Let’s Go BBC Bashing
Posted on July 11, 2023
As I understand it, the BBC gets crank calls hundreds of times a week. There are nutcases everywhere looking to make a fast buck or simply undermine them. If they were to investigate every claim made against them, they wouldn’t be able to function as a news and media organisation.
Time for Kangaroo Courts
Of course, this doesn’t mean that if the accused presenter has been purchasing pictures of a child to fund an illegal drug habit, he shouldn’t be sacked. However, there are grey areas that have led the BBC to suspend the presenter whilst they try to understand the allegations. What are they supposed to do, sack the individual without knowing the facts?
Have we really got to the point where the BBC is expected to operate a kangaroo court with every allegation that comes into their switchboard? I hope not. There are many reasons why the BBC have to be measured in their approach. For starters, The Sun newspaper (bastions of decency LOL) is part of a rival pay-per-view organisation with a populist agenda. They have every reason to destroy the BBC and they don’t care how they do it. Added to that, it appears that the child (now an adult) in question is vehemently denying the claims made by the parents.
Validation then Action
Before they ruin the life of a presenter, it is the duty of the BBC to validate the claims and then take necessary action. If it takes a week or two to come to the correct conclusion, so be it. At a guess, the lawyers are probably already preparing the presenter’s statement as I write this post. They will have assessed that the longer the presenter is ‘unnamed’, the worse it looks.
I can’t see what more the BBC could have done. You could say that they should have acted quicker and that may be the case. However, as I said earlier, they are dealing with hundreds of ‘boys who cried wolf’ situations every week. Did the parents come up with anything other than spurious claims? If they did and the BBC swept it under the carpet, then, of course, they have a problem.
Unreliable Sources?
However, as I see it, at the moment in time, they are picking through the bones of an allegation made by an unreliable, hostile news organisation, and a denial from a person who has instructed a top lawyer to deny claims made by his parents. To sack someone on that basis alone would be very disturbing.
Ultimately, if the allegations do turn out to be true, I don’t really know how the BBC could preempt the situation to stop it from happening. How are they supposed to know what someone does on their computer, in their own time? Maybe they should put it on the application form?
Question 20: Do you pay to download pictures of teenagers? Y/N
Norman House
July 11, 2023 (1:47 pm)
As soon as I heard ‘The Sun’ was involved, I guessed that it was going to make the claims somewhat dubious.
My understanding is that it hasn’t been declared that the young person is male or female or that the presenter is – though the inference is male.
Also, I think it is the mother and the stepfather, rather than both parents who have started this. They went to the police but got short-changed (nothing even to investigate) so they went to the gutter press.
They also changed their story as to whether the BBC responded to their initial complaint. The mother is estranged from the young person;
it all smacks of some people trying to make a fast buck. It doesn’t appear that they are concerned about what the young person thinks or wants. And apparently, neither was ‘The Sun’.
I said to someone that the BBC must get loads of false allegations and cannot be held responsible for what either the gutter press or social media report. Whether there was enough evidence for them to act more quickly it is difficult to say at this point.