Misleading the public

I was fascinated to watch the low-key struggle the other day between BBC and ITV executives, and members of the Commons culture committee. The television people said they were appalled by the chicanery revealed in various programmes — premium-rate phone-ins, the show about the Queen, for example — and would take urgent steps to make sure it never happened again. Mark Byford, the BBC’s deputy director-general, seemed to be in a state of anguish. One member of the committee said afterwards that he feared he might demonstrate his contrition by slitting his wrists in front of them.

The MPs were rather sceptical, especially about the BBC’s decision to make 16,000 employees attend a course to teach them how to avoid misleading the public. Andrew Neil said on The Daily Politics that this resembled a re-education camp in Pol Pot’s Cambodia. Committee members wondered why anyone should need to be taught how not to mislead.