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abe · Jul 22, 2007, 08:24 PM

BBC: Decline of a great institution
Joan Bakewell laments the irretrievable loss of confidence in an organisation that was a touchstone of trust
Published: 23 July 2007

The present crisis for the BBC is far worse that at the time of the Hutton Report. Then it was widely believed that the report came down too harshly on the BBC for a minor editorial indiscretion – a live broadcast loosely phrased – in response to complaints made by the government's press officer, revealed in his recent diaries to be an explosively unstable and erratic personality. The BBC, which was after all on the track of the truth, was widely forgiven. Not any more. The errors and deceits practised on the public by the BBC and brought to light in the wake of its gratuitous insult to the Queen will not be forgotten or forgiven. They signal an irretrievable loss of confidence in what has been for so long a unique and great institution.

BBC: Decline of a great institution - Independent Online Edition > Media

Interesting. I think it's previously admitted bias is a clue to the reason for it's decline.

Mithras · Jul 22, 2007, 08:57 PM

Isn't somebody playing in the wrong sandbox?

Cold Warrior · Jul 22, 2007, 09:12 PM

What was its previously admitted bias?

Mastrap · Jul 22, 2007, 09:21 PM

People have been harping on about the decline of the BBC for the last 50 years. It's a little bit like Apple, forever going out of business.

Kevin · Jul 22, 2007, 10:02 PM

Everyone has a bias. It's those that claim they don't that you have to watch out for.

turtle777 · Jul 22, 2007, 10:13 PM

Originally Posted by abe

BBC: Decline of a great institution - Independent Online Edition > Media

Interesting. I think it's previously admitted bias is a clue to the reason for it's decline.

Hey, didn't you get banned for spamming the forums with news clips a one-liner comments ?

-t

abe · 10:51 PM

Here's a YouTube report of the latest phone in scandal.

YouTube - BBC Phone In Competition Scandal

This is big, I think. Does anyone live in the UK who can comment on this?

Storm of criticism descends upon BBC
July 22: The BBC is used to covering controversial issues, but thanks to a number of public lapses in judgment, the British Broadcasting Corporation finds itself at the center of its very own storm. NBC’s Martin Savidge reports.

MSNBC - NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams: News, video and blog from the No. 1 news broadcast Front Page

analogika · Jul 23, 2007, 02:11 AM

Yes, but

Regulating smutty TV is a job for an umpire, not morals crusaders.

What happens when the shower scene from "Big Brothel", as the Australian Family Association has cleverly tagged the staple reality TV show, is elevated to a matter of pressing national importance? The immediate effect is surely a publicity windfall for Channel Ten, which deliberately scouted for more adventurous contestants this season in a bid to boost the show's sagging ratings. After all, what better boost to Big Brother's allure for its young target audience than the spectacle of moral crusaders in Canberra huffing about its licentious content? But beyond the grandstanding of moral crusaders - who are often all too eager to advance a worrying censorship agenda - lie some legitimate concerns about what we're watching. Parents, concerned that their children not be exposed to inappropriate material, fear, perhaps not unreasonably, that an irresponsible, "anything goes" culture has infected free-to-air TV.

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At issue is the raunchy Big Brother Uncut, which last screened at 9.40pm on Monday. Liberal MP Trish Draper expressed her outrage to a meeting of Coalition MPs on Tuesday, citing the "shower scene" where naked young men and women posed together for shots - "like porn stars", as one contestant proudly described it. Ms Draper says her office has been swamped with complaints about the show. Communications Minister Helen Coonan, citing possible breaches of the industry's code of practice, said she would raise the issue with the regulator. Channel Ten insists it has complied with the code, although it deserves criticism for earlier allowing the show to be accessed online.

A more buttoned-up approach is not the answer, however. Full-frontal TV nudity and more explicit material is hardly new - the recent controversy is only a reflection of Big Brother's mass marketing, which, interestingly, far exceeds its actual appeal. Whether the broadcast breaches the code is a question properly answered by the regulating authority, and this is where the real scandal lies. The new Australian Communications and Media Authority is due to come into being on July 1, but cabinet has failed to endorse a candidate for the job. The prolonged hiatus since the departure of former head David Flint has effectively rendered the regulator mute, fuelling public concern that TV networks are free to show what they like when they like. Senator Coonan would be better off devoting her energies to settling the issue.

Who's watching Big Brother? - Editorial - Opinion - theage.com.au

and

- The EU has decided to ban conventional light bulbs in every British home by 2009. So-called energy saving bulbs don't actually save much energy and contain toxic waste banned by the EU itself, but let's not start asking any difficult questions about that. Such an absurd mandate is obviously impossible to properly enforce so expect to see a tax on dirty evil light bulbs and regular home inspections by wardens (contracted out to electric companies and meter readers) of the state to check on Winston Smith's compliance with green law.

and also

IN THE WAKE of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the New York Times reported last week, President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to conduct electronic surveillance of hundreds of U.S. citizens and residents suspected of contact with al Qaeda figures -- without warrants and outside the strictures of the law that governs national security searches and wiretaps. The rules here are not ambiguous. Generally speaking, the NSA has not been permitted to operate domestically. And the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) requires that national security wiretaps be authorized by the secretive FISA court. "A person is guilty of an offense," the law reads, "if he intentionally . . . engages in electronic surveillance under color of law except as authorized by statute" -- which appears, at least on its face, to be precisely what the president has authorized.

Mr. Bush, in his weekly radio address yesterday, defended his action, chastised the media for revealing it, and suggested both that Congress had justified this step by authorizing force against al Qaeda and that such spying was consistent with the "constitutional authority vested in me as commander in chief." But there is a reason the CIA and the NSA are not supposed to operate domestically: The tools of foreign intelligence are not consistent with a democratic society. Americans interact with their own government through the enforcement of law. And in those limited instances in which Americans become intelligence targets, FISA exists to make sure that the agencies are not targeting people for improper reasons but have sufficient evidence that Americans are actually operating as foreign agents. Warrantless intelligence surveillance by an executive branch unaccountable to any judicial officer -- and apparently on a large scale -- is gravely dangerous.

Spying on Americans

So I leave you with define:Agenda - Google Search

♥ · Jul 23, 2007, 02:51 AM

CNN is horrible now also.

Their new online site is terrible and they've given up pretending to be politically square. They are so far over to the left that they have lost credibility.

philm · Jul 23, 2007, 03:34 AM

Originally Posted by abe

Here's a YouTube report of the latest phone in scandal.

YouTube - BBC Phone In Competition Scandal

This is big, I think. Does anyone live in the UK who can comment on this?

It's not very big really. This phone-in 'scandal' appears to be in a few cases the phone system failed during a live show so they opted to quickly grab the nearest kid in the production area, put them on air and declared them the winner. I think on one occasion, a visiting school party were in the production area and one of the kids ended up 'winning' the competition. They could have been more open and declared that the system had failed and that they could not announce a winner. But the production people made a quick decision to 'complete' the competition. Quite possibly a decision that most of us would make. No-one was hurt and there is no suggestion that this was done for financial gain - the BBC is not a profit-making organisation after all, and a number of these instances were during televised charity events - Comic Relief, Children in Need.

Summary 1: if this is the worst problem the BBC had, it's in pretty good shape.
Summary 2: nothing to see here folks, get on with the rest of your lives.

abe · Jul 23, 2007, 04:07 AM

OOOOOOPS!

BBC engulfed in fake footage scandal

Queen is shown huffing out of photo shoot

By Heidi Dawley
Jul 19, 2007

The BBC, among the world's most respected media outlets, finds itself suddenly embroiled in a huge controversy that challenges that very reputation for integrity and quality programming. As the scandal grows, it could lead to the ouster of top executives and a revamping of operations.

What's set the furor off is revelations that a trailer for a documentary about another venerable British institution – the Queen – had been edited to show the Queen huffing out of a photo shoot, which in fact never happened.

It's now also come out that supposedly legitimate promotions in which viewers phoned in to the BBC to win prizes were in fact faked, the named winners in fact members of the shows' production crews.

The heat is now on, and the BBC scandal has become a top news story in London. All BBC phone-in competitions have been suspended, both on TV and radio, senior editorial staffers have been suspended, with more suspensions possible, and red-faced BBC executives have been doing the rounds apologizing and announcing plans to prevent further abuses of the public trust, including better training.

Already, investigators have gone through thousands of hours of tape looking for other instances of fakery, and so far have found six in which results of phone-in competitions were faked.

“We found, in relation to a million hours, a very small number, but a small number of absolutely, utterly unacceptable examples of deception to the public,” Mark Thompson, director general of the BBC, said on a TV news program last night.

“And it is a very serious and grave matter for us to have even a tiny handful of programs which in the way they have turned out have ended up with a conscious deception of the public.”

The original incident, now dubbed Crowngate, came to light when a trailer for a documentary called “A Year with the Queen” was shown to the press last week to promote coverage.

The documentary, which was made by an independent production company, seemed to show the Queen walking out of a photo shoot with famed photographer Annie Leibovitz after being asked to remove her crown. In fact, footage had been edited out of sequence. The footage in which she was supposedly walking out was actually from when she was entering the shoot.

The queen incident came just as the BBC was hit with a $100,000 fine by regulators for announcing a fake winner in an on-air phone-in competition on a respected children’s show.

It was that incident that prompted the BBC to pore over two-and-a-half years of footage for other instances of fakery, leading to the six other incidents, some involving charity events.

Media Life Magazine - BBC engulfed in fake footage scandal