Jukes ex machina?

 

Jukes ex machina (Latin: [ˈdeʊks ɛks ˈmaː.kʰɪ.naː]: /ˈdeɪ.kəs ɛks ˈmɑːkiːnə/ or /ˈdiːkəs ɛks ˈmækᵻnə/;^[1] plural: deik ex machina) is a Latin calque from Greek ἀπὸ μηχανῆς θεός (apò mēkhanês theós), meaning “god from the machine”.  The term has evolved to mean a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem is suddenly and abruptly resolved by the inspired and unexpected intervention of some new event, character, ability or object. Depending on how it is done, it can be intended to allow a story to continue when the writer has “painted himself into a corner” and sees no other way out, to surprise the audience, to bring the tale to a happy ending, or as a comedic device.

Did the BBC find a way to solve a seemingly unsolvable problem with an inspired and unexpected intervention to bring a happy ending to their misery?

Curious…the Whittingdale story, headline news yesterday, has vanished completely from the BBC website’s frontpage, UK page and politics page.   Have they retreated after having overplayed their hand leaving people to think that maybe the Newsnight hit was politically motivated?

Timing is everything.

It is just a coincidence that this story broke ‘officially’ on Byline a few weeks [giving it a decent period of separation] after this ‘Report urges end to 94 years of BBC self-regulation.’….. Byline says it knew of the story for 6 months….why release it just at this time?

Many have known about the scandal for years: we’ve known about this scandal for six months.

Peter Peston in the Guardian thinks that report is the death knell of an independent BBC and the executioner is John Whittingdale…so if we’re looking for a sudden BBC motivation…..

One regulator fits all.  And who – as a conflicted trust more or less gives up the ghost – could possibly object to that?

Well, anyone who cares about independent journalism, for a start. Clementi is a former deputy governor of the Bank of England, a City man through and through. He even argues his Ofcom solution in terms of the Bank’s monetary committee. He’s very ready to trust HMG with the heavy lifting of BBC governance. Who appointed him? Why, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. If they’d appointed, say, Lord Puttnam, the report would have been different. But Secretary of State Whittingdale chose his chap.

He’ll be choosing a great many more once the Clementi formula is in operation. He’ll choose the new non-executive chairman of the BBC plus the deputy chair, the most important among other non-execs. He’ll choose four non-execs for the nations and regions. That’s six huge thumbprints for starters. And there’ll be maybe five more thrown up along the way, for Clementi reserves only three – out of 14 – top-board places for BBC men and women who actually work for the corporation, make or commission programmes, edit or control anything you see on screen.

As for Ofcom – incorporating the BBC in its overall media planning, issuing performance frameworks, balancing BBC interests against ITV and the rest – who chooses the chairman, the chief exec and the head of the new corporation-watching committee? Take another bow, John Whittingdale (with David Cameron grinning gently as selector of last resort).

Peter Jukes is a columnist and adviser to Byline and is also practically a BBC employee so often is he gracing them with his business. Jukes is taking a great deal of interest in the story and in defending the BBC.

Some at the BBC love him…

Praise for Peter Jukes’ coverage:

Jeremy Vine, BBC Journalist, said:

“If Peter Jukes is the future of journalism, our trade is safe.”

Owen Jones, Guardian columnist and author of Chavs, said:

“Peter Jukes is a genuine media pioneer, the citizen journalist personified, exposing one of the greatest Establishment scandals of our time like no other journalist.”

Any thought that the BBC might have encouraged Jukes to persuade Byline to publish the Whittingdale story first giving the BBC the excuse to then splash the story without, they hope, looking like it was a deliberate BBC attempt to smear and undermine Whittingdale and hopefully get him removed from his job?  Of course not.  Just odd that that BBC is very reluctant to tell the real story and is still insistent that only the newspapers knew of this….no mention of Natalie Rowe, no mention that the BBC itself must have known….Did Rowe contact the BBC or the Guardian in light of their intense interest in Leveson and then the BBC charter?  Impossible to imagine she didn’t…and impossible to imagine the BBC weren’t aware of her Tweets in light of what else was going on at the time.  Remember the BBC also wanted to make a film with her…hard to believe they dropped all interest in her and Osborne.  The story was resurfacing at the end of 2015 in blogs in relation to the Independent so perhaps the BBC realised this was going to come out eventually and that they’d lose their bargaining chip and so decided to give the story a little push via Byline and try and squeeze some benefit out of this saga.

Also hard to believe Cameron didn’t know, especially as the police seem to have been used as a political weapon to harass Rowe….and she tells us she contacted Cameron as well…

Why did the BBC and Guardian not publish the story?  Was it a deeply held conscientious objection to invading a Tory politician’s private life or was it something else such as keeping an ace up their sleeves for Press regulation and the Charter negotiations?

Guido has told us that Rowe contacted Labour’s Tom Watson in 2014 urging him to name and shame Whittingdale…..

tom_watson Why are you not using your Parliamentary Privilege in relation to John Whittingdale, we spoke in detail on the phone – USE IT

— Natalie Rowe (@RealNatalieRowe) July 11, 2014

But  he didn’t.  No-one did for over two years.

In fact Tom Watson actively worked to suppress the story according to ITV news…..

The Sunday People was the first newspaper to be offered the story at the end of 2013.

It approached Tom Watson – the Labour MP, now deputy leader of the Labour party, then a colleague of Mr Whittingdale on the Culture committee – for his advice on whether it should publish.

He told them he did not see there was a public-interest reason to run the story on Mr Whittingdale’s affair, since he was a single man, this was his private life, and the People had no evidence that Mr Whittingdale had paid for sex.

This was just after Leveson so it was undoubtedly not the time to publish such stories about private lives….but Whittingdale was chairman of the Culture, Media and Sport select committee at the time…so a case could have been made that it was in the public interest.

The BBC keeps hinting that there was a Press conspiracy to suppress this story, a right-leaning conspiracy [The ‘Press’ is always BBC code for the right-wing….note how they ignored the Mirror’s phone-hacking for so long], but that doesn’t make sense when the Guardian, the Mirror and the Independent didn’t publish.   Note that the BBC doesn’t mention the BBC.  Why not?  They cannot seriously suggest that they did not know about this story.  So did they suppress it to have leverage over Whittingdale, did they suppress it out of respect for his private life or did they suppress it because it would look too obviously like a hatchet job if they alone published?

Maybe a combination of all three…but as things start to look like the BBC is going to have to have some major changes, such as the end of the BBC Trust, the BBC may have decided to play that card it has long kept up its sleeve….by getting Byline to break the story first allowing the BBC then to ride in and give the coup de grace….they hoped.

But it’s gone, at least for now from the website main pages.

The BBC did tell us before it lost interest in the story that….

With this information about John Whittingdale now out in the public domain, Labour is suggesting that he cannot possibly be in charge of press regulation and should step aside from this part of his job – because he is vulnerable to pressure from the press.

Er…now it’s in the public domain there can be no pressure…that’s how blackmail works….the threat of exposure.

The Mirror gets all disingenuous.…..they tell us that they didn’t publish because it was not in the public interest but now claim it is a scandal because he was chairman of the Culture, Media and Sport select committee…and so is in the public interest…so they could have published back in 2013…..

In late 2013, the Daily Mirror’s sister title The Sunday People was offered the story for a substantial five-figure sum.

At the time he was a backbench MP. After considering issues of privacy, public interest and cost, the paper decided to turn down the story.

And…….

But he failed to declare it on the House of Commons register of interests – despite then having an influential ­position as chairman of the Culture, Media and Sport select committee.