I see the Guardian is giving several dozen nudges and a whole batch of hints that nasty old Rupert Murdoch and his Tory puppet George Osborne jointly cooked up the deal that did for the poor old BBC earlier this year:
'There's no smoke without fire' seems to be the message behind this less-than-entirely-convincing piece of Guardian journalism which lists various dates and various contacts with various media types, including Ol' Rupert, and allows its readers to join the dots
Now, any science or statistics fans will know that correlation does not imply causation. So the fact that George met Rupert twice before the BBC deal was brought about doesn't necessarily mean that Rupert put George up to it.
Now, any science or statistics fans will know that correlation does not imply causation. So the fact that George met Rupert twice before the BBC deal was brought about doesn't necessarily mean that Rupert put George up to it.
Similarly, the passage deep inside the Guardian piece which says David Cameron "has also met [Guardian editor Katharine] Viner and the Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland and Patrick Wintour, as well as [the BBC's Lord Tony] Hall in September" doesn't necessarily mean - because of the proximity of the names in that sentence and the proximity of the dates of their meetings with the PM -that Lord Hall of the BBC and the Guardian are in cahoots either!
That, of course, won't stop some BBC types from joining the Graun in their nudge-nudge-wink-winking over this.
Good to see the BBC and loyal staff wallowing in the tried and distrusted technique of dodgy association tarring. Especially JonDon, with semantic just the facts tongue planted firmly in his 'news my own' tweet.
ReplyDeleteI think my favourite was when a non-BBC political party was due to have a meeting that once was going to be hosting a a meeting with someone who once met Adolph Hitler.
I wonder who many current, active BBC staff once came across Jimmy Saville as the dodged around the Bolly bottles in the corridor?
There's also the small matter of who was on hand when all this was being concocted:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2296047/The-night-proved-Labour-political-wing-Hacked-Off.html
"At 4am a message was sent by Harman’s office to the BBC saying: ‘Labour is confident of the basis of a deal for Press regulation after late-night talks’.
Seems the BBC was well in the loop of that one.