The BBC Trust’s condemnation of Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen has the potential to cause serious damage to the corporation’s international standing, says Jonathan Dimbleby
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Index on Censorship news editor Padraig Reidy was on Richard Bacon’s show on BBC Radio Five Live last night, discussing Jacqui Smith’s ‘least wanted’ list of people barred from the UK.
You can listen to the show here
Ofcom has fined the BBC £150,000 for breaches of the broadcasting code on Russell Brand’s Radio 2 show in October.
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BBC Radio 1 controller Andy Parfitt has ‘warned’ breakfast DJ Chris Moyles about ‘homophobia’ and ‘bullying’ on his breakfast show.
The BBC reports Parfitt as saying ‘I made it absolutely perfectly clear to him and everyone at Radio 1 that we don’t condone bullying or homophobia or anything else like that.
‘As long as people work within the rules, then their future’s secure.’
The second part is actually the more interesting. Moyles, like Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross before him, and Kenny Everett before them, is employed exactly because of who he is and what he says. By definition, Moyles is supposed to be at very least sailing close to the wind.
Similarly, John Gaunt was employed because he’s the type of person that would call someone a ‘health Nazi’. Yet his employers at LBC Talksport feigned shock when he did just that, and sacked him.
The problem (for bosses) with ‘edgy’ is that there always has to be a risk of going too far. If one robs Moyles, or Ross, of the ‘what will he say next’ frisson, nothing is left. When Parfitt suggests that everyone works within the rules, he is making obselete the very reason for employing Moyles in the first place.