- Ceri Thomas
- 15 Dec 06, 03:18 PM
Usually, the only way to guarantee that some snippet of news about the 大象传媒 will appear in a newspaper diary is to ask people inside the corporation to treat it as top secret.
Generally speaking, if you do that you can expect Fleet St to be buzzing with the news within an hour or two at most. So it was surprising (and disappointing in a curious way) to find something in the that just wasn't a secret at all: from next Monday, the newspaper reviews in Today will be read by the presenters rather than the news readers.
Sandwiched in the Spy column between David Cameron on one side and Chrissie Hynde on the other, the article says the change will alarm "those who have criticised the programme for lacking political objectivity". But it's hard to see why when the presenters will be reading out the same scripts written by the same people (in the ) who write them now.
The presenters already read out some of the paper reviews, of course - early in the programme and on Saturday morning, for instance - so this is a smallish change. And The Telegraph is right: we're hoping it will help everything flow along a little more smoothly.
Ceri Thomas is editor of the Today programme
- Mike Rudin
- 15 Dec 06, 10:44 AM
Nearly three years of investigation, at a cost of 拢3.7 million, and yet the report by the former Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Lord Stevens, into the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, will not end the conspiracy theories about her death.
The conspiracy theories live because questions remain, encouraged by missing evidence and failures in the investigation. The theories live because an increasing number of people distrust official sources of information, and also because some people just cannot bring themselves to believe the official explanation no matter what.
The Conspiracy Files series is looking at four modern controversial conspiracies: the death of Princess Diana, 9/11, the Oklahoma Bomb and the death of the government scientist Dr David Kelly (episode details here). We chose them because important questions have been raised about the official explanation. That is not to conclude either way. We set about trying to find the evidence. Alison Peterson, commenting on my blog entry last week, implores us to find and analyse the facts. I hope that鈥檚 what you saw in the first programme How Diana Died (大象传媒 Two last Sunday).
Just because an official says something does not make it true, but equally it does not make it false either. We need to know the sources of the information we use and we are always looking for corroboration. We spend a lot of time working out what the real story is and how much weight to place on any particular piece of information.
have been raised about the death of Princess Diana - why was the road reopened just four-and-a-half hours after the crash? Why was there no CCTV footage available from any of the cameras along the route? Why has a crucial witness, who drove the Fiat Uno which was hit by Diana鈥檚 Mercedes, never been found?
But in the end we did not find any convincing evidence to support the conspiracy theory that Princess Diana was murdered by the secret service on the orders of the British Establishment. We revealed a vital new piece of evidence that the French authorities had and found it matched his parents. This evidence makes it clear that the blood samples, which showed that the driver, Henri Paul, had three times the French drink drive limit, could not have been switched in an attempt to cover up a secret plot. What is more, the evidence suggests Henri Paul was driving too fast on a difficult section of road, he lost control before he hit the second car, and that neither Dodi Al Fayed nor Princess Diana were wearing seat belts, and yet they could still be alive if they had worn them.
Other commenters included Laurie Phillips, Gareth Williams and Gary Scott who suggested that we attacked straw men. Yet in the programme about Princess Diana we tackled and answered all the key questions - whether Princess Diana鈥檚 driver was drunk, driving too fast, part of a secret service plot, whether a second car was also part of the plot, and whether Princess Diana was about to get married or was pregnant. We did not dodge any of those important questions. Furthermore, we pointed out information that is difficult for the authorities, such as the absence of CCTV footage.
A number of you looked forward to the other programmes in the series, which continues in the New Year, especially the programme about 9/11. To answer questions about what we are covering in the 9/11 programme, we are covering all the key issues, including World Trade Centre 7, which was not hit by an aeroplane but which collapsed. And yes we did contact Professor Steven Jones, but he did not want to be interviewed for the programme and instead we interviewed the co-chair of Scholars for 9/11 Truth, Professor Jim Fetzer.
Some wondered if the 大象传媒 was somehow part of the cover-up. I hope you鈥檒l see that the evidence we produced about Princess Diana鈥檚 death, and my background, show that is a daft suggestion.
I produced a series of Panoramas with John Ware which did not pull their punches but equally did not assume every official statement is necessarily false. A film on the Hutton Inquiry and the events surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly (鈥淎 Fight to the Death鈥) was critical of both the 大象传媒 and the British Government - hard to see how I was part of a conspiracy there. Another Panorama examined in detail the case Tony Blair made for taking Britain to war with Iraq (鈥淚raq, Tony and the Truth鈥), and quoted for the first time from the Downing Street memorandum of July 2002 which revealed that the Head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, as saying that the intelligence and the facts regarding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq 鈥渨ere being fixed around the policy鈥 by the Bush Administration.
Oh and by the way, in answer to one comment, no I am not and have never been a spy.
Mike Rudin, series producer of Who's Watching You and The Conspiracy Files
Daily Mail and others: Lib Dem culture spokesman criticises Christmas TV schedules. ()
Daily Telegraph: Report that the Today programme newspaper review will no longer be read by newsreaders and will instead be read by the main presenters. ()
Daily Mail: Richard Littlejohn on the debate about the use of the word "prostitute". "Will we have to call their pimps 'leisure services procurement advisers?" ()
Daily Telegraph: Andrew Roberts criticises 大象传媒 News website animated reconstruction of Diana, Princess of Wales's car crash. ()
