Why is ITV left to do the investigating concerning Operation Motorman and the broader aspects of the phone hacking scandal?
B-BBC contributor Alan notes…
“Can it be that the BBC are solely intent on one target…Murdoch and News International?
‘Motorman’ and its indications of widespread illegal practises throughout the newspaper industry has been available for everyone to see for a long time.
And yet the BBC showed no interest in its contents….perhaps because the Guardian, in the shape of the ‘Observer’ is also implicated.
http://www.itv.com/news/2012-03-28/do-not-publish-do-not-publish-do-not-publish/?tw_p=twt
http://www.itv.com/news/2012-03-28/backgrounder-do-not-publish-do-not-publish/
‘ITV News has been given unique access to perform a detailed analysis of information seized from private investigator Steve Whittamore in 2003 by investigators acting for the Information Commissioner’s Office. Mr Whittamore specialised in obtaining information on behalf of clients in the media…..information appears to have been obtained illegally from organisations who have either been tricked into handing it over, or from a corrupt source within the organisation. The organisations concerned are the Police, the DVLA, BT, and mobile network providers.’
“Can it be that the BBC are solely intent on one target…Murdoch and News International?”
Yes. Oh, they’ve reported the Mirror and the Guardian but you’d be pushed to find it and when they do actually report it it is disguised: i.e. no screaming headlines and the main story for days on end.
Vews At Ten ran with the quote from Malthouse that five times as many police officers are working on the hacking investigation as there are on investigating paedophiles.
The SLB* droid then duly signed off with something like,
‘It begs the question whether an investigation should be dependent on resources’.
No, sonny, that’s not the question it begs at all. Keep your partiality to yourself.
* Silly Little Boy
Wow – that’s all of Fleet Street in that list ?
Oddly, three of the newspapers seem to have paid very little in total – the Times, Sunday Times and the Sun, all owned by the evil Rupert Murdoch.
Can’t see the BBC publishing that, somehow.
This describes how the ITV dug into the story :
http://www.itv.com/news/2012-03-28/backgrounder-do-not-publish-do-not-publish/
Remember – ITV is strapped for cash, does not have hordes of journalists to dig into this. But there is real info there.
Shows what a craven disgrace the BBC has become. It is only interested in running a vendetta against Murdoch and Sky.
Where’s the Guardian and Indpendant in that list? Have they been censored out, because I can’t believe they have clean hands on this. Just like they were caught out phone-hacking, I could never believe their innocence here – I smell a rat.
Guardian is very probably under ‘Observer’.
Interestingly, The Register’s Andrew Orlowski states as fact that Monday’s Panorama, “Murdoch’s TV Pirates”, was actually researched by the Guardian’s David Leigh. No surprise then that it was built on deception:
Click to access NDSLetter.pdf
The purpose of this campaign by the Guardian-BBC is, of course, to create the prevailing view that Murdoch/News Corp is not a “fit and proper person” to hold a broadcasting licence, thus paving the way for the Guardianistas that run Ofcom to find precisely that with such justification that they would be able to defeat any ensuing judicial review action by NewsCorp.
The Left is dreading a NewsCorp takeover of Sky, and the instillation of management that would not censor facts and voices that favour conservatism.
Here’s Guido’s graph of the motorman files…
http://order-order.com/2012/03/12/show-us-the-files/
News International are lesser offenders here. The Mirror should be sweating.
What is more interesting is that the Motorman story is only covering one aspect of the media-the print media.
What it does not examine is the relationship with other aspects of the media. To think that its just the newspapers that are corrupt plainly naive or disingenuous.
Lets not forget that the death of David Kelly involved television and radio media.
This is where the real story is in my opinion .
It is quite clear that the narration of this saga comes mainly from TV media and blogging output. From the political viewpoint of the TV media, by getting rid of the adversarial and partisan nature of print reporting, it would leave the field wide open for the “impartial” television media, and its internet operation, to dominate the narration.
Wouldn’t that be similar to the US? Or even worse because there is currently no centre-right television output in the UK, it would be a leftward drift into crushing conformity?
Just think for a moment, while I would welcome the sight of Kevin Maguire going down with the Mirror Ship, in reality he is already de facto employee of the BBC and Sky. Same with Peter Hitchens, who would be rolled out as the token Conservative crank.
But the real loss to us would be people like Nick Cohen, Oliver Camm, Andrew Anthony, David Aaronovich, James Delingpole, Benedict Brogan and many others from both the left and right who would be not so welcome with their contrarian views.
That is the real loss to the British public, people who a already follow the TV’s narration about life, the universe and everything, would hardly be exposed to contrarian thought, because the “ratings” system does not allow for that niche market.
Finally this witch-hunt will be a massive loss to the English speaking culture. If you take this to its logical conclusion, and the “dead tree” press dies, that will also be the end of those who espouse the finer aspects of the English language.
There will never be another Malcolm Muggeridge, P J O’Rouke, John Keegan, Christopher Hitchens, George Orwell, Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson, Robert Novak or others who through the power of words transform our lives. Instead we will be reduced to a series of talking heads, and a world even more illiterate than before.
A very thoughtful post – thanks.
I would add Polly Toynbee to the list of permanent BBC guests.
Economics journalsists such as Anatole Kaletski and Sam Brittan are giants compared to Flounder. Alastair Cooke, whose real strength was in his Manchester Guardian reports on US politics, towers above the likes of Webb and Mardell.. Likewise the press has given us some great sports journalists, way above the banal stuff we usually get on TV and radio.
Plus we would lose all the great cartoonists. And political sketch writers like Simon Hoggart.
The free and very varied National Press has been a great British strength. It would be awful to be reduced to the lowest-common-denominator level of the likes of the BBC.
Indeed, I would miss my daily read on the Telegraph’s sports page, or even the Bournemouth Daily Echo regarding my AFC Bournemouth (well the Echo is banned at the moment, but that is another story…..)
The compliant BBC/liberal elite simply want the peace of the graveyard, whilst they quietly siphon off the nations wealth…but for charitable purposes so they`d tell us.
These scum haven`t got the balls or nerve to rob a cancer appeals jar, or set up a fake orphan in the Sudan to get his computers sent to him….they have no imagination to do such scams, but just want us on the gurney with an opened vein….if we`d be so kind….
Good point above-those names like Aaronovich get up my nose, but are necessary I guess…much as I`d love Hitchens and Delingpole instead.
It`s the Richards, Toynbees, Maguires that I hate….soft left , public school troughers -not Maguire…file under enlightened chav like Bragg…Educating Rita!…who do very well out of Beeb monopolies and sinecures like Shirley Williams, but never seem to pay any price for their idiocies.
When Leveson goes all quiet-can only assume that its the liberal press and Labour windsocks that are being “examined”…