Monday 22 October 2012

It is not just the BBC


The daily drip of claim and allegation has been seized on by many in the media to put the boot into the beeb. There are many things wrong at the BBC and the Savile affair has shown the organisation in a bad light. It is still a national institution and (mainly) a treasure. Fleet Street’s finest should be careful of crowing too much. They have much to answer for too.

Try this from the latest Private Eye:

“At The Sun, new Page Three girls were sometimes invited to accompany senior staff on jaunts and ‘play along’ with them in the interests of their careers; and at least two female regional reporters were transferred to London because they were known to be ‘up for it.’ 

What caused most horror, however, were the paper’s occasional ‘think-tanks’. Secretaries and female execs used to dread attending these away-breaks because of the late-night attentions of Stuart Higgins (the then editor) - the persistent 2am knock on the door with an accompanying invitation to experience ‘Higgie’s biggie’.  

And

“ It’s becoming clear executives, producers and fellow stars suspected these men of abusing young children and did nothing.” Daily Mail editorial last week. 

.....Perhaps rather than burying it on the letters page, the Mail should have taken more notice of the tip-off it received from a nurse at Stoke Mandeville on 7 November last year: ‘Tributes suggest he had saintly qualities. I’m afraid many of us who worked at Stoke Mandeville hospital would beg to differ.....Many a patient’s biggest fear was to wake in the hospital to find Jimmy Savile at the end of their bed.’”

Compare and contrast the mea culpa chest-beating taking place at the beeb and the ‘what me guv?’ approach stuck to with rigid discipline for over two years by News International before the dam burst. Compare the transparency of the beebs inquiries with the way witnesses and victims were bought off by Murdoch and his minions.

Who do you trust? Murdoch - with all his business interests and tame politicians? Or the BBC? 


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