Post by Teddy Bear on Aug 29, 2007 23:50:57 GMT
Another ex-employee of the BBC criticizing her former employer. Pity they wait so long after working for them for so many years to make their criticisms. After all, they've been responsible for perpetrating many of the things they criticize.
I guess we'll have to be content with 'better late than never'.
I guess we'll have to be content with 'better late than never'.
Anna Ford attacks 'ageist BBC'
By Nicole Martin, Digital and Media Correspondent
Last Updated: 2:06am BST 29/08/2007
Anna Ford reignited the row over ageism in the BBC yesterday, accusing the Corporation of discriminating against anyone over 60.
The former newsreader, who quit the BBC after 17 years, said she was exasperated with “on-screen” ageism. In a wide-ranging interview, in which she criticised the dumbing-down of standards and relentless cost-cutting, she berated the BBC for ignoring its older viewers.
“Everybody in our society should be presented on screen,” said Miss Ford, 63, as she spoke for the first time about why she left the BBC 15 months ago.
“How many presenters do you know on television who are over the age of 60? But there are more than 16 million people in this country over the age of 55 and they are poorly represented, and I don’t think the BBC is intent on making programmes for them. They’re catered for on Radio 4, but they are not catered for on screen.”
Her criticisms make her the latest in a long line of older presenters, including Kate Adie and Angela Rippon, who feel they have had to make way for younger presenters, while many of their male counterparts are allowed to work well into their 60s.
They come only months after the BBC faced a chorus of complaints for axing Moira Stuart, 55, who had been presenting the news for more than two decades.
Miss Ford echoed Jeremy Paxman’s withering attack on the fall in standards on British television, saying it was vital that the BBC differentiates itself from other channels by making “extremely high-class programmes”.
“I do think that complaints about dumbing down are justified,” she said. “I must sound very old-fashioned when I use the word vulgarity, but we are constantly seeing people on screen who are of low intelligence and low education and whose views on everything seem to be made important.”
She also took a swipe at the BBC’s cost-cutting initiatives, which she said were having a disastrous impact on the quality of news programmes
“There has been a fantastic cutback over news during the past few years,” she said in an interview in the British Journalism Review. “The BBC is cut to the bone and now I read that they are trying to cut hundreds more people. I can’t say how they will do it and maintain any form of decent news programmes on air. It simply can’t be done.
“People are now producing, for one news item, three or four items, which means getting in an the crack of dawn, commissioning each item, ringing the interviewee, getting film crews round, writing the script and getting it on air. They are stressed beyond belief, and on very short-term contracts. They’re afraid and they are bullied.”
She said that the cuts had created “an atmosphere of fear”.
“I think the BBC is now a very unkind and badly-managed place,” she said. You no longer see people smiling when they work on news programmes.”
On her decision to quit the BBC, she said: “I was so uninvolved that it prompted me to hand in my notice. I just thought, I can either take the money and run and go on doing this job, or I can decide it isn’t a job that’s worth doing any longer and leave.
“I could see the whole ethos of television news changing, partly because the technology changed and it became a 24-hour operation.”
Now a chancellor of Manchester University, a non-executive of Sainsbury’s and chair of Index on Censorship, which was set up to protect the human right of free expression, she said she did not think she would ever return to television.
“I wish I’d become a writer/journalist earlier on,” she said. “Journalism is an ancient and admirable profession. We live in a democracy where government is trying to clamp down on the information we can get, where parliament is trying to pass laws where everybody is subject to freedom of information except MPs - where would we be without the fourth estate?”
By Nicole Martin, Digital and Media Correspondent
Last Updated: 2:06am BST 29/08/2007
Anna Ford reignited the row over ageism in the BBC yesterday, accusing the Corporation of discriminating against anyone over 60.
The former newsreader, who quit the BBC after 17 years, said she was exasperated with “on-screen” ageism. In a wide-ranging interview, in which she criticised the dumbing-down of standards and relentless cost-cutting, she berated the BBC for ignoring its older viewers.
“Everybody in our society should be presented on screen,” said Miss Ford, 63, as she spoke for the first time about why she left the BBC 15 months ago.
“How many presenters do you know on television who are over the age of 60? But there are more than 16 million people in this country over the age of 55 and they are poorly represented, and I don’t think the BBC is intent on making programmes for them. They’re catered for on Radio 4, but they are not catered for on screen.”
Her criticisms make her the latest in a long line of older presenters, including Kate Adie and Angela Rippon, who feel they have had to make way for younger presenters, while many of their male counterparts are allowed to work well into their 60s.
They come only months after the BBC faced a chorus of complaints for axing Moira Stuart, 55, who had been presenting the news for more than two decades.
Miss Ford echoed Jeremy Paxman’s withering attack on the fall in standards on British television, saying it was vital that the BBC differentiates itself from other channels by making “extremely high-class programmes”.
“I do think that complaints about dumbing down are justified,” she said. “I must sound very old-fashioned when I use the word vulgarity, but we are constantly seeing people on screen who are of low intelligence and low education and whose views on everything seem to be made important.”
She also took a swipe at the BBC’s cost-cutting initiatives, which she said were having a disastrous impact on the quality of news programmes
“There has been a fantastic cutback over news during the past few years,” she said in an interview in the British Journalism Review. “The BBC is cut to the bone and now I read that they are trying to cut hundreds more people. I can’t say how they will do it and maintain any form of decent news programmes on air. It simply can’t be done.
“People are now producing, for one news item, three or four items, which means getting in an the crack of dawn, commissioning each item, ringing the interviewee, getting film crews round, writing the script and getting it on air. They are stressed beyond belief, and on very short-term contracts. They’re afraid and they are bullied.”
She said that the cuts had created “an atmosphere of fear”.
“I think the BBC is now a very unkind and badly-managed place,” she said. You no longer see people smiling when they work on news programmes.”
On her decision to quit the BBC, she said: “I was so uninvolved that it prompted me to hand in my notice. I just thought, I can either take the money and run and go on doing this job, or I can decide it isn’t a job that’s worth doing any longer and leave.
“I could see the whole ethos of television news changing, partly because the technology changed and it became a 24-hour operation.”
Now a chancellor of Manchester University, a non-executive of Sainsbury’s and chair of Index on Censorship, which was set up to protect the human right of free expression, she said she did not think she would ever return to television.
“I wish I’d become a writer/journalist earlier on,” she said. “Journalism is an ancient and admirable profession. We live in a democracy where government is trying to clamp down on the information we can get, where parliament is trying to pass laws where everybody is subject to freedom of information except MPs - where would we be without the fourth estate?”