Very well intentioned but the BBC, police, Keith Vaz and everyone are looking down the wrong road.

If "you will be believed" is correct and people do not make up or exaggerate claims about celebrities and others, then there is nothing wrong with the way things are done. Police SHOULD "tip off" media before searches or arrests. If people never lie or exaggerate, media should broadcast allegations - they are a "great story".

But if you accept MY opinion (and experience) that people DO make things up, inflate, colour, and imagine things - especially if the person is famous - then this is appalling behaviour and leads to terrible injustice.

It's very simple - but anathema to society, it appears.

www.bbc.com/news/uk-28886012

It shows what sort of people now inhabit the BBC.

I believe, mainly because very learned legal people have said so, that the BBC is on very shaky legal ground (as are the Sth Yorkshire police)

Quite apart from the morality of the whole affair.

What the hell is wrong at the BBC?. When did it become an entity that competes with the red tops and tabloid TV media?. Why does it even do so? It does not rely on advertising and I reckon if it took the opposite tack- just presented well produced investigative & entertainment programs it would avoid the hate now directed at it/

Sometimes I think that people like Hall are the enemy within at the BBC. We all know Rupert & his commercial competitors would love to see the BBC broken just as he is trying to destroy the ABC in Oz.

hedda wrote:
[quote]...I reckon if it took the opposite tack- just presented well produced investigative & entertainment programs it would avoid the hate now directed at it.../quote]
It doesn't look as if they want to do that.

www.pressgazette.co.uk/john-sweeney-lose...ll-gain-more-control

hedda wrote:
It shows what sort of people now inhabit the BBC.

I believe, mainly because very learned legal people have said so, that the BBC is on very shaky legal ground (as are the Sth Yorkshire police)

Quite apart from the morality of the whole affair.

What the hell is wrong at the BBC?. When did it become an entity that competes with the red tops and tabloid TV media?. Why does it even do so? It does not rely on advertising and I reckon if it took the opposite tack- just presented well produced investigative & entertainment programs it would avoid the hate now directed at it/

Sometimes I think that people like Hall are the enemy within at the BBC. We all know Rupert & his commercial competitors would love to see the BBC broken just as he is trying to destroy the ABC in Oz.

How is he destroying ABC ?

BBC should be privatised by now.

andrew wrote:
hedda wrote:
It shows what sort of people now inhabit the BBC.

I believe, mainly because very learned legal people have said so, that the BBC is on very shaky legal ground (as are the Sth Yorkshire police)

Quite apart from the morality of the whole affair.

What the hell is wrong at the BBC?. When did it become an entity that competes with the red tops and tabloid TV media?. Why does it even do so? It does not rely on advertising and I reckon if it took the opposite tack- just presented well produced investigative & entertainment programs it would avoid the hate now directed at it/

Sometimes I think that people like Hall are the enemy within at the BBC. We all know Rupert & his commercial competitors would love to see the BBC broken just as he is trying to destroy the ABC in Oz.

How is he destroying ABC ?

BBC should be privatised by now.

perhaps you haven't noticed Murdoch's statements and his 70% market dominated newspapers that attack the ABC relentlessly (just as he attempted with the BBC- or have you forgotten James Murdoch's speech calling for the dismantling of the BBC?). I attended a speech given by Lachlan Murdoch about 10 years ago calling for the same with the ABC.

Perhaps you haven't noticed the current Oz PM & his ghastly government- installed via a vicious campaign by Murdoch's media- continued attacks upon the ABC and their shocking stacking of the ABC board that includes, bizarrely , a strident anti - ABC Murdoch columnist.

perhaps you haven't noticed that the current government are implementing a raft of policies by the shady right-wing "think tank" (funded by the enemies of the ABC) and one of those is to destroy the ABC.

You may wish the UK to be dominated by Sky & a bunch of BSKYB garbage- and it will be cheap garbage (why produce anything else if there is no competiton ?) but I reckon tens of millions of Brits think otherwise.

Peter Preston wrote a piece for The Observer last week complaining that the BBC wasn't making biting satirical programmes any more. A typically disingenuous piece. One reason, of course, is that the likes of the Observer and Guardian, while really 'brave' when attacking things a safe distance away, have sat back and done nothing while the Mail and the Murdoch press have systematically undermined the BBC. These smug, self-admiring liberal publications have not spoken out as the belief in public service broadcasting has been all but destroyed by cynical commercial competitors. And then they have the nerve to wonder why the BBC seems spineless these days. There was nothing fated about it. It was allowed to happen by people who knew it was wrong.