The point of the BBC was to get, as far as humanly and institutionally possible, to the facts. Its standards for reporting were higher than practically any organisation on earth; if they said it, they could show why they said it and how they got there. It wasn't perfect, it didn't often break a story, but by god if and when they reported it, you could rely on it.
And then they burned that mother lode of trust: Deceit plunges BBC into darkest days.
THE BBC has been thrown into crisis after uncovering a "hornet's nest of deception" involving some of its biggest charity appeals, including Comic Relief, Sport Relief and Children in Need.
After discovering at least six more incidents of viewers being seriously misled, the broadcaster immediately suspended all its competitions across its television, radio and web operations. Some "editorial leaders" at the heart of the problems have been suspended.
On what was dubbed a "black Wednesday" for public service broadcasting in Britain, the media regulator Ofcom also released a damning report on premium phone lines that uncovered a "systemic failure" in their operation.
In an effort to head off a new wave of criticism, the BBC introduced a mandatory training program, "Safeguarding Trust", for its 16,500 staff.
Coming shortly after faked publicity footage for a BBC documentary that appeared to show the Queen storming out of a photoshoot and the first ever fine of £50,000 ($116,860) for faking a phone-in on the children's program Blue Peter, the BBC's director-general, Mark Thompson, said the new revelations were "a very grave breach of discipline".
BS. These people were not breaching discipline. They were following the lead set by their bosses. They lived in an institutional environment where this kind of behaviour was tacitly, but clearly, enabled, encouraged and rewarded. Ofcom was right, the failure is systemic.
Yes yes, the Mission Statement and the written rules all forbid this crap, but not one of these things could have happened without the people making the decisions being promoted to positions where they could, and were rewarded for, subverting the mission statement and the written rules.
In large measure, all this has come because the community at large, and the people who lead it, both in government and business, place no premium on truth, on fact, on transparency. It wasn't long ago that Fox news sued in US cpourts for the right to lie in its news and won, supported by a stable of other major media corporations. That said it all.
By systematically underfunding the BBC to try and enforce compliance with its political agenda, the UK Government has, for half a generation, pushed the BBC into prostituting itself to raise money or to gain audience share to "justify" its existence. Its focus has become one of sustaining that existence rather than fulfilling its charter to provide the best quality of information possible.
But once you become a prostitute, is it any wonder that you end up associating with pimps and pushers and scam artists?
I don't give a damn whether these "competitions" were faked or not, in a media world where everything, including "reality" has become a performance to distract the masses, a rigged TV competition is about the least of our troubles. Our biggest problem is that we can no longer rely on the mass media to tell us anything useful, let alone the truth about anything important.
In a world swimming in information, our primary sources have become systematic liars; thank god for the net where we at least know that we have to check the information before we give it cred, where we CAN check the information.
As for the Beeb, I have no idea how they claw their way back to credibility. Sad day.
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Don't hold back now, Earl ;-)
I wonder what Andrew Keen would say about this .. it seems to speak to the heart of his premise.
Posted by: Jon Husband | July 22, 2007 at 12:55 PM
Hi premise, if I understand it, is that institutional media can be trusted, although he adduces no evidence for that in those pieces. Tradition is dead in those few places it existed and governments and corporate media are complicit in reinforcing each other's agendas.
I'm all the way with David W, the internet is a tool for both producing everything and sifting everything in the information environment.
What interests me almost as much is that Taleb's Black swans announce themselves in small ways that are not important at the time.
Peak Oil announced itself in strange Saudi behaviour back in 2004, bids for increased state control and coercion turn up in dodgy language around terrorism and the final collapse of media integrity arrives in a telethon for a good cause.
Sometimes it IS just a cigar, but very often it is not.
Posted by: Earl Mardle | July 23, 2007 at 11:51 AM