Paxman lambasts 'Oh My Newsnight'

[Teddy Bear]

Paxman lambasts 'Oh My Newsnight'
By Sally Pook
Last Updated: 8:00am GMT 01/12/2006

View Jeremy Paxman's Oh My Newsnight video on YouTube

Jeremy Paxman, notorious for his merciless interviews on Newsnight, has turned his fire on the show itself.

On air, he accused the editor, Peter Barron, of turning the BBC2 programme into a bit of a joke.

Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman: just joking?

He criticised Barron for the Oh My Newsnight section, which invites viewers to make a two-minute programme about an issue they believe merits a place on the show.

Viewers are asked to send their films to a video-hosting website, such as YouTube, where they will be judged and a winner chosen.

But, closing Wednesday's edition of the show, Paxman said: "That's all from Newsnight tonight. Martha [Kearney] is being punished for some offence in a previous life by presenting tomorrow's programme.

"In the meantime, it's all available on the website, along with the editor's pathetic pleas for you to send us some bits of your old memories and the like, so we can become the BBC's version of Animals Do the Funniest Things. Goodnight."

A spokesman for Newsnight insisted it was a typical Paxman joke, as did Barron who said: "I am very thick-skinned about things like this."

Yesterday, Paxman, who did not appear to be joking, was unavailable for comment.

[indikit]

Barron is clearly the bitch in this particular TV relationship. Bet he had Paxman's tea ready the instant the show went off-air.

[Teddy Bear]

Barron has today slipped in his own criticism of Paxman, without mentioning names, in the Editors Blog

Oh My Newsnight Results

...Thanks to everyone who entered and took part in the discussion, the voting and indeed the controversy. I'm bewildered that anyone could seriously suggest that allowing our viewers ten minutes out of the hundreds of hours of airtime Newsnight produces each year to tell us what they think is important is somehow a negative development. At the very least we've had a great debate about the value of user-generated content, which has surely been the media story of 2006.

So would we do it again? I hope so, but that'll depend on whether there's demand for Oh My Newsnight 2, and a fresh supply of films worth showing). Let us know.

Peter Barron is editor of Newsnight

[Teddy Bear]

It appears Paxman is getting off with more criticisms of the Beeb. I must confess to a certain amount of glee witnessing this in-fighting - but it is interesting to wonder how will it all end. Will Paxmans's ego prove too much for the Beeb so they show him he's really not as indispensible as he might think?

Paxo's green with anger

Is no one immune from Jeremy Paxman’s scorn? The Newsnight Rottweiler has now turned his beady eye on Sir David Attenborough, criticising his Planet Earth nature programmes for being, of all things, damaging to the environment.

In the current edition of Ariel, the BBC’s staff newspaper, Paxman opines: ‘The BBC’s environment correspondents, even the makers of the series Planet Earth, are trapped in a bizarre arrangement in which they travel the globe to tell the audience of the dangers of climate change, while leaving a vapour trail which will make the problem even worse.’

Barely drawing breath, Paxo also condemns the Beeb’s ‘laughable’ recycling practices and the claim that all its new buildings meet high environmental standards.

He writes: ‘I find this hard to believe when the tens of millions spent on the news centre at Television Centre has resulted in an edifice in which the air-conditioning units have to be kept running even in the middle of January [and] computer terminals and lights blaze away all night.’

[Teddy Bear]

The Times today has picked up this story:

You're wasteful hypocrites on being green, Paxman accuses BBC bosses
Adam Sherwin, Media Correspondent

• No impartiality over climate change
  Air-conditioning running in January
  
• 
  
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Jeremy Paxman has accused the BBC of corporate hypocrisy by decrying the negative impact of climate change while contributing actively to the problem.

The Newsnight presenter called for the BBC to make a commitment to reduce carbon emissions and mimimise staff air travel.

Writing in Ariel, the corporation’s in-house magazine, Mr Paxman said that the BBC had abandoned any pretence of impartiality over the debate surrounding climate change. Yet even though it adopted a “high moral tone” over the issue, it had not matched Marks & Spencer’s commitment to become carbon-neutral.

He described the green response by BBC officials as mere hand-wringing. But the BBC responded by saying that it was not a good use of the licence fee to offset the carbon impact of international flights but that correspondents could do so out of their own pockets if they wished.

Mr Paxman said that the BBC’s recycling practices were laughable. He claimed that its electricity bill had doubled to nearly £13 million in the past three years.

Mr Paxman published a BBC green manifesto, involving a comprehensive assessment of environmental practices, a commitment to reduce carbon emissions by at least 3 per cent each year until 2017 and a fleet of “green” vehicles.

Adopting the measures “might save the BBC from looking like corporate hypocrites”, he said. Tens of millions of pounds had been spent on a new television centre to produce a building where “the air-conditioning units have to be kept running in the middle of January”.

The makers of the award-winning series Planet Earth are “trapped in a bizarre arrangement in which they travel the globe to tell the audience of the dangers of climate change while leaving a vapour trail which will make the problem even worse”, Mr Paxman said. He questioned the economics behind the BBC’s decision to film the £13 million Robin Hood series in Hungary to save money. “How would the sums look if we took into account the carbon costs of all the to-ing and fro-ing?” he asked.

He added: “With the massive deployment to the Beijing Olympics looming and filming for another Planet Earth series under way, to say nothing of the numerous vital overseas fact-finding tours of senior management, a corporation-wide policy is urgently needed.”

The BBC said that its “green office” campaign, which encouraged staff to turn off unused lights and computers, reduced CO2 emissions by 2.6 tonnes a day in London and Scotland.

THE MANIFESTO

Environmental practices to be assessed by external analysts within three months

Commitment to reduce overall carbon emissions by 3 per cent a year for ten years (It’s not good enough for this task to be left to an “adviser”)

No new buildings to be commissioned without meeting energy standards

All vehicles to be “green”, staff to be encouraged to minimise air travel and the carbon cost of unavoidable journeys to be offset

BBC will only enter into arrangements with companies using “green” vehicles from January 2008
Source: Jeremy Paxman, Ariel magazine

[Teddy Bear]

Things are getting a little 'catty' over at the Beeb heh heh heh

On standby
By Maggie Urry

Published: February 2 2007 02:00 | Last updated: February 2 2007 02:00

What is going on in the Newsnight office? It fell to Gavin Esler, one of the BBC2 show's presenters, to pen the regular "in tonight's programme" e-mail yesterday. He opened by saying how surprised he had been to read in yesterday's Times "that my esteemed colleague Jeremy Paxman has offered a devastating critique of the BBC's failures to be green enough".

"Great stuff, I thought," Esler continued. But then: "Imagine my surprise," he went on, describing finding the Newsnight office computer and monitor, which he shares with Paxman and two others, had been left on all night. "Who," Esler wrote, "could it possibly be wasting all that electricity? Well, the last log-in that I could discover was 'Paxman'."