This month I’m starting with the biggest media story since my last post in May – the Dyson report which concluded that Martin Bashir acted deceitfully when he gained a notorious interview with the late Diana, Princess of Wales for Panorama in 1995.
I was one of the 23 million who watched agog that night. I remember it so vividly, shushing my ex partner and a friend as they stumbled in from the pub. (I also watched agog when Prince Andrew gave his car crash interview to Newsnight and Emily Maitlis in 2020. After that, and the subsequent fall out which included Prince Andrew stepping back from royal duties, we’re unlikely to see another major BBC interview with a senior royal for many, many years to come.)
It was depressing to see Prince William coming out against the BBC in the wake of the Dyson report, and to see so many people and organisations piling in to attack the BBC.
There’s no doubt the BBC did fail in that instance of the Diana Panorama interview and it has failed subsequently to live up to its reputation for integrity and transparency, by rehiring Martin Bashir.
But, please, let’s not forget and undermine all the many, many fabulous services the BBC provides through radio, digital, TV and film, all for around £3 a week (£159 a year). The BBC is under attack – it’s up to us defenders to protect it. In the words of Joni Mitchell, you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone.
Some useful links
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/reports/reports/dyson-report-20-may-21.pdf
In other news
This weekend’s G7 meeting in Carbis Bay, Cornwall (11-13 June) is reminding me of a Christmas holiday I had with my dad, his partner and my then partner in Carbis Bay in, I think, 1993.
We had early evening drinks every night at the Carbis Bay hotel, where there was some kind of bridge card convention going on. Every evening my dad would order the first round and say to the bar person, “Kitty will pay.” They all thought I was called Kitty. In fact, we all dobbed cash into a kitty which we used throughout the week.
Who even has cash these days?
I took a week off last week for, among other things, a significant birthday. The week before I attended PR360, PR Week’s annual conference which, like last year, was virtual. There were lots of takeaways, the key one being the future of work looks hybrid (a combination of face to face and virtual) to me anyway as a self-employed PR consultant.
I’m also signed up for PRFest, taking place online next week. I confess, I’m looking forward to networking and the key themes are society, the planet (Laura Sutherland who organises PRFest is based in Glasgow where COP26 will be held in November), work, corporate social innovation and the next generation of practitioners. It should be another stimulating week’s learning and developing.
This month I’m really keen to trial my PR Power Hour – so if you’d like a FREE Power Hour focussing on the stories you can tell about your business or your organisation, drop me a line. All I’ll ask in return is a recommendation on LinkedIn. You can book in via the Calendly widget on my website.
Lucy Rouse PR Blog 