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The BBC, Lord McAlpine and Libel Law
The past week has seen a series of extraordinary events arising out of a BBC Newsnight broadcast about sexual abuse in children’s homes in North Wales in the 1970s and 1980s. This led to the wide...
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The Leveson Inquiry and the BBC – Brian Cathcart
Is there a link between the BBC crisis and Leveson? Does the fate of George Entwistle teach us lessons about regulated journalism? Yesterday’s papers were fumbling for the connection. In the Observer,...
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Lord McAlpine and libel reform – Gavin Phillipson
Condemnation of the BBC over the Newsnight report linking child abuse allegations to a former senior Tory politician has been savage and universal. Journalists, pundits and politicians confess...
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Libel damages and Lord McAlpine: did the BBC pay too much?
There is no doubt that Lord McAlpine has been badly treated by the BBC. The Newsnight broadcast on 2 November 2012 about sexual abuse in children’s homes in North Wales in the 1970s and 1980s referred...
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Libel Claims against ITV and Twitter – Lord McAlpine and the restoration of...
As we pointed out last week, Lord McAlpine’s reputation was severely damaged by the event surrounding the ill-conceived Newsnight broadcast of 2 November 2012. That damage was caused in part by the...
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Case Law: Tesla Motors v BBC, Top Gear up before Top Judges – Rosalind English
In the case of Tesla Motors v BBC ([2013] EWCA Civ 152) the Court of Appeal refused an appeal against the strike out of a libel claim against the BBC in relation to a review of an electric sports car...
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BBC and the European Scrutiny Committee, Scrutinising the Scrutineers: Part 3...
UK media coverage of EU issues is frequently superficial and plagued by basic errors. The BBC, and others, must work to change this. Part 1 of this post was published on 17 April 2015 and Part 2 on...
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BBC Charter Green Paper: Inside the bizarre logic of the BBC review – Des...
Who would have expected that one of the central debates about the future of the BBC would not be about its pro-business news coverage, its financial mismanagement or its alleged cover-up of the Jimmy...
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BBC Charter renewal: invisible actors and critical friends, Part 1 – Julian...
When the DCMS Green Paper on BBC Charter Renewal [pdf] was published on 16 July 2015, the reaction on the part of the corporation’s enemies in the press was relatively muted, particularly when compared...
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BBC Charter renewal: invisible actors and critical friends, Part 2 – Julian...
This is the final part of a two part post. Part 1 was published on 28 July 2015. Anxiety has been expressed in pro-BBC quarters about the members of the Charter Review advisory group [pdf] set up by...
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How the Murdoch press has waged a relentless campaign against the BBC (and...
Ever since Rupert Murdoch decided to enter the television game in the early 1980s, his newspapers have waged continuous war on public service broadcasters, and on the BBC in particular. These he sees...
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Why the Murdoch press wants to exterminate public broadcasters – Brian McNair
Like most people with even a passing interest in the part played by News Corporation in British politics, I remember exactly what I was doing when scandal broke in 2011 and the sense of a seemingly...
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The Beeb, the bias and the bashing – Ivor Gaber
My entry for the prize for the most unsurprising allegation of 2015 was the uncannily similar complaints that emanated from a number of Conservative MPs who claimed that the BBC’s reporting of the...
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Toxic triangle: how government and commercial media ganged up on BBC –...
The 2011 Parliament Act has been bad news for the BBC. It means the two periods of maximum potential political intervention in the BBC. Charter renewal every ten years and licence fee negotiations...
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Future of the BBC: why the ‘market failure’ model is a flop in broadcasting –...
For any fans of the BBC – and that would include the 59% of Britons who say it is the source they are most likely to turn to for accurate news coverage or, for that matter, the 34% of Americans who...
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BBC Governance: Is a New Settlement Possible? – Damian Tambini
The key players in the debate about the BBC Charter have now shown their hands. The public’s voice is being filtered through a range of public consultations by Parliament, by Government and by the BBC...
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Brexit and the BBC: a tough call for the culture secretary? – Damian Tambini
Culture secretary John Whittingdale gave an update on the progress on the renewal of the BBC Charter in a speech at the Oxford Media Convention last week. All the parties, as well as recent select...
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This isn’t public policy: the prelude to the BBC White Paper – Des Freedman
It is hard to know whether the recent rumours about the contents of the forthcoming White Paper on the future of the BBC should be seen as light entertainment or crime drama. Three leading Sunday...
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Four ways John Whittingdale could wreck the BBC – Steven Barnett
Is John Whittingdale the most hostile politician ever to have responsibility for the BBC? When a senior Telegraph journalist called his appointment as culture secretary “an effective declaration of...
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Decoding the BBC White Paper – Des Freedman
The good folk at the Cambridge University Conservative Association must be a little disappointed. Having listened to culture secretary John Whittingdale tell them only last month that the disappearance...
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