How the BBC censors evidence of press misbehaviour

Robert Henderson The Leveson Inquiry resumed sitting on 27 February.  Its  focus will be on the relationship between the police and the press.  Consequently, this subject was chosen for BBC Radio 5 Breakfast  Programme’s 9.00 am phone-in on that date. Before  the subject was announced Piers Morgan appeared on the programme and repeated his denial [...]

Why public service broadcasting (PSB) matters

We all know what comes from rampant and unrestrained commercial activity: a worship of Mammon to the exclusion of everything except the feeding of company directors’ and financiers egos and greed. In broadcasting, unrestrained commerce equals a low grade, populist cultural diet heavily polluted with advertising. Many supporters of PSB think that is a case [...]

How the BBC surreptitiously censors callers to phone-ins

Midway through 2007  I discovered a strange thing. Try as I might I could not get through to BBC  R5 phone-in programmes. The phone would ring and ring but it was never answered. This was very odd because I had never experienced such a problem before. Moreover, it occurred directly after I had managed to get [...]

The Blair daughter’s attempted suicide and the public’s right to know

The British mass media claims it is committed to informing the public. The reality is that it  frequently colludes with politicians to suppress stories. A important  example is the attempted suicide of Blair’s daughter Kathryn in the Spring of  2004 (reports on the web by non-mainstream media  suggest she was taken to hospital on Thursday [...]