Post by Teddy Bear on Apr 4, 2013 19:33:07 GMT
Anybody who's tried to complain to the BBC with a genuine issue knows from personal experience the frustration and anger they will suffer from seeing how the way the BBC will dismiss it. Numerous members here have detailed some of their experiences for those who have never been through it themselves.
A comment on one of the articles I posted yesterday explains very succinctly what this experience is like.
A comment on one of the articles I posted yesterday explains very succinctly what this experience is like.
Peter Martin
Actually, it can go a bit further than that. If any viewer asks some awkward questions via the BBC's mandated sole point of do so, and persists after all the labyrinthine hurdles you describe the BBC throws up have been surmounted, the BBC will simply pull an epic sulk and take the ball away. You will get redacted (banned).
And the way they will justify it would make Douglas Adams, of 'Beware the Leopard' fame, seem like Nostrodamus. The complaints input allows a maximum of 1500 characters. The BBC in fighting any complaint will throw staff, and resources (all secret, all internal) that can amount to years, hundreds of pages of 'belief' at ever sillier job levels and megabytes of data, to kill it through attrition.
But in weathering this onslaught you will need to reply, and in matching their replies, using their systems, they will then pull the plug claiming what they have initiated and escalated is 'wasting licence fee payers' money' in justification/excuse.
It is is about as bent a parody of corporate doublespeak as it is possible to imagine.
Making them, as you say, unaccountable. They pretend to listen; they pretend to self-monitor or 'reach out'. But in reality they have created a bubble in a bunker, and are in unidirectional broadcast only mode throughout. Only when really facing a wave of issues they can't bluster away, or move on from, will they commission an internal review to find they mostly get it about right, and if there is anything wrong redact it out using legal semantics or dubious FoI exclusions.
If any outfit, especially in the hated private sector (who actually can often be left to do what they like if not illegal as it's between them and their shareholders) did a fraction of these things, the howls of derision would, and have been from dawn to dusk, Humph to Paxo.
The level of their hypocrisy really is extraordinary, matched only by the powerlessness of those we elect to hold them to account as they force us to keep paying no matter what.
I am in my second year of asking why they commissioned an external investigator to go beyond exchanges I was was having with the BBC complaints as a licence fee payer, to try and make connections with others on BBC-critical sites around the blogosphere, on a 'guilty until they really don't care as they can do what they like' basis. And the Trust has announced it doesn't have a problem, having only listened to un-named 'witnesses' within the BBC, and refused to allow me near anyone making all sorts of claims that are either inaccurate or out of context. This is of course the organisation whose lead news magazine created the Savile/McAlpine fiasco, and the subsequent Pollard Report on the calibre of internal integrity.
They are now outright daring me to try and get OFCOM, DCMS or the ICO interested, knowing full well that all fellow public sector oversight bodies are as effective in actually preventing abuse as any other with the word 'Trust' in it.
Good luck with the petition, but I'd have to say it will be lucky to make an impact.
While the internet has in many ways revolutionised accountability, I tend to take them with a pinch of salt. An email or tweet, a few details (that may or may not be checked) and a lazy headline for the next day is created. How many of the things are running now? And most are dominated by those who have better social media coordination skills, appealing to those often with too much time on their hands and not enough brains to see where they are being led.
With, of course, the £4Bp BBC on hand to act as a free PR facilitator... if they like the sound of the activist campaign in question. If not, you'll never hear of it.
Propaganda complemented by censorship has poor precedent.
"Should any viewer attempt to complain, they would be opposed by a complex strategy of obfuscation, delay, and denial."
Actually, it can go a bit further than that. If any viewer asks some awkward questions via the BBC's mandated sole point of do so, and persists after all the labyrinthine hurdles you describe the BBC throws up have been surmounted, the BBC will simply pull an epic sulk and take the ball away. You will get redacted (banned).
And the way they will justify it would make Douglas Adams, of 'Beware the Leopard' fame, seem like Nostrodamus. The complaints input allows a maximum of 1500 characters. The BBC in fighting any complaint will throw staff, and resources (all secret, all internal) that can amount to years, hundreds of pages of 'belief' at ever sillier job levels and megabytes of data, to kill it through attrition.
But in weathering this onslaught you will need to reply, and in matching their replies, using their systems, they will then pull the plug claiming what they have initiated and escalated is 'wasting licence fee payers' money' in justification/excuse.
It is is about as bent a parody of corporate doublespeak as it is possible to imagine.
Making them, as you say, unaccountable. They pretend to listen; they pretend to self-monitor or 'reach out'. But in reality they have created a bubble in a bunker, and are in unidirectional broadcast only mode throughout. Only when really facing a wave of issues they can't bluster away, or move on from, will they commission an internal review to find they mostly get it about right, and if there is anything wrong redact it out using legal semantics or dubious FoI exclusions.
If any outfit, especially in the hated private sector (who actually can often be left to do what they like if not illegal as it's between them and their shareholders) did a fraction of these things, the howls of derision would, and have been from dawn to dusk, Humph to Paxo.
The level of their hypocrisy really is extraordinary, matched only by the powerlessness of those we elect to hold them to account as they force us to keep paying no matter what.
I am in my second year of asking why they commissioned an external investigator to go beyond exchanges I was was having with the BBC complaints as a licence fee payer, to try and make connections with others on BBC-critical sites around the blogosphere, on a 'guilty until they really don't care as they can do what they like' basis. And the Trust has announced it doesn't have a problem, having only listened to un-named 'witnesses' within the BBC, and refused to allow me near anyone making all sorts of claims that are either inaccurate or out of context. This is of course the organisation whose lead news magazine created the Savile/McAlpine fiasco, and the subsequent Pollard Report on the calibre of internal integrity.
They are now outright daring me to try and get OFCOM, DCMS or the ICO interested, knowing full well that all fellow public sector oversight bodies are as effective in actually preventing abuse as any other with the word 'Trust' in it.
Good luck with the petition, but I'd have to say it will be lucky to make an impact.
While the internet has in many ways revolutionised accountability, I tend to take them with a pinch of salt. An email or tweet, a few details (that may or may not be checked) and a lazy headline for the next day is created. How many of the things are running now? And most are dominated by those who have better social media coordination skills, appealing to those often with too much time on their hands and not enough brains to see where they are being led.
With, of course, the £4Bp BBC on hand to act as a free PR facilitator... if they like the sound of the activist campaign in question. If not, you'll never hear of it.
Propaganda complemented by censorship has poor precedent.