BBC Cuts Costs: It’s Taking The Piss, But Not As We Know It

March 3, 2010

Anton Goryunov writes: The BBC has done what it does best yesterday by taking the piss, at the expense of the long suffering licence payers. As part of its costs cutting exercise the Corporation announced plans to scrap two irrelevant digital radio stations and a couple of websites that no one has ever heard of. BBC Director-General, Mark Thompson, said with a perfectly straight face, that the publicly funded broadcaster was intending to concentrate on making ‘better programmes’. Mr Thompson also let be known that the BBC was planning to continue providing ‘unbiased news’ and make it even better. Imagine for a moment a meeting between the top brass at the BBC where the groundbreaking decision on cutting costs was taken. Director General: People, we’re in serious trouble. We have...

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Category: Point Of View
Tags: BBC, costs, Mark Thompson

A Passionate Defence Of The BBC. And Of Its Hard Working Executives

November 14, 2009

Adam Lovejoy writes: I would like to voice my defence of the BBC and the wonderful and talented people who run it, including its Director General, Mark Thompson, and all of his deputies and senior executives. A vicious campaign has been unleashed against these fine people by some sections of the media, accusing them of receiving huge salaries, as if they do not deliver for the money they are getting. So what if the top 37 BBC executives earn more than the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. What has Mr Brown done for the country, compared to the tireless work that these people at the BBC carry out? Just let me give you some examples of what the hard working executives at the BBC, earn so that you will understand better why I am so angry with hacks who are having a go at them for supposedly...

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Category: Media
Tags: BBC, Mark Byford, Mark Thompson, Salaries

The BBC Is Playing The Impartiality Game With Gaza: What A Joke!

January 26, 2008

The BBC’s top management has come up with one of the most bizarre stunts ever: refusing to screen an appeal to raise money for the Palestinians living in Gaza.How on earth did BBC Director General Mark Thomson manage to keep a straight face when he actually announced that the decision not to broadcast the appeal was motivated by the desire to ‘safeguard the corporation’s impartiality’ in covering events in Gaza? It was like the editor of Pravda newspaper saying in the days of the Soviet Union that he was concerned by people’s perception that it was the mouthpiece of the Communist Party. This is surreal. This is something from George Orwell, or Andrey Platonov, the Russian writer, who had actually preceded Orwell in ridiculing left-wing dictatorships in the 1920s and...

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Category: Media
Tags: BBC, Gaza, Jonathan Ross, Mark Thompson