The BBC is on fire. It needs a new Director-General. The runners and riders:
There is some talk in news circles about the structure of the Director-General role changing, including a rumour that it could be split in two to better manage at-times competing functions. The proposal would be for a full-time journalist to head up the editorial side of the BBC at the DG level, and a seperate non-journalist businessperson to head up the commercial functions, also at the same DG rank. Many at the top of the BBC feel this double-header would unencumber the role. The job is a poisoned chalice when it comes under media scrutiny…
Despite the government not having a technical role in the appointment it is a highly politically-charged process and there will be significant lobbying and jostling from all sides, including from Downing Street. Labour sees the analogue BBC as its own territory and wants to install a loyalist. Is the ‘plot’ to remove Davie actually an own goal for the right?
Statement by Paul Dacre, Editor-in-Chief of Associated Newspapers Limited, following Harry’s loss in court today:
“Prince Harry wrote a sad book which boasted about his killing of 25 Taliban, his drug-taking and, in cringe-making detail, how he lost his virginity. There isn’t a laundry in the cosmos big enough to wash all the dirty linen he has aired about his own family. For him, to complain about HIS privacy being invaded takes, not just the biscuit, but the whole tin. Poor Harry. I feel sorry for the way a confused and angry young man has been drawn into this case. The bitter irony is that his mother, Diana, liked the Mail. We were her paper. We took her side in her acrimonious break up with Charles. She and I would speak and meet. The Mail’s superb royal reporter was her friend and confidante. The truth is that this trumped-up action – which has cost well over £50 million and wasted a huge amount of valuable court time – should never have been brought to trial. That it did, raises profoundly disturbing questions about the conduct of elements of the legal profession. Today’s verdict is not just a victory for Associated’s magnificent journalists – several of whom have had a terrible toll imposed on their health and lives – but a free press generally. Make no mistake. This was a conspiracy, supported by Hacked Off, to destroy a paper. Financed by the orgy-loving, racist Max Mosley and involving the actor Hugh Grant, it was also a sinister bid to resuscitate Leveson Two and impose statutory regulation on the press which, even now, is rearing its ugly head in Labour’s Media Green Paper.”