Reflections

The BBC has recently been in the spotlight over two issues. One was the editing of an incident involving the Queen and an American photographer. For those who didn’t see it, the Queen was sitting in a confection of silks and satins, and the photographer asked her to remove her tiara so that she would look less “dressy”.   “Dressy?”  said the Queen.  “Dressy? What do you think this is?”  (indicating her whole outfit).  Anyway, a subsequent picture of the Queen apparently walking out saying,  “I am not going to change anything” was in fact a shot of her walking in, something which rather fictionalised what happened. I had some sympathy with the Queen, who must have to put up with stuff like this all the time. I have none, however, with the director who fraudulently changed the sequence of shots.

He subsequently appeared, saying with some satisfaction that he hadn’t been asked to resign. He should have been.

The other issue was another fraudulent action on the part of the BBC in the programme  “Blue Peter”.  A technical fault meant that the winner of a competition couldn’t be contacted, and a child who was in the studio anyway was asked to “stand in” for the winner.

What shocks me about both these episodes is that in both cases deception was seen as a legitimate way of dealing with an issue. To me, it is symptomatic of the appalling slump in standards of the BBC. A couple of decades ago the service could be trusted. That is no longer the case.

With illiteracy, dishonesty and a failure of personal accountability pervading the medium, the BBC needs to get its finger out in a big way if it is going to claw back the reputation it once had. I somehow doubt whether the corporation has the people in influential positions who could carry out this change.

A pity.