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Director General of BBC Resigns Over "Poor Journalism"
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."
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.)
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.
Better known as 318230.
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.
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.
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.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
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
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.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
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!
The BBC did nothing "wrong" neither did the editor, however It is certainly an embarrassing cock up. Resigning is the RightThingToDo(TM), it's the ultimate apology, it unambiguously clears the MP's name and deflects partisan attacks away from the BBC.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
>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.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
Resigning is the RightThingToDo(TM), it's the ultimate apology
His payoff is equal to one year's pay of £450,000 (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.