Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Bless Auntie, and all who sail in her.


It seems that Mark Thomson (the BBC DG) is frantically rearranging deckchairs on the deck of HMS BBC:

He said the "very significant plan of action" would affect all BBC staff.

He's just come out with a guilty plea statement to the BBC Trust about defrauding misleading the public on Blue Peter and libeling misrepresenting the Queen. He asked for nineteen other offences to be taken into account `said further "serious editorial breaches" had been uncovered in a recent audit of the corporation'.

The story on the BBC website makes no mention of the Paddington Bear Brown press-officer incident.

UPDATE 5.29pm
The Beeb has produced a new lead on their website entitled: BBC to suspend phone competitions

The BBC is to suspend all competitions after an inquiry unearthed a fresh batch of faked phone-ins.

Serious editorial breaches were found in six shows, including Comic Relief. Director general Mark Thompson said the incidents were "totally unacceptable".

Mr Thompson has outlined a "zero tolerance" approach to any future lapses in editorial judgement.

He also ordered an independent inquiry into footage that wrongly implied the Queen walked out of a photo session.
They're still spinning though:
He has also called for a workshop involving other broadcasters to discuss issues surrounding editorial standards and training.
That translates as `it's everyone, not just us'.
The horrifying bit is that he then felt it necessary to say:

"There is no excuse for deception. I know the idea of deceiving the public would simply never occur to most people in the BBC.

"If you have a choice between deception and a programme going off air, let the programme go. It is far better to accept a production problem and make a clean breast to the public than to deceive," he added.

UPDATE 19:47 pm
OK, make that six more programmes.
We're talking about an admission of endemic lying.
How do they expect us to take their much-vaunted impartiality at face value now?

4 comments:

hut said...

This may be one of the good signs you mentioned earlier that such as this is coming out.
The Beeb is tripping over their own feet.

*Schadenfreude*

I just realized I paid license fees for six years to get lied at...

Clovis Sangrail said...

Nick,
Yup and yup.

Mark Wadsworth said...

"Workshop" was piece of twattish lingo that I thought went out in the 1980s. Glad to see they've revived it. Can we also have more "rolling out" like in the late 1990s?

Clovis Sangrail said...

Mark,
Good point! I think that should be `sandpit' now.