Friday, October 29, 2021

Yet more arts news...

Toilers at the coalface of BBC News, already struggling to understand their new operating model,  furrowed their brows more deeply last night, as the new commissioning/content system produced yet another item from reporter Alan Yentob. 

It was a story on the work of an American convicted murderer Donny Johnson, largely condemned to solitary confinement, who paints with colours made from the sweets M&Ms. Was it news ?   Donny's first exhibition of work was in 2006, after being encouraged by psychotherapist pen friend Steve Kurtz. Through Steve, British film-maker Mike Dibb (maker of Ways of Seeing and many other arts documentaries at the BBC), befriended Donny.  Mike, now 81, completed his documentary on Donny in 2019, with a screening in June that year at the Birkbeck Cinema. 

Now it's popped up at 11pm on Sunday on BBC4, and the art exhibition is on tour at The Riverside Studios, a former BBC building a quarter of a mile away from Al's regular lunchtime table at The River Cafe. 

There was a moment in last night report viewers might have got the impression, bolstered by the script, that Alan was actually in Johnson's cell at Pelican Bay Prison, not far from Crescent City in northern California. Later shots demonstrated no air fares had been involved, as it was a replica constructed for the exhibition. Previous Yentob films have faced criticism for the presenter nodding along to answers that he never directly asked.  Was there a producer involved in last night's item ? A tougher one might have noted the prolixity of the script line "Every year, the Koestler Arts Foundation has an annual exhibition...."

Is Alan an official member of the BBC News Culture team ?  Is he being paid for this work ?  Or is he simply taking up the generous invitation from BBC News' new Culture Editor ?


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