Tuesday, August 04, 2015 

"Where are my testicles, Summer?"


"Nobody exists on purpose.  Nobody belongs anywhere.  Everybody's going to die."

One of the lines doing the rounds following the government's green paper on the future of the BBC was, if the BBC's so great and worth the £145.50 every household must pay on pain of fines and even prison, why can't it make Game of Thrones?  The line, naturally, can be altered to be about your favourite non-BBC and probably not made by a British broadcaster at all show and still retain the point.  Why indeed can the BBC not make The Wire, Breaking Bad, or as some wag soon had it, House of Cards, despite its vast income?

This set me thinking on what British television as a whole has never been any good at.  Best answer I could come up with: adult animation.  With the exceptions of Stressed Eric and Monkey Dust (both BBC productions, natch), the attempts at adult animation from our main broadcasters have been fairly horrific.  You could say there's not much point in trying to compete with the Americans when their output is so good, and yet, if you take a proper look, it's not strictly true, is it?  Family Guy and the Simpsons are so past their best (if Family Guy had a best) it's painful, American Dad and the various spin-offs from Family Guy can be good and yet still don't really satisfy, which leaves you with, well what?  South Park, which was great when both political and funny, and now more often than not is just political?  Bob's Burgers?  It might as well not exist such is the time slot it gets over here.

Bearing that in mind, it doesn't necessarily say much that Rick and Morty has yet to be picked up by a broadcaster in this country.  A new show from the guys at Adult Swim, it'll just be the same old same old, won't it?  Robot Chicken never made much of an impact here, let alone Aqua Teen Hunger Force.  A bit too screwball for UK sensibilities seems to be the opinion.  We like our animation shows with families, where the father despite being fat/and or an idiot is in fact the hero of the piece, where the female characters are either stereotypes (Hayley) or ciphers (Meg, Lois, Francine, and despite the attempts to flesh her out, some of which have been great, Marge too) and where each week there's a new moral lesson on offer.

Which is precisely what makes Rick and Morty the kind of show so good you feel you have to proselytise about it.  It is that familiar set-up we all know, the mother and father, the two kids (we'll not count either Maggie or Meg, as the show's respective producers certainly don't) only in this instance with the addition of the mom's own father, returned after years away for reasons never properly explained.  Only it takes those conventions and in the space of a single season of 11 episodes manages to fundamentally subvert them, to define these 5 characters in a way that other series have failed to do in 10 seasons.  Yes, it remains the case that Beth, the mom, the horse surgeon, is still the most transparent of the 5, but 17-year-old Summer, the other child that it looks is set to be neglected just like those other female characters, rises up in the latter half of the series to play a role almost equal to that of Rick, the grandfather, and 14-year-old serial masturbator Morty.  Jerry, the dad, moreover, is an idiot and a loser, who just like Homer, Peter and Stan managed to marry out of his league, only he's played as an idiot and a loser on the apparent brink every episode of being ditched by Beth.

Oh, and Rick just happens to be an alcoholic genius scientist who has a portal gun that can transport anyone to another dimension or any of the infinite parallel universes that exist alongside our own particular version of reality in an instant.  He's the Doctor and Doc Brown, only he's also on the edge of insanity and mania, whether driven there by his trips into the unknown, his drinking or by the sheer scale of his intellect we can't quite tell.  And to be clear, Rick spends almost the entire opening half of the first season essentially abusing Morty through their adventures.  In the pilot episode Morty breaks his legs after Rick fails to tell him he needs to turn his special shoes on before descending down a sheer cliff, then Rick informs him he needs to stuff the huge seeds they're collecting up his butthole to get through alien customs as they're out of portal juice after Rick had to get a cure for Morty's busted legs.  Rick's own sphincter just can't handle it any more.  After Rick and Jerry get trapped in an alien simulation with a uncannily real Morty in another episode, Rick stumbles drunkenly into Morty's room and holds a knife to his throat, until he's convinced this Morty isn't a simulation.  When Morty finally does object to how Rick uses him and demands they go on an adventure of his choosing, Morty's reward is to be nearly raped by a anthropomorphic jellybean in the toilet of an olde worlde inn.

Doing a show as wildly inventive, some would say almost as tiresomely inventive as Rick and Morty justice in words is difficult in of itself.  In that first pilot episode there's a chase scene at the alien customs/airport that contains more ideas in a single minute than other shows have in entire episodes, one creature brought into existence by Morty going through its entire life-cycle in the space of five seconds.  Even properly cataloguing its influences and references is hard: the domestic tensions at work are nearly straight out of the Simpsons (indeed, most people will probably get their first dose of Rick and Morty from the incredible, extended couch gag co-creator Justin Roiland provided for the Simpsons' season finale), just as the science fiction backdrop owes a debt to Futurama.  At the same time the wackiness and instinct to break things reminds of the best episodes of American Dad, while the writers also acknowledge how many gags they've stolen from Douglas Adams.

What truly marks Rick and Morty out though is just how far the writers are willing to take things.  In Rick Potion #9 our two heroes completely wreck their Earth, transforming every other human except for Beth, Jerry and Summer into deformed, monstrous creatures Rick swiftly dubs "Cronenbergs".  Unable to fix it, Rick simply searches for an alternate universe/timeline where he both did fix it and he and Morty die almost immediately afterwards, our pair taking their place, burying their doubles' bodies in the backyard.  Morty, like the viewer, takes quite a while to get his head around this total mindfuck, which comes right in the middle of the season rather than as a finale as you might normally expect.  

Then there's Rixty Minutes, where Rick installs cable TV "from every conceivable reality" in response to being forced to watch the Bachelor, only the family catching sight of an alternate universe Jerry on Letterman soon makes Beth, Jerry and Summer far more interested in their alternate selves than infinite TV.  The episode plays out between Rick and Morty watching adverts and shows that Roiland for the most part ad-libbed and improvised, and Summer's distress at finding out that in most alternate realities she doesn't exist as Beth had an abortion and never married Jerry.  It's only when Morty tells Summer of the epiphany he's had, thanks to the events of Rick Potion #9, including the quotes at the top, that she retreats from running away and goes back downstairs to watch a trailer for a parody of Weekend at Bernie's 2, involving an dead woman being "operated" by her cats.

The one apparent problem, that when so many ideas are thrown into a single episode there's a risk creative burnout will be hit all the sooner, thankfully doesn't seem to be manifesting itself as yet.  The first episode of the second season doesn't quite hit the heights almost all the shows from the first did, but the next two are right up there again at the top.  This said, I can't help hoping that Rick and Morty doesn't turn into one of those shows that carries on for series after series, long after the point at which the creators themselves have often wanted to put their characters out of their misery.  Nor does it feel like that kind of show: it seems special, with writers and creators who'll know when they've taken it as far as they can.

To return to the BBC, one of the other complaints heard was that with so many other channels and sources of entertainment Auntie is nearly irrelevant.   They almost never take into account how many of those channels are reliant on old BBC programmes to fill their schedules, or had their origins in doing nothing but showing repeats.  The most watched channels on Sky, despite everything, remain the BBC ones.  The assumption that if only the BBC got out of the way the commercial broadcasters would be able to further innovate and grow rather falls down when they show no indication of doing the things the BBC already doesn't, or does badly.  If they can't see the worth in a show like Rick and Morty, or won't try and produce an equivalent, why believe things would be any different after the fact?

Labels: , , ,

Share |

8/04/2015 10:27:00 pm | |

Monday, July 06, 2015 

The beginning of the end.

Deals made in secret are always bad deals.  It's not always instantly apparent which side has come out the loser, but in the instance of the BBC versus a Conservative government, anyone betting on the side of the public service broadcaster is on a hiding to nothing.

Those with long memories might recall this is almost precisely what happened 5 years ago.  Back then, at least Mark Thompson talked a good game ahead of conceding pretty much everything: a pound out of the commissioning budget of the BBC is a pound out of the UK creative economy, he said in his MacTaggart lecture.  Lecture delivered, the then director general accepted a freeze on the licence fee right up until 2016/17 without anyone else being consulted.  In retrospect, thanks more than anything to the world finally noticing that phone hacking had been a thing, kiboshing News Corporation's dreams of swallowing Sky wholesale, it wasn't the worst of deals.  Yes, there have been cuts, but the BBC is pretty much doing what it did in 2010, if not frankly better.

To repeat the process, as DG Tony Hall now has, was asking for it.  Rather than beating his chest ala Thompson, he instead decided he would show the Tories the wounds on his back.  Look how I've already been flagellating myself, he said, thinking that making clear how another 1,000 jobs will have to go thanks to the loophole allowing those who only use the iPlayer to watch catch-up TV don't have to pay the licence fee, a shortfall estimated to be costing £150m, would go some way to sate the Tory lust for blood.  Schoolboy error.

In some ways, to be sure, the deal Hall has struck doesn't look too bad for the BBC.  It obviously secures the licence fee itself, although no one was seriously imagining the Tories would destroy the BBC in one fall swoop.  The fee will also rise in line with inflation from 2017, although if inflation remains around zero as it is currently then it won't count for much.  Hall's biggest coup, the one he's going to be boasting about, is reaching an agreement to close the above loophole, although how this will be done in practice remains to be seen.  Hall has decided to describe this as "modernising" the licence fee, which seems an odd way of telling people to cough up, like it or not, but he obviously knows what he's doing.

Otherwise he wouldn't have apparently, if we're to believe the reporting so far, suggested to the government that the BBC pick up the tab for free licence fees for the over-75s.  This at present costs a mindboggling £650m.  The licence fee brings in £3.72bn.  Moving BBC Three online only, as approved by the BBC Trust, is meant to save just £30m.  Yes, there are a few other sweeteners in the deal, such as how the licence fee will no longer be "top-sliced" to pay for the roll-out of super fast broadband, that the cost will be phased in so the BBC doesn't lose £650m in one go, and how the corporation will effectively take control of the policy once its pays for it fully, leaving open the possibility Auntie will swiftly say that in fact the over-75s get a pretty good deal all told and either abolish the subsidy entirely, means test it or say only cover half, but you don't have to be Martin Lewis to think the sums aren't going to add up.  Not least when the way is still open for the decriminalising of non-payment, leaving it as only a civil offence, estimated at potentially costing the BBC a further £200m.

Let's start with the assumption that the deal leaves the BBC down by "only" £100m.  Radio 4, according to the BBC, costs £91m a year (the Graun says £121m), while the BBC's online services writ large cost £174m.  Whichever way the BBC tries to save that £100m, services are going to have to close.  BBC Three might be shut down entirely, BBC Four could join BBC Three online only, some if not most of the BBC's local radio stations would go, and the digital radio offerings like 6 Music would almost certainly have to be looked at again.  That's just on the assumption it costs £100m, when it could easily be far higher, especially if once fully phased in the BBC doesn't feel able to dump or cut the subsidy, a move the likes of George Osborne know full well will be opposed with the utmost vehemence by the rest of the media.

According to Steve Hewlett, usually well informed, having to take on the cost of licence fees for the over-75s would have "heralded a catastrophe".  Tony Hall presumably believes the concessions he wrangled from both Osborne and new culture secretary John Whittingdale have avoided such a scenario.  Again, let's take his word for it and accept in the circumstances he couldn't have done much better.  That doesn't alter the fact this is the second time the BBC has been forced into cutting a deal without so much as the slightest input from the people whom actually pay for the damn thing.  We apparently have no say whatsoever, unless the Tory majority is taken as being an affirmation for their manifesto promises of keeping the over-75s subsidy and err, a continuing freeze in the licence fee.

It's difficult, if not impossible to separate this fait accompli from the behaviour of both the Tories and the majority of the press at large both during and since the election.  David Cameron was almost certainly joking when he said about closing the BBC down, but the claims of bias made against the corporation during the campaign, utterly laughable considering how day after day the bulletins ran with the SNP-Labour pact scaremongering, were deadly serious.  The Murdoch press, no longer cowed as memory of phone hacking fades and attention turns to the Mirror, has been making its voice heard again.  Osborne's ridiculous comments yesterday that the BBC was somehow crowding out not just local, but national newspapers, Mail Online being such a woeful failure, just underlined how the motive seems to be to cut the BBC down to size for daring to hold government, regardless of stripe, to account.  The Tories' real ire is directed at pieces on the BBC News website like Mark Mardell's from last week, pointing out Cameron has no clothes when it comes to his "full spectrum response" to the attack in Tunisia and instead chose to focus on the inanity of what the BBC calls Islamic State for a reason.  Such articles carry far more weight when the BBC so rarely dabbles in outright analysis, even if Mardell was clearly remaining objective.  The leak to the Sunday Times framed the passing over of the over-75s subsidy as almost a direct response to the BBC daring to cover the reality of cuts to welfare, cuts which are about to fall far wider than previously.

We can't of course know what went on in the back and forth between Hall and the government.  It was probably made clear in the most certain of terms that if he refused the deal on the table or dared to suggest consulting on it that it would not be on offer in the future.  Again, it could turn out that the deal is better than it seems.  It could force the BBC to finally sort out its problems of management, which have not improved in the slightest even as journalists and others with years of service have been let go.  It might lead to some hard choices that should have been taken years ago: there is no reason why Radio 1, 1 Xtra, even Radio 2 couldn't be privatised, as they without a doubt have long stifled commercial alternatives, almost all of which are laughably terrible.  

From the other side though, this really does look like the beginning of the end of the BBC, forced into cutting services which are popular and in turn undermining the esteem in which the corporation continues to be held, leaving the licence fee ever more precarious as the media landscape continues evolving at speed.  The beneficiaries will just happen to be those whom already have far too much power, whether they be the government of the day or the corporate media that overwhelmingly backed said government.  The losers?  Everyone else.

Labels: , , , , , , ,

Share |

7/06/2015 09:38:00 pm | |

Wednesday, March 25, 2015 

Two reports and an attempt to link them.

For today's post, shall we compare and contrast two cases which on the surface have absolutely nothing in common but I would argue in fact do speak of the way power operates in this wonderful nation of ours?  Not like I can sink much lower, nor have I anything better to do with my time.

First then to the Independent Police Complaints Commission's report into the shooting of Mark Duggan.  Back in January of last year the inquest jury reached a verdict of lawful killing, based on how the officer he was shot by, known only as V53, was justified in the belief that Duggan was armed and about to fire.  This was despite also finding that Duggan was in fact not armed, and had thrown the gun over the railings near to where the taxi he had been in was stopped as soon as he left the vehicle.

This apparent cognitive dissonance raised the ire of Duggan's family, quite understandably.  The publication of the IPCC report has had much the same result, despite it reaching a slightly different, arguably even more inflammatory conclusion, based on its own investigations and the various legal proceedings.

When it comes down it, the entire dispute about what did or didn't happen between Mark Duggan getting out of the taxi he was in, subjected to a "hard stop" by CO19, and his being shot by V53, concerns 4 seconds.  The IPCC finds that within 4 seconds of getting out of the car he had been fatally shot (finding 12, page 450 of the report), with V53 firing two rounds.  They also find that in the space of these 4 seconds, the other officers most likely did inform him to stop, although there wasn't enough evidence to conclude they identified themselves as armed police (finding 14, page 458), that Duggan moved from the side of the car round to the back, that he did move his right arm in a way that made V53 believe he was getting ready to aim the gun at him and fire, and that this movement was in fact Duggan throwing the gun away.

Essentially, after nearly four years of investigating, the IPCC has accepted nearly in its entirety the police account of what happened.  As it all but admits, it was almost impossible to reach any other conclusion as there were no independent witnesses to the shooting itself, or at least none who had a clear view at a short distance.  The taxi driver changed his account of the shooting itself, and could only see Duggan's back.  Despite the CO19 officers refusing to be interviewed, with them conferring together on their account, the IPCC declares there to be no "objective evidence which undermines the account of V53" (page 476).  That there was "no DNA attributable to Mr Duggan on the firearm or sock" is dismissed as it's possible to handle an item without leaving such material.  The IPCC also declares that as another officer was behind Duggan, this "tends to support V53’s assertion ...as W42 could have been seriously injured or killed if the bullet had not fortuitously embedded itself in his radio".  This would seem to this layman to be an entirely subjective conclusion based on an assumption of V53's professionalism, but it most likely wouldn't have made any difference if W42 hadn't been behind Duggan.

As to how the gun got to where it did, we're still none the wiser.  No one saw the gun being thrown by Duggan, not V53, who thought it was being moved in his direction only to find it had disappeared once he had fired, nor W70, the only other officer to say he saw Duggan with the gun.  The IPCC suggests most of the other officers were distracted by the shots and the "explosion" of the "plume of down feathers" from Duggan's jacket (page 486), and they didn't have the best line of sight anyway.  

Again, the IPCC makes some eyebrow-raising suggestions as to how the accounts given by the officers suggest they're telling the truth: while "it is surprising that none of the officers saw the firearm leave Mr Duggan’s hand and travel to the grassed area ... had the officers ... been in collusion to provide corroborative evidence linking Mr Duggan to the position of the firearm, it is likely that they would have claimed to have seen this".  Also, had Duggan not in fact had the gun in his hand at all, "there is no sensible reason why they [the police] would have opted to plant the firearm on the grass such a distance away from Mr Duggan thereby giving rise to the various doubts which have inevitably arisen about this matter".  This to the IPCC is "implausible" (page 485).

None of this is to suggest that the IPCC was wrong to reach the only possible conclusion based on the evidence they had.  The most likely explanation for why Duggan, instead of surrendering, probably did go to throw away the gun is that he didn't realise the officers following the taxi were from CO19.  The report sets out he sent a Blackberry broadcast which mentioned "Trident" officers (page 459), who are usually unarmed.  The only person who knows what really happened in those 4 seconds between Duggan leaving the taxi and his being fatally shot is V53, and on his conscience it must lie.  You do however recall how differently the police acted when called to the scene of the murder of Lee Rigby, with his attackers proceeding to run towards the officers.  Despite being well aware of how dangerous they were, neither of the men were shot with the intention to kill.

To give the IPCC some credit, it does recommend that all radio communications during covert firearm operations should be recorded, as should all armed response vehicles be fitted with in car data recording systems, while the "feasibility of fitting audio/visual recording devices in covert armed response vehicles" should also be explored.  That said, it's surprising this isn't already standard practice, and surely the issuing of armed officers with headcams would go a long way to clearing up any disputes.

And so, far more briefly, to the other major report of the day.  Yes, the sad demise of Mr Clarkson, as prompted by the investigation by Ken MacQuarrie (PDF).  Clarkson's fracas was we learn more of a 20-minute tantrum, involving the strongest of language and various insults directed at Oisin Tymon, ending with a 30-second assault that resulted in the producer going to hospital.  That Clarkson in effect grassed himself up, apologised profusely and repeatedly, including in person quite rightly made no odds.

Unlike it seems most lefties I've never minded Clarkson and even more shocking, I quite enjoy the Top Gear specials.  The show proper I'm indifferent towards, but in feature length format Clarkson, May and Hammond acting like children in foreign climes passes the time, cleverly scripted or not.  That I feel this way and can still absolutely adore Stewart Lee is to apparently be very odd indeed.

As is so often the case, it's the fans that are worse than the act.  When you get over a million people signing a petition demanding the immediate reinstatement of someone in a position of authority alleged to have punched a junior colleague, you can both dismiss some of it as larking about and a bit of fun, many of whom now probably accept the sacking of Clarkson is the right decision in the circumstances, as well as also conclude that an awful lot of people think it's perfectly fine for someone in power to act like a dick so long as they like them.  Except it's not just that: because Clarkson is "politically incorrect", a "dinosaur" as he described himself, the BBC were never going to be satisfied until such a person was expunged, nor were his critics.  We even had, lord preserve us, David Cameron passing comment just hours after he had criticised Ed Miliband for demanding to know why he wouldn't debate him as "focusing on the future of a television programme".

It's this concentration on the ephemera, the apparent belief that some should have impunity on the basis of who they are, and a sense of entitlement that leads many to believe they are being persecuted as not everything is always about them that says much of why so little has changed since the riots prompted by Mark Duggan's death.  Duggan himself probably wasn't a pleasant man all told; those who rioted initially might have been outraged by his death and the initial police response, but you can hardly claim what followed was a political response; and besides, the police have been found twice now to have acted properly, discrepancies or not.  

The above is probably accurate, but even if it wasn't there would have been politicians, pundits and public alike lining up to defend the police's right to shoot dead someone they believed to be dodgy.  It's why despite all the deaths in custody, the Irishmen with chair legs in plastic bags, the Brazilians who "leapt the barriers" and those in the wrong place at the wrong time, no police officer has been convicted of murder or manslaughter in nearly 30 years.  It's not just we're brought up to respect authority, or that some people apologise for, even take pleasure from others acting viciously so long as it's against those they don't like, it's also that more people than we care to admit are just unpleasant and have really unpleasant, repellent opinions.  And far too often, rather than being challenged, they're indulged.

Labels: , , , , , , ,

Share |

3/25/2015 10:38:00 pm | |

Thursday, November 13, 2014 

The downfall.


Ah, Mazher Mahmood.  Time was all we had to identify him were a couple of grainy photos filched from an Albanian newspaper website, obtained by them from who knows where and which also soon disappeared down the memory hole thanks to "Maz's" ever busy legal beavers.  It took a long damn time, but the collapse of the Tulisa Constovalos drug trial finally prompted a media organisation to challenge Mahmood's claims his life would be put in danger should his true countenance be widely publicised.  The last time Maz tried and failed to prevent the media publishing his fizzog, winning a temporary injunction against among others, this blog, only the Graun went ahead and did so anyway.

Panorama and John Sweeney are thankfully more indefatigable beasts.  Twice Mahmood's lawyers forced the BBC to postpone the broadcast, first with the renewed claim he couldn't possibly be unmasked lest those he exposed come after him, always a risible argument considering his victims know his face all too well, and then after that failed with a challenge over the evidence involving John Bryan's procuring, or rather non-procurement of prostitutes.  With this last desperate attempt rejected, BBC1 was at last able to show the documentary last night.

And while for those of us who've followed Mahmood's activities down the years there was little we didn't already know included, the exception being the claims of Mahmood's links to corrupt Met officers, you can more than understand why he and News UK tried everything to stop it from airing.  Apart from identifying Mahmood, his methods were laid bare, vignettes taken from the secret recordings made by his team which he and the News of the World never wanted you to see.  John Alford declaring himself teetotal, with Mahmood then urging him to drink anyway, page 3 model Emma Morgan given cocaine by the person she was then entrapped into "buying" it from to supply to Mahmood, Constovalos made to believe she was being considered for a role in a Hollywood film alongside Leonardo DiCaprio as she was the obvious choice to play a "bad girl"; whoever the source was for the material, and the guess would have to be it came from within News UK, it showed Mahmood in just about the worst possible light.

As contemptible as Mahmood is, this was never about just him.  Mahmood could only work as he did for so long with the support of first the News of the Screws, and then following its sad demise, the Sun on Sunday.  It should be stressed that on occasion, Mahmood's entrapment tactics produced important, genuinely in the public interest stories, such as the corruption he uncovered involving the Pakistani cricket team.  Those kind of targets didn't satisfy either him or his editors though, nor one could say did they NotW readers.  No, instead they had to stitch up foolish but otherwise decent people somewhat in the public eye, such as Emma Morgan, Johnnie Walker or the Earl of Hardwicke.  At his very worst, he and his team concocted entire fictional plots, whether it be the one to kidnap Victoria Beckham, with the trial of those accused collapsing when it become public Mahmood had paid the man who "informed" him of the nefarious deal, or the "red mercury" plot, with those entrapped thankfully found not guilty.

Yet despite these failures, both the police and the Crown Prosecution Service continued to work with him, going ahead with cases such as the one involving Constolvalos when it was an obvious example of entrapment.  They carried on doing so even after the Screws was put out of its misery, and as we now know, 3 further cases have been dropped as Mahmood was to be the key witness.  It's possible other previous cases could now be the subject of appeal, especially if Mahmood is charged with perjury and attempting to pervert the course of justice over the collapse of the Constolvalos trial as many expect.

Indeed, as Roy Greenslade writes, this level of protection seems to be continuing, as the attorney general asked the BBC not to screen the docu.  Presumably on the basis it could make it more difficult for Mahmood to get a fair trial should he be charged, the real objection is more likely "Maz" and his editors still have friends in high places.  Why else would News UK still be providing Mahmood with their largesse for vexatious litigation when he is supposedly on suspension, unless they still have a glimmer of hope that he could still return?

Regardless of that wishful thinking, Mahmood is finished.  The real motivation behind his attempts to stop Panorama was not over his safety, but his ability to carry on as before.  His methods detailed, his visage shown, few will now make the mistake of being drawn in by the image and boasts of a serial offender.  And with him, hopefully, also ends another disgraceful period in British journalism.

Labels: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Share |

11/13/2014 10:59:00 pm | |

Monday, May 12, 2014 

The impossibility of freedom of speech.

Perhaps it's just the years spent examining my own navel, but for the most part I go out of my way not to be an appalling hypocrite, choose the easy target (yeah, right) or make the obvious riposte/joke about things.  When faced however with the fact that someone was starved enough for excitement in the first place to be listening to David Lowe's Singers and Swingers show on BBC Radio Devon, then was apparently so exercised by how the version of The Sun Has Got His Hat On he played included the original, n-word using second verse that they felt the need to complain, I find it difficult not to wonder about how desperately empty their life must be.  Those minutes spent contacting the BBC could have been used in any other way imaginable; life might not always be all we would like it to be, yet surely, surely, even the most miserable, wretched and pitiless individual could have come up with something more entertaining and intellectually nourishing to do than whinge about the content of an 82-year-old song?

No?  We are back in context land, you see folks.  I can perfectly understand the BBC cutting the Major scene from The Germans episode of Fawlty Towers, especially pre-watershed, not least when John Cleese has himself said it's not something he would write now.  When it comes to material pre-1960 though say, to cut racist dialogue or stereotyping out of either music or films is to deny history.  You're not protecting people, you're censoring something approaching the norm and which should be recognised as such precisely because we've moved on from then.  David Lowe didn't even realise the song featured the n-word, and either wouldn't have played it at all, or as would have been best, prefaced it by saying it contained some language we would view as offensive now but wasn't then.

The only reason the Mail on Sunday decided this was a front page story is obviously due to the discrepancy of treatment between Clarkson and Lowe.  Clarkson, like Lowe, offered an apology and got a final warning; Lowe offered an apology or resignation, and the BBC accepted the latter.  Who knows whether there were extenuating factors or a manager was already looking to get rid of the DJ,  off he went.  The BBC has since done a reverse ferret and offered him the show back; Lowe has declined on grounds of stress.  It looks bad, and it is bad.  Often the BBC ignores complaints on the reasonable grounds that most are from the usual suspects, either with an axe to grind, nothing better to do, or the consistently and never knowingly under-outraged.  Why they took the single complaint this seriously is anyone's guess, unless post-Sachsgate and the Savile/McAlpine disaster they've become far more proactive than previously.

Then again, they could just be entering into what seems to be the new spirit of the age.  Nearly 40 years ago newspaper editors worked themselves into a frenzy over the use of a word they no doubt heard and used multiple times every day.  In our brave new social media world, we have people who can only be described as half-wits making complaints to the police about tweets they don't like.  Rather than the police telling said half-wit to stop wasting their time with spurious politically motivated whining, they instead visit the individual targeted and ask him, despite no laws having been broken, to take the tweet down.  Everyone then duly wonders whether things can be really that slow in Cambridgeshire for two officers to find the time to make such a visit, and if perhaps we've reached a new low in the great giving and taking offence stakes.

On the surface at least, the problem is the law.  We have free speech, except we don't.  Article 10 of the ECHR allows free expression but makes reasonable exceptions, including for the prevention of disorder or crime.  Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 duly makes it an offence to send a message that is grossly offensive (or menacing), which even by the standards of legislation that leaves it up to judges and juries to decide what can deprave or corrupt is by definition subjective.  As a result we've seen the likes of Matthew Woods jailed for three months for making unfunny, off-colour jokes, grossly offensive to some certainly, but par for the course for others.  Last week saw another victim, with Robert Riley jailed for eight weeks after tweeting in the aftermath of the murder of teacher Ann Maguire that he would have killed all of her colleagues at the school as well.  Riley was, predictably, another of those lonely people who enlivened his existence (spent as a full-time carer) by trolling, tweeting purposefully "outrageous" things in the hope of getting a response.  He had in fact as the judge noted sent other messages, including some that were racist in nature, but it was the couple about the dead teacher that resulted in Inspector Knacker getting involved.

Precisely what benefit anyone gains from sending pathetic misfits such as Woods or Riley to jail isn't clear.  It might make someone feel slightly better for a few hours, and could feasibly shock those convicted out of immaturity; it could also cause further bitterness, dare I say perhaps somewhat justifiably.  It certainly isn't a good use of resources, and yet despite the attention giving to trolling last August, the debate Keir Starmer urged nearly two years ago concerning the boundaries of free speech online hasn't really happened.  Abuse on the scale of that received by Caroline Criado-Perez is one thing; surely the despaired upon works of Woods and Riley ought to be something else.  We can't however seem to get perspective, as lazy journalists and also bloggers seek out the next comment or slight to get angry about.  We should hardly be surprised when the police and BBC management can't either.

Labels: , , , , , , , ,

Share |

5/12/2014 11:28:00 pm | |

Tuesday, May 06, 2014 

Clarkson and missing the real issue.

At times, I get the feeling I'm the only person ostensibly on the left who doesn't get instantly outraged when someone is accused of or indeed has used a racist epithet.  Now obviously, as a white 25 to 34 male who has enough free time to have spent the last coming up on nine years writing a politics blog almost every night, the first thing I should do is check my privilege.  

OK, privilege duly checked, and I still think that in most circumstances the context, rather than just the actual word used, is just as integral.

This is why Ron Atkinson had to be sacked when he described Marcel Desailly as a "fucking lazy nigger" in an aside to his co-commentator that was inadvertently broadcast in some countries due to the microphone being left open, and why Jeremy Clarkson and the BBC have just about got away with the former using the same word in unused rushes from Top Gear.  Some will vehemently disagree with me, but I simply don't accept the line that some words are so reprehensible or have such a history they should never be used unless reclaimed or for reference.  It's in how they're used, and Atkinson's ought to be the textbook example of insult married with latent racism. You could also include the case of the LA Clippers' owner, secretly recorded telling his girlfriend not to bring "black people" to games, as blatant, shocking prejudice.

With Clarkson the case is far more nuanced. Counting against him is that at first he seemed to deny he had used the word at all, then in his apology that he hadn't done enough to disguise the word or not say it at all. As is fairly apparent from the video the Mirror soon provided, he does say nigger, albeit quietly. In his favour is he's using the word in the context of the well-known child's rhyme, eeny meeny meiny mo, in order to choose the car to drive. While there are variations on it, Clarkson was more than likely brought up on the version he used, before the word rightly become truly beyond the pale. Old sayings often become engrained in the mind; there was also controversy a few years ago when a judge talked of "the nigger in the woodpile", with a Tory peer also using the phrase.  Offence wasn't intended, but both should have known not to use such an archaic metaphor. For further context, the rhymes we used playing tag when I was a sprog were similarly vulgar: we usually alternated between "each peach pear plum, choose your best bum chum" or "ip dip dog shit fucking bastard silly git you are not it".  Then again, I can't say if I was a TV presenter on a popular motoring programme I would use either to faux choose which automobile to hammer round a race course.

The problem is Clarkson's apology video thickens the plot somewhat.  If as he says there was a take where he said teacher, it seems odd that he would have written a note at all to the production staff telling them to use that rather than the others unless he wanted to be certain.  It would make more sense if they had overdubbed the scene later, especially as Clarkson does lower his voice when say the specific part, and changed it to teacher then.  More likely is that someone said, err, Jeremy, we can't use that for obvious reasons and they then did the teacher take, with Clarkson having seen the rushes later sending a note to confirm the change.

As the epithet wasn't specifically directed at anyone, it was never intended to be broadcast, it's possible Clarkson was mumbling precisely because the intention was to overdub the sound later and an apology was reasonably swift in forthcoming, I don't really have a massive problem with the BBC issuing a final warning.  Indeed, I'd say the use of "slope" during the Burma show was by those standards far more serious and worthy of further action, as it was directed at someone and with Clarkson apparently safe in the knowledge that not many people (myself included) would even realise he was talking about the man on the bridge.  Top Gear often walks the incredibly fine line between stereotyping for (dubious) comedy effect and outright prejudice, arguably staying just about on the right side of it.  You can say this is further evidence of how Clarkson has form, and he probably does.  Is he racist though, rather than just an arse, tweaking the nose of the politically correct, as Paul Dacre described it?  Probably not.

The danger here as so often is that with focusing on the ephemera we miss the significance of other statements that have gone almost entirely unchallenged.  Last year saw Nigel Farage repeatedly claim that London was going through a Romanian crimewave, without a single opposition politician challenging him on picking out a specific community, or indeed making clear that the figures are disputed and have been repeatedly misunderstood.  More recently, as Atul Hatwal writes in one of the first posts on Labour Uncut I've ever agreed with, Farage has moved on to saying people would be right to be concerned if a Romanian family moved in on their street, with the party's spin doctor repeating that message, again with only the heavily criticised campaign against the UKIPs saying anything about racism, and without directly calling them out on their sub-Powellite message.  Directed against almost any other community, creed, or race, there would deservedly be a Clarkson-type outcry.

As potentially self-defeating as it is call out the party's underlings, to not do so when it comes to Farage and others at the top of the party is sheer cowardice, especially when Farage has now resorted to highlighting the party's "black and ethnic minority candidates", having decided not to do so on their previous conference literature.  Regardless of what you think about Clarkson, the failure to properly take on UKIP bodes extremely ill for the general election campaign to come.

Labels: , , , , , , ,

Share |

5/06/2014 11:59:00 pm | |

Wednesday, March 05, 2014 

Don't save BBC Three.

Just before Christmas the Graun printed a piece by Neil Clark looking back fondly at the holiday TV schedule from 1978, the year before, in Clark's words, "Thatcherism arrived and changed everything".  In this brave old world the BBC found time to fit in six lectures from Leonard Bernstein; that well loved comedy Tea Ladies was about to start (for all of one, err, pilot episode); and the kids had Hungarian and Czechoslovakian cartoons to keep them amused.  Absent were any university educated comedians, the bastards soon to blight television screens with their "alternative" humour, and who needed them anyway when there was Michael Crawford, Ronnies Corbett and Barker, John Inman and Larry Grayson among others to entertain the nation?

Quite apart from Clark's insistence that all this was about to be smashed apart by neoliberalism, you'd have to be truly myopic to claim that the quality on offer made up for the lack of choice.  Television might not have been dumbed-down to the extent it has now, but did anyone really watch all six of those lectures from Bernstein?  Nostalgia, while great in small doses, rather obscures the reality that the shows still repeated now from decades past are in general the best those decades have to offer, at least in comedy.  There are undoubtedly some hidden gems that don't get the attention they deserve or which only lasted a series, Whoops Apocalypse one that comes to mind, yet we tend only to remember either the great or the completely rancid.  The merely bad or the average fall through the cracks in the mind.  Even the execrable fade in time; how many now can recall Curry and Chips, when plenty will know about Love Thy Neighbour?  It's also easy to forget one of the main reasons the UK was in the vanguard when it came to VCR ownership was to be able to record the good and avoid the bad, as well as to rent.

The news that the BBC is to close BBC Three reminds in a way of how spoilt we've become for choice, if not when it's come to Three for quality. It's that lack of quality that seems to have done for the channel, at least in the sense we know it, as its most popular shows will live on initally on the iPlayer, likely to then be repeated elsewhere. Rejecting calls from everyone's favourite tattooed elderly gent as well as others to merge BBC4 with 2, the reasoning seems to be that regardless of Three's relatively unique youth oriented remit, what 4 does it does very well, while the same just can't be said for its sister channel.

This has been rather proved by the struggle those seeking to defend the channel have had to point to the programmes we'll be deprived of should Tony Hall get his decision past the BBC Trust. Most are past glories, or not even that. There's no accounting for taste, but personally I'd hold Gavin and Stacey and Little Britain against the channel rather than present them as what it's capable of. There has been some magnificent original comedy produced, such as Monkey Dust, Nighty Night, Mongrels and The Revolution Will Be Televised, but for every critical or commercial hit there's been about four other stinkers. Just recently there's been Way to Go, Badults, Impractical Jokers, Cuckoo or anything featuring Jack Whitehall, while further back there was Grown Ups and Tittybangbang. Any goodwill generated by Being Human or some of the better documentaries is swiftly undone by Snog, Marry, Avoid or Don't Tell the Bride, let alone the dreck served up by Russell Kane on Live at the Electric or Nick Grimshaw with Greg James in tow.  For all the talk of how it reaches parts of the country the rest of the BBC doesn't, when the endlessly repeated Family Guy frequently turns up as one of the most watched shows it doesn't say much for the original content.

About the best case that can be made is the 16-34 demographic isn't served greatly elsewhere on the BBC away from Radio 1, and that whatever it's faults, BBC Three has established itself as the home of new comedy.  There's no reason however why the best of BBC Three can't flourish online, or why shows like TRWBT couldn't fit in on BBC2.  A general overhaul of television in general wouldn't go amiss; it wasn't that long ago BBC2 boasted of its comedy nights, and they could quickly return.  Getting rid of the deadwood such as Mock the Week and reducing the number of QI repeats would provide room for a start.  Of course, the BBC could also as Heydon Prowse suggests axe expensive copycat bilge like The Voice.  In an ideal world, moving Three online would also give E4 a boot up the backside, encouraging it to stop buying in the lamest sitcoms America has to offer and invest a little in upcoming UK talent.  It produced Misfits, after all.

In an ideal world though Three wouldn't be getting the chop at all.  This decision comes about as a direct result of the 2010 licence fee settlement that was provided to the corporation as a fait accompli, with there being little in the way of encouraging signs since that the charter renewal due in 2016 won't also be difficult.  It's also unclear exactly how much would be saved by taking Three off air and putting some of its content online; unless the plan is to let the channel quietly die, a sizeable amount of the overall £122m spent on it last year is still going to be spent rather than saved/redistributed.  If the idea was as the more cynical suspected when it came to the proposals to close 6 Music and Asian Network to generate campaigns to save them, it's dubious whether as many feel the same about Three as the fans of those far more targeted radio stations did.  Sad as it is to say, events have conspired against Three, and it's the most rational and reasonable thing to cut in the circumstances.  It still leaves TV in a far better place than it was 30 years ago, whatever the sentimentalists and revisionists would have you believe.

Labels: , , , ,

Share |

3/05/2014 11:59:00 pm | |

Tuesday, September 10, 2013 

Boring, boring Labour.

Considering the BBC's problems at the moment, it wasn't the best idea for the new Newsnight editor to "accidentally" tweet how boring Rachel Reeves was on the programme last night.  That no one who actually saw the segment featuring the Labour shadow treasury spokesman could possibly disagree doesn't matter when this was quite obviously bias in its most latent form, and the party richly deserved the apology it quickly received.  Little things like objectivity simply don't enter into such proceedings.  True, the fault doesn't so much lie with the person as it does with Katz and his underlings: Reeves has never been anything other than stultifingly dull; expecting her to have suddenly become devastatingly witty and incisive in analysis was asking a bit much.

The problem for Labour is that Reeves is the rule rather than the exception. For all the silliness of the summer and whispering against Ed, the party appears listless.  If it wasn't for Ed Balls, Andy Burnham and Chris Bryant, all of whom, love them or loathe, can make an impact, things would be even worse. With the party having to drop the investigation into what did or didn't happen in Falkirk after those accusing Unite of skulduggery withdrew their evidence, it looks increasingly like the response from the party had been drawn up for just such an eventuality. Unable to back down without giving yet more ammunition to the Tories, having pretty much put a "kick me" sign on their own backs already, the media were clearly hoping Miliband was going to be received at the TUC much like a bank note campaigner at a police station.

Predictably enough, the brothers didn't oblige. Not that this was down to Miliband winning over his audience with the sheer force of his argument, as err, he didn't bother to make one.  Listening to Ed you wouldn't think this was about the breaking of the historic link with the unions, the very organisations that created the party in the first place; no, this was about a "change", an "exciting idea" that would lead not to 200,000 Labour members but 500,000, a genuine, living breathing movement!  Who could disagree with that?  How the "change" would work in practice, whether it would mean a funding shortfall for Labour or a loss of influence on either side wasn't up for discussion.

Instead Ed delivered what has become his standard speech.  Yes, the opening was lively enough, with a fairly spirited attack on Cameron for something he might have said, as frankly I can't recall Dave describing the trade union movement as a "threat to our economy", at least in those exact terms, but then it just descended into the One Nation mush that has become the Labour's leader boilerplate message.  We still of course don't know what a One Nation Labour party is, as it looks unbelievably similar to the one we had prior to Ed deciding appropriating the old Tory mantle was a good wheeze.  After all, the policies are the same, the ministers are the same, and the message is the same.  Ed could have delivered his speech today at any point this year or last, and yet the closing section seems like something approaching the sort of pitch Miliband will have to make prior to the election.  It doesn't just come across as that word, weak, it's completely and utterly lacking.

As George Osborne tried to set out yesterday, however risibly, the coalition now has that horrible thing, a narrative.  The recovery is real, Labour wanted us to change course, they can't be trusted.  It might yet become a bit more subtle, and it seems likely there's going to be some movement on living standards, whether through alterations to the minimum wage or otherwise, but that's essentially going to be the message over the next year and a half as long as the economy keeps growing.  It's still going to be an uphill struggle for the Tories to win a majority when the odds are stacked against them, yet stranger things have surely happened.  Miliband could be the next prime minister, but he's starting to leave it late on why he deserves to be and how his party would govern better than the current shower.  A good place to start would be sacking his current speech writer.  And letting Reeves loose on the TV sparingly.

Labels: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Share |

9/10/2013 11:56:00 pm | |

Wednesday, December 19, 2012 

Newsnight and Duncroft: still far from the full story.

The Pollard inquiry into the entire Newsnight affair has, as recent reports have been wont to do, reached pretty much the conclusions it was expected it would.  Nick Pollard, formerly of Sky News, dismisses the notion that there was managerial pressure to drop the investigation into Savile's alleged activities at the Duncroft approved school, while finding that Newsnight's now ex-editor Peter Rippon made the wrong decision, mainly on the grounds that the CPS had investigated one of the claims about Duncroft and decided there was insufficient evidence to bring charges, to spike Meirion Jones and Liz MacKean's story.

It most certainly doesn't end there though, and there are more than enough uncertainties in the report for those suitably inclined to reach the conclusion that there was in fact pressure put on Rippon.  Both Jones and MacKean certainly believed there was, although Jones has since admitted he had no evidence for claiming at the time that this was the case.  

Key to the entire chain of events is a series of emails between Rippon and Stephen Mitchell, the deputy head of news, on the 29th of November last year (paragraph 91, page 68 onwards).  In the first, Rippon outlined the investigation and when Newsnight was planning to transmit the story, along with a request as to whether he could talk to Mitchell in more depth on the phone later.  As Pollard notes, this email and its follow-up are positive about the story, without any indication that Rippon at this stage was having doubts.  Remarkably, both men are uncertain as to whether the proposed phone call took place; Mitchell cannot remember it, with Pollard noting acidly that he "found the frequency with which Mr Mitchell's memory failed him surprising" at a different point in the report, while Rippon believes he "probably did" talk with Mitchell.

Whether it did or not, this was the point at which Rippon began to properly voice his doubts.  The following morning he emailed Jones, shifting the onus onto establishing that the CPS "did drop the case for the reason the women say", that Savile was too old and infirm to be charged.  Rippon's explanation for his change of heart, given to the inquiry, was that he felt the report as it stood relied too much on the evidence of Karin Ward, referred to throughout as [R1], how the interviews with the other victims had been conducted over the phone by an inexperienced trainee reporter, and how the evidence could be undermined by how some of the women had shared and discussed their experiences among themselves previously on a social networking site (paragraph 100, page 72).

Pollard examines three explanations for Rippon's shift: that he had been very keen on the story but something happened overnight to change his mind, influenced by Mitchell; that he changed his mind based purely on his "pondering it overnight"; or that he had overstated the story to Mitchell in his emails, despite having doubts, which had now come fully to the fore.  Pollard concludes that the first explanation is the most likely, that a conversation did take place, and that it was something Mitchell said that made him re-examine what his team had so far put together.  He doesn't believe, however, that what Mitchell said was "inappropriate or that it was influenced by any wish on Mr Mitchell's part to protect the Savile tribute programmes".

We are then dealing with hypotheticals, leaving more than enough room for doubt to creep in.  Add how Pollard accepts that Rippon made comments to Jones and MacKean along the lines of how if the "bosses weren't happy" [it couldn't go ahead] and "he could not go to the wall on this one", even if again, he found no evidence that he was being put under pressure, with Helen Boaden, the head of news, saying she thought it could have "arse-covering" on his part, putting the blame elsewhere, and it isn't the clean bill of health it looks at first sight.  My opinion remains, as it was at the outset, that this was almost certainly an editor deciding on his own that there wasn't enough evidence, but I don't blame anyone for suspecting there was more going on than has come out even now.  It still doesn't explain fully though why Rippon spiked the report rather than urge his team to investigate further, or indeed why Jones believed that it was either drop the story, or "leave the BBC".  He has instead decamped to Panorama.  Lack of resources, as Rippon claimed, just doesn't cut it, savage cuts to Newsnight or not.

Pollard's other main conclusion on the initial Newsnight investigation, that Rippon's decision was wrong and that Newsnight should have broken the story about Savile being an abuser 11 months before ITV did, also looks strong on the surface.  After all, Exposure used more or less the same evidence as collected by Jones and MacKean, which has in turn lead to over 400 people coming forward with allegations about Savile.  There are reasons though to suspect that at the time, Rippon was perfectly within his rights not to proceed with transmission, and one which has came to light since.  His reasons for having doubts, although undoubtedly expressed more lucidly through hindsight, are more than respectable: the only on camera interview they had was with Ward; they didn't have any corroborating evidence from those who worked at the school; the interviews with the other women, should, ideally, have been conducted in person,  and without there being any possibility of their being led; and some of the other women had discussed their experiences on Friends Reunited, increasing the possibility of the allegations becoming blurred.

Since then we've learned that the letter from Surrey police, which Newsnight knew of but never saw, saying the case was dropped because of Savile's age and infirmity, was a forgery.  Anna Racoon has also, in a series of blog posts, raised a number of doubts about some of the testimony.  A resident at Duncroft herself during the mid 60s, she denies that Savile ever visited the school while she was there, refuting the allegations made by one woman there at the same time.  She also maintains that Karin Ward must have been 16 when she appeared on Clunk Click, even if all her other claims are true.  Raccoon, regardless of being suckered in by the Libertarian Party previously, seems to be highly credible.  She may well be utterly wrong, but there are doubts there, and while the police had not previously investigated Ward's allegations, they had some of the other claims made by the others who had made contact on FR, deciding there wasn't enough evidence to pursue them.  It is almost certainly the case, as Raccoon notes, that Savile was a child abuser, an ephebophile (or at least attracted to post-pubescent children) if not a paedophile, but it has not yet been proven that he committed any offences either at Duncroft or with girls from the school.

These doubts bring us into some very uncertain territory.  Even if the Duncroft allegations are exaggerated, it's certainly the case that some of the claims made against Savile have to be accurate.  It's also unlocked memories which many have either struggled with ever since or tried to forget, casting the 60s and 70s in a different light.  While some of this will have had a negative effect on those who rather wouldn't have been reminded of what happened to them or what they got up to, for many talking about it, perhaps for the first time, will have resulted in the opposite.  As someone who struggles with his own past, I can't present opening up about everything as being wholly positive, or always for the best.  For many though it will have helped to exorcise demons, or been the first time they thought they might have been believed.  Negatives as there will have been, I would wager the positives will have outweighed them.

You can then respect Rippon entirely for the decision he made, even if you can't agree with it knowing now how it would have played out.  It would certainly have saved the BBC from the nightmare it's gone through over the last couple of months, one which Pollard finds it brought entirely on itself.  If anything, the BBC's management structure is even more Byzantine than we first thought: it takes him 11 pages (9-21) to describe it and the managed programmes list.  Away from Newsnight, one of the biggest failures he found was that the Savile investigation was moved off of this list, a list set-up in the aftermath of Hutton through which any controversial programmes or ones with risk to the BBC could be known about and shared across the organisation.  Stephen Mitchell decided it should be taken off the list, although he couldn't explain why to Pollard.  Pollard decides it was because Mitchell believed it was so sensitive that it shouldn't be widely known with the BBC, something that led in turn to the disasters that followed.

Also pilloried is George Entwistle, who if he hadn't been forced out would have had to resign now.  Pollard criticises him for taking no action after being warned by Helen Boaden about the Savile investigation, when it would have been the obvious opportunity to postpone the planned tributes until more was known.  He also didn't inquire further when told by the head of "knowledge commissioning", asking about whether they should start on a obituary programme, that he "saw the real truth", having worked with Savile as his first job at the BBC.  He was also at fault over the blog from Rippon which came to be seen within the BBC almost as gospel, despite the inaccuracies in it which MacKean and Jones pointed out almost immediately, failing to address it quickly enough, and then using it effectively to shield himself from criticism, putting it all on Rippon.

Pollard's recommendations are just as predictable.  He thinks the role of the director general as editor-in-chief is outdated, requiring they take responsibility while being unable to step in and make a difference.  The well known problem of too many managers and too rigid an adherence to going up one rung on the ladder at a time needs to be sorted once and for all, although Pollard suggests getting rid of the deputy director general was a mistake.  He sees no reason why there should continue to be "Chinese Walls", such as how Entwistle insisted it was no business of his knowing any more detail about the Savile investigation than what Helen Boaden told him.  He also wonders whether part of the problem might be that almost all of those involved had spent more or less their whole careers at the Beeb; this can and will be overstated, but it certainly wouldn't hurt if the BBC cast its net wider in the search for new recruits.

More important than these is Pollard's advice as a journalist: to be ready to collect more evidence if what is gathered is not enough, and to be prepared to hand over a story to another programme if it needs more work.  Rippon could have asked Jones and MacKean to do more work, rather than spiking what they had, or he could have suggested giving what they had to Panorama to see what they could do with it.  He did neither.  The same is true of the McAlpine affair, except in reverse.  As with so often in the past, these were avoidable mistakes which were made worse by mismanagement.  Whether it will have a long-term impact on a corporation which is still leagues ahead of almost all its journalistic competitors remains to be seen.  For now, deputy heads have rolled again.

Labels: , , , , , , , ,

Share |

12/19/2012 10:52:00 pm | |

Monday, November 12, 2012 

Through the media looking glass.

Where to even begin? It's as though over the weekend we fell through the looking glass, into an eerily familiar yet entirely different world. It's one where the Sun, yes, the Sun, can accuse both the BBC and the Guardian of "paedophile hysteria". It's one where spectres of the past can re-emerge and be regarded as wise sages, where newspaper editors that ignored or played down their own failings can cheer the bloodshed at a rival and demand more, and one where there's always something or someone else that can be blamed.

We must though start with Newsnight. We could, as the report by Ken Macquarrie has done, put the majority of the blame on the fact that the programme was in disarray following the "stepping aside" of numerous editors and managers while the various inquiries into the failings over Savile are taking place. It certainly explains somewhat how the report on the abuse at Bryn Estyn came to be broadcast within a week of the investigation being authorised. It doesn't however even begin to make clear how the journalists responsible for the piece justified it to themselves: this was a story that would have disgraced most blogs. Believing that by not naming the senior former Tory politician they were accusing they had protected themselves, they didn't so much as show Steve Messham a photograph of Lord McAlpine, nor did they contact McAlpine for comment. Rather than trace the other source who backed Messham's account, they simply ran with it. The first rule of investigative journalism is that you check the facts repeatedly, and then you check once again for good measure.

As has since become clear, Messham has spent the last twenty years wrongly believing that Lord McAlpine was one of his abusers. It seems to be an honest mistake based on more than understandable confusion, but it was one that would have fallen apart had this been a proper investigation.  Most importantly, as the Graun's piece on Friday reported, the Waterhouse inquiry discounted the possibility McAlpine was involved in the abuse as Messham's evidence was inconclusive.  Also key was that Messham believed his abuser was dead at the time of the inquiry, while McAlpine is still very much alive now.  Moreover, this isn't the first time Messham has taken his allegations to the media: there was as the Heresiarch notes a BBC documentary on Bryn Estyn in 1999; Private Eye according to reports discounted the possibility of McAlpine's involvement; and, fatefully, the long defunct Scallywag magazine ran the claims back in the early 90s.

Those reports from Scallywag, reprinted by the truly credible son of God David Icke, have been doing the rounds on the internet for years.  Often featured alongside the thoroughly debunked claims of a establishment paedophile ring in Scotland and Tony Blair's slapping of a D-Notice on Peter Mandelson's involvement in child abuse (reports which ignore entirely how the D-Notice committee works), they've become a conspiracy staple.  That the BBC, of all organisations, either didn't know of how long-standing these allegations were and how dubious those pushing them are, or simply wasn't aware is inexcusable.  As much as you can understand Newsnight's apparent determination to get back on the front foot as soon as it could, alarm bells should have rang from the outset.  Is it possible the journalists responsible, including those from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, felt this was a way to get back at all those, the Conservative party among them, who had criticised the BBC by pointing the finger straight back at them?

Whether it was or not, George Entwistle was right to resign.  Scapegoat or otherwise, his not being aware of the Graun's report on the accuracy of Newsnight's story as he was preparing to give a speech spoke of someone out of the loop, unable or unwilling to get a grip.  The decision by the acting director-general Tim Davie to set out exactly who is in a position of responsibility is a good start, but it must be a very temporary situation: if possible, the Pollard review should be accelerated so that those who've "stepped aside" can either return to their jobs or replacements can be made forthwith.  Equally clear is that the BBC's management structure needs an urgent overhaul; the BBC Trust, acting as both regulator and defender cannot continue to exist in its current state.  An wholly independent trust is now needed.  Likewise, the director-general simply cannot remain as editor-in-chief of news, expected to be aware of every investigative report, while also running an organisation as large as the BBC has become (and it should be stressed, should more or less remain).

Some perspective is nonetheless sorely needed.  Ever since the Exposure programme on Savile, what's happened is a classic instance of a moral panic.  To say this helps absolutely no one is an understatement: we've gone from one extreme, that of silence, to one where allegations about almost anyone famous during the 70s so much as hugging someone young a little too tightly have been sprayed about like deodorant by a malodorous hormonal teenager.  With the collapse of Newsnight's credibility, there's the potential that we'll go back to the original position.  If that happens, the BBC is hardly the only organisation to blame.  The Sun last week ran a series of utterly ludicrous articles linking Savile to the Yorkshire Ripper, based on little more than how the body of one of Peter Sutcliffe's victims was found near to Savile's flat in Leeds.  Considering how quickly Savile has gone from charity fundraiser to "one of those most prolific child sex offenders" the country has seen, as well as potential necrophile, murderer was bound to come up sooner or later.  The Daily Star meanwhile has ran a Savile story on its front page every day for the past two weeks.

Even those who should know better, such as George Monbiot, have found themselves caught up in this storm of paedophile finding.  When a mood like this takes over, it's often the case that those who previously were rightly ignored and ridiculed find their imaginings are seen in a different light.  All it takes is a tweet from someone with a decent number of followers, and the damage can be done.  When we then get Philip Schofield presenting the prime minister with a whole series of names his researchers have dug up via a Google search, asking that he speak with them, it's the equivalent of taking seriously the proclamations of street preachers.

It's also a wonderful opportunity for the settling of scores.  The press as a whole is terrified that Leveson's shortly to be revealed recommendations for reform of regulation will involve some variety of statutory underpinning, and it sees this as a great chance to prove that everyone is equally guilty.  The Sun's attack today on Chris Patten is remarkable for its brutality, and it is of course in no way influenced by the way Patten showed how Murdoch caved into the Chinese authorities by refusing to publish his book on his time as last governor of Hong Kong.  Its linking of the Guardian to the BBC is also utterly transparent, on Saturday picking on Monbiot without mentioning it was the Graun that debunked the Newsnight report, while today it describes the BBC "[A]s the broadcasting arm of the muck-raking Guardian newspaper".  Would that be the same muck-raking Guardian newspaper that exposed the phone hacking scandal by any chance, and the same scandal that the Sun's former editor is awaiting criminal trial over?  The Mail meanwhile could hardly be banging the drum harder against more rigorous regulation, with Paul Dacre in apparent terror of Leveson's personal judgement on him, at least according to Private Eye.

None of this is to understate the BBC's failings.  The resignations forced by Lord Hutton's report into the sexed up Iraq dossier were one thing; this has been a disaster entirely of the BBC's own making.  What needs to happen now is a further opening up of the corporation, with cutbacks made not to programmes or journalists as has been the pattern of the last few years but to the layers of management that so singularly failed to prevent this travesty.  Only then can a fightback begin, both to regain lost trust and beat back those who wish for an end to the licence fee altogether.

Labels: , , , , , , , , , ,

Share |

11/12/2012 11:59:00 pm | |

Wednesday, October 24, 2012 

In danger, as ever, of forgetting the real victims.

There's something almost touching about the way the vast majority of the media gave George Entwistle a kicking for his performance in front of the parliamentary media committee yesterday.  Far from the image of hacks, and editors especially being grizzled, tough and all but impervious individuals, it turns out that their feelings are really rather easily hurt.  Why else would they have been so hysterically critical of the BBC's new director general, only just over a month into the job, if they hadn't been so scarred by their own appearances before the Leveson inquiry?

This isn't to say that Entwistle was convincing yesterday, as on a number of issues he clearly wasn't.  To start with, he most certainly should have been better prepared.  His lack of inquiry into why exactly Jimmy Savile was being investigated by Newsnight when he was told of the potential problem by Helen Boaden is not adequately explained by his stated refusal to interfere in matters outside of his remit.  Postponing the planned tributes to Savile until after the investigation was completed would have a perfectly reasonable precaution to take.  Likewise, his failure to delve deeper into whether Peter Rippon's blog post was completely accurate despite being warned that it was misleading by the producer of Newsnight's spiked report is both perplexing and worrying.  Also in need of clarification is a report in today's Times which suggests Boaden may well have had more input into the investigation than has previously been stated.

Some of the questioning was though both irrelevant and completely over-the-top.  What point exactly was served by Philip Davies inquiring about the names of those who authorised the transporting of young girls to Savile's shows, and then allowed them to stay on afterwards?  Entwistle didn't know because he doesn't need to know; as long as none of those involved are still working at the BBC, which is highly unlikely, it's now a matter both for the police and for the inquiry he's set-up rather than the director general.  Just as off the mark was Therese Coffey's highlighting of a comment by Rippon in an email that the sources they had were "just the women", taking it as proof they weren't being believed.  Rather than challenging her interpretation, pointing out that this is more likely a reference to how they should also question those working on the programmes at the time, he demurred.  Later on, Entwistle was compared to James Murdoch, as though his failings are in some way comparable to the man in charge of running an company that the media committee itself said seemed to be suffering from "collective amnesia" and which Murdoch senior later admitted had instigated a cover-up.

It still took quite some chutzpah for the Sun, of all papers, to splash on Entwistle's problems and describe him as baffled, bumbling and clueless.  Considering that the paper's last editor is currently awaiting trial for perverting the course of justice and conspiracy to intercept communications, a little humility would be nice.  Similarly, as we await Lord Leveson's report, perhaps Paul Dacre could reflect on what it might say about his own paper and editorship, rather than accuse the BBC of "manipulating the facts".  Or perhaps Dacre is annoyed as that's his job.

Just as opportunistic has been Maria Miller, who felt she just had to write to Chris Patten to register her concern at the BBC's ability to investigate itself, despite the media committee deciding they would allow the Pollard review to reach its own conclusions.  It's understandable she might feel aggrieved at how her predecessor nearly lost his job after acting as the minister for Murdoch, but that was hardly the BBC's doing.  Patten was entirely justified in effectively telling Miller what she could do with her concern.

All of this focus on Newsnight runs the risk of taking attention away not from why Savile got away with hiding in plain sight for so long but how.  Monday's Panorama made clear that even if not common knowledge, there were plenty of people who either suspected or had seen for themselves Savile's activities, and yet for the most part they either did nothing about it or their attempts to get it looked into floundered.  Without wanting to criticise those who must now bitterly regret not doing more, it still seems remarkable that some of those who knew didn't push harder, either going to the police or finding others with the same worries and then approaching managers to give their concerns extra weight.

This can't all be explained by the culture of the time; indeed, it was barely cited by those who've now come forward.  Certain commentators, while quick to assign blame to the liberal left either down to permissiveness, or because the abuse took place within the BBC or other state institutions, have ignored almost entirely Savile's links to other parts of the establishment. He befriended both royalty and politicians, spending Christmas at Chequers with Margaret Thatcher throughout the 80s, something the same right-wing tabloid press that worshipped the ground she walked on don't seem to want to discuss.

The greatest difficulty victims of abuse have always faced is being believed, as still shown by the failings of the police, social services and the CPS in Rochdale.  It wasn't political correctness that allowed the rape of vulnerable young girls to continue, but that the victims either weren't believed or even felt by those who should have been protecting them to be "making their own choice".  In an age before child abuse became synonymous with the darkest reaches of the internet, it often took the actual catching of a paedophile in the act for a charge to be brought and a conviction achieved.  Nick Davies wrote a whole series of articles on abuse in the late 90s that are just as applicable today, in spite of the advances in investigation that have been made.  Those in positions of power have always been able, either through connections, lawyers or influence to get their abuses either dropped or hushed up, the testimony of the weak disregarded or ridiculed.

That this now seems to have happened to a limited extent at the BBC is not surprising.  Compared to other powerful institutions that have either dragged their feet or gone into complete denial when faced with such accusations, it has acted with relative speed, albeit not swiftly enough.  What this shouldn't be allowed to become is another witch-hunt, where those who have made limited but understandable mistakes today pay the price for the much greater failings of the past (just as the News of the World should never have been sacrificed in an attempt to save Brooks and the Murdochs).  Savile is dead.  His victims and those who facilitated him are not.

Labels: , , , , , , , , ,

Share |

10/24/2012 09:57:00 pm | |

About

  • This is septicisle
profile

Links

Last posts

Archives

Email me
Syndicate this site (XML)
Powered by Blogger
and Blogger Templates