BBC recommendations
23/06/04 11:58 Media
issues
OK - there's loads out there about the Telegraph and
its purchase, and how Conrad Black is going to try
and stop the Barclay brothers buying it.
More interestingly, today the BBC has unveiled its plans to revamp its news services in the wake of Hutton.
I'm stunned. There's a lot of good stuff in there of course - a journalism college is to be welcomed by anyone with a commitment to quality, and single-sourced stories will be used only when they are truly in the public interest.
OK, rewind that last sentence and read it again. They will run stories from single sources only when the item is in the public interest. The Hutton Report, you'll recall, was about a single-sourced story and the source, when identified, tragically took his own life. And Lord Hutton criticised the BBC for running the story at all.
The story was about how the claims that we were under imminent threat from Iraq with their weapons of mass destruction were at best exaggerated.
Is it just me, or has that story turned out to be completely true? And if so, what could be more in the public interest than the idea that our country was taken to war under a completely mistaken premise?
And bearing this in mind, why hasn't the Hutton Report been put in the nearest shredder along with m'lud's reputation, rather than still getting treated as a serious statement on the press by so many?
More interestingly, today the BBC has unveiled its plans to revamp its news services in the wake of Hutton.
I'm stunned. There's a lot of good stuff in there of course - a journalism college is to be welcomed by anyone with a commitment to quality, and single-sourced stories will be used only when they are truly in the public interest.
OK, rewind that last sentence and read it again. They will run stories from single sources only when the item is in the public interest. The Hutton Report, you'll recall, was about a single-sourced story and the source, when identified, tragically took his own life. And Lord Hutton criticised the BBC for running the story at all.
The story was about how the claims that we were under imminent threat from Iraq with their weapons of mass destruction were at best exaggerated.
Is it just me, or has that story turned out to be completely true? And if so, what could be more in the public interest than the idea that our country was taken to war under a completely mistaken premise?
And bearing this in mind, why hasn't the Hutton Report been put in the nearest shredder along with m'lud's reputation, rather than still getting treated as a serious statement on the press by so many?
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