Thursday, October 11, 2007

Shut up for journalism....BBC style

BBC bosses have told prominent presenters including John Humphries and Jeremy Paxman to shut up and stop having a go at the corporation over planned job cuts.

Whilst there is some sense in stopping two high profile journalists kicking lumps out of each other - after all its not staff on Newsnight or Today who are the problem, it's management's plans to axe hundreds of jobs in news - it is a bit rich for the BBC Trust Chair Sir Michael Lyons to tell them to shut up by calling in all the media correspondents and splashing his message all over the newspapers and websites.

And even if you got those two to shut up there's a flood of open letters today from BBC staff criticising the planned job cuts, motions from branches and comments galore from BBC staff in Ariel, the BBC's in-house magazine.

Sir Michael's inappropriate attempt to silence dissent comes just 24 hours after Director General Mark Thompson's bizarre comments about how staff would be "pleasantly surprised" by the level of job losses announced next week. Oh you bloody think so do you? I reacted to his comments last night. Perhaps Sir Michael should have told Mark Thompson to shut up instead.

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