former BBC producer Antony Jay remembers those brave anti-establishment days : “For nine years (1955-1964) I was part of this media liberal consensus. For six of those nine years I was working on Tonight, a nightly BBC current affairs television programme. My stint coincided almost exactly with Macmillan’s premiership, and I do not think my ex-colleagues would quibble if I said we were not exactly diehard supporters. But we were … Continue reading
posted Putting things in order on BBC Views Online’s The Editors blog, where he said: Maintaining standards of honesty, accuracy and fairness throw up various dilemmas which programme editors have to grapple with on a daily basis. For example we sometimes get politicians making complaints about an interview or a particular film. Uh huh. Where’s this going? We had a recent correspondence from the Treasury about an item made by … Continue reading
Rod Liddle’s column in The Sunday Times leads on the BBC: Cue meltdown at the corporation. A frightened looking man in a suit, Peter Fincham, was wheeled out to apologise for having inadvertently misled the press and was gleefully attacked live on air by his underlings on Newsnight and breakfast news and repeatedly told to resign. And Jana Bennett, the BBC’s director of vision – whatever the hell that means … Continue reading
from today, Who are the car bomb suspects?, in which the BBC tells us: Eight people were initially held over the failed car bomb attacks on central London and Glasgow. Three men have now been charged, a woman has been released without charge and four men are still being held. Details have been emerging about their backgrounds. Strangely, in such a long and detailed article, complete with supporting quotes from … Continue reading
The first train wreck is revealed by the ever vigilant (and ever wonderful) News Sniffer Revisionista as it catalogues eighteen versions, 0 to 17, of BBC Views Online’s original Queen walks out of photo session fabrication page. Watch as the intial version is padded out with more so-called details, with a ‘Tantrums and tiaras‘ section being added, moving revision by revision to the inevitable train wreck at the end, with … Continue reading
(I wonder how they got hold of it!), here is an unexpurgated 43 second clip of the BBC’s preview trailer, including the now infamous switched around clips wrongly portraying the Queen as ‘storming out’ of a photo shoot: The silly music and the cinematic voiceover hardly speak for the BBC’s confidence in the ability of their programmes to sell themselves, do they? Click through to read and contribute comments … Continue reading
here is a BBC Newsnight interview of Peter Fincham, Controller of BBC One, the man who presented the fabricated clip of the Queen to journalists on Wednesday, saying, according to David Silitto’s report, “yes, it looks as though she stormed out”, as he did so. BBC Newsnight: Peter Fincham interview BBC Newsnight interview of Peter Fincham, Controller of BBC One Full post still to follow. Click through to read and … Continue reading
to Her Majesty the Queen after showing journalists a preview trailer implying, actually, lying would be more accurate, that Her Majesty had stormed out of a photo shoot after a dispute with photographer Annie Leibovitz. Naturally enough, journalists being journalists, saw this clip of the queen apparently storming out of the photo shoot for the major news story it apparently was, and splashed it all over this morning’s newspapers. Unfortunately, … Continue reading
I wonder how the BBC would cover a story where a BNP activist was arrested on a charge of murdering his Asian next door neighbour. Like this ? Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.
Blogger Mick Hartley spots the contradiction in this BBC story. (and it must just be one of those amazing coincidences that the Guardian is covering the same subject) Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.
