BBC poll on press freedom

"World opinion is divided on the importance of having a free press, according to a poll conducted for the BBC World Service.

Of those interviewed, 56% thought that freedom of the press was very important to ensure a free society.

But 40% said it was more important to maintain social harmony and peace, even if it meant curbing the press's freedom to report news truthfully.

Pollsters interviewed 11,344 people in 14 countries for the survey.

In most of the 14 countries surveyed, press freedom (including broadcasting) was considered more important than social stability."

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BBC Changes

From The Guardian:
"Day of reckoning for BBC: thousands of jobs axed and Television Centre to be sold
· Staff in news and factual programming hardest hit
· Director general's plans met with union anger
Owen Gibson, media correspondent
Thursday October 18, 2007
The Guardian

The BBC Trust yesterday unanimously approved plans to cut thousands of jobs, sell off its west London headquarters and reduce the number of programmes it makes by a tenth.

The radical overhaul immediately sparked a furious backlash from staff likely to strike within weeks, with feelings running particularly high in the news and factual divisions where job losses will run into four figures.

Chairman Sir Michael Lyons said he was satisfied the package put forward by the director general, Mark Thompson, during a four-hour meeting would "safeguard the core values of the BBC at a time of radical change in technology, markets and audience expectations".

http://media.guardian.co.uk/bbc/story/0,,2193436,00.html

Public Trust in BBC down

From the Guardian:

"Public trust in the BBC has fallen sharply in the wake of the scandal involving fake phone-in competitions on high-profile programmes and wrongly edited footage of the Queen, a Guardian/ICM poll shows today.
The poll also reveals a wider crisis of public confidence in the broadcasting industry as a whole, with viewers strongly sceptical of what they see on television, even when they are told the scenes are real.

Fifty-nine per cent of those questioned say they now trust the BBC less than before. Only 37% say their opinion has remained unchanged, despite the BBC's admission that it had made mistakes and would ensure that they were not repeated."

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From the Guardian: BBC orders inquiry as pressure mounts

"The BBC has launched a wide-ranging internal investigation into the mistakes that led the controller of BBC1 to claim that the Queen had walked out of a photoshoot "in a huff".

Peter Fincham was forced to apologise after wrongly claiming, while unveiling the BBC's autumn schedules, that a fly-on-the-wall documentary to be screened later in the year showed the Queen storming out of a photoshoot with Annie Leibovitz.

As pressure mounted on the BBC yesterday, Mr Fincham repeated his determination not to resign. His fate may now hang on a crucial meeting between BBC trustees and the corporation's director general, Mark Thompson, due to take place next Wednesday."

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