How the BBC is right - but looks so wrong
The BBC is right. But they have a spectacular capacity to make themselves look wrong. The explanation finally given this morning for the Carol Thatcher affair was utterly clear. The "golliwog" comments about a black tennis player were made in a public, working area occupied by around a dozen people, some of whom were offended. They were not "private" remarks. And, besides, if that’s the kind of language Carol Thatchers thinks acceptable even privately, the BBC has every right to stop her appearances, not least for fear she causes even wider offence by using such vocabulary on air. As she refused to apologise, it would have been better all round if the circumstances had been explained earlier. But that is where the BBC should be cleverer. There were very lovely BBC people who seemed shocked when I tied its giant arts programming launch last week to the current public service broadcasting debate. (28/01/2009 --- BBC puts arts back into focus - THE BBC launched a bid today to reclaim the public service broadcasting high ground with a giant package of new arts and music programmes. After a string of scandals topped by the Jonathan Ross affair, director-general Mark Thompson renewed the BBC’s commitment to the arts....)
But how else did they think a giant re-affirmation of their love of the arts would be interpreted?
The BBC does, genuinely, make some terrific arts programmes, even if too many of them don’t receive the publicity they deserve on Radio 3 or BBC4.
In which case, how much shrewder it would have been to trumpet them last year, when they could have been viewed quite separately from all political ramifications.
ends
