Facts are sacred and expensive

Just run across Richard Sambrook's private - as opposed to his BBC sponsored - blog, "Sacred Facts".

Oh dear - how very BBC - even in private.

I admire the sentiment over the howls of derision from a milllion media studies lecturers. It is, of course, a reference to CPScott's famous aphorism about facts being sacred and comment free.

Sambrook last came down to Cardiff to speak to students a couple of years ago (pre-Hutton when he was still THE big cheese at BBC News). He painted a worrying picture of the BBC as this vast journalistic organisation - globally in a league of it's own - unchallengably vast. But never answered the question, why? Who asked the licence payer if they wanted to pay for a global journalistic behemoth? Did anyone ask the treasury for that matter?

These were the unasked questions that floated over the whole session. So these are very expnsive (£2 billion+) "Sacred Facts".

Nonetheless I can point to a number of recent former Cardiff students who are surviving in uncomfortable parts of the world thanks to financial arrangements with the BBC behemoth. And, of course, the BBC accounts to fully 50% of all British broadcast journalism.

This is a hand I'd better stop biting. Long may it live!