Author Archives: Andrew

, by Karyn Miller, including the following (underlining added):

Among the glummest faces were the huge crews of television journalists sent from Britain to cover the hurricane, many of whom looked as if they were reporting typical autumn weather in England.

The BBC had the biggest team, with a total of 34 reporters, producers, cameramen and others. Nine, including three correspondents, are based in New Orleans and 25 in and around Texas.

The Sky News team consisted of an anchor, three reporters, a weather forecaster, four producers and three cameramen – a team similar in size to the one that covered Hurricane Katrina. Throughout the day, Sky’s team broadcast updates on what rapidly turned into an anti-climax for television crews expecting to report live from a major disaster.

Jeremy Thompson anchored the rolling news programme while David Bowden and Alex Rossi were the reporters in the field, along with Stuart Ramsay from Channel Five who also did reports for Sky.

A Sky spokesman, who declined to say how much it had spent on its coverage, said: “It was important to have a full team because it came on the back of Hurricane Katrina and we were not there just to cover the hurricane but also the evacuation of the residents.”

ITN had only one reporter, Robert Moore, with a producer and a cameraman.

I suppose the sheer disparity in the numbers outlined above is because of “the unique way the BBC is funded“!

has just returned from Washington DC, suffering from BBC distortion withdrawal symptoms – fortunately Justin Webb was on-hand to provide relief with a load of suitable drivel.

Sunday Times exposé of product placement advertising on the BBC, this week’s Sunday Times has an amusing follow-up, BBC quietly pulls a plug on Spooks – it seems that following last week’s uproar the BBC have quietly doctored the third episode of Spooks on BBC1 to cover up a prominent Apple Computer logo:

On Friday the BBC press office initially claimed that the cut scenes had appeared only on a preview tape and were picked up during a final edit before going on air.

The corporation’s spin doctors did not appear to realise that the scenes had already been broadcast on BBC3 and were doctored only after The Sunday Times article.

Later a spokesman said: “We are looking into why that version — that was not the final edit — went out.”

Yeah, right!

(on the supposedly ad-free BBC) for Andrew Marr’s new Sunday morning programme have him saying what sounds like “What we’re trying to achieve is the television equivalent of a crappy little newspaper”? I presume he’s trying to say ‘cracking’, but if he does mean crappy then he need look no further than the BBC’s Six O’Clock news crew for inspiration – telly-taxpayers haven’t forgotten the depths of dumbing-down exposed a year or two ago when one of the BBC’s supposed ‘talent’ responded on air to the presenter with something like “yes… and on the show tonight… we have”. Bring back Richard Baker, Kenneth Kendall, Robert Dougal et al! Please!

Meanwhile, elsewhere at the BBC, we have Torin Douglas, ITV cheerful as it hits its 50th, bemoaning the passing of the much missed ITN News at Ten. What Torin doesn’t remind us about though is how, once it became painfully obvious to all, incuding the short-sighted executives at ITV, that ITN News at Ten would have to come back, the tellytax-funded opportunists (bloody Greg Dyke, again) at the BBC made sure it could never work again by cynically moving the BBC Nine O’Clock News to 10pm. Good old BBC – public service at its best!

As an aside, a (Don’t) Have Your Say contributor at the time asked “What next? An advert break for News at Six?”. Why yes indeed, the supposedly ad-free BBC now has an ad-break in the Six O’Clock News, stuffed in to the gap between the national and regional news parts of the programme!

, according to Brian Rowan, BBC Northern Ireland security editor. A surprising part of Rowan’s conclusion is his assertion that “Even the loyalists accept that there is no threat from the IRA”.

Really? Well, I suppose you might concur if, like Brian, you omit events such as the IRA’s grand larceny at the Northern Bank in December (see The Adams-McGuinness technique: rob banks to buy your way to power in today’s Times*) from your analysis, or the vicious IRA murder of Robert McCartney, complete with thorough forensic cover-up (and a pub full of IRA/Sinn Fein witnesses saying, all together now, “we was all in the toilet at the time, so we was”).

On a related note, now that attention has shifted, intimidation of and violence towards the McCartney family and their friends has resumed. Strangely, the BBC’s sole article on the subject, headlined McCartney intimidation ‘growing’, has been watered down with a new headline, Families discuss justice campaign. Way to go, BBC!

* Channel 4’s Dispatches, The Big Heist, is on at 9pm tonight.

in Blackpool, BBC News Online featured a few pre-conference puff-pieces, including one with millionaire* Lib Dem MP Lynne Featherstone, Liberal gets tough on pub hours, by Justin Parkinson, BBC News political** reporter, focusing on Ms. Featherstone’s “biggest hit so far”, her “querying of the impending liberalisation of pub licensing laws in England and Wales”.

Curiously, amongst all of Featherstone’s ‘tough’ words, Justin omits to mention the Lib Dems policy to legalise drinking at the age of 16! Just the sort of typical two-faced Lib Dem hypocrisy that any journalist worth his or her salt ought to be probing.

From Hansard, Jan 25th, 2005:

Kevin Brennan: Will the hon. Gentleman confirm that it is Lib Dem policy to legalise drinking at the age of 16? Does he think that that will contribute to a reduction in binge drinking?

Mr. Foster: The answer is yes. I do not think that I could explain the position more clearly.

Link courtesy of the excellent, if currently somewhat sporadic, LibDem Watch.

* Not mentioned by Justin either. ** And here was me thinking they were all political reporters at the BBC – just like criminal lawyers: “why? aren’t they all criminals?” 🙂

Harold Evans’ most recent opinion column at BBC News Online was described as: “Evans on words – Don’t say ‘precipitation situation’ if you mean ‘it’s raining'” – this from the corporation that goes out of its way (re-writing history as necessary, even) to say militant/insurgent/bomber/etc. whenever it means terrorist!

, re. your story this evening about the clothes horse known as Kate Moss: her boyfriend, Pete Doherty, is not “a well known drug user”. He is, in fact, a well known drug abuser.

Next time you take the trouble to broadcast to the nation’s watching families please try to remember this important distinction, and perhaps even point out to the children watching your coverage the typical outcome of abusing drugs such as cocaine and heroin. Thank you.

P.S. Logging on to BBC News Online to watch their recorded version of the Six O’Clock News just now, after 8pm, reveals a message stating “This broadcast has ended”. If only!

of BBC programme makers, revealing that:

COMPANIES are paying fees of up to £40,000 to advertise their products covertly on BBC programmes, often in breach of the corporation’s rules.

At least 50 cases have been identified where top brands have bought favourable exposure on BBC television by paying specialist agents.

The article goes on to point out that:

The licence fee payer is the loser from the multi-million-pound trade. By maintaining the fiction that “brand placement” agencies are no more than tradesmen supplying props, the BBC can fend off pressure to sell conventional advertising. But for relatively paltry benefits in kind it hands over promotional slots worth thousands of pounds.

Read the The Sunday Times’ Insight Team’s accompanying article for the full story of how BBC shows connive with those with products to promote.

we learn that Lance Price, a former BBC reporter who, surprise, surprise, went to work for the Blair government as a spin doctor from 1998 to 2001, says:

The media was bullied, browbeaten and bribed with favours to report Labour favourably.

and worse, that:

The BBC reveals its questions in advance to Blair at press conferences in return for their reporters being chosen to ask their questions first.

A fuller version of Mr. Price’s revelations are serialised in today’s Mail on Sunday, where Price is described as remaining “a staunch New Labour supporter”.