BBC 'Ludicrously Overstaffed' at Dale Farm

[Teddy Bear]

A story where the BBC can get behind the 'underdog' and show how 'caring and concerned' they are, can't be resisted. So as many of the staff who can want to be visible on such a story.

Pity they don't see the underdog as the residents that have had to put up with this illegal invasion for the last 10 years. Talk about 'biting the hand that feeds one', I doubt that there's even one licence fee paid by these travellers, and I'm sure no TVL inspectors ventured onto their encampment to check who had TV's in their caravans, despite the satellite receiver that would have been visible on the roofs.

Still the legal residents have no choice about paying for the BBC, so 'screw them' as far as the BBC is concerned.

BBC accused of 'overstaffing' as protesters pull out of Dale Farm
The BBC was accused of "ludicrous over staffing" today after it emerged that it had more reporters than there were protesters at the Dale Farm traveller eviction.

By Richard Alleyne

While the number of activists dwindled, the BBC still had six satellite crews, a handful of local correspondents and a team of documentary makers on the six acre site.

They even had their own caravan within the compound to provide accommodation and refreshment for the 30 or so staff working on the story.

Yesterday Don Foster, Liberal Democrats culture spokesman, said: "That is ludicrous over staffing and hardly good way to get public sympathy for the 20 per cent budget cuts facing the BBC."

The BBC's renting of the caravan even led to some light ribbing from their rivals at ITV, who boasted they were making do with a tent.
Damon Green, the ITV News Correspondent, tweeted: "We have a tent, the BBC have a caravan at DaleFarm. Delivering Quality First".

The BBC claimed that they had about 20 official staff on the site though this did not include a handful of local reporters and independent crews working on documentaries.

"The eviction at Dale Farm is a major rolling news story and we have around 20 people there including reporters and technical staff, covering the story locally and nationally for TV, radio and online," said a spokesman.

[Teddy Bear]

An article about how the BBC try to cover Dale Farm, and how the facts speak for themselves, quite differently.

MAIL COMMENT: The facts behind the Dale Farm hysteria

By Daily Mail Comment

Last updated at 4:24 PM on 20th October 2011

Amid the violence and hysteria, the hand-wringing by the BBC and the cries of ‘ethnic cleansing’, shouldn’t we recall a few basic facts about the travellers’ encampment at Dale Farm?

The first and most important is that the settlement on the part of the site in contention is illegal.

The travellers have known this from the start, when their application for planning permission was rejected because it contravened green belt policy. They chose to ignore the ruling.

True, some say planning law is too strict (although this paper believes the green belt, now under threat from another quarter, is among the nation’s glories, which must be protected with all vigour).

But what nobody can dispute is that the law is the law – and in a democracy such as ours, nobody is above it.

As for the travellers’ claim that they’ve been wronged because of their ethnicity, this is the opposite of the truth.

Indeed, had they not belonged to a minority, they would have been kicked off the land without ceremony ten years ago. As it is, they have been treated with huge tact and patience – often to the immense distress of their neighbours, whose lives they have cruelly disrupted.

For ten years, at massive public expense, they’ve been accorded the best that our painstakingly laborious legal and political systems can offer, consuming the time and attention of regiments of equality officers and High Court judges.

Throughout, the local council has behaved with absolute propriety and understanding. Now it pledges to rehouse them – even though many have spacious homes in Ireland.

In short, there was no excuse whatever for yesterday’s wanton criminal violence by the travellers and their rent-a-mob accomplices against the police and bailiffs who were performing their duty.

They deserve not one iota of public sympathy – least of all from the BBC, which depends on law-abiding citizens paying their licence fees.