On 15-Jun-2010, at 22:41, Nick Reynolds-FM&T wrote: > The BBC has made its position quite clear on the blog - not once but > several times. We have been straight about it as you can see from these > blog posts, not just recently but as far back as April last year (see > Danielle Nagler's post in the list below) - so the idea that we didn't > want to talk about this is false:
well, yes. the *position* was very clear. the facts — that is, what was being proposed and the nitty-gritty of how it would actually affect people — weren’t, as evidenced by the many questions which went unanswered in the blog comments. Tom Watson’s blog post contained inaccuracies because he was interpreting a very technical industry document without background knowledge — which was what everybody else (myself included) had to do in order to figure out what it was that was actually being proposed (how else are people supposed to know what they’re dealing with?) the _position_ took priority over the facts. the BBC was very effective at communicating the position. it was abysmal at communicating the facts. the closest it came was Danielle’s post back in April last year (which I linked to earlier in this thread — I was very aware of it!), and even that was rather heavy on the PR, and took some flak at the time for it. > I have worked hard to get the BBC to engage with you and in my view > bearing in mind the obvious sensitivities we have done this well. Even I > though we couldn't publish your blog post I spent time trying to get it > published in other places, encouraged you to do so and I was pleased > when it was. Don’t get me wrong, I do very much appreciate your efforts — please don’t take this as a personal criticism, because it’s not, at all — in no small part because it’s not *your* job to translate engineering terms into the actual effects. I’m not sure what the sensitivities are — does the public not have a right to make an informed judgement given the facts of it? > And I'm saddened that you use the word "disgraceful" in your email > below. I believe the BBC has communicated this as well as we can. I’m sorry you’re saddened, but believe me, the BBC (not “you” singular), could have done a lot better better. Communication on this was shoddy and haphazard, it — with the exception of Danielle’s post — reeked of damage-limitation, missed out half of the stuff that people would naturally want to know, and you weren’t able to find out the answer to. In fact, you had asked some of same questions, because you didn’t know the answer either. I know for a fact, though, that lots of the people within the BBC who were involved in creating this whole thing would have known the answers, because if you’re an expert in DVB, it’s actually pretty basic stuff! (don’t forget, this had already been implemented once already, and the BBC, via the DTG and DTLA, were talking to receiver manufacturers to ensure they were doing the right thing). so, to be brutally honest, if there’s something you couldn’t be more wrong about in this whole affair, it’s this. the BBC wasn’t particularly honest — it didn’t lie, but it was a very very long way away from the whole truth — and I think it’s unfortunate that you’ve been taken along for the ride. I think *you*, not to mention everybody else, deserve better than that, even if we ultimately disagree about whether the actual proposal is a good or a bad thing. M. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
