Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Making the news

The deputy head of the BBC Newsroom got the Feedback treatment last week about his treatment of the Archbishop & his comments on Start The Week about the problems of the Catholic church in Ireland.

As one example of the stir this caused, Marian Finucane on RTE1 spoke on Saturday about what it was like to be an ordinary parish priest these days to a group from across the country; it was sobering to hear of the sadness & anger (which in some cases most definitely extended to the hierarchy) among a group whose position I have not personally heard addressed before.

It turns out that it wasn’t BBC News wot started it. They first read it on the front page of Saturday’s Times (which they get late on Friday evening) – or was it the AFP?

Anyway they checked; yes the Archbishop had said those words, so they reported them too. And no, they have nothing to apologise for, except one small slip on one radio bulletin which was corrected ASAP.

So how did the others get to it first?

Someone at Radio 4 sent out preview tapes – obviously not normal practice, since Start The Week usually goes out live, but this one was recorded about a week in advance for transmission on Easter Monday. Presumably they just wanted their colleagues on the print media to have a chance to write their copy in advance so they could have the day off too.

And so the monster feeds itself

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Making the BBC news