The BBC’s ‘on the ground’ piece for the Christmas junior doctors’ strike is based almost entirely on uncritical quotes from two BMA officials who are not named as such. This is the award-winning journalism you pay for on pain of prosecution…
Yesterday’s article in the South of England section was titled “I am sleep-deprived, overworked and deserve more” and carried quotes from three people, one of whom was the chief executive of the Royal Berkshire NHS Trust in Reading. The only two junior doctors consulted were called Heather Gunn and Matt Bilton. Gunn said “I do not want to be strike, I want to be at work helping my colleagues. Unfortunately the reality is that many doctors like myself face the prospect of not having a job”…
Bilton said “The government… put an offer this past week but it was too little, too late, and so unfortunately we have no alternative.” Nice line that, wonder who came up with it…
Nowhere in the piece does the BBC care to mention that Gunn is deputy chairman of the BMA’s South Central Regional Council and Matt Bilton is longtime Chairman of the BMA’s Thames Valley Regional Resident Doctors Committee. Pop that piece in the bin would you darling…
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.”