BBC news chief Sambrook moves job
In what is presumably one of the final bits of fallout from the toxic nuclear waste (painted with whitewash to fool us, of course) that was the Hutton Report, comes the announcement from the BBC that Richard Sambrook is to head the BBC's "worldwide news services", including BBC World Service radio and the BBC World TV channel, as well as the BBC's international web sites, as head of the Corporation's international news and information division.
More practiced Beeb-watchers than myself will be able to say whether this represents a kick upstairs, downstairs or next door for Sambrook, but the fact that he is taking on what is evidently one of the top news jobs in the Corporation would seem to bode well, and even indicate some degree of ascendance.
The Hutton report, the BBC's article on Sambrook's move (Media Guardian described him as being "moved", as in pushed) notes and readers will recall, criticised Sambrook over his handling of journalist Andrew Gilligan's claim that the Government 'sexed up' its Iraq dossier - a claim that, it seems to me, is revealed all too clearly to be true (had you not come to this conclusion already), if one reads between the carefully sheathed, but awfully sharp knives that Lord Butler kindly placed in his report for the use of anyone who wanted to pull them out.
Despite the vast amounts of glow-in-the-dark whitewash being splashed around British and US seats of government at the moment, it would appear, based at least on by-election results and other indicators, that the British population is under fewer illusions about how its leader has tweaked the facts on why we went into Iraq in the first place - and tweaked them grossly to an extent of which Fox News would be proud - than is the case across the Atlantic: something no doubt also not unrelated to Fox News. (The only thing we ask ourselves is, "Why? Why was it so important that you had to mislead us?")
Meanwhile, said Fox News Channel is thankfully suffering growing US criticism for its use of the phrase "Fair and Balanced" as its trademark - it is plainly neither: to my mind, it's about as "fair and balanced" as Soviet-era Pravda, a view echoed by a recent full-page ad from moveon.org in the New York Times. Fox may also lose its trademark rights to said phrase, if a current petition to the Federal Trade Commission is successful - though as it stands, you're supposedly committing an infringement by using those plain English words in that order. They also grumble loudly if you make jokes about it, especially if the joke is in the form of the title of a book that points out what they are really up to.
US broadcasting dumped its 'fairness doctrine' a while back, without which Fox would have to at least label its propaganda as opinion rather than pretend that it is fact (as would a large number of right-wing radio hatemongers). Thankfully, there is still a requirement to be "fair and balanced" (if you'll pardon the expression) on the part of British broadcast news media - I just hope it stays that way despite rumours to the contrary. You can watch Fox News untouched in the UK because it originates overseas: if it was produced here I can't imagine they would get away with it, and it would look rather like Sky News instead.
All I can say is that despite his brush with Hutton, I trust Sambrook to carry British traditions of fairness and balanced coverage (oops, there I go again, I imagine) across the BBC's World a good deal more than I do Comrade Murdoch, who has evidently learned far too much from his media involvement in mainland China to remember quite what the words "fair and balanced" really mean.
