Posted on 11/12/2012 8:13:43 PM PST by granada
Few seem to be enjoying the management meltdown at the venerable BBC more than Rupert Murdoch, the News Corp. chief whose rival British newspapers have been caught up in their own lengthy, embarrassing and expensive phone-hacking scandal.
But the troubles for both media organizations highlight that the news industry in Britain is at rock-bottom in public esteem, and could face increased restrictions from the government of Prime Minister David Cameron, which appears convinced it has been unable to police itself.
The British Broadcasting Corp. has moved into full-bore damage control since it retracted mistaken allegations by its marquee news program that a politician sexually abused children. That serious mistake followed the BBC's earlier failure to report on widespread child sex abuse allegations against one of its biggest stars, the late Jimmy Savile.
"BBC mess gives Cameron golden opportunity (to) properly reorganize great public broadcaster," Murdoch tweeted gleefully Sunday.
The scandal follows several years of turmoil over the phone-hacking scandal, which exploded with the discovery that employees of Murdoch's News of the World tabloid hacked into a kidnapped girl's mobile phone. The scandal widened when scores of celebrities, sports stars and politicians said they, too, had been hacked. The tabloid folded, Murdoch's media paid out millions in compensation and still faces scores of lawsuits. Several news executives have been arrested.
A report due this month from Lord Justice Brian Leveson, based on months of jarring testimony about wrongdoing by Murdoch's reporters and others, may prompt the government to impose statutory regulation on the British print press, which is overseen by an industry watchdog.
Many say the reputation of the British media is at an all-time low.
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
Murdoch suffered great pressure from Britain left wing media, they tried to use hacking scandal to destroy him.
I believe it's the reason that made Murdoch fail to give enough support in the election.
BBC likely won’t lose a dime, being funded by the state.
I’m happy, too.
The BBC has been pushing an extreme left agenda for decades, an agenda that looked the other way at pop culture pedophiles. In addition to his filthy behavior, Savile pushed degenerate culture on generations of Britons. The leftists at the BBC loved the idea of deflecting attention to another scandal, particularly one involving the Tories and , even better, aides to The Iron Lady. They were so wrong about this “non-scandal.” I hope MacAlpine sues the BBC and that Guardian slimeball Monbiot. And, the BBC should be dismantled. Government-sponsored media has no place in the 21st Century (Listen up, Big Bird). Finally, Jeremy Paxman should soak his head in a urinal. I do hate a smug leftist.
You think PBS is bad..can you imagine the nation’s #1 TV channel being completely taxpayer-funded? Britons HAVE to pay a tax to the BBC if they want to own a TV! Now “Auntie Beeb” has been caught in a Penn State-style scandal, and it’s only getting worse. The Thatcher-hating UK lefties are crapping themselves right now over this. It makes the phone hacking scandal look like shoplifting!
yes. I believe BBC tried to use that non-existent scandal as a distraction.
Yes, I know about that kind of stuff. RTE did (and still does) the same TV-license thing in Ireland.
Funny enough, they still charge less for the license if you have a B/W set versus color. The B/W license is £49 (about $79) while the color license is £145.50 ($231). Imagine Washington DC trying to force something like that on US TV owners, though?
It went on for DECADES.
I'm certain MANY people knew what was going on.
Same withthe Elmo scandal.
Oh, what a surprise a children's entertainer is a pedophile.
What's next? Are we going to hear that a child's party clown is hiding bodies in his crawlspace?
Color me unsurprised.
Savile’s behaviour is yet to be proved.
Some of the allegations have been shown to be bogus, and others seem to amount to consentual sex with teenagers and some groping.
The ‘evidence’ presented by a major ITV documentary (ITV is the other (commercial) huge UK TV channel) was frankly laughable, reduced to stating a kiss was ‘sexual assault’. Other evidence was accused by a man who is a convicted fraudster (twice).
Questionable behaviour, but not rape or abuse. It seems he may have been a dirty old man with a liking for jailbait, but not a paedophile, rapist or abuser.
BTW, as a Briton who grew up in the 70’s to now, I would like to know what you mean by ‘degenerate behaviour’. Savile presented the nation’s favourite pop music show and a children’s wish-making programme at Saturday teatime. As well as radio pop shows.
None a den of degeneracy.
Britain, until the 1990’s, was happy to pay the licence fee.
We had what was undoubtedly the finest TV in the world, and along with ITV, the BBC was the pinnacle of that. Nobody then and even now can match the scope of the BBC: news, entertainment, current affairs, sport, music, radio, documentaries....
The BBC News in older days was also more impartial and free of the leftist bias (by and large) that it has now.
For its problems and ills, the BBC is still a superb broadcaster, with a range of programming unmatched. It is after all still the world’s biggest broadcaster.
The BBC however has had its day perhaps as a state funded broadcaster. It is the only one left in the UK that is.
One of the odder aspects of this is that most of the investigation and exposure of the BBC management failings has come from the BBC itself and its journalists. The Director-General, Entwistle, resigned after being eviscerated by the BBC’s star interviewer on its flagship radio breakfast news show. Hard to imagine this happening with any other media organisation. And Murdoch has little to crow about. Nothing which has happened, or is alleged to have happened at the BBC remotely approaches the sustained criminality, deliberately pursued as corporate policy, with which News International executives have been charged and await trial.
Am I the only one who can’t get the rest of the article with the link???
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