Cover stories
| 15:41 UK time, Monday, 25 September 2006
The reverberations of are still being felt – but not just in the world of football. They have also provoked how about how we at the ´óÏó´«Ã½ cover stories generated by our own journalists – particularly, as in this case, ahead of the programme itself appearing.
There can’t be much room for doubt that we used not to be very good at this.
Original reporting and investigative journalism which had taken many months of effort could disappear without trace after just one transmission. You either caught it or you didn’t. On one occasion, a piece which won the Royal Television Society’s home news award made no impact on the rest of our output. That just does not feel right.
Now as some commentators have noticed, things have changed. We do try to ensure that every part of the ´óÏó´«Ã½â€™s journalism is aware of the stories being generated across all of our output and we ask editors to think about whether those stories are appropriate for their audience. There are some very good reasons for this.
Original journalism is both important and expensive. Finding things out and telling people about them first is at the heart of what audiences expect from news and current affairs. Every piece of original journalism we carry has been paid for by licence fee payers and they deserve to be given every possible opportunity to see, hear and read what we’ve discovered.
In a world where the individual consumer is so much more in control, showcasing the best of our journalism becomes even more important. When we talk to audiences, we find time after time that people are unaware of something we’ve done which they would have been particularly interested in. At a time when so much more choice is available, we need to find the best ways to highlight our strongest work.
Of course there are dangers which every editor is aware of. Some long form programmes just don’t translate easily into much shorter news reports. Some stories are so complicated and layered that they can’t be told in that way. And of course there is a danger of over-promoting ourselves. No one wants to watch a news programme which seems to consist only of trails and previews of other ´óÏó´«Ã½ programmes and events at the expense of the day’s other news.
Ultimately there is no definitive edict about exactly how and when we showcase our own journalism. Individual editors have to decide what is right for their own programmes and audiences. But we do this in a spirit of seeking to share the best of what we do with as many people as possible – that’s a measure we feel comfortable to be judged by.
Comments
Are you saying that we should get to see what you have discovered even if you haven't discovered anything?
I can understand that a lot of money was spent on last weeks Panorama and you can't just throw it away once it is completed, but perhaps the ´óÏó´«Ã½ could have realised at an early stage that nothing was going to come of it and cut the filming rather than continue to waste licence payers' money.
I find it hard to believe that the programme was being hyped up on both prime time radio and TV when it was as poor as it proved to be.
Surely heads should roll at the ´óÏó´«Ã½ over both the programme and the decision to promote it all over the place when ultimately it was worthless. TV licence payers deserve more!
It's a shame that the documentary that you have chosen to extensively cover is some of the poorest output from the ´óÏó´«Ã½ in some time.
The documentary took a premise that is the received wisdom - football is riddled with corruption - and yet delivered nothing. The build up promised that football would be 'rocked to its core' but instead all that was rocking was my head as I slowly drifted off to sleep. Panorama certainly changed my perceptions. It made me certain that football was much cleaner in its financial practises than I'd originally suspected.
What was the result of that documentary? Some big talk. No money changing hands. No out of the blue phone calls from managers direct to the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s plant. A documentary that could have had massive impact ended up feeling rushed, unplanned and amateurish. Just how many times did the hidden camera nearly get spotted?
Was Harry Redknapp being caught on camera saying that he'd like to sign Andy Todd worthy of an hour long documentary, acres of newspaper space and gigabytes of bandwidth?
Personally I'd rather see the ´óÏó´«Ã½ following up Channel 4's 'Dispatches' program about the Labour Party's methods of raising funds through 'commercial loans'. At least that had a bit of substance.
Panorama last week was as thin on content as one of the models at the London Fashion Week.
Contrived stories with little concrete fact the program failed to live up to the hype generated.
Can the editor tell me why Harry Redknapp was even mentioned on the program?
He gave his opinion on a player and said he would like him in his squad. What next, will every manager on Match of The Day have to not comment on individual players in case they are accused of "tappping up".
Investigative journalism I have no problem with, creating a story, failing to substantiate it and then editing it to try to grab ratings looked some of the poorest standards from the beeb in many years.
This programme proclaimed to have evidence that would rock football to its foundations.
This was clearly not true and perhaps there was only enough material for a News Night style piece. And this should have been focused on Agents in football because there was simply no evidence on the managers.
Now the ´óÏó´«Ã½ are being sued by all and sundry. Poor journalism, poor editorial judgement and poor Panorama. I can now see why it will be dumbed down for a 1/2 hour prime time slot. This is not a reflection of the audience but a reflection on the journalists. Their objectives were too high and they wasted time and money that could have been better spent.
I agree with Ben, I watched this Panorama eagerly after the hype that the ´óÏó´«Ã½ had built up around it with such phrases as "names will be named" and "send a shock wave through the world of football".
I couldn't believe, by the end of it, that I'd sat through it for an hour. I kept waiting for a final blow to be dealt but it never arrived. Apart from a few agents pushing dodgy paperwork around, there was nothing substantive on the managers and Sam Allardyce (and Harry Redknapp to some degree) will have a field day with the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s allegations. It was all too easy for them to deny it the next morning because they knew the Beeb had no evidence other than hearsay from agents whose opinion we were lead to distrust by the broadcast itself.
A foundless, toothless investigation that has left the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s reputation for this sort of thing in tatters after all the good work done by proper investigative journalists like Donal MacIntyre.
It does amuse me when a lengthy story appears on the TV news having not featured anywhere else. It's then followed by the inevitable "..and you can see more on that in a special programme...".
Interesting - I guess it's pretty unanswerable that you should share information around as widely as you can. But there is something of a delicate balance here which goes beyond a bare judgement of news values - if Channel Four's Dispatches had a scoop, it would have to be life-changingly strong for it to feature on the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Six O'Clock news, website, radio, News 24 etc. And everyone knows that TV is about maximising ratings. So it's not quite the whole story to say its about making the most of the journalism - if you're honest Adrian, you'll acknowledge surely that there's an element of PR too?
Maybe the line to be drawn is about pre- and post-publicity? If a programme has some revelations, by all means report on them after it's been shown. But doing them beforehand seems a little bit weird.
if the ´óÏó´«Ã½ spent a year on an investigation, would it then be prepared not to broadcast it if it didn't feel it was absolutely up to standard? Or is there a danger than programmes which are only 'all right' get shown, simply because they have been big productions?
"...we find time after time that people are unaware of something we’ve done which they would have been particularly interested in." -
Wouldn't it be lovely if we could subscribe to newsletters that tell us what's on when, and that only for those stories we are indeed 'particularly interested in'?
But that would take a human, doing a paid job, of somebody being employed to categorise and select what story should appear under what heading - and those would have to be quite extensive. I wouldn't want to subscribe to a feed for just 'environment' and have to read through all the stuff I am not particularly interested, in order to, on occasion, come across the specific subject I do want to know about, like say 'water drought' and maybe 'recycling'...