Prunings

Some odds and ends for Nick Pollard to consider as he goes about his inquiry in BBC News.

Unconfirmed rumours, particularly about improper sexual activity by public figures, abound in journalism. Nick will have heard hundreds en route from the Birkenhead News in 1967. About Prime Ministers, Ministers, MPs, singers, actors, comedians, writers and film stars. Most, he'll admit, were unfounded gossip that became urban myth - without challenge or eventual proof.

At any one time, the BBC, across upwards of 7,000 journalists, might be conducting forty or fifty different serious investigations. Not all will make the air, many will remain unproven. To put other non-news programmes that might be, in the long term, connected with those investigations "on hold" in some way whilst facts are established would be ludicrous. Add a hold on those programmes where there might be "rumours", and on some days, it would be hard not to have gaps in schedules.   

The charge of weakness and caution against the current senior news management is serious, and, in my view, wrong. Take the Panorama called "FIFA's Dirty Secrets", shown at the end of November 2010.  It wasn't just "Senior sources close to No 10" that wanted that programme delayed, to be broadcast after England's World Cup bid. Andy Anson, CEO of the bid team that included David Cameron, Lord Coe, David Beckham, Prince William, Gary Lineker and Alan Shearer, visited Mark Thompson to press the point, and The Guardian believes Jeremy Hunt called Mark Thompson. There's a thoughtful view of those events from Stephen Mitchell here.