Cats and scapegoats

The Telegraph says that up to 25 BBC staff will be disciplined or sacked in the scandal of fake tv and fake phone-ins, which even included a competition to name the Blue Peter cat.

Some people are still calling for a criminal enquiry. Getting people to hand over their money under false pretences certainly looks like fraud to me. Meanwhile the broadcasting union BECTU says that staff are being scapegoated. I don't usually have a lot of sympathy for people who play the scapegoat card when they've done something wrong but BECTU may have a point that it's only the more junior staff who are in trouble.

Yentob and Noddy

The Guardian reports that Alan Yentob has been caught doing noddy shots for interviews where he wasn't actually present, another twist in the tale of fake t.v.

I've just recorded a t.v. interview for a film I've been making and manage to avoid the hackneyed noddy shots, although I confess that the shots of me asking the questions were recorded after I asked the actual questions, as there was only one camera.

The interesting thing about he Guardian story is the extent to which the BBC source is allowed to make an anonymous defence.

The source robustly defended the practice, insisting that Yentob was unable to attend every interview that appears on his show because of his workload.

It is quite possible that the source is Yentob himself, something the reader would be entitled to know, I suggest.

The truth about fake TV

More4 News had an interesting short film tonight asking whether a lot of standard tricks in tv news reporting are actually lying. As someone who recently stood outside the High Court to make a film without having been in, it made me think.

But it's almost inevitable that the stuff people are owning up to isn't that bad.