Rupert Murdoch’s probably enjoying a day’s respite from the phone-hacking scorn being heaped upon him. Today is the BBC’s bad PR day.
First this from The Independent:
The BBC has admitted 15 breaches of its editorial guidelines and has bought documentaries for “nominal” fees as little as £1 from a company that was working to promote foreign governments such as the Egyptian regime of the now-deposed Hosni Mubarak . . . .
The BBC Trust has published its 66-page report into the BBC’s failings in its use of funding and sponsorship for the making of current affairs programmes on its international channel, BBC World News. The report follows an investigation by The Independent into the practices of the London-based production company FBC (Fact Based Communications), which also worked for the government of Malaysia, led by Najib Razak, the dictatorship of Kazakhstan and numerous other countries and corporate giants including Microsoft and American Express.
FBC was commissioned by the BBC to make 20 current affairs documentaries, many of them on controversial political and environmental issues.
As if that’s not bad enough, the UK press is picking up on an embarrassing Daily Mail report about the Beeb’s bloated bureaucracy:
There are almost 4,500 job titles in existence at the Corporation, it has emerged, and almost 2,000 of its staff have the word manager in their title.
It is thought there are even more staff on top of this who are classed as and paid as managers but do not have the word in their job titles . . .
The news comes after the BBC promised last year that it was banning baffling job titles and would make it clearer to the public what staff are doing.
Murdoch, and the rest of the UK media aren’t off the hook though. The Leveson Inquiry‘s already under way.
