SOMETHING SMELLS BAD AT THE BBC
The decision to broadcast a documentary about a man cleared in court by a jury had no substance. You can’t help but feel that if it hadn’t been Alex Salmond in the dock, then the idea would have been binned.
At no point did it feel like it was a look at the trial, more a roundabout examination of the underbelly of Mr Salmond’s character. And it ended up coming across as a petty attempt to stick the knife in.
The BBC effort to retry Alex Salmond consisted of pulling out all of the allegations that were used in the real trial, and none of the defence’s robust arguments against them.
It was completely unbecoming of a broadcaster like the BBC, which prides itself on a reputation of impartiality and quality newsgathering. This had neither.
It was, in fact, the retrial of Alex Salmond, with very shoddy parameters.
The first is the choice of presenter. Wark is a BBC veteran and stalwart of ‘Newsnight’, which claims to carry weight as a platform for serious journalism.
That aside, in 2007 the BBC were forced to issue an apology to Mr Salmond following an interview by Wark on that very show, for being "rude and dismissive.”
Scandal
Previously she had been mixed up in a scandal, as the former First Minister, Labour’s Jack McConnell, Mr Salmond’s then political opponent, was revealed not to have listed in the Register of Interest that he and his family had enjoyed a holiday with the BBC woman’s family at her villa in Majorca on two separate occasions.
Something certainly smells bad in Pacific Quay.
Posts
For those of us who watched, listened and read output from the BBC prior to and since the 2014 Independence Referendum, your above statement, "BBC, which prides itself on a reputation of impartiality and quality newsgathering", is not a quality of the BBC that we recognise.
ReplyDeleteI just got a reply to my complaint to the BBC. No surprises here.
ReplyDelete>> Thank you for contacting us about the Trial of Alex Salmond and we are sorry to hear of your concerns. However we don’t agree that this programme was biased or unfair.
Alex Salmond has been a senior political figure for many years and his trial and subsequent acquittal was a major news story, which received extensive coverage at the time. The outcome was fairly reflected in the programme and would have been known to everyone watching. Within that context, the film aimed to examine what impact the trial had had in terms of the ‘me too’ movement and Scottish politics. A range of different views were heard, including authoritative contributors who made points in support of Alex Salmond, such as Jim Sillars and Kenny MacAskill. Mr Salmond himself was invited to take part but declined to do so, as the film made clear. The BBC’s Editorial Guidelines require us to be duly impartial and accurate in our reporting and we believe this was the case here.
We appreciate not everyone agrees with the decisions we take but we welcome feedback and have passed your comments to senior editors of the programme.
Kind regards,
BBC Complaints Team
www.bbc.co.uk/complaints<<
I don't know anyone who believes or trusts the ebc, it is english to the core , english values are not Scottish values, it reeks of political bias from kaye adams , gary robertson et al on the radio to the likes of wark the now happily departed union jackie (bird) brewer and a host of other tories who are finding it increasingly difficult to hide their political affiliations and whenever someone complains they are told that whatever they are complaining about is actually in line with the ebc editorial mandate, whereas everyone actually knows that the ebc is a tory run arm of the english tory government, I don't know if the ebc was ever impartial but I do know now it is anything but impartial
ReplyDelete