The BBC does not seem to enjoy having complaints about it being made public. Yesterday, I blogged the genuine concerns of a B-BBC reader and license payer; here is what he received back this morning from the BBC. In my view, a Public Broadcaster should have nothing to fear from frank and honest examination of complaints, don’t you think?
From: NewsOnline Complaints <newsonline.complaints@bbc.co.uk>
Date: Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 8:40 AM
Subject: RE: Your complaints
To: xxxxx
Mr X,
Complaints handlers would have no knowledge of whether or not you had taken your concerns to the BBC Trust. If you have issues about this decision you may take them to the Trust, as you may any about the handling of the process.
The BBC does not oblige its staff to give their names in such correspondence to prevent advantage being taken of such information. We note you have chosen to make this private exchange public.
BBC News website
My italics. Guess who reads Biased BBC?
Here’s an invitation from me to the BBC Complaints Department. If you seek to have those of us who pay your salary to better understand you and your ways, be transparent. If you think I am being unfair, please feel free to comment here and put your case. I won’t ban you for two years…
As you will have realised the BBC complaints system is awful.
eg. No replies to their replies, you have to resubmit via their online system.
No emails of your initial complaints
No keeping to timescales.
No details in the replies as to how to escalate to the editorial commitee.
Just, we note you complaint (and we’ve filed it in the bin)
What is needed is the equivalent of what do they know, or fix my street to operate on the BBC site. You submit your complaint from a central website. All complaints are made public for all to see. Emails when they don’t reply within X days, with automatic follow ups. All replies made public.
The BBC complaints system is deliberately designed to “get rid” of complaints, to lose them, delay them.
After all – what do we matter ?
They have newswatch, don’t forget, you could be making the news next week…
Ray Snoddy ??? Fat lot of use he is.
Roger Bolton’s programme on Radio 4 would be a better bet. Especially if it focussed on, say, 2 or 3 of the original complaints to show they were NOT vexatious.
Roger Bolton??? Fat lot of use he is.
As an outsider, I find this pretty creepy.
The BBC are not judge, jury and then final court of appeal…much as they`d like that!
That bit about “noting” the correspondence being made public sounds creepy….this was not private correspondence on Helen Boadens lavender-scented notepaper, I presume!
So much for tranparency, accountablility and shining sunlight onto darker matters…guess that is only for the Tories.
The BBC-like the Guardian have decided that only THEY have the right to “get it just about right”…and the rest of us had better watch out for the massage parlours we`ll be having to attend if they have their way!
As I say…utterly creepy.
Guessing you who know more of this are more sanguine that I am.
Creepy is just the word that occurred to me as well.
I wonder if there is any information on the percentage of complaints the BBC upholds?? I doubt they’d apply the ‘black test’ to it that they’re always so keen to do themselves:-
a) The police stop and search a disproportionate amount of black youths, a disproportionate amount of black youths are in prison; ergo – the the criminal justice system is racist.
b) Less than 1% of complaints to the BBC are upheld, ergo – the BBC complaints system is corrupt.
I have asked the BBC to give me information on the percentage of complaints for left wing bias they have upheld and the percentage breakdown of complaints for left and right wing bias. Any organisation serious about its impartiality would go out of its way to keep these figures. I am not holding my breath.
‘We note you have chosen to make this private exchange public.’
No, I am not sanguine either. Especially when I have shared such exchanges here before, and found BBC employees tracking me down on twitter to pursue the matter.
That… is more than creepy. That is outright sinister. A complaints department makes a connection with an anonymous posting and cross-indexes their files?
What do they think they are, the Stasi?
Next… ‘We know where your kids go to school, too.’
This is surely harrassment and requires police involvement.
By what logic in their world does them writing to tell a licencee fee payer to piss off mean that they are able to keep such abuses ‘private’.
I’d like to see them justify that one to all the BBC reporters who break stories based on exchanges which are, genuinely, private, as opposed to cookie cutter service failure blow offs.
Very raw nerves touched here, and it seems no one smart enough to understand what the interent represents if a) you stuff up and b) try to dig deeper when nailed.
We know the BBC monitor this site as quite often when lefty bolloocks (sorry news) is spotted on here we suddenly see stealth edits to reports.
If they cut out the lefty crap and did their job then sites like this wouldn’t need to exist.
More likely there are a couple of loyal lurkers who send alerts to various Beeboids, rather like a child going to tell Mommy.
More like the junior SS telling the Gestapo about their parents saying nasty things about Hitler.
Really, Martin? To put your mind at rest I’ve never told “Hitler” about what is discussed on here. Now who can I complain to at B-BBC about being compared to a member of the “junior SS” ?
Email me your complaint David and I will deal with it in due course.
You may find the process comes to a shuddering halt when facts start to intrude.
No, DG, it’s the loyal fans who were compared to the junior SS, not actual Beeboids like yourself.
Although recently Ros Ball (we think) of BBC Parliament alerted Jane Bradley to the post about her biased tweets.
David Gregory,
This site is free and uncensored, unlike the BBC which we have to pay for whether we like it or not and many of us do not like paying for an organisation whose political views we find repulsive. Do you see the difference ?
8am news on the Toady Show…and “wor Jacqui Smiff” gets a quote.
Is it about porn for hubby?…no
Is it about her sisters nice house?…not at all
Not even about her expenses owing…lines have been drawn.
No …our sage has words about the rioters, and her old lot seemed not to get it exactly right as they came through on Surestart and positive parenting courses.
Well I never…still, shes NuLabor so gets her two cents in as of right.
I demand a second opinion…Heather Mills will do for now, so the BBC had better get onto it!
The Beed’s attitude in this case is no surprise, and it isn’t reserved just for this complaints process* (*other BBC conplaint processes are available and equally kafkaesque and involve a level of hoop jumping unprescedented).
For years (for my sins) I have been a user of their Points Of View Messageboard – I am not in anyway shocked by the BBCs methods, manipulation, spin, moderation in your case, they are equally paranoid on POV.
The BBC’s DNA does not contain the thought that anyone outside the BBC (or the Guardian, it’s bedfellow) can have a different point of view to theirs, it’s natural (in their eyes), therefore, for them to delete, hide, obscure, ban or take issue with anyone not ‘on message’.
Keep up the good work.
The BBC are now behaving like school children.
And to think I thought they would never leave the nursery !
We note you have chosen to make this private exchange public.??
Sorry is this exchange private ? did both sides agree to it being kept secret ? and can a publicly taxpayer funded organisation be in anyway expectant of secrecy in this day of F.O.I’s ? well unless they go to court to lie their way out of it [Balen] but that’s still all very public ain’t it BBC??
I actually started cheering loudly when I realised how this has obviously upset them. There is more than meets the eye to this one – this needs to be pursued as far and wide as it will go as they know they have been caught out in their complacency.
It would be great if this, finally, was the breach in the dam, it’s certainly a hit on target. Whoever is conducting the News Intrernational Investigation should be given the evidence and told to ignore any anti-Murdoch claims the BBC makes as it has proved it’s total partiality. They also need to be reminded to investigate the BBC’s position and whether they and have committed phone-tapping crimes like their Guardian colleagues have. Beleive me, there is more than meets the eye on this – the BBC are panicking which means they are hiding something.
International Believe
Nick above has it spot on. When you first submit a complaint to their “Complaints” website, you don’t even get a reference number for it, leave alone an e-mail acknowledging receipt of the complaint.
I usually complain direct to journlists or editors responsible for the bias using this address: name.surname@bbc.co.uk I believe they can all be contacted in that fashion.
Those who have replied have this legal blurb in their e-mail:
This e-mail (and any attachments) is confidential and may contain personal views which are not the views of the BBC unless specifically stated.
If you have received it in error, please delete it from your system.
Do not use, copy or disclose the information in any way nor act in reliance on it and notify the sender immediately.
Please note that the BBC monitors e-mails sent or received.
Further communication will signify your consent to this.
Dunno about this. It cannot be an awful lot of fun handling complaints all day, especially as the people on the receiving end probably had nothing to do with the disputed news items in the first place. They probably receive hundreds of complaints on a daily basis, many of them spurious, so I’d be inclined to cut them some slack.
However, like most of this site, I do have major issues with the broader question of how the BBC reports certain issues – the Middle East and climate-change being two such examples – and I am appalled at how politicised the corporation has become in all areas of its output. Many of its reporters and correspondents are terrific; too many think they’re the next John Pilger and treat us to highly selective op-eds rather than just deliver the news.
Some of the website and broadcast reporting is abject and wouldn’t pass muster with a regional newspaper or local radio – no surprise given that many of the BBC’s journalists and anchors have never actually worked as local journalists.
But, as someone said above, it is far better to approach the journalist or editor directly, rather than bombard the complaints department with emails questioning the minutiae of reports.
Just my 2p, that’s all.
You also have to remember it’s usually thick moronic spotty halfwits who read the complaints anyway. Wasn’t there some beeboid lefty twat who was standing for Liebore somewhere who was moaning on Twitter that he had to write the replies to people complaining about the BBC?
They really don’t get it do they?, scrap the TV tax and fund themselves instead of stealing money off the poor and they could be as lefty as they like.
Wasn’t there some beeboid lefty twat who was standing for Liebore somewhere who was moaning on Twitter that he had to write the replies to people complaining about the BBC?
Yep.
Death by Facebook.
Chris Summers, that’s the twat!
Priceless!
I suggest complaints to the BBC go by snail rather than e-mail. That requires a paper reply and therefore a paper trail. Much easier to track.
The BBC probably also do book reviews so, based on this, if they do..
http://jamesdelingpole.com/blog/in-praise-of-peer-review-on-amazon-1681/
‘I don’t need to actually read this book in order to criticise it ‘
There seems to be an odd parrallel universe opening up in some sectors of society where they not only are irony-free, intolerant nutters, but they freely admit it in writing.
And the bloke who wrote the ‘piece’ that inspired these exchanges too.
Bet he wishes he’d claimed it was ‘private’ now.
The BBC – Digging For Failure!
I think that BBC staff are beginning to realise that there is something seriously wrong in Climate Science. Members of the Space special interest group of Mensa made a little publicised complaint to the BBC Trust last year, although the complaint was not upheld, it was an eye opener for members of the group about how seriously Orwellian the BBC has become.
They provided evidence that the BBC Trust takes a more biased view than the IPCC or the Royal Society which conflicts with the BBC Trusts claim that impartiality is important, and although the evidence that the BBC was overtly biased was provided to members by the BBC in its communications with us, it was not mentioned or referred to in the BBC Trust Editorial Standards Committee’s finding. Presumably because they feared legal action from members of Mensa would be embarrassing for the Trust. After the complaint some people at the BBC have contacted us. The impression is that the BBC Trust is the arbiter of thought and the staff wish that they where free of the thought police, another said he was expecting that the Jones report would provide an escape hatch from the mad house not a straight jacket. Our group is now producing an article that shows how the Climate of Venus proves the theory of Ferenc
Miskolczi.
Standard ‘dismissal’ of complaints by BBC usually has this line
…However, I’d like to assure you I’ve registered your complaint on our audience log. This is an internal report of audience feedback which we compile daily and is available for viewing by all our staff. This includes all programme makers and news editors, along with our senior management. It ensures that your points, along with all other comments we receive, are circulated and considered across the BBC.
I can easily imagine this ‘log’ is printed on to toilet paper in the staff loos, to become part of the ‘staff logs’. Note they say ‘available for viewing’ not that it will be. One has the feeling that in their arrogance they are more likely to chuckle over complaints than consider their real validity.
I can also imagine that Saddam and Gaddafi had a few chuckles themselves in their time over valid complaints, never believing there would come a day when they’d be held to account.
Keep chuckling BBC – I know you think that history will be different in dealing with your insidious output. Here’s a line to remember “I’m a celebrity – get me out of here” 😉
‘Note they say ‘available for viewing’ not that it will be.’
http://www.lorentzen.org/quotedir.html
“`…You hadn’t exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them had you? I mean like actually telling anyone or anything.’
`But the plans were on display…’
`On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.’
`That’s the display department.’
`With a torch.’
`Ah, well the lights had probably gone.’
`So had the stairs.’
`But look you found the notice didn’t you?’
`Yes,’ said Arthur, `yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying “Beware of The Leopard”.'”