John Simpson ‘very pessimistic’ over future of the BBC

Posted by Press Gazette on 15 March 2010 at 12:16
Tags: BBC, Broadcast, Newspapers, Television

It’s a day of veteran BBC correspondents sticking their heads above the parapet to dispense little “Hell-in-a-handcart” style missives about the state of the news media.

Kate Adie has already sounded off about “fluffy” female newsreaders and “showbizzy” 24-hour news channels. Now, it’s BBC World Affairs editor John Simpson’s turn to sling it about.

And what’s John’s beef? The future of the BBC and Rupert Murdoch primarily, although he does extend a few nice words the way of the News Corp chairman and chief executive. (more…)

Kate Adie: 24-hour culture creates ’showbizzy’ news programmes

Posted by Press Gazette on 15 March 2010 at 11:27
Tags: BBC, Broadcast, Television

Veteran BBC war correspondent Kate Adie has criticised the culture of 24-hour news channels by suggesting they reduced coverage of world events into “showbizzy” events, according to a report.

Speaking at the Emirates Airline Literature Festival in Dubai, Telegraph.co.uk reported that Adie launched an attack on “young and fluffy” looking newsreaders where looks counted for more than journalistic skill.

She said: “It is no good your reporters bringing back a two-minute distillation of the crucial events. Nowadays they have to graze across all those things and they have to stand and speculate a bit.” (more…)

Tory government would reveal all BBC staff earning more than £200k

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 3 March 2010 at 09:49
Tags: BBC, Broadcast, People, Television

How many BBC journalists earn more than £197,689 a year?

We could be about to find out, according to the Daily Telegraph. It reports today that the Conservatives would force the BBC to reveal the names of all staff earning more than the Prime Minister shortly after entering office. (more…)

Mark Thompson: BBC’s commercial activity should not distort its mission

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 2 March 2010 at 08:40
Tags: BBC, Broadcast

BBC director general Mark Thompson has used a comment piece in The Guardian today to explain why the BBC is set to retreat from digital and curb its spread into the commercial sector.

A BBC report due to be announced at 11am today, but leaked to The Times last week, is set to call for the BBC to sell off its magazines business and cut down the size of its website.

Thompson writes in The Guardian: “The BBC should concentrate more than ever on being a creator of quality. It should focus even more than it does today on forms of content that most clearly build public value and that are most at risk of being ignored or facing underinvestment…

“Given the convergence of technologies, the BBC’s limits need to be demonstrably based on its public purposes and to be spelled out.

“Clearly the BBC needs the space to evolve as audiences and technologies develop, but it must be far more explicit than in the past about what it will not do. Its commercial activity should help fund and actively support the BBC’s public mission, and never distort or supplant that mission.”

Thompson faces an impossible job. The BBC is doomed to irrelevance if it doesn’t spread out into areas which keep it in touch with the majority of its fragmenting audience - but it faces potentially fatal pressure from commercial sector players if in doing so it undermines their business models.

Focusing more sharply in content that it is in the public interest is all very well. But the BBC may well find that the public aren’t interested in it. More on this story on the main Press Gazette site from 11am.

NUJ claims BBC complaints unit procedures undermined journalists

Posted by Press Gazette on 25 February 2010 at 11:17
Tags: BBC, Broadcast, National Union of Journalists, Television

The National Union of Journalists has criticised the findings of the BBC Trust’s editorial standard committee after it decided to partially uphold a complaint against an edition of Panorama which looked into the treatment of ADHD.

The NUJ said last night that it had concerns about the methods of the standards committee and that it would seek and urgent meeting with the trust to “seek assurances that the procedures would be changed in order to protect investigative journalism”. (more…)

BBC veteran reporters only on ‘30-day contracts’, claims Mail

Posted by Press Gazette on 22 February 2010 at 09:36
Tags: BBC, Broadcast, People, Radio, Television

The appointment by the BBC of the veteran reporters Julia Somerville and Fiona Armstrong was seen as a well-timed response to accusations of ageism at the corporation.

However, the Daily Mail claimed today that both reporters, who returned to screens just days ago, are only on 30-day contracts. (more…)

Adam Boulton: Dimbleby got ‘too involved’ in Griffin Question Time performance

Posted by Press Gazette on 8 February 2010 at 12:05
Tags: BBC, Broadcast, Television

The first ever television debates between party leaders in the run-up to the general election are in danger of being “negotiated to death”, senior party sources told the Guardian. (more…)

Hidden sex camera BBC producer faces up to two years jail

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 1 February 2010 at 12:48
Tags: BBC, Broadcast, Radio, Television

A former BBC local radio reporter of the year is facing possible jail after admitting secretly taping sexual encounters with six different women using a hidden camera in his bedroom.

Benjamin Wilkins resigned from his job as a BBC producer when the charges first came to light in 2008, the Daily Mail reports. It says that some of the women Wilkins filmed, who cannot be named, hold senior presenting and production roles in TV and radio.

Wilkins was also a journalism lecturer at the London College of Communications.

He is due to be sentenced at London Crown Court later this month, the Mail reports. It states in its report that voyeurism carries a maximum charge of two years in prison.

BBC dominates shortlist for SJA Sports Broadcast Awards

Posted by Press Gazette on 27 January 2010 at 12:54
Tags: BBC, Broadcast, Journalism, Radio, Television, awards

The BBC has received fifteen nominations across the four categories of the SJA Sports Broadcast Awards.

The corporation is followed by Sky Sports with five nominations and TalkSport with three. ITV has received just one nomination. (more…)

Kirsty Wark: I earn less than £500,000 a year

Posted by Michele Weydert on 18 January 2010 at 11:46
Tags: BBC, Broadcast, Journalism, People, Television

Journalists need to have a ‘fairly thick skin’, Newsnight presenter Kirsty Wark tells the Guardian in an interview.

Wark, who joined Newsnight in 1993, says that journalists have to expect some criticism. “It comes with the territory and you have to have a fairly thick skin,” she says.

A few years ago Wark was criticised by commentators who thought she was ’setting herself up as a celebrity’. “There were several things that happened that they latched on to, but you just keep your head down, get on with your homework, and try and do the best you can.”

“I joined the BBC when I was 21, and all I am is a journalist. And what journalists do is try and ask the right questions. Often we fail, but you don’t set yourself to be anything other than that.”

When quizzed about her income she said that her annual pay from all sources, including much non-BBC earnings, is “south of” £500,000 a year.

BBC journalist sacked for representing Hells Angels

Posted by Press Gazette on 14 January 2010 at 16:56
Tags: BBC, Broadcast

A BBC journalist has been sacked for a conflict of interest after it was discovered he had acted as a spokesman for the Hell’s Angels, reports the Daily Mail and others.

Steve Jones, a BBC television and radio news correspondent for mid-Wales, used his code-name ‘Echo’ to publicly criticise the police’s handling of a bikers’ festival while on leave from the corporation.

Jones had worked at the BBC for over 20 years, and colleagues recognised his distinctive voice after interviews on Radio 4 and Radio 5 Live defending the Angels brotherhood.

The BBC’s code of conduct says journalists must disclose their interests and get permission before representing outside organisations.

Policy Exchange proposes more local news competition with BBC

Posted by Press Gazette on 14 January 2010 at 16:55
Tags: BBC, Journalism

More competition with the BBC should be created for local news broadcasting, according to thinktank Policy Exchange.

A new report said about local news: “External contestability would focus on areas where BBC plans were most in danger of crowding out commercial schemes rather than helping to raise standards and ambition across the sector.”

The report recommends that ITV ditches its public service broadcasting commitments in 2012 - two years before the end of its PSB licence.

Read the report in full at: http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/publications/publication.cgi?id=166

Sun and Guardian nominated for Radio Production Awards

Posted by Press Gazette on 13 January 2010 at 10:59
Tags: BBC, Broadcast, National Newspapers, New Media, Newspapers, Online, Radio, awards

Producers working for two newspaper organisations have been nominated for the inaugural Radio Production Awards for the quality of their online shows.

The Guardian’s Francesca Panetta and Sun Talk’s Sam Gregory were both nominated in the Best Online Producer category, with Panetta also nominated for the Creative Award. (more…)

X Factor host Dermot O’ Leary in talks to front BBC political show

Posted by Press Gazette on 12 January 2010 at 09:54
Tags: BBC, Broadcast, Television

X Factor host Dermot O’ Leary has revealed in the Radio Times that he is in talks with the BBC to front a new politics show. (more…)

BBC reporter breaks ‘unbreakable’ phone

Posted by Press Gazette on 12 January 2010 at 09:13
Tags: BBC, Broadcast, Mobile, New Media

BBC Click reporter Dan Simmons breaks an “unbreakable” phone at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and bags himself a free mobile for his efforts.

27m users a month to bbc.co.uk, says Thompson

Posted by Press Gazette on 11 January 2010 at 11:26
Tags: BBC, Broadcast, Media Metrics, New Media, Online

BBC director general Mark Thompson revealed in the latest edition of BBC in-house magazine, Ariel, that bbc.co.uk receives 27 million users each month.

Thompson said: “The website is an amazing media success, with 27 million users a month, but it has grown like Topsy and some parts are less focussed than others.” (more…)

BBC’s Nick Robinson accused of ’sub-standard journalism’ by Jack Straw

Posted by Press Gazette on 8 January 2010 at 10:38
Tags: BBC, Broadcast, Journalism, Television

BBC political editor Nick Robinson has been accused of “sub-standard journalism” by Justice Minister Jack Straw for naming him as being one of six Cabinet members sympathetic to an attempted leadership challenge. (more…)

Mark Thompson: ‘We’ve been tougher on pay than others’

Posted by Press Gazette on 7 January 2010 at 11:39
Tags: BBC, Broadcast

BBC director general Mark Thompson has claimed that the corporation has been tougher on bonuses and executive pay than any other public company or broadcaster. (more…)

How the snow ‘chaos’ is being reported today

Posted by Press Gazette on 6 January 2010 at 10:30
Tags: BBC, Broadcast, National Newspapers, Newspapers, Online, Television

Were you forced to wrestle a polar bear on the way to work this morning? Nope, neither was anyone from Press Gazette. Yet judging by some of the coverage being given over to the weather you wouldn’t be far off the mark thinking we were about to descend into a sixth major ice age. (more…)

BBC apologises for its ‘Should homosexuals face execution?’ headline

Posted by Press Gazette on 17 December 2009 at 15:37
Tags: BBC, New Media, Online

Peter Horrocks, director of the BBC World Service, has apologised for the offence caused by the corporation running a post in its The Have Your Say forum with the headline “Should homosexuals face execution?” (more…)