Starvation in Syria: how did it take us so long?

How can it be that in all the saturation coverage of the migration from Syria, the debates about air strikes and the brutality of Isis, it has taken until now for the plight of the besieged people of Madaya to reach our consciousness?

The Times splash headline seems odd. "Outcry over..." You'd think the mere fact of thousands of people at risk of starving to death would be enough for a splash. But it is needed because that fact was in the paper yesterday - at the foot of the opening world spread.

It was in the Guardian, too. At the bottom of the second foreign spread. The Telegraph picked up on it today and put it on page 12.

This flurry coincides with extensive BBC television news coverage yesterday, including pictures of emaciated children and footage of a man making leaf soup,  and a UN announcement that the Assad government was to allow aid through.

The difficulties of getting news from towns such as Madaya might explain our ignorance of this situation apart from one thing: Laura Pitel reported on it for the Independent a week ago. Her story led the paper's world section, accompanied by a photograph of children demonstrating outside the UN building in Beirut a few miles away. The splash that day was British troops facing abuse charges over the war in Iraq.

The UN has many failings and it may be that it hasn't made enough noise about the sieges of Syria (Madaya is not the only stricken town). Or maybe we, as Western journalists, haven't been listening. Maybe we think our readers won't care.

Because that is the big problem with news judgments these days: newspapers tend to give prominence only to stories they think readers care about.

When challenged about the disparity in coverage of terrorist attacks in Paris and Beirut, papers were quick to say "We covered Beirut, but people didn't care."

There is a lot of fantastic journalism on newspapers' inside pages, but foreign stories tend to break through to the front only on the tails of television coverage. Even the H-bomb tests in North Korea made page one of only the Guardian and Telegraph (where it got five pars) yesterday.

It's a tricky one. What's the point of printing stories no one will read, stories that might actually turn them away from your product? Newspapers are commercial enterprises, they have to sell to survive, and now that there are so many algorithms to tell editors exactly what people are reading on their tablets or mobiles, it is tempting to follow the Mail online model and feed the known appetites.

But isn't that like giving the kids fish fingers because you know they like them and never offering something more challenging, but ultimately more satisfying, such as liver or kippers?

So hurrah for the The Times for looking beyond the direct interests of its readers. People in Syria drinking leaf soup matter more than people in the Home Counties drinking a pint a day.

Postscript Good to see "proper" journalism, too, from the Independent and Mail, whatever your opinion of the politics behind their lead stories.

Was it right for Keogh's letter to the BMA about the junior doctors' strike to be passed up to Jeremy Hunt - who is, after all, his ultimate boss - for approval? Is it really a scandal? After all, he agreed with the changes made and the inserted paragraph was a restatement of something he had actually said. Should we be surprised that politicians try to manipulate situations? That's what they do.

It's an interesting topic, especially in the light of the furore over Laura Kuenssburg and the resignation of  foreign affairs spokesman Stephen Doughty from the Shadow Cabinet.

The BBC political editor is being accused of manipulating/manufacturing the news, rather than reporting on it, because she apparently persuaded Doughty to announce his resignation in a live interview  just before Prime Minister's Questions. Was this political bias, designed to help Cameron and embarrass Corbyn? Seems unlikely to me, given that the Beeb is supposed to be a hotbed of lefties.

If she had convinced a wavering shadow minister to resign when he wasn't going to, that would be another matter. But there is no suggestion that that is what happened.

I'd have thought that any broadcaster that got wind of such a resignation would have sought to capitalise by trying to get a scoop and then time its release for  maximum impact. But critics say that because the BBC is publicly funded, it must be impartial (see above) and not chase ratings.

But if it doesn't compete with rivals to prove its coverage is best, then people will seek out other news sources. And then critics (not necessarily the same ones) will say "Why are we paying for this stuff no one watches?"

Auntie's bloomers are hung out to dry

It was always disappointing to come home from school on a Thursday to discover that Jimmy Savile would be presenting Top of the Pops. The programme, along with Ready  Steady Go, was the highlight of the week, so the choice of presenter was important.
They had all come from Radio Luxembourg -  David Jacobs, Pete (later Peter) Murray, Alan Freeman and Savile - so their voices were familiar from furtive listening under the eiderdown. We knew what David Jacobs looked like from Juke Box Jury, but to see rather than hear the others had been a revelation. None of them was what you'd call sexy, but Savile was simply odd, and no one I knew liked him.
When you're 12 you have instinct, but not the honed bullshit detector that comes with experience. We didn't like Savile because he seemed to regard himself as being on the same level as the musicians who came to mime on the show. And he patently wasn't. In those days big names appeared on TOTP, and I mean big names: the Beatles, the Stones, the Who, Tom Jones. The other DJs showed due deference.
Through the Sixties and Seventies, Savile's profile grew and grew: the charity walks, the marathons, Jim'll Fix It. Somehow they were all about him and not about the people he was purporting to help. Breathing cigar smoke and jangling bracelets and chains, there was something sinister as he invited some little poppet to sit on his knee asking her: 'Have I made your dream come true?' before pointing  to his cheek and instructing her to plant a kiss 'just there.'. Still, everyone on television said how wonderful he was, so maybe I just didn't get it. A mysterious greatness that needed explanation, like Gerard Manley Hopkins or the Ancient bloody Mariner.
It didn't occur to me that he was a child molester. I just didn't like him.

No doubt a lot of people who didn't know his dark (and apparently open) secrets thought the same. It's easy to imagine that his despicable tastes were common knowledge around the BBC. As Jeremy Paxman told Nick Pollard's inquiry into the corporation's handling of the Savile story,  'It was...common gossip that Jimmy Savile liked young...I don't know whether it was girls or boys...but I had no evidence of it.'
Today we know only too well that we were all correct in our instincts, that there was something strange about him. As individuals we can avoid such people and mutter  what we think of them to each other, but as news organisations we cannot report rumour as fact. Nor, indeed, can we make insinuations as Cassandra (William Connor) did so expensively  in his magnificent appraisal of Liberace for the Daily Mirror in 1956.

'This appalling man...reeks with emetic language. Without doubt, he is the biggest sentimental vomit of all time. Slobbering over his mother...and counting the cash at every second, this superb piece of calculating candy-floss as an answer for every situation.
'There must be something wrong with us that our teenagers longing for sex and our middle-aged matrons fed up with sex alike should fall for such a sugary mountain of jingling claptrap wrapped up in  such a preposterous clown.'

He may have been writing about a glittery pianist half a century ago, but the description fits Savile to T,  right down to the peculiar sanctification of his mother. Publishing or broadcasting such thoughts, though, is fraught.

The BBC has been on the rack for months over Savile's long career of abuse and the ham-fisted way it dealt with Newsnight's investigation into his activities just as a tribute was  programme being prepared as a Christmas special in 2011. The screws were tightened when ITV broadcast its own documentary last November; then  Panorama joined the torturers with its take on the squabbling and mismanagement inside the BBC. Today the corporation is back in the punishment room after publication of evidence given to its internal inquiry under Nick Pollard. Apart from the substance of the text, there is further furore over the abundance of marker pan amid the typescript.

The BBC is seen as having failed on two fronts: in employing a man for decades in the face of strong hearsay evidence that he was a predatory paedophile, and for stifling the in-house investigative journalism that would have exposed his activities. 

Sharing the dock with the BBC on the first count are the likes of Stoke Mandeville Hospital and a dozen other organisations that saw Savile not as a wicked man but as a cash cow. Scores of people are hanging their heads in shame that they did not - or would not - see what he was or take action to stop him.

Paxman's evidence to Pollard is relevant to this in that he says that when the BBC had to embrace the  crowd from the pirate radio stations, they didn't know how to handle them. They were aliens, from another culture. This, remember, was the dawn of the era of sex, drugs and rock'n'roll, of anything goes. If the BBC wanted to keep these hip guys it had to accept that joints would be rolled and sheets would be crumpled. Even if it had recognised what was going on, it wouldn't have had a clue how to deal with it.
That is not to excuse decades of inertia, but to explain how Savile was able to establish a modus operandi and eventually come to believe that no matter how outrageous he was, nothing could touch him. Sadly, as we know from countless inquiries and scandals, abuse of  children in borstals, special hospitals, hostels and orphanages was rife for at least three-quarters of the 20th century. The vicitims did not dare complain and even had they attempted to, who could they have confided in? Who would have listened to them, let alone believed them?

Today, however, it is on the second count that the BBC is being put on trial - for killing a story that was in the public interest simply because it was inconvenient. All good stories have their  heroes and villains. The Newsnight journalist Meirion Jones is the hero, the entire upper echelon of the BBC is the villain, and the Newsnight editor Peter Rippon the fallguy. We all love Paxo, so he has to take a major part on the side of the good guys - even though in truth his evidence is hardly telling. He didn't know what they were working on, beyond 'something about Savile', and he didn't even realise that there was anything wrong with the decision to pull the story  'until the shit hit the fan'.

So how culpable is the BBC journalistically?

By Paxman's admission, 'famous DJ turns out to be nasty man' is not your typical Newsnight story. 'I don't find it surprising,' he told the Pollard inquiry, 'that some people said "Look this isn't really for us." It is not our normal sort of territory...You don't see this sort of stuff very much on - or indeed at all - on Newsnight. One can understand why people might say "It is not our sort of thing." It is not.' Indeed, Paxman went so far as to say that the programme had never before tackled this sort of material.
So he appears to have been ambivalent about the story while his editor and reporters were  arguing and agonising over the fate of their work and how it appeared to be at the mercy of a totally inappropriate tribute show.
A year later, though, Paxman started to sit up and take notice.  A few days before ITV broadcast  its documentary, he urged his editor to run the story the Newsnight team had been preparing. The trailers and pre-publicity had clearly set him thinking.

Asked when he had concluded that the decision the previous year not to run the story was wrong, Paxman was open: 'To be perfectly frank..when the shit hit the fan...around the time the ITV thing aired.' This, he said, was because he thought the BBC had behaved  like other authority figures who disbelieved vulnerable institutionalised children who complained about abuse. Paxman didn't watch the ITV show, nor even Panorama's hairshirt follow-up.

At the height of the furore it seemed utterly bonkers that Peter Rippon, above, could seriously think  that the failings of Surrey Police and the CPS in not pursuing Savile was a better story than the stark facts his own team had unearthed. To any right-thinking individual, let alone journalist, it was clear as day that the real story was the exposure of a serial paedophile who had been a welcome guest in most people's living rooms, not about some bungling coppers.
But if you look at Rippon's assertion in the context of Paxman's evidence that it was not a 'Newsnight story' it doesn't seem quite so daft - a point Nick Pollard himself picked up on in his questioning of Paxman. Think of it in terms of a Guardian reporter finding a vicars and tarts story. Not quite our sort of thing, old chap.

Of course, this story is much, much bigger than any old vicar having his wicked way with any number of tarts. Rippon was at fault if he did not recognise as much, and  if he did, shouldn't he have  supported and encouraged his reporters in their investigations and helped them to find a more appropriate outlet within the BBC for their efforts? 

But there is another aspect. Who takes their own organisation to the cleaners? Would The Sunday Times have gone to town on the hacking story if it had uncovered it first? Once the Goodman-Mulcaire trial was over in 2007, anyone could have gone digging. Only The Guardian did, while the NI papers, in their ignorance, thought the rival paper was simply indulging in a witch hunt. Would the Telegraph have exposed Conrad Black's financial shenanigans? 

Should we really have expected a late-night current affairs programme with its small and dwindling audience  to blow this scandal open?

As journalists, we naturally think it should have done. But it's easy to say that from a distance and with hindsight.

The rest of the world loves the BBC;  other broadcasters and newspaper publishers - and many politicans - hate it. It tramples all over their territory without having to earn its keep. When advertising is slack, and newspapers have to offer their product in half a dozen formats with ever-decreasing resources,  it grates that the Beeb can run its worldwide operations, a dozen radio and television stations and a website - and pay the likes of Gary Lineker more than £1m a year - all at taxpayers' expense. The commercial TV and radio networks have the same antipathy.
The Beeb's enemies moan when it goes for ratings, complaining that it is competing for the mass market on a sloping playing field; they moan again when it splashes out a fortune on Jeremy Clarkson's Top Gear antics (which I believe are the corporation's biggest source of international revenue); and they moan still more when it makes niche programmes for tiny audiences - why is the taxpayer funding entertainment for the minority?

Jeremy Paxman, who is reported to be one of 15 in the 'half-million club', belatedly found his journalistic scruples offended by the spiking of the Newsnight story, yet by the time of the Nick Pollard inquiry he was happy to blast off about the entire organisation. His perception of the way the BBC is run may be accurate, but it still leaves a nasty taste. If it's so terrible, why does he stay?

Emperor Chris Patten has also denounced the top-heavy structure of the corporation, which has a budget of £750m and employs nearly 8,000 people. Patten has been in charge of this unweildy and apparently ungovernable empire throughout the Savile saga, yet he speaks -  as  Dan Sabbagh pointed out on Twitter - as though it had nothing to do with him.

It is open season on the BBC. When it comes to Jimmy Savile, the corporation has got a heck of a lot frighteningly and disgracefully wrong. But as you read Saturday's newspaper accounts, with their Paxo pix and 'BBC is pathetic' headings, listen for the sound of axes grinding in the background.

Sold down the river

Updated June 7

"Our output has been impressive not only in its scale, but in its ambition, quality and outstanding journalism. The audience response has been overwhelming with a peak audience of almost 12 million people tuning in for the pageant, 17 million for the concert and 7.4 million for yesterday's carriage procession. Overall across the jubilee weekend, 68.5% of the nation watched some of our Diamond Jubilee programming, a stunning figure."
Mark Thompson, BBC Director-General, in an email to staff today






It's never much fun having to work when the rest of the country is on holiday. But when you're a journalist it's part of the package. We all moan when we are rostered for what seem like too many Sundays, but there are upsides. You get days off in the week when everyone else is slaving, so the town centres are empty or you can get on with the chores in peace. If you're a middle-ranking exec you might be allowed to play with the train set with limited long-distance interference from above. If something big happens, you feel a real part of it because there are so few of you at work - but if something really big happens, you know the boss class will descend on the office and take over.
On rare occasions we know in advance that something big is going to happen, and so staffing is adjusted accordingly. I dare say that every sports editor in the country will be on duty constantly between July 27 and August 12.
This weekend was just such an occasion. If you're the Independent or the Socialist Worker you may not have felt it necessary to staff up for the jubilee to quite the same extent as the Telegraph or the Mail - it's all a question of knowing your audience. And this is where the BBC  got it so catastrophically wrong.
At The Times, for example, the deputy editor - rather than one of the team of lowlier Sunday editors - was running the show this Sunday night;  the chief night editor was on duty all over the weekend. The paper knew that the river pageant was the central event of the celebrations and that it had to be covered properly. The top team was on hand to make sure it was: the best writers, the best photographers, the best executives. The strategy paid off with a 20% lift in sales - more than 100,000 extra copies sold - a far bigger boost than was achieved by any of its rivals. The Telegraph, which went jubilee bonkers and even put Union Flag bunting on the masthead (disliked by many, but I thought it was fun)  saw sales rise by about 8%.


So what gives with the BBC? It clearly knew that the pageant was important to its viewers: it  devoted four and a half hours of unbroken coverage to it. The website described it as one of the biggest events of the year, the first time in 350 years that such a flotilla had been seen on the Thames. Everyone knows we are a maritime nation. The event, as we were told several times, had been three years in the planning. How did the Beeb manage to make such a mess of it?
First, who commissioned Kate Shiers, Claire Megahey and Zoe Timmers  - a trio whose experience appears to be dominated by Crufts, the One Show and Three Men in a Boat - as the producers?
Who approved the list of presenters and participants?  Presumably Megahey's links with the One Show explain Matt Baker and Sophie Raworth, and the Three Men in a Boat link may tell us why Griff Rhys Jones was imposed on us.
But, for goodness' sake: Tess Daly,  Anneka Rice, Sian Williams, Fearne Cotton, Sandi Toksvig, Maureen Lipman, Richard E. Grant? Did nobody look at this list and think 'Hey, blokes like boats, should we get some chaps who know what they're talking about?'
No,  rather the view appears to have been 'Oh the men won't watch, it's the girlies who like all this royal fluff, but they won't care about the boats, we need to lighten it up.'


The first big mistake was not to recognise - in spite of its own hype reinforcing the fact - that this was a big state occasion. The Beeb was scared by criticisms of David Dimbleby's commentaries for the golden jubilee a decade ago and had, in the words of former Radio 4 controller Mark Damazer made a clear decision to make the coverage "warm and inclusive".
But you can be warm and inclusive without being idiotic.
The great voices of the past, the Tom Flemings and the Max Robertsons, have been silenced by mortality, so if you accept that the BBC didn't want to wheel out a Dimbleby, who could have stepped in?  If the channel has dumbed down to such an extent that it has no presenter with more gravitas than Bruce Forsyth, Dermot O'Leary or Graham Norton, then it should have gone knocking on the door of Radio 4, where it would have found a wealth of talent to borrow: James Naughtie for a start, Sean Lay, Ed Stourton, Jennie Murray...anyone, indeed, who could recognise that a little homework would stand them in good stead. And what about Andrew Marr? Or even Jeremy Paxman or Fiona Bruce?
But no, Paul Dickenson was given the job; a man who literally didn't know one end of a boat from the other - going from talking about the gilding on the stern to the same gilding on the prow in the course of one sentence. 


The howlers have been widely listed: HRH the Queen; a hat being made by the milliner who produced Nelson's hat for Waterloo; the tonnage of HMS Belfast, the Duke of Edinburgh's age; muddling upriver and downriver; talk about going downstairs from the royal barge's first floor.
Tom Cunliffe, the only maritime expert on duty, knew a thing or two but was barely allowed to air his knowledge because it was far more important for the viewers to see Tess Daly "knighted" by a drag queen in Battersea Park or drool over some average WI cakes in a tent. And even Cunliffe was unable to translate the semaphore message being relayed from the National Theatre. Didn't these men have telephones? Weren't there any people on hand as back-up to tell them what it meant? Well the Belfast Telegraph could have done. It reported last Thursday that rooftop dancers would spell out the message "Happy diamond jubilee Queen Elizabeth We heart you."
Last Wednesday I was in the village hall and a local man came in to photocopy some downloads from the pageant's official website. He took home pages and pages of details of all the boats taking part so that he could follow their progress closely. The information was - and still is - there, freely available to everyone. Did nobody at the BBC think to read it?
If they thought waiting for a succession of ordinary boats to come through was too boring, could they not have focused one by one on those in the Avenue of Sail? Sir Francis Chichester's Gypsy Moth IV, the Dixie Queen paddle steamer, the Endeavour cockle boat that took part in the Dunkirk evacuation? 
Ah, sorry. They did pick up on one: HMS Belfast. Fearne Cotton was sent there to talk to a couple of war veterans. Did she ask them for their memories? Did she treat them with the respect one expects at their great age? Did she heck. She addressed them by the first names, Jim and John. Not difficult names, but she still managed to call John 'Jim' and then feed them the (inaccurate)  words she wanted to hear, leaving them with little  to say but 'yes'.


OK, so the BBC was determined to get across the party atmosphere (it could hardly be blamed for the rain), so it was legitimate to have some folk out with the crowds. But any fool could see that what was required was a mix. Newspapers have grasped this all along. There have been fun pictures, jolly colour copy, a bit of history, and some serious commentary along with the razzmatazz. How could nobody at the Beeb realise that the same applied here, after all there were 270 minutes to fill, there was plenty of time to blend the serious with the fluffy bits.


What was vital was that viewers should have been told the history and the personal stories behind as many of the boats as possible. With all the participants listed on the website, researchers should have gone out and spoken to the owners about their craft in advance.The interviews could have been spliced into the live coverage. There should have been a helicopter crew showing shots of the entire flotilla, instead of restricting us to the rowing boats and the royal barge. We needed at least to be told the story of the little boats' role at Dunkirk; we didn't need people cooking or cracking jokes or swooning over the handle that lifts Tower Bridge.
And how about reacting to newsworthy events as they happen? When the London Philharmonic Orchestra's boat arrived at Tower Bridge we saw 12 young people out on deck, soaking wet, singing their hearts out. Why weren't we told who they were? Or even the name of the choir? (They were members of the Royal School of Music Chamber Choir.)
There was so much wrong with the coverage that it's cruel to continue. So let's move on.

The jubilee concert outside Buckingham Palace had a line-up that looked as naff and as cheesy as you could get. There was a shadow over the event because of the Duke of Edinburgh's absence. But apart from  Paul McCartney's odd choice of songs and Elton John's faltering voice, all went swimmingly -  particularly Stevie Wonder's reworking of his lyrics and the  light show on the Palace facade that accompanied Madness's Our House.
The only trouble was that, as is often the case with such events, the show overran a bit. The Beeb should be used to that by now - so many football finals run to extra time and penalties.  Generally  the rest of the schedule is just pushed back a bit. But not last night. Oh no. The concert ended with a four-minute firework display. Just as it reached its climax, Huw Edwards started to sign off...and then the fireworks were hidden under the scrolling credits. They couldn't wait just one minute - one minute - to let the viewers see the display come to its natural conclusion. Can you imagine them cutting off the final penalty in one of those cup finals? Of course not.
And with time so tight, you'd expect to go straight into the next programme which was, as the continuity announcer told us, five minutes late. No. The fireworks were cut off to make way for a pair of trailers for the Euros and the rest of the jubilee coverage. 
The next day, the channel broadcast the concert again. Presumably there would be people in an editing suite somewhere who could put right the faux pas of the previous night? There must surely have been some straight film of the display and some technical means of showing it all? But no, what was shown was exactly the same as the night before - put the tape in the machine and bugger off home - complete with the intrusive final credits.


This is what rankles about the BBC's attitude. It was bad enough that it got things wrong on the pageant, but there was a loud enough reaction for it to make sure that coverage of the concert was pitch perfect. Then when it made another mistake, which was also swiftly and widely denounced, it took no action to rectify it for the second showing of the concert the next day. This again smacks of having the B or C team on duty because it was a holiday weekend instead of realising that this wasn't just any other quiet bank holiday. Where were the people who are supposed to be in charge?  Just as an editor has to carry the can when his paper gets it wrong, so the controller should be called to account for this. Where was Danny Cohen all weekend? 


And then when the serious inquests began, how did the BBC respond? Did it put up someone accountable to answer the criticisms on the Today programme or the Media Show? No. It was left to Mark Damazer, who does not even work for the corporation any more, to face Evan Davis yesterday morning. He came up with the "warm and inclusive" line and then declared: "The BBC tried too hard."
Tried too hard? Excuse me. This isn't an 11-year-old who has been told to do her best in a school test; this is our national publicly-financed world-renowned broadcasting giant. Tried too hard?  The whole crux of the problem was that the people on screen and behind the mikes didn't try at all. They did no homework, they didn't have a clue what they were talking about and thought it was all too dull for anybody to care.


The decision to take a lighter approach - as Alan Yentob put it to the Media Show 'to reflect popular participation' - was apparently a direct result of the complaints about Dimbleby ten years ago. Then there were 700, this time there were nearly 2,500. Those who had a pop at Dimbleby said he talked too much and was disrespectful at times. That doesn't tell me that the whole nation wanted the Beeb to dumb down; the "disrespectful" suggests the reverse. 
And if the dismay of 700 people is enough to bring a change of tack - however misguided - shouldn't there be some acknowledgement that when three times as many ring or write to have a moan, they may have a point? No one has said "We got it wrong" or even "We could have done better."
Instead the  corporation has rushed out audience figures showing that 12 million tuned in for the pageant, as though that proves everyone loved it. But ITV wasn't offering live coverage, so the figures aren't that meaningful.
Mark Thompson retires soon as director-general. Two of the internal candidates to replace him were involved in planning the jubilee coverage. Let's hope they, and their rivals, have learnt from this.



Thank you for sticking with it to the end. Please do share your thoughts below. And please take a look at the other posts. They are all media related.


Hello and goodbye to Wapping a personal diary of life inside the fortress in the days before the strike that changed newspapers forever


Out of print a love letter to newspapers in this digital age. Why they don't have to die if we have the will to let them live and thrive


Why local newspapers matter Why we should care about the revolution in the regional press


Missing: an opportunity How the hunt for Madeleine McCann could be turned into a force for good instead of just a festival of mawkish sentimentality


Riding for a fall Does buying a ticket for a jolly day out at the races mean you are fair game for the snobs who sneer and snipe?


Just a pretty face Illustrating the business pages isn't the easiest job in the world, but spare us the celebs who aren't even mentioned in the story


Food for thought a case study in why we should take health advice with a pinch of salt (and a glass of red wine and a helping of roast beef) 


The world's gone mad Don Draper returns and  the drooling thirtysomethings go into overdrive But does anybody watch the show? (But there is more Whipple in this post!)