Listening Post

BBC in crisis?

Listening Post unravels the bad press the BBC has given itself.
Last Modified: 19 Dec 2012 16:13

It is the biggest and most recognised news network in the world. For decades, the publically funded British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has been a journalistic standard bearer.

But it has been a difficult time for the BBC. A decision by BBC flagship current affairs show, Newsnight, to drop a story about one of their most celebrated broadcasters, Jimmy Savile, who had been accused of sexual abuse, unleashed a cascade of events that led to the resignation of its director general, George Entwistle.

Listening Post's Flo Phillips unravels the bad press the BBC has given itself. We speak to media experts Stewart Purvis, who ran the television news agency ITN; New Statesman journalist and Al Jazeera presenter Mehdi Hasan; Tim Luckhurst, who was a news editor at the BBC; and Nathalie Fenton.

"The BBC has been reminded in the last few weeks that whilst it does many things to entertain the British public, whilst it does many things to educate them, its primary responsibility is to inform and that means that the jewel in its crown, its journalism, is also its Achilles heel. If the BBC is to be trusted, respected and admired as it is, by the British public and around the world, then it must at all times maintain rigorous scrutiny and the highest conceivable standards in its journalism both at home and abroad."

Tim Luckhurst, a former news editor at the BBC

249

Source:
Al Jazeera
Topics in this article
People
Featured on Al Jazeera
Al Jazeera's exclusive publishing of a key Guantanamo prison military document lays bare the brutality of force-feeding.
Former military official says poverty and anger in indigenous communities mean conditions for an "insurgency" are ripe.
A four-part series that gives a rare insight into the country on the move, with history in tow.
Series on the Palestinian 'catastrophe' of 1948 that led to dispossession and conflict that still endures.
Featured
A four-part series that gives a rare insight into the country on the move, with history in tow.
Series on the Palestinian 'catastrophe' of 1948 that led to dispossession and conflict that still endures.
Two years since the start of the uprising, rebels and Assad's forces remain locked in conflict.
China aims to expand its influence in the resource rich area.
Extensive coverage of war crimes tribunals and controversial calls for blasphemy laws.
join our mailing list