The Guardian is reporting that the BBC Governors' discussions leading to Greg Dyke's sacking will remain closed for years to come.
Yesterday's Independent carried a valuable article by Ray Snoddy looking back at the lessons of Hutton. His interview with Richard Sambrook, head of BBC News at the time of Hutton, contains the following interesting observation:
That he has survived so well when BBC chairman Gavyn Davies and director-general Greg Dyke both resigned is probably down to two factors that Sambrook will not discuss even now.
It is believed that during the crisis, Sambrook argued unsuccessfully for a swifter and better apology for the part of the coverage on weapons of mass destruction the BBC was judged to have got wrong - claiming the Government deliberately misled the public - and pressing for the row to be taken to independent arbitration.
The irony was that two Labour supporters in Dyke and Davies felt they could not be seen to do a deal with a Labour government - and elected instead to fight, without compromise, on the issue of the BBC's independence.
"I think we got a lot of things right but we got one big thing wrong and there was a lot of mis-communication. Given that somebody died we should all feel bad," Sambrook admits
Former BBC Television MD Will Wyatt's observation is also right:
There was something wrong. On the day that BBC news chiefs and the director general were composing their reply to Alastair Campbell's broadside over the Kelly affair, one of those involved rang me to say, with a chuckle: "You'd never believe how different the atmosphere is to what it would have been under the former regime."
Under John Birt, there would have been a rigorous, unforgiving analysis of the issue, he implied. Now, I sensed, they were in "sod off" mode.
I missed Newsnight's Allies on Trial episode. Thankfully. Oliver Kamm - not a kneejerk BBC critic - makes some important points about it. He also comments on David Aaronovitch's entertaining Times column on Today programme snorting.
Apologies for lack of recent blogging. Actually trying to write the book....
Blogging has been a bit light recently, due to real-life commitments.
The Guardian reported that the BBC White Paper would be delayed, partly due to disputes about the BBCTrust. OfComwatch reports on a lunch with BBC D-G Mark Thompson.
Sky News is preferred by opinion-formers to BBC News 24 according to an internal BBC leak.
Meanwhile, the BBC News college for journalists is getting underway. I'm looking forward to it tackiling the issue of post-devolution Britain, as BBC Controller of Nations and Regions Pat Loughrey told us it would when he came before the Assembly's Culture Committee.
Here we go again.
Earlier, nowhere did this story refer to England, or indicate that Beverly Hughes's responsibilities as Children's Minister in DfES are principally -not wholly - limited to England. (Mind you, the DfES site is not much better, though at least its press release last week on the Childcare Bill made clear that it referred to England: has the BBC not seen this?).
Nowhere on Breakfast News this morning was this made clear. The story has now been changed, like this one was, to mention England
BBC Controller of Nations and Regions Pat Loughrey has set out the BBC's vision for local television, saying local papers shouldn't fear them.
According to the Guardian, Trevor Phillips has returned to the issue of diversity within media organisations, saying:
"Black and Asian reporters are fed up with being assigned stories on Brixton yardies and bling culture".
He said the media had to open up to ethnic minority applicants if it was to reflect the diversity of modern Britain and report on it comprehensively.
"We need to know more about more different kinds of people, we're only going to know that if we have organisations in the media as diverse as our society and communities," Mr Phillips added.
He said the lack of ethnic minority journalism led to mistakes being made by white reporters, pointing to wrong assumptions that were made in some parts of the media about the Asian community after the July bombings in London.
Director of BBC World Service news Richard Sambrook says:
We don't own the news any more. This is a fundamental realignment of the relationship between large media companies and the public.
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