Author Archives: Andrew

(courtesy of the Daily Mail):

After years on six-figure salaries as cabinet ministers, John Prescott and John Reid should hardly be short of a bob or two.

But yesterday it was revealed that both had pocketed about £250 from the BBC to give their views on Monday’s proceedings at Bournemouth.

A source at another broadcaster also claimed that Mr Reid had asked to be paid for a five-minute chat, so the interview was cancelled.

Rival politicians described the BBC’s behaviour as “outrageous” claiming it should not be using licence-fee-payers’ money to pay for party political propaganda.

The BBC claimed that it had paid them in exchange for them being available all day to comment on the events at the conference.

A spokesman said: “They were given a facility fee to cover the inconvenience and disturbance of being available to BBC News for the whole day, and that is not in breach of our editorial guidelines.”

Nice work if you can get it. I’m sure there are plenty of more interesting and worthwhile commenters at the Labour Conference who’d be only too pleased to share their opinions with us via the BBC for free – it’s disgraceful that two wealthy well-upholstered former cabinet ministers with fat pensions coming their way should ask for payment and receive payment from the BBC in this way – in particular a discredited and dishonourable buffoon like Prescott, who most people, the Labour Party included, are only too happy to see the back of.

Perhaps in its apparent drive for honesty and transparency the BBC ought to inform us, its tellytaxpaying customers, when people are being paid (over and above reasonable expenses) to share their opinions with us – there seems to be a coterie of BBC talking head favourites who do quite nicely out of appearance fees – apart from honesty and transparency this might save the corporation some cash and give viewers a wider range of more interesting opinions. Doubtless a public register of payments would be of interest to HM Revenue & Customs too.

P.S. Did anyone see either of these grasping buffoons commenting on the BBC on Monday? I don’t recall seeing them, though I have been somewhat unwell since Monday with an (unrelated) stomach upset.

Please use this thread for BBC-related comments and analysis. Please keep comments on other threads to the topic at hand. N.B. this is not (and never has been) an invitation for general off-topic comments, rants or use as a chat forum. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog. Please scroll down to find new topic-specific posts.

writes David Elstein, a respected broadcasting executive and commentator:

If fake quizzes are venial sins, loss of impartiality is – for the BBC – a mortal one. This summer, the BBC published a laudably honest independent report on impartiality, which exposed the prevalence of political correctness and “groupthink”.

It revealed how despite all the BBC’s efforts, its editorial processes were captured two years ago by the Make Poverty History lobby group, in the shape of a major drama, an episode of The Vicar Of Dibley, and a massive live concert, all promoting the same ideas.

It was only after two senior BBC executives earlier this month protested in public that a similar event relating to environmental issues – Planet Relief – was abandoned.

How can trust be restored to the BBC? Certainly not by calling in former executives to investigate, which is how the mis-edited footage of the Queen is being handled.

What is needed are wholly independent adjudicators, with a wide remit and access to email traffic.

Do read the rest.

writes Chris Hastings in the Sunday Telegraph:

…BBC employees are furious that the corporation has spared Mr Yentob from disciplinary action after it forced a wave of resignations last week from junior members of staff who committed similar breaches.

Staff contacted by The Sunday Telegraph, including some of the BBC’s best known names, said Mr Yentob’s “extraordinary” behaviour should be the subject of disciplinary action.

“The Alan Yentob business is the most serious allegation”, said one senior broadcaster who asked not to be named.

Another said: “He is guilty of deception and should be for the high jump like all the others.”

And in defence of ‘Noddy’ Yentob we have:

One senior figure in broadcasting said: “Alan Yentob is guilty of self-regard and foolish vanity. But I don’t think he is alone in that respect. I simply cannot accept that he is the only person in television to have behaved like this.”

It’s not much of a defence is it? Still, it sounds like there’s more sleaze to come out if that’s true.

This could be a useful and painful lesson for the BBC and other broadcasters about how easily the stupidity and dishonesty of a few can tarnish and smear everyone else – a lesson that the BBC gleefully meted out to the Conservatives with their endless ‘Tory sleaze’ mantra in the years before 1997. Let us hope that it takes as long for broadcasters to regain the trust of their audiences as it is taking the Conservatives to regain the trust of the electorate.

:

As BBC executives fall on their swords for rigging such world historical events as the naming of the Blue Peter cat, I am reminded of a story told me by an ex-minister concerning this programme. It held a competition of a creative nature of which the minister was a judge. He chose an entry that turned out to have been from a child at a fee-paying prep school as the winner, on the quite reasonable grounds that it was by far the best. The powers-that-were threw up their hands in horror, saying that such a privileged child could not possibly get the prize, so it went to someone from a much more impoverished postcode. It is nice to know that, since few at the BBC have got anywhere by merit, they wish to apply the same standards to others.

Thank you to Biased BBC reader Lurker in a Burqua for the link.

I see that in his latest Gaza sob-fest on today’s BBC News website, Jeremy Bowen says that:

“Israel, like most of its Western allies, regards Hamas as an unreconstructed terrorist organisation bent on the destruction of the Jewish state.”

That’s absolutely right Jeremy. Just as we regard a large, grey, four-legged mammal with a long trunk and big ears as an elephant.

Ouch! Spot on.

is The Times report on last night’s latest developments in the BBC fakery scandal.

BBC Director General, (Bite-) Mark Thompson, writing on the BBC Editors Blog, Trust and values (worth a read just for the vitriol of the comments!), says:

The trawl did find four more cases of serious audience deception to go with the six we disclosed in July.

…which of course avoids the question of cases of deception that the BBC doesn’t regard as serious.

Note: Unfortunately I’m short of time today. There’s more I’d like to say on Thompson’s comments. Hopefully later.

reports the Daily Mail:

Natasha Kaplinsky has already been chosen to present the oneminute national news, aimed at younger viewers with a short attention span…

Horses for courses I suppose in the case of Ms. Kaplinsky.

An insider said: “Meetings are taking place at all the regional centres, We were told that some market research had been done and that the audience likes pretty young women reading the news – so that’s what we are going to have. “We were told this is not dumbing down – we are just connecting with our audience better.”

Yeah right. One of the big issues with the BBC these days is too much concentration on style and presentation – and not enough on substance and gravitas. Audience research also tells the BBC that a large part of the public is opposed to the BBC tellytax – are they going to pay some attention to that research too?

“Viewers will, of course, still be able to watch the Ten O’Clock News later to get more in-depth news and analysis.”

Of course it’s not so long ago that viewers had the choice of two decent evening news programmes – one at 9pm, the BBC’s Nine O’Clock News, and ITN’s much missed News at Ten.

Shortsighted execs at ITN were allowed to do away with News at Ten for a while, until they realised what a mistake they had made. Then along came the predatory BBC, acting in its own interests rather than the public’s interest, finishing all hope of News at Ten ever returning by moving the Nine O’Clock News to 10pm as quickly and as unseemly as they could. So much for public service television.

Biased BBC reader David Preiser has written the following for us:

On September 17th BBC News Online featured a video report on the front page showing University of Florida student Andrew Meyer being tasered by campus security at a public event.

Meyer, was shown asking failed presidential candidate Senator John Kerry a question, then engaged in a scuffle with campus police, who at one point tasered him. The BBC video and a report are here:
Stun gun used during Kerry debate. The voice over informs us that the student:

“…was trying to ask a question when this happened. Up to four officers tried to remove the student who had reportedly been speaking for some time. He had been asked to stop and his mic was cut off.”

We are told he was asking Kerry why he hadn’t contested the election results after losing to Bush, and why Kerry hadn’t called for Bush’s impeachment. The BBC reporter implies that the student was suppressed for asking an anti-Bush question. The accompanying article says much the same. In both cases we are led to believe that someone was having his right to free speech violated simply for having an alternative viewpoint, specifically an anti-Bush one.

Except this is not the full story.

Meyer jumped to the front of the queue from further back, after everyone was told “last question”. The last question had already been asked, and Kerry was in the middle of answering it when Meyer leapt to the mic and asked Kerry about contesting the election and impeachment. Kerry tried to ask him to wait until he had a chance to finish answering the original last question. Not having any of it, Meyer became belligerent, and you can see what happened next. We are not informed that Meyer was deliberately speaking out of turn, or that he was given a chance to stand down. See Michelle Malkin,
Student tasered at John Kerry forum, for more.

Does this look like a bit of public theatre? That’s because it is. As fellow reader dave t comments, Meyer is something of an instigator and serial irritant, one who had planned this all along: Questions Raised Whether Tasered Student Planned to Stage Incident at Kerry Forum. More evidence that this was a stunt can be found in the local paper, Police: Meyer calmer off camera, something that escaped the BBC’s reporter.

The BBC report gets the story completely wrong, showing someone apparently being suppressed for making a noise and spouting leftie shibboleths. This distorts what happened and twists the facts. The sheer volume of more accurate reports that can easily be found is nothing short of embarrassing. Instead the BBC went with their instincts and produced an inaccurate report leaving the audience to draw anti-Bush and anti-American conclusions – a report quite different from the reality.

Thank you very much David for writing this up. Most appreciated.

Dan Sabbagh and Adam Sherwin, writing in The Times, Socks the Blue Peter cat who could cost BBC staff their jobs, reveal that the real name, or at least the name that topped the viewer poll, of Socks the Blue Peter cat is… a variant of Puss Cookie (see update below).

No wonder it was deemed inappropriate – even Mrs. Slocombe would have spotted such an obvious opportunity for double-entendre!

One has to wonder at the stupidity of a poll that produces such a result – it would have been far better to avoid the situation arising by offering a selection of safe names for viewers to choose from. I have some sympathy for the producer having found himself in this situation, however, it’s not a first offence, nor is it something that should have been fixed, in whatever way, without involving more senior management.

The Times reminds us that this isn’t the first time Blue Peter pets have been the subject of deception:

The original Petra, the programme’s dog, died of distemper shortly after first appearing on screen in 1962. At that time, in the belief that children would be unecessarily upset, a similar dog was found as a replacement. What had really happened remained a secret for three decades.

Getting back to the here and now, The Times also reports:

Other staff are expected to be suspended in the next few days, with suggestions that as many as 25 could eventually face action, after about five were told not to report for work when the first set of scandals broke in July.

A statement is not expected from the BBC until the end of the week, although the BBC Trust was briefed by Mark Thompson, the Director-General, about new and existing revelations at its monthly meeting yesterday. That meeting also saw the trust order Mr Thompson to make savings of 3 per cent a year every year for five years from 2008, without closing any television channel or radio station.

The Times also reports today’s other fakery stories – worth a read.

P.S. Jeremy Paxman, bemoaning the lack of a Newsnight cat or dog, has asked viewers to help with ideas for naming a Newsnight dog. I have two suggestions:

Paxo: a powerful attack dog, whose bite and target selection is improving with age; or,

Peter: a put upon hang-dog hound, who not only has to share a kennel with Paxo but also has to put up with having his tail tweaked by all and sundry.

Update (3pm): According to Nick Higham on BBC News 24, the winning name for the cat was ‘Cookie’ – not the potentially rude name reported earlier. Even more bizarre then as to why they should deem Cookie inappropriate. The BBC has also announced that Blue Peter will be getting a new kitten that will be named Cookie.