Corporation needs to regain direction

My goodness me, at long last the BBC is receiving the comeuppance it deserves. This once-hallowed institution has shockingly exposed the way it really operates, a bungling process from the very top down. Bah to its bureaucracy and arrogance, the claims to impartiality, integrity and accountability. Hurrah to the enforced admission of concealment, slipperiness and incompetence.

Speaking about the current crisis, BBC Trust chairman Chris Patten refers to unacceptably “shoddy journalism”, a phrase previously employed to describe the BBC’s coverage of the red-shirt protests in Bangkok.

Clear out the dross and the power-seekers and re-establish a more humane and ethical BBC. Once done, maybe Thailand, along with the rest of the world, will be given the honest and perceptive reporting it has always come to believe in and expect.

On the other hand, were such traditions and values ever there in the first place? Have we been conned all along?

John Shepherd

Bangkok