It's not unusual for people to be both nice and nasty within a short period of time.
BBC News CEO Deborah Turness opens her September missive to staff with five "huge and heartfelt thank yous", for work in a period of almost daily "seismic stories".
Then comes the money message, and it looks like pennies of News over-spending are once again running into pounds, and forcing nice Debbie into an outbreak of CAPITAL LETTERS: "Our priority is to protect the budgets that deliver our journalism, but to achieve this we MUST reduce what we spend on “backend” costs that need to be gripped and controlled.
"It’s about basic, good housekeeping in terms of properly managing overtime, travel and transport, how we use freelancers, attendance at industry conferences and events etc. We have clear guidance in place re how these areas should be managed, but tracking shows abuse of the system and non-adherence to our guidelines. You will see that we are going to be applying a more rigorous approach to enforcing guidelines, so please do help managers and leaders as they apply the rules."
'Please help managers as they apply the rules'? Oh, please. It was always the managers who were breaking them! Attendance at industry conferences? I never got to go to ONE in 40 years at the BBC. No, no, they're not for people who actually make content, how ridiculous! They're management perks. As were the flying visits to big stories or OBs, always staying in the sort of hotels I couldn't book on the BBC system because they fell outside 'policy' ie were too expensive. Look to the planks in your own eyes, senior management.
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