Just what have the BBC been getting up to with regard to the Cliff Richards story?
‘The BBC was plunged into a new crisis last night after it was publicly blasted by police over its role in the shock Sir Cliff Richard sex abuse investigation. In an extraordinary attack on the broadcaster’s standards, furious South Yorkshire Police accused the Corporation of breaking its own guidelines.
The force took the highly unusual step of announcing it had written an official letter of complaint to Director-General Lord Tony Hall over the Corporation’s controversial coverage of the case. The BBC caused a sensation with its coverage when the star’s Berkshire penthouse was searched for five hours last week.
The force revealed it had been contacted ‘weeks ago’ by a BBC reporter who had found out about their ongoing top-secret investigation into shock allegations that Sir Cliff had sexually assaulted a boy at a 1980s concert. In an astonishing statement published late yesterday, police said they had been ‘reluctant’ to co-operate with the broadcaster but believed if they did not, the BBC would run the story anyway, potentially jeopardising the highly sensitive investigation.”
Now, someone is spinning here. Is it South Yorks, is it the BBC?
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2726859/BBC-crisis-Cliff-raid-Police-fury-TV-chiefs-screened-dramatic-swoop.html#ixzz3Ae0C0Hys
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And how did the BBC reporter find out about the Police’s top-secret investigation? Surely he couldn’t have been hacking telephones, could he?
Well he is hideously white and a Christian so he must be a criminal.
Meanwhile, another media heavyweight weighs in, rather free of irony…
MichaelWhite @MichaelWhite
Media Hypocrisy: Leveson tells cops not to tip off tabloids on celeb raids. Tip off BBC on Cliff instead. BBC goes tabloid.Tabloids complain
Seems Mr. White feels that ‘reporting’ is ‘complaint’ when it’s coverage of family matters he’d prefer was not mentioned.
We have the police and the nation’s broadcaster in at best a very stupid, unsavoury deal (likely to tarnish legal due process still further), accusing each other of lying, and this eminence gripe thinks banging on about the hypocrisy of tabloids pointing out BBC tabloid hypocrisy is the main issue!
Is it the case that the BBC received the complaint and then passed that on to the police – but only on the basis of getting some forewarning?
That would set a dangerous precedent for a national broadcaster if true, putting conditions on the reporting of a criminal offence.
Really, this is an outrage to the justice system. If the politicians had some backbone they would now really take the BBC to task on it.
However, they won’t. They are too scared that it will backfire on them if it turns out he is guilty of something. They have lost sight of the principle of the Law, Justice and due process, and that this is worth defending purely out of principle.
It appears that is the BBC uses enough “inverted commas” in its articles it somehow introduces an element of doubt in what they quote. Like a get-out clause. Just read this piece and count them.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-28823699
That’s a corker.
I remain confused at what denotes a “quote”, a ‘sampled statement’, “BBC analysis” or simply ‘any old thing a BBC “reporter” wants to look ‘dodgy”.
I presume there is some BBC tome that has all this laid out?
If so, I will then be intrigued at how the single ‘subhead’ “quote” here:
‘Preserve potential evidence’
…was reconfigured from doubled text here;
“… it was taken to preserve any potential evidence”
Ah, the ‘B’BC and their use of inverted commas to ‘push their narrative’. A stealthy grammatical weapon, which plays upon ‘the trust’ that the BBC enjoys from a ‘sizeable proportion’ of the audience.
I saw the newspaper review this morning (Sunday) with Alice Arnold, and a man from Esquire magazine. Both of the Left and BBC lovers. They mentioned the article in the Mail and of course had a dig at the newspaper – ritual behaviour for those types, they like to display their credentials. The man (from Esquire) said that no-one, that is no ordinary people would be really interested in criticism of the BBC. It was just the Mail as usual. They are so smug and so out of touch.
Part of the problem is the BBC in its Citizen Kane, anti-authority mentality thinks that it’s above the Police.
Well, they seem to pick and choose when it suits them. One moment they’re doing their best to stick the boot in and the next it’s “ooh, look, so and so has been arrested on suspision of…”.
I’m not saying the Police Service over the years has been whiter than white but generally the more I look at the BBC’s coverage of the Police the more it leaves me with the clear opinion that they’d love to see it disbanded with Britain living in a Left Wing, fluffy, multi-cultural la-la land.
Love and Peace.
They’ve written a letter of complaint?
That’ll be straight in the bin then!
The police will get the BBC standard cut’n’paste letter back claiming they got it “just about right” like the rest of us do when we submit a complaint.
I once wasted my time making a complaint to the BBC about their dysfunctional Information Policy & Compliance Team (who deal with FOIA and DPA requests). It’s always a hoot when people complain to the BBC, as anyone who has watched Points of View will know.
The gist of my complaint was that they reject most FOIA requests, even those that seem perfectly valid, by hiding behind the journalism get outs of the legislation. It’s a fact that the BBC actually responds to less than half of the FOIA requests that it receives.
Anyhow, my complaint was passed to the Head of Information Policy & Compliance, who spookily couldn’t see any problems with the efficiency of his team.
The way the BBC handles complaints is a total joke.
I wonder if the police had to wait the standard month and a half before they were fobbed off?
More to the point here, is that despite all the allegations and the complaint made by the Police, the BBC exec has done what it always does and denied it has done anything wrong.
In most instances when a company misbehaves there is a route the public can take to achieve resolution, but we live in a corrupt country where the government has absolved most of the public sector from the kind of strictures that private companies have to meet, and made it so expensive to run a case against them that few have the resources to do it.
The BBC fits into this bracket where it investigates itself, and on the odd occasion where it does find it might have fallen short, it broadcasts an apology and that’s an end to it. The staff who committed the breach are never fired and probably never even given a ‘few words’ to make sure they don’t do it again.
My own appeal to the trust has been passed back to the complaints department as even they cannot justify the ‘we believe it to be true’ as a credible answer. I was thinking though, what happens if they do uphold the complaint? I get an apology by EMail and that’s it. The BBC are never going to be having a word in Jon Snows shell like telling him to be less biased and to stick to the truth as it ism and not how he’d like it to be.
If even the Police with legitimate complaint get the fob off then the rest of us have no chance what so ever !
Just to mention, Jon Snow is Ch4. Jezza, Jon, Orla, Wyre, Dave, dee. Dozy, Beaky, Mick, Titch, Bob, Carol, Ted, Tulip & alice, however…
‘passed back to the complaints department as even they cannot justify the ‘we believe it to be true’ as a credible answer.
And so… the system works! Douglas Adams could write a book about it.
‘I was thinking though, what happens if they do uphold the complaint? I get an apology by EMail and that’s it.’
Me too. And at what stage?
If it goes all the way to the Trust and gets upheld (airborne Gloucester Old Spot Territory) it does get published for all to see. OK, it’s tucked away, but sites like this can find it and place a big neon sign at at. Which they don’t like.
But what about the earlier stuff? Especially absolute howlers.
Having a quick stealth edit, possible word in the culprit’s shell-like to not get caught next time, and a giggle on the compilation copy left in the newsroom lavvy isn’t really going to educate, inform or deter repetition.
I’ve never seen a ‘We really screwed up… sorry’, at least obviously.
And what about those world-trusted ‘110% success rate’ complaint stats that are served to Trustees, MPs and other credulous numpties? Are the foul-ups admitted to to close file included?
Jon Simpson – I keep getting them muddled !
Good old South Yorkshire eh?
A good knees-up with cameras to act before…nice hotels in Berkshire that we can all stump up for?
Symbiosis for media and tomorrows ACPO cadres.
Daresay that all that unpleasantness re Hillsborough, Pakistanis and Roma kicking seven beggars bells out of each other, Rotherham Councils childrens homes and UKIP witch hunts are simply not enough to keep the lads(and lasses of course) busy up there in Sheffield.
Mad world huh?
Another white Christian for the trashing…hope to God he`ll be innocent and then bring the BBC down for this nastiness.
Think I`ll pray for that.
Someone, somewhere in the Police, CPS or Magistrates court must have told the BBC and others. They are not psychic.
It says a lot about how far the BBC has fallen that a police force would believe that it would interfere with an investigation if it didn’t get its own way.
I very much doubt that any possible action against Cliff could succeed after these shenanigans.
I hope nothing comes of it and the BBC is left to explain itself.
Not that a perfect organisation ever can.
First the BBC stop playing Cliff’s music and now this. Just what have they got against the man? Could it be they believe, or have proof, that he is gay and are mightily miffed with him because he won’t ‘come out’?
Just a thought.
I can remember, when the bBBC used to have some comedy programmes worth watching, Rory McGrath on “They Think It’s All Over” making a different reference to Cliff Richard’s sexuality. He linked him to Sue Barker, Cliff’s long-term tennis-playing ‘companion’ (and rumoured to be more), with the phrase “Cliff Richard and Sue Barker … was it in or was it out?”
Man in no way dependent on BBC checkkie gives his take on progress to date:
@steve_hewlett: By me…via @guardian BBC’s Cliff Richard scoop raises questions about fairness to suspects http://t.co/5uh5o7yyvB
Seems questions are raised. Lucky the BBC doesn’t do answers. So it’s the fuzz, then (with a wee swipe at the Mail & Murdoch to see a wee bonus come Xmas?).
Damned if the police do, damned if they don’t.
Rock and a hard place?
Whilst we all guess, time will tell.
I’m sure that the police would have sought CPS advice before acting. They would have been crazy not to. This would then cover them from criticism in the long run.
According to the Sunday Telegraph today it seems the South Yorkshire Police felt necessary to investigate by the BBC who had ‘information’ which then passed to the police on an ‘exclusive’ news ride. Sort of blind leading the blind on a ‘sus’ charge. The BBC pointing a finger and the Police charging in sounds like a bad ‘Carry-on-Sargeant’ film clip. Or maybe any connection with the BBC is cause for concern now, perhaps the BBC keep ‘tabs’ on performers?
From the BBC article …..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-28832233
A spokesperson added: “The BBC agreed to follow normal journalistic practice and not to publish a story that might jeopardise a police inquiry.”
On Saturday, South Yorkshire Police said it was contacted some weeks ago by a BBC reporter “who made it clear he knew of the existence of an investigation” and “it was agreed that the reporter would be notified of the date of the house search in return for delaying publication of any of the facts”.
These two statements are inconsistent. There would have been no need to agree to feed the BBC with confidential information if the police believed that the BBC would ‘follow normal journalistic practice and not publish a story that might jeopardise a police enquiry’ .
Ergo, the police were convinced that the BBC was basically telling them that, if they did not cough up confidential information, the BBC would break their so-called ‘normal journalistic practice’ and would jeopardise an ongoing investigation.
Now that, some might call blackmail.
That also could be ‘conspiracy to pervert the course of justice’.
Imagine some supposedly average, everyday punter, who happened to be banned by the BBC, slaving away and calling on IT techniques such as proxy servers, to fight to bring this to the attention of the BBC audience they apparently live only to decry, on its website:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2728050/MPs-quiz-police-BBC-news-investigation-Cliff-Richard-leaked.html
One wonders what the odds are it would ever get through.