Who’s Your Auntie? Don’t get Foxed into dumbing down, BBC

Excellent comment piece by Marina Hyde in today’s Guardian, discussing the hypocrisy of Mail readers on the lookout for BBC slip-ups.

She says those very audiences are the people who would relish the ethically abominable programmes they show in the US, such as Fox’s Who’s Your Daddy, which invited an adopted woman to guess her real father from a panel:

 

It’s the kind of low-budget, sentimental, voyeuristic TV that brings in audiences. Perhaps we shouldn’t expect anything this hideous from Auntie quite yet.

But it seems the BBC is still shunning responsibility where it matters. Private Eye just reported that 150 radio and TV hacks are for the chop. Meanwhile the BBC is having to pay £150,000  for the stupidity of two overpaid entertainers.

The fallout from Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand’s phonecall may have been hopelessly disproportionate,  but the Beeb has it coming if it keeps hiring and firing the wrong people.

Climate of Fear?

They say that if you’re starting a blog, write something you really care about.

So, here is a blog about the big wide world of the BBC; a world in which I want to work one day. 

It will be deal with values that the BBC is constantly struggling to balance and uphold; informing, educating, and entertaining with objectivity.

In this internet age, that challenge is huge. Complaints are made at the click of  button and the consequences (good or bad), can last for months or do permanent damage.

Marina Hyde last week linked the BBC’s refusal to air the DEC humanitarian aid appeal for Gaza with last year’s so-called Sachsgate saga. It had created a climate of fear, according to Hyde.

Whether she was right or wrong, it is hard to see how articles still cynically milking the Ross-Brand saga (like this one in the Mail today), will help the BBC make the right choice when facing more serious decisions in future.