"I am not a GP but I would like to formally complain about the reporting of the Today programme's top story http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_7486000/7486975.stm. Essentially the BBC reported the comments of Health Minister, Ben Bradshaw, that GP's are in effect running a cartel with a "gentleman's agreement" to avoid taking on patients. Yet the BBC did not challenge Mr Bradshaw to produce any evidence to support these claims. Further on the BBC's website http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7475985.stm, Mr Bradshaw claims that there is one GP practice with only 2 patients, again no journalist has challenged him to produce any evidence to back this claim. There was no second source to this story in effect.
Yet just over a year ago I was interviewed by the BBC's Michele Paduano in March 2007 when I accused 2 ministers of Health (Patricia Hewitt & Lord Hunt) of either lying or misleading Parliament over the data in the relation to the junior doctors training scandal , MMC . The BBC even had a second source for the story, an e-mail from XXX which entirely backed my claims. Yet that interview was never broadcast, as the XXX mysteriously couldn't remember where they got the figures from. I was told by the BBC that since the Andrew Gilligan/David Kelly affair that they will only run a story if they have 2 sources.
Yet the Today programme is quite prepared to run a scurrilous rumour from one junior minister without presenting any evidence to back the story up....or indeed a second source.
I think this is dreadful and frankly when a programme like Today fails to take a government minister to task over such a rumour, they are failing in their jobs as journalists. I would also point out that Mr Bradshaw is a former BBC journalist and his partner works for the BBC, could this explain why the BBC are being so soft on him?
I await your reply.
Yours sincerely"
Yet just over a year ago I was interviewed by the BBC's Michele Paduano in March 2007 when I accused 2 ministers of Health (Patricia Hewitt & Lord Hunt) of either lying or misleading Parliament over the data in the relation to the junior doctors training scandal , MMC . The BBC even had a second source for the story, an e-mail from XXX which entirely backed my claims. Yet that interview was never broadcast, as the XXX mysteriously couldn't remember where they got the figures from. I was told by the BBC that since the Andrew Gilligan/David Kelly affair that they will only run a story if they have 2 sources.
Yet the Today programme is quite prepared to run a scurrilous rumour from one junior minister without presenting any evidence to back the story up....or indeed a second source.
I think this is dreadful and frankly when a programme like Today fails to take a government minister to task over such a rumour, they are failing in their jobs as journalists. I would also point out that Mr Bradshaw is a former BBC journalist and his partner works for the BBC, could this explain why the BBC are being so soft on him?
I await your reply.
Yours sincerely"
3 comments:
As another patient, I am glad to see this letter. I have been watching the front page of the BBC News and have been horrified by the biased reporting - and indeed have tried to leave a comment, only to find that, somewhat mysteriously this was not accepted.
I think that your letter writer has hit the nail on the head.
indeed.
it's funny how many very reasonable letters get censored by the beeb, you can tell more about them by seeing what they don't allow to appear in the comments,
the news sniffer is great for this, but doesn't detect comments like yours which never appear, i'm sure there are plenty of them:
http://www.newssniffer.co.uk/bbc/threads/show/3891
cheers
Totally agree. I also wrote to complain about this latest biased bit of journalism. It seems to me the BBC are running scared of the government. If they continue down this path they will lose the trust of the public.
And if they think this will buy them any favours from the governement when the next review of the licence fee and the viability of public broadcasting is carried out they are kidding themselves. They are dealing with politicians who seem to have their own very unique way of behaving. Perhaps the BBC should learn from the GPs experience.
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