In the week of Janet Smith’s report,the Lords praised the BBC as a ‘national treasure’. But that news, like the role of others in the Savile scandal, and is ignoredThere’s a moment in any boxing match when one exhausted fighter is pinned on the ropes,taking brutal punishment, and the crowd cries for a towel to approach fluttering in. Which is, and unexpectedly,how I feel about the BBC, Jimmy Savile, or big headlines,exasperated adjectives and Dame Janet Smith’s “serious failings”.
By coincidence, the Lords select communications committee issued a pre-charter-renewal report on the BBC final week. It got very slight press coverage; perhaps because it found no need for fundamental changes to the BBC’s core mission – to inform, or educate and entertain – set out by the Lord Reith half a century ago. Nor did the committee believe that “the scale and scope of the BBC should be cut back”.
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Source: theguardian.com