BBC apologises over ‘Mr Plod’ caption for pic of dead policeman

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 19 March 2010 at 09:21
Tags: Broadcast, Television

The BBC has apologised after a captioning error which saw it label a photo of dead PC Ian Terry, Mr Plod. The photo appeared during the Six O’clock news. PC Terry was killed in a shooting and his inquest is currently ongoing.

The Telegraph has chapter and verse on this story. It quotes editor of BBC News and Six and Ten James Stephenson:

“In the BBC News at Six we mistakenly used an image of the late Pc Ian Terry. Pc Terry was a firearms officer with Greater Manchester Police. He was killed during a training exercise in June 2008.

”His photograph was used in a report looking at the impact of unemployment on different sectors of the economy. The intention was to use images of individuals which are cleared for this kind of use. Instead an image of Pc Terry was used. We have taken steps to ensure the error is not repeated.

”I would like to apologise unreservedly for the mistake and for any distress caused to Pc Terry’s family, friends and colleagues.”

Sun slates anti-Tory BBC bias citing free ice cream claim of Nasty Dave on Basil Brush

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 19 March 2010 at 08:59
Tags: Broadcast, National Newspapers, Newspapers, Television

The Sun today publishes an investigation alleging that the BBC is Blatantly Biased Against the Conservatives.

Evidence it cites includes an episode of the Basil Brush Show on BBC2 which featured a mock election with a character called “Dave” who won after promising everyone free ice cream but who was later arrested because the dessert turned out to be out of date.

The Sun also claims that Labour panelists are given more time to speak on Question Time and that BBC News gave disproportionate coverage to row over Tory donor Lord Ashcroft’s tax status.

The Sun makes no secret of its own political leanings after signalling last September that it would be urging its readers to vote Conservative.

Meanwhile, exclusive research commissioned for the April edition of Press Gazette magazine is set to show that specific media outlets have very little effect on people’s voting intentions. Watch this space for more on that story.

Report: Lord Ashcroft legal pressure delays Panorama investigaion

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 18 March 2010 at 12:29
Tags: Broadcast, Law, Television

Legal pressure has prompted the BBC to shelve a Panorama documentary investigating controversial Conservative Party donor and ‘non dom’ tax exile Lord Ashcroft, The Independent reports.

A BBC team led by James Oliver has travelled to Belize and the Turks and Caicos Islands to investigate Ashcroft, according to The Independent.

Ashcroft is currently suing The Independent over a story it published in November last year making allegations about his business dealings.

In May last year Ashcroft accepted substantial damages, which he gave to charity, and a public apology over claims published on the website that his company the Belize Bank offered customers unlawful tax avoidance advice.

Aschroft is the major shareholder in the monthly magazine for politicians, Total Politics.

Richard Ayre to join BBC Trust

Posted by Press Gazette on 18 March 2010 at 12:16
Tags: Broadcast, People

The former deputy chief executive of BBC News, Richard Ayre, is to join the BBC Trust.

Ayre, who is currently the Ofcom Content Board member for England and chairman of Ofcom’s Broadcasting Review Committee, will replace former ITN editor-in-chief Richard Tait.

Tait will step down on 31 July with Ayre taking up his appointment on 1 August.

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…)

Fake news report of Russian invasion panics Georgia

Posted by Press Gazette on 15 March 2010 at 08:49
Tags: Broadcast, Television

Georgia was thrown into panic on Saturday night when a local television news programme broadcast a hoax claiming that the Russian Army had invaded and killed President Mikhail Saakashvili.

The false report by broadcaster Imedi Media, Georgia’s privately-owned third channel, brought immediate fears that the brief and bloody 2008 war between Russia and Georgia had restarted. (more…)

Jeremy Hunt: ‘We are proposing a revolution in local media’

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 8 March 2010 at 08:31
Tags: Broadcast, Television

Shadow culture minister Jeremy Hunt has promised a revolution in local media by sweeping away competition rules to give publishers like Trinity Mirror cross-media monopolies in the territories they cover.

In an interview for The Independent media section he says: “What we are proposing is a revolution in local media that would get rid of the cross media ownership rules at a local level and that would mean that if you are [Trinity Mirror chief executive] Sly Bailey you can say that I own the Liverpool Echo, I have got Liverpool.com, I’ve got Liverpool FM and I’ve got Liverpool TV, so if you want to reach people in Liverpool there’s no better way. I think that would be a very compelling offer for advertisers.”

The Labour Government has said it proposes spending the £130m of BBC licence fee currently allocated towards digital switch-over on subsidising independent broadcast news consortia.

But the Tories have said they favour a market-led solution and would scrap the consortia plan (the first three pilot broadcast news consortian licences are due to be awarded in May).

They have said they would rather use the BBC’s £130m to subsidise more “super-fast broadband”.

Penny Smith exits GMTV and special correspondent role for Stapleton

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 4 March 2010 at 10:13
Tags: Broadcast, People

Penny Smith has been “axed” from GMTV and fellow news anchor John Stapleton is to take on a special correspondent role - the Daily Mail reports.

It follows news that GMTV political editor Goria De Piero has left to embark on a political career and is in the running for selection to a safe Labour seat at the next general election.

The Mail reports that broadcasting veteran Smith, 51, who was with Sky News at its launch in 1989, is now set to present a series about poetry on Radio 2.

In January, the Daily Mirror reported that GMTV could cut between 50 and 100 editorial staff by merging with the ITN newsroom.

Female broadcast journalist, over 50, under valued? Move to China

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 3 March 2010 at 10:05
Tags: Broadcast, People, Radio

Former BBC broadcast journalist Susan Osman has found a new job as a breakfast news presenter in China after feeling that she had hit the “silver ceiling” in the UK, The Guardian reports.

Osman claims that there is more respect for the older generation in China and that it is a great place for a 51-year-old female broadcaster to work - provided you don’t mention the private lives of politicals leaders, the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests of 1989; or banned spiritual movement, Falun Gon.

Osman tells The Guardian: “I don’t think I have ever – ever – been treated with so much respect in a working environment..They listen, seem to admire me and seem to understand what changes I’m trying to bring here.”

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…)

NUJ: ‘We cannot stand by and watch BBC sacrificed to satisfy Rupert Murdoch’

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 3 March 2010 at 08:28
Tags: Broadcast, New Media, Online, Radio, Television

The National Union of Journalists has said it “cannot stand by and watch staff and outstanding public service content sacrificed to satisfy the demands of Rupert Murdoch and other commercial interests”.

NUJ general secretary Jeremy Dear said: “BBC management’s strategy of desperate, hopeful self-sacrifice is fundamentally flawed. Far from convincing an incoming government or commercial rivals that the BBC should now be left well alone, their self-harming approach will only encourage commercial media operations to demand more cuts.” (more…)

ITV return to profit signals thaw in UK media recession

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 3 March 2010 at 08:18
Tags: Broadcast, Media Business, Television

Revenue for 2009 fell 7 per cent to £1.9bn. The group made a pre-tax profit of £25m after a loss of £2.73bn in 2008.

Read the full ITV results announcement here.

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.

British journalist jailed in Gaza faces further 15 days detention

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 1 March 2010 at 12:59
Tags: Broadcast, People, Television

Paul Martin, the British freelance journalist jailed in Gaza, today had his period of detention extended for another 15 days - the BBC reports.

The arrest of Martin appears to be an attempt to manipulate the outcome of a trial he was due to testify at.

Martin was due to testfy at the trial of a Palestinian militant who was charged with allegedly revealing state secrets during a conversation with Martin. But his arrest was ordered, according to reports, by the trial judge.

GMTV’s Gloria De Piero lined up to take Geoff Hoon Labour seat

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 1 March 2010 at 09:38
Tags: Broadcast, People

GMTV political correspondent Gloria De Piero is facing allegations that she has been “parachuted” into a safe-seat after announcing that she is to run for Labour in Geoff Hoon’s seat of Ashfield in Nottinghamshire. The 37-year-old journalist has been GMTV’s political reporter since 2003.

One local Labour party activist said they were already furious at having an all-woman shortlist for the seat - and were unhappy that someone from outside the area was apparently being “line up” by the party hierarchy to take the seat, the Daily Mail reports.

BBC Trust chairman’s statement following reports of deep cuts resulting from strategic review

Posted by Press Gazette on 1 March 2010 at 08:05
Tags: Broadcast, Consumer Magazines, Magazines, Media Business, New Media, Online, Radio, Television

Following reports last week suggesting the BBC was about to close two radio stations, cut the size of its website and dispose of its magazines, BBC Trust chairman, Sir Michael Lyons, made the following statement:

“In its first three years, the Trust has focussed on addressing the concerns of audiences and re-shaping the BBC. In particular this has meant working to ensure the BBC delivers genuinely distinctive content, serves all audiences across the UK, and provides value for money for licence fee payers. (more…)

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…)

From the Frontline: journalist Vaughan Smith takes Taliban fire in Helmand Province video

Posted by Press Gazette on 18 February 2010 at 11:48
Tags: Broadcast, Television

You might think your job is hard, but take a look at this.

Video journalist Vaughan Smith - also founder of the Frontline Club - has just returned from Afghanistan where he was embedded with the Grenadier Guards as they begin Operation Moshtarak to win regional control from Taliban fighters.

The video was made for Channel, 4 two years after he last joined the Grenadiers on operations in 2007.

As this astonishing video shows, “frontline” really is the best word to describe his approach to reporting, as his unit takes fire from two directions:

Read Smith’s own thoughts on his experiences at Frontlineclub.com.

Speaking in 2008 at the Rory Peck Awards (via Guardian.co.uk) Smith claimed he’d been “shot more times than I have been credited by the BBC”.