Director General of BBC Resigns Over "Poor Journalism" 214
dryriver writes "George Entwistle, the new Director General of the BBC who had been on the job for a mere 54 days, has voluntarily resigned over a BBC program that featured 'poor journalism'. The program in question was 'Newsnight', which typically features hard-hitting investigative journalism similar to American programs like '60 Minutes'. On Friday night, Newsnight accused a prominent Conservative MP and former adviser to Margaret Thatcher, Lord Alistair McAlpine, of having sexually abused a number of young boys at Bryn Estyn Children's Home in the 70s and 80s. Only after Newsnight aired with the allegations in the UK did the BBC realize that 'the wrong photographs were shown' to the alleged sexual abuse victims, who are now adults, and that Lord Alistair McAlpine had nothing whatsoever to do with the abuses committed. Newsnight's 'poor journalism' caused George Entwistle, the Director General of the British Broadcasting Corporation, to resign voluntarily over the scandal caused by the erroneous allegations. This example of an important media chief 'resigning voluntarily due to bad journalism' is interesting, because many TV, Web and Print journalists make 'serious mistakes' in their coverage at some point or the other, and quite often no heads roll whatsoever as a result."
BBC Forward! (Score:2, Informative)
Big deal. You accused an innocent man of being a pedophile. But at least you didn't cover up an investigation of another man being a pedophile. Oh wait!
Re:BBC Forward! (Score:5, Informative)
Nice way of misrepresenting the facts.
Editorial judgement determines that there's insufficient evidence to safely publish: story stopped. Note that the police had also decided not to prosecute despite having criminal evidence gathering mechanisms available to them and despite having multiple complaints registered with them.
Editorial judgement determines that a first-hand witness is happy to state on the record what he believes the police told him: story broadcast. The "internet" goes into overdrive and names the wrong man.
Now, tell me exactly, what did the BBC do wrong here? Put it objectively, and explain it simply, because right now your post is snide misinformation.
Re:BBC Forward! (Score:5, Insightful)
The press (who have no vested interest in bringing down the BBC oh no) have been putting the boot in for years so it must be true! The Commie BBC with their homo pinko agenda must be destroyed and replaced with the serious journalism and honest reporting that gave us the hacking of a murdered teenager's voicemail.
Re:BBC Forward! (Score:5, Insightful)
Resignation Genius (Score:5, Interesting)
Resigning is the RightThingToDo(TM), it's the ultimate apology
His payoff is equal to one year's pay of £450,000 [bbc.co.uk] (approaching $700,000).
Which he gets to claim for 54 days of work that he's also already been paid for. By quitting now, he's made just a hair under £10,000/day ($16,000/day), including weekends.
If he'd stayed for five years plus a final year's payoff, he'd have been paid a fifth of that rate.
I wish I could fail that hard.
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Yeah, definitely falling ong is golden sword. Knowing how this thing tends to work, it would be more accurate to rework the headline: "Director General offers to resign if paid £1.3 million and allowed to stuff his pockets full with paper clips and post-it note pads."
Re:BBC Forward! (Score:5, Informative)
>Big deal. You accused an innocent man of being a pedophile. But at least you didn't cover up an investigation of another man being a pedophile. Oh wait!
Wait, indeed. The Newsnight report didn't name the alleged abuser, who turned out to be completely innocent (well, as innocent as a Tory can be). It actually merely reported that one of the victims of abuse named him. The victim of abuse named him because the police dealing with the case a decade ago, TOLD the victim that it was this senior Tory chap, showing him a photo of the abuser and saying it was the Tory. The victim believed this to be true and told the BBC, who reported it without naming any names.
The police also mislead another victim, having him also believe that the person who abused him was this Tory.
So obviously, despite naming no names and simply repeating the victim's accusations, which they believed to be true (albeit without enough rigorous checking) the BBC must be at fault here and people should resign!
Meanwhile the police .... have taken no responsibility. And the enemies of the BBC, yet again, jump on it for the smallest of errors (or even non-errors) at any chance they're given.
Perhaps it had further to fall? (Score:5, Insightful)
The BBC has fallen very low indeed.
And yet all it takes for me to be content with paying my licence fee is about five minutes watching any other major news channel, from the UK or otherwise. The BBC isn't perfect, but it's so far above the average there's no meaningful comparison, and IMHO it is still somewhat ahead of even the decent alternatives overall.
One of the most interesting things about the BBC is the remarkably neutral way their news programmes report on stories involving themselves or their own people. George Entwistle was being interviewed on their regular breakfast programme -- not a show you would normally associate with hard-nosed journalism and heavy questioning of interviewees -- just a few hours before he threw in the towel, and even there the hosts weren't giving him a bye just because he was (at that moment) their own editor-in-chief. On many of the news networks, I imagine the kind of blunt challenges those presenters made would have been career-threatening moves.
Re:Perhaps it had further to fall? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Agree, if every public service operated as poorly and unprofessionally as the BBC, the world would be a much better place.
Nicely put! Mod up!
Re:Perhaps it had further to fall? (Score:5, Interesting)
Upping the number of pro-war media corporations that fall in line to support the state unconditionally would not make the world better:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_coverage_of_the_Iraq_War
As bad as many other government organizations may be, I doubt their problems on average are worse than those of the BBC. Except for those who like sending soldiers out to kill a bunch of people and have no one question the justifications for millions of Iraqis slaughtered, starved, displaced and maimed, we'd find things are worse if all such organizations behaved in a similar fashion. Sure, some are even more wholly corrupt, but plenty are far closer to some semblance of humanity.
I think the most evil part about BBCs bias of that war was after the US got a democrat ruler. The narrative immediately switched from 'defensive first strike to keep the scary Iraqi terrorists from coming to the US' to 'the poor savages in Iraq need us to protect them from themselves'. The strategy of fear used by the conservatives and the strategy of guilt by liberals is such a timeless emotional appeal used by warmongers. I'd be impressed by how refined the method has become if it weren't so vile. The BBC played its part in this story telling well; regardless of the fact that it was the military occupation causing the chaos and death, the BBC continually pushed the message that the sunnis and shias were bent on genocide. They lied outright to turn the anti war left into new supporters of the military murder machine as a means of 'protecting Iraqis'. The reason I think this was the most disgusting part of BBCs behavior regarding the war is that it perpetuated not only a factual lie about the conflict, but it also reinforced a false moral proposition which is that it is morally good and right to inflict violence against innocent people as a means to achieve the end of protecting them.
To be fair, most all MSM made this narrative switch after the 2008 election. However unlike other mainstream media corporations, the BBC tends to be overlooked as a supporter of evil. We can see in this very thread a number of people that look favorably upon the BBC, while eagerly condemning and mocking FOX. However, the only difference between the two is a degree of subtlety and accent.
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George Entwistle was being interviewed on their regular breakfast programme -- not a show you would normally associate with hard-nosed journalism and heavy questioning of interviewees
The BBC Radio 4 breakfast show has a reputation for shredding politicians, so I don't know where you get that idea from....
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Maybe it's relative? I think this programme was the one famous for grilling people: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HARDtalk [wikipedia.org]
Is it as hard nosed as HARDtalk?
Re:BBC Forward! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes the liberal conspiracy exists. Sane and rational people collude to exclude batshit crazy nutjob ideologies from public discourse. Boo-fucking-hoo...nobody will to take my wingnut talk seriously. Reality has a liberal bias!
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And yet another nutjob wingnut anonymous coward.
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The right thing, but the wrong person resigned. (Score:5, Insightful)
Accusing somebody of rape when he did nothing is a very serious matter. It destroys that person's life forever!
If you don't put the correction up high enough, people will miss that it was a false accusation, and a "urban legend"/meme type thing will form, that sticks to that person forever anyway.
It is exactly why slander / character assassination is a crime, and the original reason such actions were criminalized. (Until they got abused to censor everybody and everything.)
Re:The right thing, but the wrong person resigned. (Score:5, Insightful)
Accusing somebody of rape when he did nothing is a very serious matter. It destroys that person's life forever!
If you don't put the correction up high enough, people will miss that it was a false accusation, and a "urban legend"/meme type thing will form, that sticks to that person forever anyway.
Corrections just aren't enough when a person is accused of a crime. Even resigning, plenty of people will believe that Alistair did it and that shadowy right-wing operatives coerced him into resigning.
The only right answer is not to fuck it up in the first place.
Re:The right thing, but the wrong person resigned. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think Lord McAlpine will suffer any enduring harm to his reputation. The allegations were very quickly proven false.
But hopefully this will be enough to bring this sad chapter to an end. What had started with accusations against Savile (who is dead and thus beyond all prosecution) has turned into a hysteria-driven witch hunt, where the police are essentially sidelined in favour of investigative "journalists" looking to make a name themselves by catching the ever bigger fish.
McAlpine will likely sue and most certainly win and there can be a more rational approach to investigating pedophile accusations than wagging a list in the British Prime Minister's face on television.
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What's happening in the UK right now is totally fucking insane. It's been mentioned before already on various sites, but Chris Morris' Pedogeddon spoof show (back in 2001) was spot on.
Re:The right thing, but the wrong person resigned. (Score:5, Insightful)
The only right answer is not to fuck it up in the first place.
How do you plan to ensure that nobody, in a planet with about 7Billion people, that nobody fucks it up?
The only way is for false accusations not to matter. That means no vigilantes; it means the law deals seriously with people who are dangerous paedophiles (so people have confidence that they don't need to intervene themselves) and it means people who cause harm to the falsely accused, for example by firing them from work, should be forced to fully and completely compensate them for that harm.
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...people who cause harm to the falsely accused, for example by firing them from work, should be forced to fully and completely compensate them for that harm.
This is the message that needs to spread far and wide. Unfortunately there are too many people who believe that controlling speech is the answer, and it is, only when it is more important to protect the authority and 'reputation' of the powerful and influential. That is the sole purpose of libel/slander laws.
Re:The right thing, but the wrong person resigned. (Score:5, Insightful)
The first thing to do is to fire the person who fucked up AND the person above them who fucked up. That's at a minimum. This does several things 1) it eliminates one person who fucked up, so they won't do it again. 2) It eliminates another person who fucked up by not paying attention. 3) It sends a solid message to the people who are still there - fuck up, or let someone fuck up on your watch and you're done. Anyone further up the chain is optional on top of this, but IMHO you have to start with the people who did it and those who should have known.
Bah! man at the top resigns while shitheads who "investigated", wrote, and reported the story are all sitting there reporting on the resignation.
Cue the thought police (Score:4)
And when someone googles a job applicant and sees the story with name and pictures and decides NOT to hire, then what? Being misinformed is not a crime and can not be enforced - especially when the result is inaction. Spreading the misinformation is a crime - or at least something you can sue for. Lets not blame the people who heard the news instead of those that report it.
Re:The right thing, but the wrong person resigned. (Score:5, Insightful)
Really? An investigation never reaches an inaccurate conclusion?
That's... quite a reality you live in.
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That's an error, not a "fuck up". This difference is, in fact, legally recognized when it comes to libel: should you have known better or was your error reasonable?
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Accusing somebody of rape when he did nothing is a very serious matter. It destroys that person's life forever!
If you don't put the correction up high enough, people will miss that it was a false accusation, and a "urban legend"/meme type thing will form, that sticks to that person forever anyway.
Corrections just aren't enough when a person is accused of a crime. Even resigning, plenty of people will believe that Alistair did it and that shadowy right-wing operatives coerced him into resigning.
The only right answer is not to fuck it up in the first place.
And I'm sure that in the U.K. just having a person investigated by the Police, leaves an unremovable trail. You may be totally innocent but there will always be a record that you were investigated. The outcome of the investigation is irrelevant.
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Worse than that, the fact a complaint was made and investigated is used when considering your suitability for certain lines of work, and can be shared with potential partners if they want to check up on you.
Lovely way to treat innocent people :(
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The only right answer is not to fuck it up in the first place.
Problem is, people who are always right never learn anything.
Even resigning, plenty of people will believe that Alistair did it and that shadowy right-wing operatives coerced him into resigning.
The editor had the strength of character to take personal responsibility for his actions and the "victims" reputation has been fully restored, why should he suffer because other people have psychological problems accepting reality?
Maybe it's simpler as a car analogy; the editor didn't see the red light, it was the MP who was hurt by the accident, everyone else is just a fucking spectator.
Re:The right thing, but the wrong person resigned. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The right thing, but the wrong person resigned. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm still at a bit of a loss why the BBC is catching the flack.
Much of the rest of the UK media, especially the bits owned by Murdoch, hate them passionately.
Re:The right thing, but the wrong person resigned. (Score:5, Interesting)
The BBC made out the evidence was stronger than it was. In fact they had failed to do basic journalistic checks before publicising the allegation. They gave enough away that it was only a simple case of eliminating a small number of potential suspects to come up with a name, hence the internet rumours.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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Things are different in the UK (Score:2)
His severance package only amounts to 450,000 GBP. In the US, I am sure it would have been much more.
Slashdot? (Score:5, Funny)
At first I thought I clicked on the wrong bookmark, but the style and appearance sure looks like Slashdot, however to content is apparently completely random international news.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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There's been a load of blah on Slashdot recently about some election in the colonies; turnabout is fair play :-)
Well played.
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I have to agree with sibling, well played, good sir!
The two cultures. (Score:5, Insightful)
At first I thought I clicked on the wrong bookmark, but the style and appearance sure looks like Slashdot, however to content is apparently completely random international news.
The geek tends to believe in the technocratic notion that his specialist skills place him above the law and other social norms.
It's useful corrective to be reminded now and again that it just ain't so,
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Only if he gets caught.
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Only if he gets caught.
The ethics of the psychopath.
Re:Slashdot? (Score:5, Funny)
Imagine what it'd be like if Slashdot editors had to reign over "bad journalism". Nothing would ever be the same again.
They already do 'reign' over bad journalism...
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Summary is misleading (Score:5, Informative)
What actually happened, is that the victim went to the police at the time the alleged incident took place, which was IIRC in the 80s. He was shown photographs by the police and told that they were of Lord McAlpine. The case collapsed and the evidence was destroyed for whatever reason. Police corruption wasn't exactly unheard of back then (see: Hillsborough).
Now after all this Jimmy Saville stuff came out, Newsnight picked up the story from a legit witness who believed he had been assaulted by McAlpine, BECAUSE THE POLICE TOLD HIM THAT'S WHO IT WAS. Remember that Newsnight was recently blasted for NOT showing a story about paedo Saville based on evidence that was actually less solid than this. This is a witchhunt against the BBC. They had no way of winning this, damned if they did, and damned if they didn't.
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They had a duty to followup on the word of one alleged victim to see how much of the story they could verify. These are extremely serious allegations, and having dropped the ball on the Jimmy Saville story is no excuse for rushing headlong into misplaced allegations against someone else.
Re:Summary is misleading (Score:5, Insightful)
The guy was a kid at the time of the police investigation. You don't think it would be reasonable to show him a picture of Mc Alpine again and just check "is this really the guy?" before making the accusation?
This is basically the same accusation as the Saville stuff. Failing to follow through with proper journalistic professionalism because the BBC staff has been cut and messed about with by the past several UK regimes. Cameron, Brown and Blair should all resign with Entwistle.
Re:Summary is misleading (Score:4, Interesting)
The BBC institutionalised paedophilia. Most celebrities of the time are admitting they were aware of what was going on but chose to protect their careers. The BBC deservedly came under flak. They tried to deflect by outing a senior (former) politician.They got the surname correct, they got the family correct, but they got the wrong guy.
Now the witness claims mistaken identity and believes the perp died some years ago. Lord McAlpines brother, who died in 1991, lived in the area where the abuse is alleged to have taken place.
Newsnight gets shutdown for a false (and very serious) allegation. But notice there was no pressure for dropping a report into Savile and his pedo activities when they had two witnesses prepared to go on camera.
Note: this comes about a year after the reputation of Rupert Murdoch was destroyed. Rumors suggested he maintained his grip on power and was untouchable because he had some damning information on the most powerful in society. Now we're seeing the BBC under pressure. Watchout for a Murdoch comeback.
There are many facets to this story. It touches on many powerful people, household names, and I suspect will become a very dirty war.
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Re:Summary is misleading (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the parent is saying that because the BBC was so heavily condemned for burying the story about Jimmy Savile being a predatory sex offender, it had no choice but air accusations against McAlpine. I agree that's why the BBC ran the story, but failing to uphold journalistic standards in one direction is not a reason to suspend those standards in the other.
Re:Summary is misleading (Score:5, Informative)
Factor in that Newsnight didn't name the person in question, that they certainly did some checking and it is clear that they didn't have a 100% clear case but also that they felt the story was strong enough to air. Did they make a mistake airing it? Possibly but where do you draw the line on when evidence is strong enough? If they were 95% confident it was him, would it be acceptable to tell the story (without naming the individual)? How about 99.9%? The view of the victim was that it had been covered up by the police in the same manner that much of Saville's behaviour had been so again if the BBC kept it quiet they risked a mass of criticism. It really was a case of damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Re:Summary is misleading (Score:5, Insightful)
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How about when the police have him in custody, or officially filed charges? It's not the medias job to identify criminals, it's their job to report when the proper authorities do that.
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>How about when the police have him in custody, or officially filed charges? It's not the medias job to identify criminals, it's their job to report when the proper authorities do that.
Wrong. In fact when the system works the media is an incredibly powerful ally to law enforcement. Exactly because things like free press laws can allow people to talk to the media without revealing their own identities, this gives the media access to whistleblowers who may have (good) reason to be weary of going to law enf
And how is this related to technology? (Score:2, Offtopic)
I really don't see how this story is of any interest of Slashdot.
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Didn't you read the articles? Gynoids and replicants were involved...
Re:And how is this related to technology? (Score:4, Informative)
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Wow - but why the BBC? (Score:2)
Re:Wow - but why the BBC? (Score:4, Funny)
...Why not start that trend at the Huffington Post? Or Fox News?
Because in those organizations we'd be down to janitors providing the news in about a week?
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...Why not start that trend at the Huffington Post? Or Fox News?
Because in those organizations we'd be down to janitors providing the news in about a week?
Business is picking up.
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[citation needed]
It was the internet wot did it (Score:3)
Re:It was the internet wot did it (Score:4, Interesting)
What did the BBC do wrong? They just reported that someone's name was being quoted by other people. This was entirely true
Repeating such a serious allegation without hard proof is highly irresponsible, and probably libellous.
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There is rarely hard proof of child abuse, just testimony of the abused. That's why the coverups work so well.
Try explaining that to an angry mob.
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Dude, in which jurisdiction, if I may ask? Or did you just make this one up?
Sorry, I had to ask.
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Fortunately they didn't mention the person. It'll be interesting to see if McAlpine manages to win a libel case on this one against the BBC.
All those people on twitter though..
Slashdot is only telling half a story here (Score:2, Informative)
This _current_ BBC pedophilia scandal is far greater than what the slashdot article is letting on here.
Pedophilia is rampant in the uk and elsewhere in the social golden-spoon strata McAlpine hails from
all the way to the top. It looks like they've decided on trying the easy way out here yet again by slandering the
investigators and firing them from the job. This is a common form of retaliation with these people.
Google for BBC pedophilia scandal, there is far more than just this going on.
Or go to the hores's mouth... (Score:5, Insightful)
has voluntarily resigned over a BBC program that featured 'poor journalism'.
Or, instead of The Guardian, you can read all about it on the BBC website [bbc.co.uk].
Yes, you read that right - the BBC are reporting on this and not pulling too many punches. In fact, one of the last straws for Entwistle was a difficult grilling by a BBC interview on their flagship radio news program. That goes to show why, although some heads need to be cracked together over this screw-up, the BBC is something worth keeping.
Couple of other points:
Newsnight accused a prominent Conservative MP and former adviser to Margaret Thatcher, Lord Alistair McAlpine,
Actually, they didn't name him, just described the accsued as a "prominent Thatcher-era conservative politician" but in the process they leant a lot of credibility to internet tittle-tattle which did name him.
This example of an important media chief 'resigning voluntarily due to bad journalism' is interesting, because many TV, Web and Print journalists make 'serious mistakes' in their coverage at some point or the other, and quite often no heads roll whatsoever as a result."
Its worth putting this in the context of the BBC's current predicament - they've been accused of dropping an investigation into sexual abuse by the formerly-much-loved celeb, now deceased and discredited Jimmy Saville. Of course while, with hindsight, that investigation was right on the money, had their evidence not panned out then there would have been an uproar, so close to the star's death. This looks awfully like an attempt to over-compensate, and not spike a story that should have been spiked. However, that this should happen when the BBC management knew that they were already under scrutiny does not look good.
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I know for a fact the BBC provides much better news about the US, than you're likely to get in the US.
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Peh. I trust the BBC about as much as I trust Pravda. They like to memory hole stories [bbc.co.uk] that don't fit their agenda after they've been published(Nov 9/12). You hear about the story about the luxury homes in the Palestinian territories that the Beeb did? Probably not. Because it was up for all of an hour before memory holed. It was a rather good bit of journalism they even included pictures of the overflowing markets and all the rest.
And when I say they scrubbed it, they scrubbed it. It was up and down so fast that not even google crawled it. But, [blogspot.ca] some [blogspot.co.il] bloggers did catch it. [jihadwatch.org]
Except that it is still there on the BBC web site on November 11. Is this a new definition of "memory hole" where you put video up on your website for the entire world to view for several days? Also, two of your "bloggers" are actually the same blogger, one accessed via the Google Canadian URL and one via the Israeli one.
In fact, when I go to the main page Middle East news page http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world/middle_east/ it is still one of the top video news stories listed on the right hand side. What the
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Peh. I trust the BBC about as much as I trust Pravda. They like to memory hole stories [bbc.co.uk] that don't fit their agenda
Pro tip: if you want to claim that [insert name of news organisation] has suppressed a story, linking to that very story on [insert name of news organisation]'s kinda sorta undermines your claim.
Blame the Media (Score:3, Funny)
This example of an important media chief 'resigning voluntarily due to bad journalism' is interesting, because many TV, Web and Print journalists make 'serious mistakes' in their coverage at some point or the other, and quite often no heads roll whatsoever as a result."
This is not in any way uncommon in the UK. Whenever something goes wrong and catches the media's attention, which is inevitable in any big organisation given that the employees are only human, a frenzy will be worked up until one of the higher-up heads roll. Given intensive media coverage that lays blame wherever it can, many will chose to step down to avoid becoming the main ring event of the coming circus. Sensationalism triumphs regardless of reason. This is not unique by any means to the UK, but it is very distinctive here and you will usually hear of someone stepping down or getting sacked every few weeks. It even affects football coaches who fail to bring their teams to the finals, as though the coach could control the ability of all other teams and all luck involved in the sport.
Somehow it has come to be expected that the head of any organisation can micromanage every single employee in the organisation ever single second of the day.*
All that said, in this case it is reasonable to expect that the director general of the would be aware of this given the potential impact and that there were concerns several days before the program aired. If nothing else he failed to make himself accessible for important information.
* It goes even deeper than that. Negative sensationalism sells and most things are framed just that way even when they do not deserve it. Just watch the "investigative" journalism of prominent presenters such as Kay Burley or Steven Sackur (in particular "Hard Talk"). They clearly ask questions that are intended to come across as incisive but which are often nothing but vapid, thinly veiled strawman arguments designed to make them appear insightful and clever. They completely ignore any answers given to them and continue to pursue this tainted image that they are trying to create in order to sensationalise the issue.
It's no wonder that politicians and others stick to carefully engineered sound bites. Even the rare honest few who would like to explain intricate issues and other matters know that their words will be twisted to sell some scandalous headlines. /rant
It started with Newsnight (Score:2)
They clearly ask questions that are intended to come across as incisive but which are often nothing but vapid, thinly veiled strawman arguments designed to make them appear insightful and clever.
This is a very unwelcome recent trend at the Beeb. I place the blame squarely on Jeremy Paxman and/or the editorial team behind Newsnight. At some point, a little while ago now though it's hard to pin down exactly when, he seemed to jump from asking difficult questions of his guests but respectfully to doing pretty much exactly what the above quote says. And since Paxman is one of the BBC's longest-established Serious Interviewers, and Newsnight is the nightly serious news show, if you can get away with tha
I hear.... (Score:2)
My bad, that's completely wrong.
FOX News... (Score:5, Insightful)
Gawd I hate putting those two words next to each other... if FOX News had a director resign after every piece of bad journalism, you could watch the line of new directors walking continuously through the building without ever stopping. Of course this would require journalistic integrity... so FOX will never have to worry abut this problem.
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It's okay though. Those lies are politically correct. If a news organization lies to do good then it's okay so CBS, NBC and ABC get a free pass and MSNBC is the hero of them all. Sacrificing credibility in the name of all that is good. Maybe one day CNN will get off the fence and start lying as well instead of just selectively reporting. They still think of themselves as journalists unlike their liberal brethren at the other mainstream media disinformation outlets. I'll admit FOX has a real right wing
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So first off all, y'all are making some pretty big presumptions about my politics, beliefs and position on news in general. Those other news outlets you mentioned only have a liberal bent compared to your conservatism, most are pretty middle of the road with a handful of liberal editors off screen shaping content. By the way, I'm not talking about the NEWS part of the news. Anyone can read a feed from AP or Reuters without adding much of an editorial bent one way or the other. No, I'm not letting the other
Twitter story, really (Score:2)
Some background (Score:5, Insightful)
The BBC Newsnight programme ran this, and the Director General had no idea they were running it. Ordinarily, he might get away with it if it were an isolated thing. However Newsnight was recently found to have cut an investigation into Jimmy Savile, a well-known TV/radio personality who turned out to be a serial child abuser. The investigation was cut for "editorial" reasons last year (soon after he died) and the suspicion was that it would allow them to run sacharine eulogies for him at Christmas. Finally, the accusations only got aired this year by another channel, and it looks like he abused hundreds of kids over decades, including in BBC dressing rooms.
So Newsnight was under a lot of scrutiny, and the Director General ought to have been watching it like a hawk.
However he admitted (to a BBC journalist in a very tough radio interview - let's see any other news organization allow its own journalists to bury their editor-in-chief) that he hadn't known what the programme was going to say about Lord McAlpine, and he didn't have an answer to the accusation that he was "asleep at the wheel".
So yeah, he mucked up by not being sharp enough. The BBC itself doesn't look good as it seems to have (thus far) allowed the people who made the "editorial decision" to cut the Savile investigation to continue in their roles. I suspect they will go eventually, once the independent inquiries have run their course.
However the one thing it has got right, and *no other* news organization would ever get right, is to have one part of it criticize another. There is no way Sky News would ever allow one of its journalists to have a go at the head of Sky TV in the manner of this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9768000/9768406.stm [bbc.co.uk]
Journalism??? (Score:2)
I thought it was "Entertainment"
Re: (Score:2)
Compared to Dancing with the washed up celebs and Desperate Cunts of some city or other....it is entertainment.
Jimmie McAlpine (Score:2)
The Telegraph on Friday have made accusations [telegraph.co.uk] that Lord McAlpine's brother (who ran the huge building company) lived close by the care home and had a huge collection of expensive cars (noted by witnesses at the time). There are some theories that this was a simple mix-up by a key journalist/the police and fingered (bad expression) the wrong brother which has now caused the BBC to go into melt-down.
What's odd is that The Telepgraph published another article [telegraph.co.uk] which seems to downplay the idea that Jimmie was i
Re: (Score:2)
In what way is the BBC Labour focused? I don't give a shit about what Mark Thompson said, show me some actual examples.
Lost in Translation (Score:2)
I take it "on the job" doesn't have the same meaning on that side of the pond, because 54 days worth is in no sense of the word "mere".
Resigning over bad journalism? (Score:2)
If this spreads, it would be impossible to follow Fox News any longer. On account of all their new anchors trying to talk while holding guns in their mouths.
DG's Graduated Response (Score:2)
except.... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The Daily Mail is notorious for lying. Shame on you for linking to them.
Can't blame Entwhistle for bailing out (Score:2)
Who needs the kind of shit he's had to take since he stumbled into the job less than two months ago? You'd have to be a pretty hard-assed kind of guy to brazen out the flak that the (print) media have been dishing out against the BBC in general and him in particular. Not that they'd have any kind of agenda in the aftermath of the Leveson inquiry...
The BBC is still the best and least biased source of news in UK, and probably in the English-speaking world. Every other source has manifold compromises because o
Re: (Score:2)
Oh come on. You can remember faces from thirty years ago? I can't remember the faces of three people that assaulted me thirty years ago; you could show me a dozen photos and I'd just end up shrugging.
Re: (Score:2)
As the father of two children I'm saying assume the worst of every man.
That makes you sexist, ignorant and stupid.
Statistically your children are more likely to be abused by you and your immediate family than anybody else. You're also missing out half the population, members of whom also abuse children.
As the father of no children at all, can I suggest you do yours a favour and move out?
Re:My take (Score:4, Insightful)
OK, I'll assume the worst of you. Have you stopped fucking your children yet?
You are an idiot (Score:3)
The existence of the BBC forces the independent te