BBC shirts lose their stuffing

TELL YOU what I enjoyed most about the debacle at the BBC over the infamous Jonathan Ross/Russell Brand broadcast on Radio 2: the relish with which BBC news presenters reported that the corporation was failing to put up management voices to defend themselves.

Newsnight, the Today programme and PM missed no opportunity to repeat that their requests for a BBC representative had been turned down.

For nearly a week the anti-BBC press were presented with an open goal, and when the chairman of the BBC Trust Michael Lyons and DG Mark Thompson did put themselves up they were hesitant and unconvincing.

It’s not the first time that the BBC’s journalists have displayed rather more backbone than their bosses, the “quivering suits” who appeared to be paralysed in the face of the contrived outrage of the Fleet Street pack.

This has been the state of affairs since the Andrew Gilligan affair in 2004 — in which the then top two were hounded out of their jobs, along with the reporter himself — knocked all the stuffing out of corporate shirts.

At that time BBC journalists covered the story with a fairness that was almost painful — but pretty impressive too: can you see the Daily Mail or any other national medium ever giving such space to their critics?

But recently BBC executives have even been refusing requests to explain themselves in the relatively benign environment of Feedback, the Radio 4 programme that gives viewers the chance to respond to programmes.

Doesn’t “public service broadcasting” involve an obligation to account for your output?

The assumption on the Radio 2 affair seems to be that the case was indefensible. But that simply wasn’t true. No great harm was done: neither “victim” of the comedians’ chatter took great offence. Andrew Sachs and Georgina Baillie have hardly complained, and Georgina Baillie, whose career as an exotic dancer has been propelled to celebrity level, has said that the BBC response was “way out of proportion” and the two comedians should be reinstated.

“I think a world without Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand would be a very sad, dull place,” she said.

AS IS well known, there were just two complaints about the broadcast when it was aired, which is two more than for an item three days earlier on Radio 4. Saturday Live, presented by Clare Balding, featured a former MI6 officer called Harry Ferguson; at least that’s what he said he was called.

There were five minutes of fairly predictable nattering on the 20 adventurous years of a “real life James Bond” before this presumably rehearsed episode: “I suppose you are going to ask me how many people I have killed,” Harry Ferguson said. “Before you ask, it is six.”

There were no further questions; no who, when, where or how, let alone why. I guess, since MI6’s remit is strictly overseas, that the victims were all foreigners, and doubtless they were up to no good. But here was the BBC giving unchallenged airtime to a serial killer, a man who has terminated six living, breathing human souls.

BBC press officers have been combing the records for me but it seems there was not a single complaint; perhaps, like me, listeners were simply too flabbergasted.

I wonder why the Daily Mail didn’t take up that one.

RENT-A-QUOTE MPs are calling for an enquiry into the splendid scoops of BBC economics editor Robert Peston, whose stories on the financial crash have proved so influential — and so accurate. They want to know: who has been feeding him this stuff? And what are they suggesting? That he identify his confidential sources? I’m sure he’d be delighted to do so.

Scots sport hacks lose it altogether

IT WAS George Bernard Shaw who said “those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.” And those who can’t teach, write, I’ve often thought.

It certainly seems that Scotland’s football writers can’t play football. In October they played a “friendly” in Glasgow with a team of Members of the Scottish Parliament, which turned into a mass brawl and had to be abandoned.

One MSP, Labour’s John Park, was sent off for a wild tackle on BBC soccer pundit Chick Young, who complained: “He had a go at breaking my leg.”

In scenes that would have Joey Barton trembling with fright, there were continuous clashes until, after 55 minutes, the referee called off the game; he said afterwards: “The under-10s behave better.”

One politician player said: “The sports hacks were whingeing from start to finish.” And Scotland’s former sports minister, Frank McAveety, who is still Labour’s spokesman on sport, added: “Perhaps their complaints have something to do with the fact that the parliamentarians were winning and some players were in a huff.”

When the match was called off the MSPs were 6-2 up.

Can miracle man save the dead tree press?

WHEN I set off for work on November 5 the newsstand at the tube station had run out of The Guardian, at 9am. Coming home that evening, all the stands at Kings Cross station had run out of the Standard — the paid-for London evening that’s supposed to be on the verge of elimination by freesheets.

Next morning on BBC Today programme James Naughtie reported from a street scene in Washington DC. He was standing in a queue that went round the block outside the Washington Post. The Post was producing a special edition and hundreds of people could not wait for it to reach the newsstands.

The great orator Barack Obama cannot only mobilise the American electorate against the political establishment, it seems he can do something even more remarkable: he can shift newspapers.

“Quality” papers sold out across the US and the UK on November 5. The New York Times sold 35 per cent more papers and copies are now are on eBay at $600. All the UK heavy papers printed extra editions, with added sales of up to 25 per cent.

People obviously bought them because they wanted a memento of a great occasion. But why didn’t they just print out web pages, download pdfs, or save videos on their hard drives? Can it be — and I am risking ridicule here I know — that people will always prefer printed newspapers when they have stories that inspire them?

Jailbird Miller finds a new home with Fox

NAME “Judith Miller” ring a bell? She was the New York Times reporter who went to jail for declining to name the sources for her scandalous stories on Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to the invasion of March 2003.

Of course we all supported her, even though the people she was protecting were war criminals, because that’s the principle.

She also lost her job, and now I am pleased to see she has got a new one, providing commentary on national security and counterterrorism issues for Rupert Murdoch’s war-mongering Fox News. She’ll be all right there.

THERE ARE new skills in our trade all the time but this one is new on me: the Press and Celebrity Officer. The Alzheimer’s Society is advertising for one, to work on “an exciting fundraising partnership”, recruiting and supporting celebrities to take part in charity runs. Job there for a motivated young journalist suffering low pay and overwork on a local paper. Sadly that’s probably what’ll happen.