Fightback gathers pace
Mark Thompson’s speech last night is reported in The Times and The Guardian today. He defended the BBC’s showing of JS:TO, pledged “not to be swayed by short-run moral panics”, and predicted further controversy in the future, which the broadcaster would resist with “courtesy and sensitivity” as well as “conviction and muscularity”.
Only The Times thought it important to consult Stephen Green on the affair. Green said,
This is not an issue of freedom of speech, but a case of broadcasting people not knowing the civilised limits and having to be told them.
“Civilised limits” presumably stretching to the publication of private numbers on the net, and blackmailing cancer charities?
It must be frustrating for Mr Thompson that ordinary people have the cheek to phone somebody who takes a decision at the BBC.
What a profoundly silly man he is.
UPDATE: Predictably, Thompson’s speech enraged “Massah” John Beyer, the Black and White Minstrels fan who likens himself to St Paul. So he has written a letter to The Times, which hasn’t been published, but which you can view here if you are so inclined.
The logical fallacy here is to assume that this is an either/or situation.
The publication of the telephone numbers & addresses was at best naive – though who knows what else one could do if other channels produced only computer-generated responses? Likewise the treatment of Maggie’s would not in normal circumstances be at all civilised.
But how does that make the things campaigned against (TV swearing,/blasphemy and abortions) by any stretch of the imagination civilised? For all we know there may have been uncivilised behaviour by both parties.
What a profoundly silly man he is – yup. Just came across this spoof site at antichristianvoice.org.uk.
Maggie’s Centre and JSTO had nothing to do with abortions and everything to do with bullying and hypcrisy.
You are implying that swearing or blaspheming are as bad as attacking cancer sufferers. How on earth can you equate the two? You must be out of your tiny mind. What kind of a god would want you to do that?
You are, quite frankly a twisted and sick individual if you believe that the two are equal.
They didnt attack cancer sufferers. For all we know, the actual cancer sufferers knew nothing of it – but they did get more money out of it in the end.
My point is that all 3 things are uncivilised. It’s not a question of ‘If one is uncivilised the other must be civilised’.
They threatened to picket a centre which canceer sufferers visit. They were willing to hassle terminally ill people because a charity had accepted money from a charity performance of JSTO. How is that possibly anything other than utterly utterly wrong? How can you possibly say it even equates to swearing. A TV show, which has plenty of warnings about it does not hassle anyone, particularly not those who are terminally ill. Picketing a charity cancer centre does. In this instance the ends do not and can not ever justify the means. Why can you not accept that? Why?
I agree – and would not have taklen the same action myself. Tho’ I very much doubt that they would have hassled any terminally ill patients.
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