoid debating the actual issues by questioning the motives of one’s opponent. Isolate and polarize.
Cassie,
Here is a link to a FOI request to the BBC regarding Whether Mark Thompson was a common purpose ‘graduate’.
Needless to say, it was fruitless.
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/mark_thompson_director_general_o
Magnifying glasses at the ready….Beeboids connected to Julia Middleton’s fake charity Common Purpose…..
Forgive me if I’m misinformed or possibly brainwashed by Neuro-Linguistic Programming; but the whole idea of a “Common Purpose” conspiracy seems to have come from the fevered mind of Brian Gerrish.
One of his points of evidence is he found a speech given by Obama “don’t confuse him with Hitler”, where he says the words “the politics of common purpose”; and then a speech by Gordon Brown which includes the phrase “our common purpose”. O erm K…
Here’s a clip of one of his talks a few months ago:
Apparently The Great North Run, Red Nose Day, Vivienne Westwood, Lady Ga-ga, Bird Flu, The Angel of the North and Mark Owen from Take That are all part of a Global Marxist/Nazi/Pedophile plot to establish a New World Order.
If you take thus guy seriously then either you’re talking too many drugs or not enough.
The illshaven one sounds worried and so he should. They have been rumbled as a self congratulatory continuation of university debating clubs but at the people’s expense. All hive minded all doing well- for now . Fear is spreading through the hive. The internet and the digital age is like smoke blowing through the hive. They had better swarm soon and look for another home before it is too late. With a new queen bee I expect. Hard luck illshaven one.
Thompson seems to be as mentally deranged as the one eyed mong.
Oh come on folks have some sympathy 🙂
These are scarey times for your chattering classes as a world they no longer understand is changing rapidly. Their beloved Labour lost the election then the lovely Mr Clegg who they thought was one of them did a deal with the Tories. To make things worse not all the Tories are well spoken and say nice things like Mr Cameron. Instead nasty Gove has ideas and the unspeakable northerner Pickles keeps opening the accounts up to the public and even made Polly’s husband redundant.
To make things worse the public has Sky or cable and doesn’t watch the Beeb anymore. Even worse the public know global warming is a scam and all of that is going to come to a head soon.
Scarey scarey times !
Ah, but we’ve got to protect the creative industries!
Y’know, the ones that give us Eastenders, Casualty, Holby City, Doctors, Flog It, Car Booty, Cash in the Attic, Cash in the Celebrity Attic, Bargain Hunt, Celebrity Masterchef, The Lottery Show, Homes Under The Hammer, To Buy or not to Buy, Cars, Cops and Criminals, Motorway Cops….
……and sends people to prison if they don’t cough up.
And of course before the License Fee Pound reaches the ‘creatives’ responsible for all that crud, it’s had to pay Mark’s 800 grand a year, the £4,500 of taxi fares for one employ in one three month period, the Diversity and Muslim Outreach Department (17,000 strong), and layer upon layer upon layer of management.
Doing a lot of work that pound.
Thompson speaks as if he is in charge of an organistion which is a public good like the health and education services. He isn’t. He leads an organisation which is responsible for a large proportion of the junk broadcasting in the UK. If I was responsible for BBC 1, lots of pop music channels and for pushing the government’s huge gambling concern I’d be ashamed of myself.
Interesting that he makes no attempt to defend their inherent left wing bias, which is a far greater concern to me than the cost issues. Presumably he thinks if he can confine the discussion to a damage limitation on costs, its a result .
starting to sound like cornered rats,aren’t they?
oh well-if the cap fits…. 😉
Thompson even looks like a cornered rat, although that is an insult to rats. How many nurses’ salaries could be paid out of the money wasted on this talentless, overpaid, third rate, nonentity ?
Not sure if the comments reflect even the concessionary tone of the headline:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/7971355/Mark-Thompson-faces-up-to-reality.html
Mind you, ‘they’ must be the few who do not deem Mr. T’s BBC Team as a beloved national institution worth very penny, as does the rest of ‘us’… er… the country… um, according to BBC polls.
I see that the BBC also has £1.5-2 billion deficit in its pension funding. Just so long as it is not my children and grandchildren as taxpayers that end up picking up the tab further down the line I don’t mind. It looks as though Thompson will have to find the money elsewhere by way of cuts, fewer expense claims etc etc. They won’t know what hit ’em.
That bastion of objective, political dogma-free, hew close to the line reporting, The New Statesman, has this:
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2010/08/bbc-sky-paper-thompson-murdoch
Not too sure they should quite shine a light on Aunty in this way when it comes to awkward questions of news media for not sharing the full stories as and when it suits.
Especially when I can think of only one media entity publicly force-funded and without any possibility opt-out if… when found in breach of service contract.