BBC to issue global apology for documentaries that broke rules

[Newsjock]

Source: The Independent

The BBC will today apologise to an estimated 74 million people around the world for a news fixing scandal, exposed by The Independent, in which it broadcast documentaries made by a London TV company that was earning millions of pounds from PR clients which it featured in its programming.

BBC World News viewers from Kuala Lumpur to Khartoum and Bangkok to Buenos Aires will watch the remarkable broadcast, available in 295 million homes, 1.7 million hotel rooms, 81 cruise ships, 46 airlines and on 35 mobile phone platforms, at four different times, staged in order to reach audiences in different time zones. The BBC will apologise for breaking "rules aimed at protecting our editorial integrity".

The Independent exposed last year in an investigation into the global television news industry how the BBC paid nominal fees of as little as £1 for programmes made by FBC Media (UK), whose PR client list included foreign governments and multinational companies. The company made eight pieces for the BBC about Malaysia while failing to declare it was paid £17m by the Malaysian government for "global strategic communications". The programmes included positive coverage of Malaysia's controversial palm oil industry.

... The Independent has revealed FBC, which was run by the former Financial Times journalist Alan Friedman and the CNN presenter John Defterios, was also making editorial programmes that featured FBC clients for the global business broadcaster CNBC, which suspended its FBC-made show World Business. Other FBC clients included the governments of Greece and Kazakhstan and companies like Microsoft. FBC also tried to suggest in its promotional literature it had "cultivated" key opinion formers, such as economist Jeffrey Sachs, as "ambassadors". Sachs totally rejected the claim.

Read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/tv-radio/bbc-to-issue-global-apology-for-documentaries-that-broke-rules-6719997.html

[lame54]

1. And Now For Something Completely Illegal

[truebrit71]

6. ROFL~!

Thread winner!!

[snot]

2. This has been in the works since before 2005, when the BBC's rules were changed . . .

. . . to allow the Prime Minister to appoint the BBC's Trustees and to permit outsourcing. See http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x376080 . Wish I'd been wrong.

And that was the biggest response I managed to inspire. Since then, of course, how DU posts have complained about the media?

I hope some day we'll all prioritize the more fundamental issues more highly. As I've said for years, the top three should be election reform, media reform (including protection of the internet), and education (which has now become a hot topic; but that too has been in the works for years) – because if we can fix those, all other issues will be much easier to fix; if we can't, we'll continually be playing catch-up, at best.

[garmatnuk]

3. Just another PR

I don't think they have to apology - it's another PR)

[stockholmer]

4. BBC News was, is, and always will be MI6/NATO/bankster propagandists and war-mongering shills

http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2012/02/bbc-are-corporate-paid-propagandists.html

[Blue_Tires]

5. Well, at the minimum at least I can say they're going public with the mea culpa