In BBC News job interviews at the turn of the century, those asking the questions indulged in a fad for hypotheticals. We'd start with unlikely scenarios, and then twist their development in conversation with the applicant, trying to lead them into the myriad bunkers and long grass on the BBC golf course that is Editorial Policy. It was generally fun for both sides, as improvisation kept the storyline going.
I'm not sure we had the breadth of imagination to develop a strand quite like the events in a certain Camberwell flat on Thursday night into Friday morning. For those at Broadcasting House the following night, the angst of deciding how to handle coverage of the Guardian scoop must have been intense and prolonged. What to do about a single source story only given at that stage to one newspaper ?
Those on shift can now take comfort that, by piecing together lines from other residents in various papers, we can be certain it was a humdinger of a row, and checking that the couple was ok was the right course of action, when they wouldn't answer their door.
Will the tape ever emerge ? Will Carrie go back to the flat ? Will Boris ? Should the BBC be on the case ?
Below, a Metropolitan Police cinema ad from 2010...
I remember those. I got the one about producing a live OB, a day in the life of Heathrow Airport. Mid-afternoon, mid-broadcast, we learn a passenger plane is about to make an emergency landing; its landing gear won't come down. Question: do you show it live? I said no, I'd record it, but carry on programme without showing the actual touchdown. Grim faces all round. I defended my decision; surely the BBC shouldn't risk showing the horrific deaths of hundreds of people live on air? Nope, apparently I should show Mrs Jones live pictures of Mr Jones dying in a fireball.
ReplyDeleteA few years later, during the row about Panorama getting into North Korea on the back of a student trip, a senior BBC News spokesman was asked, outside Broadcasting House, whether the BBC thought it was acceptable for the BBC to endanger the safety, possibly the lives, of other people in order to get a story? Yes. Yes, we do, replied the BBC man, sometimes the story is important enough to do that. I think there was then the sound of a coach and horses being driven through every BBC health & safety regulation ever written, but his reply was accepted and the world turned on.
I didn't get the job, and I'm bloody glad I didn't.