You'll have to forgive me, I'm confused.

[davywavy]

A year or six months ago, my various friendslist/comments feeds across social media were crammed with comment on the Leveson enquiry. From the moment the story broke - that reporters working for News International had hacked voicemail messages and then the organisation had covered it up to preserve their reputation - there was a pretty constant strream of comment about how this rendered the company not a 'fit and proper' organisation to hold a major role in the UK media. I could barely turn on a computer without seeing a dozen links to articles from the Guardian about how this failure of professional oversight meant that News International were not - there's that phrase again - 'fit and proper'.

The odd thing is, that over the last few weeks worth of revelations an accusations about how Jimmy Savile - and by all reports others - spent most of the last half century fondling their way around the care homes of the country and the BBC covered it up to preserve their reputation (and, it seems, brushed accusations under the carpet as Savile was a very valuable property during the 60's, 70's and 80's), but the comments threads have been utterly silent about any suggestions of questions over fitness or properness beyond sober observations about how we should wait for all the facts before passing judgement, etc.

I mean, what? Is everyone who was commenting on News International six months ago just really busy at the moment? Or is there some subtle distinction I'm missing here? You'll have to explain, because I'm confused.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

BBC (left-wing) good. Murdoch (right-wing) bad.

What more do you need to know?

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I refuse to believe that any of my friends could be so simple-minded. There's bound to be a more logical explanation.

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

Speaking personally, I'm waiting for the results of the inquiry to determine what it's all about; the subject at hand is to me "feels" a lot more delicate and that may well be part of what is keeping the news teams cautious here - dragging up peoples names and saying "my phone was hacked" is something you can drag up to the front pages and be all indignant about - the actual sordid details of what said messages contained are still safe and you can rant and rave about how your privacy was violated.

However if you pull up hapless victim A and splash over the front page "Bob got bummed by celebrity S" then Bob's reputation and personal life are somewhat shattered and you are going to suffer a serious news backlash (I'd imagine)

It's also a noticeable factor that most the victims for the hacking saga were all famous so you get a double whammy for news; "Celebrity X gets hacked by evil Corp Y" two names to pull in punters each time.

Rather than "Unknown kid #437 bummed by Celebrity S" again. It's got no new "news" worthy power to it. All it becomes in the end is numbers, and in numbers, "one bumming is a tragedy, 100,000 bummings is a statistic." paraphrasing Stalin slightly.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

it's not really the news reporting I'm thinking about, mind. It's the utter lack of comment on - say - FB, which some months ago was crammed with gleeful comments about how the whole situation proved news International was bad & wrong. I'm guessing that those same commentators are just short of time now a comparable situation involving the BBC has arisen.

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

Fair point then; and as anonymous says people don't like Murdoch and love to rant about him; the Beeb has a better general perception by the blogosphere and so it's getting much lighter flak.

[raggedhalo.livejournal.com]

Sins of omission vs. sins of commission, perhaps?

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Doesn't wash, unless the BBC didn't commission Jim'll Fix It after years of "Oh, there were lots of stories it was going on" comments which have come out lately.

Which they did, y'know?

[kathminchin.livejournal.com]

My main thought right now is that the BBC has two things it has to do. The first is review its current policies and make sure that they are fit for purpose; which they can do (and I believe are doing) right now.

The second bit - the investigation into the alleged cover up is going to be a lot longer and more complicated. And the police have asked them to wait until they've finished theirs. Right now all folks can do is suck their teeth in a shocked manner at the allegations about the cover up.

[sesquipedality.livejournal.com]

Oddly a lot of the people I know were actually saying we should wait for the facts before judging News International. But then I know a lot of lawyers, who, despite what you might have read, on the whole believe in justice more than they believe in dogma.