PAR FOR THE COURSE…

The BBC’s self-declared flagship of so-called quality journalism, Panorama,has been found seriously lacking by the BBC Trust. In short, it fabricated evidence disgracefully in order to attack Primark, a store which the boys and girls at the BBC no doubt view with horror because it provides cheap, affordable clothes for the masses.

I know from personal experience that the BBC Trust will normally go to the ends of the earth to support BBC journalists, so this is an earthquake of sorts. But note the way the BBC website has handled the story. Nice Roy Greenslade – so old fashionedly left-wing that by his own admission he makes Arthur Scargill look moderate – of the Guardian has been wheeled out to defend the offending piece. The intro is also mealy-mouthed and begrudging – there’s no direct acknowledgement that Panorama got it wrong, only that the BBC must say sorry. And as the icing of the cake of the denial, news boss Helen Boaden says that this is wholly exceptional and everything else that the BBC does is beyond reproach, always, always, always….

In fact, the ruling is among the strongest upoholdings of a journalistic complaint that I have ever seen and the corporation should be utterly ashamed that it used such cowboy, slipshod methodology. Although that’s par for the course.

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19 Responses to PAR FOR THE COURSE…

  1. Louis Robinson says:

    Here is the money quote in the judgement which was not used in the BBC wesite story: “The fact that the activity being carried out by the boys in the Bangalore footage did not appear to the Committee to be genuine.”

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  2. Abandon Ship! says:

    but it is reflective of a wider truth…………..

    How are those Palin e-mails going Beeboids?

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  3. David Preiser (USA) says:

    But they’ve done it before. They haven’t and won’t learn a lesson.  Oh, and it was shot by a freelancer, not an actual BBC employee, who refutes the Trust’s decision, etc.

    Panorama:  Fake, but accurate.

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  4. Phil says:

    It’s best to get news from the private sector, just like education, housing and healthcare.

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  5. Lloyd says:

    Can I point out that it’s Primark, before the beeb spelling police come along.

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  6. George R says:

    INBBC ‘Panorama’ -par for the course again tonight campaigning for the rights of mass illegal immigrants into Britain from Afghanistan, etc.

    INBBC: number 1 broadcaster for advocating national suicide of Britain by unending mass illegal immigration:

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/panorama/hi/front_page/newsid_9511000/9511700.stm

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    • George R says:

      “Lifeboat Ethics: the Case Against Helping the Poor”

      [Extract]:

      “So here we sit, say 50 people in our lifeboat. To be generous, let us assume it has room for 10 more, making a total capacity of 60. Suppose the 50 of us in the lifeboat see 100 others swimming in the water outside, begging for admission to our boat or for handouts. We have several options: we may be tempted to try to live by the Christian ideal of being ‘our brother’s keeper, or by the Marxist ideal of ‘to each according to his needs.’ Since the needs of all in the water are the same, and since they can all be seen as ‘our brothers,’ we could take them all into our boat, making a total of 150 in a boat designed for 60. The boat swamps, everyone drowns. Complete justice, complete catastrophe. ”

      […]

      “Suppose we decide to preserve our small safety factor and admit no more to the lifeboat. Our survival is then possible although we shall have to be constantly on guard against boarding parties.
      “While this last solution clearly offers the only means of our survival, it is morally abhorrent to many people. Some say they feel guilty about their good luck. My reply is simple: ‘Get out and yield your place to others.’ This may solve the problem of the guilt-ridden person’s conscience, but it does not change the ethics of the lifeboat. The needy person to whom the guilt-ridden person yields his place will not himself feel guilty about his good luck. If he did, he would not climb aboard. The net result of conscience-stricken people giving up their unjustly held seats is the elimination of that sort of conscience from the lifeboat.
      This is the basic metaphor within which we must work out our solutions.”

      http://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles/art_lifeboat_ethics_case_against_helping_poor.html

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  7. dave s says:

    The liberal narrative is always the correct one. In effect the only one that should ever be put forward 
    Why this delusional behaviour is dominant in the BBC/Guardian etc is not explicable in any rational way.
    If this is so then altering the reality to fit the narrative is not an offence against truth but a duty to a higher truth. The truth of modern liberalism.
    It pervades every story and everything they say. Strip it out and you are left with nonsense.
    I will not use the word “Lies ” since that assumes a conscious act of will. What we see and hear is far worse than that . It is an offence against reality and true things.

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    • cjhartnett says:

      ” Altering the reality to fit the narrative is not an offence against truth, but a (sacred) duty to a higher truth”.
      Quite wonderful Mr s-not seen the whole liberal castle in the air that is elite groupthink put quite so pithily!

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  8. Craig says:

    So there’s a link in the BBC article to the BBC Trust report and to Mr. Greenslade’s defence in the Grauniad, and a link to Panorama at the bottom of the post but, oddly enough, no link to the injured party…Primark. Even the Graun links to Primark’s video response to the Panorama decision.

    The Guardian article says:

    The decision by the trust is also understood to have infuriated BBC News staff, who privately say that the Primark case has demonstrated that the corporation’s complaints procedure is flawed.

    The tone of that BBC article suggests whoever wrote it is one of those infuriated beeboids. The captions and block-quotes and several paragraphs within the article all seem designed to huff ‘But we were right!’

    The Telegraph quotes straight from the BBC Trust at much greater length and also gives more space to the Primark spokeman – including this, which the BBC article chose to leave out:

    He added that the firm had to “persevere and pursue the matter for a period of three years” including four internal BBC investigations before being vindicated.

    It seems that the BBC is still spinning against Primark.

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  9. cjhartnett says:

    Sorry seems (yet again) to be the hardest word for the BBC.
    Ironic seeing as they seem to spend half their journalistic output in seeking “apologies” from everybody else.
    Thanks to Robin for the full report- you`d not get anything like that on the news in its detail.
    Typical stitch up(arf arf!)-God knows how many interns the Beeb uses in its bowels cobbling this crap together-got to be an undercover report here !
    Primark are working class tat mongers that are a real business and don`t live for FairTrade. Guilty then as charged, by some cub prep-school warrior out on a virtuous cause! What he believes is true and that ex Labour liar Greenslade will confirm the all round greatness of all things BBC.
    Bloody Queen does do moonwalks backwards by the way!That they doctored the film to prove this does not mean she doesn`t. It`s the intention ,you fools!

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  10. robert kenyon says:

    “….such cowboy, slipshod methodology”

    What ghastly deeds have cowboys done that they merit a comparison with the BBC?

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  11. As I See It says:

    I was amused to see how News 24 covered this earlier. One beeboid interviews another about it – so that apparently represents balance. Cut to our Helen (hugs x) giving the BBCs response. Then a short couple of lines from the injured party – which was read out. All rounded off with a statement from the producer (flatly denying what I thought the Trust had just found him guilty of!)  – his quote and pic are flashed up on the screen. 

    In no way, shape, or form was this a balanced report.

    Normal service has been resumed.

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    • My Site (click to edit) says:

      rounded off with a statement from the producer (flatly denying what I thought the Trust had just found him guilty of!)’

      Neswatch will be peachy then: ‘On balance, we think we got it about right’

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  12. Millie Tant says:

    Thanks for posting that, Robin. It makes for very interesting reading. No real surprise, though, for anyone who remembers previous occasions of Beeboid making things up and telling lies.

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  13. Beeboidal says:

    Shocking stuff.  As if faking the scene were not enough, dramatic dialogue had to be added too.

    An adult’s voice is heard in the footage speaking to the three boys in a local language or dialect and these words are sub-titled during the programme as “get on with the work, little boy” and “keep quiet and get on with the job, boy”. These words were presented in the programme as having been spoken by the boys’supervisor. However, the ECU concluded (with the assistance of a BBC WorldService translator) that they were probably spoken by K (the Journalist’s driver/translator). Therefore, the ECU upheld this aspect of the Complainant’s complaint and found that this constituted a breach of the accuracy editorial guideline.

    Memo to Helen and the gang: In the real world, ‘breach of accuracy’ would be considered to be getting some fact(s) wrong. Making stuff up is an altogether different beast.

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