BBC World Service has restarted its FM broadcasts with SLBC, the Sri Lankan national broadcaster after a 14-month long absence. In a press release yesterday, Peter Horrocks, Director of BBC Global News guaranteed that programmes in English, Sinhala, and Tamil will have uninterrupted broadcasting, and that the BBC will remain true to “specific editorial values that include impartiality, editorial independence and seeking a relevant range of views on any topic”.
Islamist insurgents have banned music from radio broadcasts claiming its un-Islamic. Stations have already complied with the order, issued at the beginning of April, as workers feared for their safety. The BBC report that all but two of the Mogadishu’s 15 radio stations used to broadcast music. Last week, the armed Islamic group al-Shabaab banned the re-broadcast of BBC productions in Somalia, claiming they were against Muslisms and Islam.
A publisher should not be held responsible for a libel created by the out-of-context publication of material by a search engine, the High Court has ruled. Even if a snippet has a libellous meaning neither the search engine nor the publisher should be liable, the Court said. Sam Budu took the case against the BBC over articles published on a website in 2004 which detailed his dealings with the Cambridgeshire police. A first article on the BBC’s website said that a person had been denied a job when it was discovered he was an illegal immigrant. The second and third articles named Budu but detailed his counter-claims that he was in the UK legally. Budu sued over both stories, and the snippets which appeared in Google, arguing that they constituted a separate publication of the articles.
Jonathan Ross’s departure from the BBC has led to a spate of speculation about his motives. Ross himself has been fairly quiet on the matter, though the prolific tweeter did thank his fans on the social network site, saying “Thanks for all the kind words about my decision. I feel sad that i can’t keep making the shows so many of you love!”
Ross also issued a statement saying his decision to leave the BBC was “not financially motivated”.
You’d imagine that would be sufficient, but the need to fill pages with a story on one of Britain’s best-known celebrities — coupled with the recent obsession with BBC salaries — has led newspapers to unfounded speculation about Ross wanting more money, or a meeting in which he was given a “derisory offer” by the corporation.
Such has been the extent of this whispering that Ross, through his solicitors Schillings, has been forced to issue a reminder to media that suggestions that Ross’s motivation was financial would not only be in breach of Section 1 of the PCC Code of Conduct as to accuracy, but that in fact they are untrue and grossly defamatory of the popular presenter, who insists he had never even entered negotiation on a contract with the BBC, much less been given a derisory offer.