Aletho News

BBC hides royal wedding coverage costs

Press TV – June 7, 2011

The BBC has used a “controversial exemption” in Britain’s regulations to avoid revealing the astronomical costs of the royal wedding coverage and the number of complaints it received on the day.

British anti-monarchy campaign group Republic hit out at the broadcaster for resorting to the exception in the Freedom of Information Act saying it is going to appeal to the Information Commissioner’s Office to lift the exemption.

“The BBC has been widely criticised for misjudging the level of interest in the royal wedding and was predicted to receive an unprecedented number of complaints about its non-stop, wall-to-wall coverage,” Republic said on its website.

The group said the BBC allocated “vast sums of resources” to the royal wedding while “other areas of the corporation’s output had fallen victim to funding cuts”.

“Over a thousand staff were reportedly sent to cover the wedding, more than five times the number of commercial rival Sky,” Republic said.

The Freedom of Information Act allows the BBC to withhold information that is related to “journalism, art or literature” but the state broadcaster’s insistence on keeping the royal wedding costs secret has raised concerns that it has gone out of its way to accredit a monarchy many people do not bother about.

“The only conclusion we can draw is that the BBC has something very embarrassing to hide. There is a very significant public interest in knowing how licence fee-payers’ money is spent, particularly when it comes to highly controversial issues such as the monarchy,” Republic’s campaign manager Graham Smith said.

Smith also said the broadcaster’s royal wedding coverage is under question as its attitude toward the event has reportedly angered many of the people who pay license fees to keep the corporation running.

“An exemption introduced to protect the independence of the BBC was not intended to shield the corporation from legitimate scrutiny. The BBC must be seen to be impartial and must be seen to be making appropriate decisions based on viewer feedback. If tens of millions of pounds of licence fee payers’ money was spent on the wedding, if thousands of viewers lodged complaints about the BBC’s coverage, clearly the licence fee payer has the right to know,” he said.

Smith went on to attack the BBC for turning into the public relations apparatus for the monarchy.

“Throughout its royal wedding coverage the BBC let itself be co-opted into the Palace PR machine. It’s time for the BBC to come clean, admit its mistake and move toward more objective and proportionate coverage of royal events,” he added.

This comes as Republic had earlier warned in another article on its website that the BBC did not present an impartial picture of the event to the public.

“While we accept that the royal wedding is a news story that the BBC, and other broadcasters, need to report, we believe the degree, style and substance of the BBC’s coverage is biased in favour of the monarchy,” the campaign group said.

June 7, 2011 - Posted by aletho | Supremacism, Social Darwinism