JUST ASK THE DAMN QUESTION

THE BBC AND JIMMY SAVILE:

COULD IT HAPPEN AGAIN?

Yes – Because it’s Happening Now.  

“Everybody would say, ‘what evidence have you got?’ I would say, ‘well I don’t have enough evidence to ever prove to anyone that he’s guilty…I just feel that I have huge responsibility, a huge need, to go and ask a lot of questions’.”

David Walsh, the journalist who, in 1999, first questioned Lance Armstrong’s remarkable performance in the Tour de France.

At a moment when the BBC is being forced to confront the toxicity of its intrinsically compromised “networked” and “club-like” nature – in which uncomfortable facts can be hidden in plain sight if that’s what suits a number of people – I was most interested to read a parallel story; one which has echoes of the BBC’s omerta.
On the 11^th October, the Press Gazette carried an interview with sports journalist David Walsh, who was the first person to publicly question the plausibility of the startling performance of cyclist Lance Armstrong. What struck me most about Walsh’s story was not so much that he was a person who walked a lonely and demanding path, against the groupthink of the day (there are always a few) but, rather, his grounds for doing so.

He wasn’t leaked dynamite information – he didn’t obtain access to secret medical reports – he had no “deep-throat” source back then, in 1999. Instead, he coolly observed what he was witnessing – and asked himself the plain and obvious question: “is this plausible?”

He didn’t think so. Following Armstrong’s victory in the 1999 Tour, Walsh wrote “This afternoon I will be keeping my arms by my side because I’m not sure this is something we should be applauding.” His only ground for writing that provocative opinion in the Sunday Times, was his intuition for the plausible.

Walsh incurred widespread damnation for his comments. But as he said in the Press Gazette article, “Everybody would say, ‘what evidence have you got?’ I would say, ‘well I don’t have enough evidence to ever prove to anyone that he’s guilty…I just feel that I have huge responsibility, a huge need, to go and ask a lot of questions’.”

And David Walsh carried on doing that thing which is actually surprisingly rare amongst the journalistic profession – he went to his subject – and simply asked the obvious questions.

Lance Armstrong invited Walsh to interview him in 2001; “He rang me because he knew I was asking a lot of questions and he thought that if I come along, and he’s really nice to me, and he gives me a one-on-one interview, I’ll be as happy as every other journalist and I’ll become his friend,” Walsh says.

“I didn’t feel any desire to be his friend because I had a sense of what he was like, and I felt there were lots of questions that needed answering.”

Walsh’s first words to Armstrong when he arrived at the hotel were: “I don’t believe you’re clean, but this is why I’m here, because I have questions. But the only questions I want to ask you are about doping. I won’t be asking you one question about cycling outside of the context of doping.”

David Walsh had those suspicions – and he simply went, and bluntly asked the obvious questions. And carried on asking them. And he was right.

Now that so many people in the BBC are mumbling about how the conduct of Jimmy Savile was so widely suspected – and that there were so many rumours – and, indeed, actual victims to be spoken with, as we now know – why did no BBC journalists go and ask – and persist in asking – the plain and obvious questions of Jimmy Savile – and ask the same obvious questions of those who had employed Savile, and those who persisted in enabling him to be around children?

What is it – about that simple foundation-stone of journalism – just asking the damn question – that is so difficult for 99% of today’s journalists?

Well, as an example of the modern phenomena that so increasingly threatens the entire relevancy of traditional hacks – a citizen’s media journalist – I am going to ask some damn questions.

Some obvious questions – arising out of things that sit in plain sight, yet which go unremarked, uninterrogated.

For example – why are BBC journalists still – this very day – silently permitting the scandalous and corrupt concealment of decades of child-abuse to go unquestioned?

What are their motivations – their reasons – for doing that?

Could it be - like the use of performance-enhancing drugs by Lance Armstrong – the most plain and obvious explanation?

That corruption is widespread amongst BBC staffers?

Indeed – I’m asking - I’m pointing at the elephant in the room – and asking the question: “is, in fact, corruption endemic in British journalism?”

That is my gut-instinct – just as Walsh had his about Armstrong.

Gaby Hinsliff, former Political Editor of the Observer, wrote in a tweet at 1.37 on Friday 12^th October, “Whatever failings of BBC management, BBC journalists are doing an exemplary, unflinching job of reporting Savile case.”

Really?

Well – now that it is safe and undemanding to do so – maybe a number of BBC hacks are reporting the sordid details of Savile’s conduct. But are they asking THE important – the plain and obvious questions, a la David Walsh?

Are they questioning the very “culture” of the BBC as a traditional institution – and all the baggage that brings?

Are they asking – “is corruption and concealment a common currency in the BBC?”

Or – “why has the BBC played the role it has, in so strongly assisting the Jersey establishment to cover-up child abuse – including abuse by Savile?”

Well, let’s hope one or two them might be planning to do that, though I haven’t yet seen any sign of it. And to help any budding David Walshes in the BBC – I’m going to assist, by laying out some of the stark and extraordinary matters that require – that demand - questions.

And the failure of the BBC to deal competently or honestly with current child-abuse scandals in Jersey is one of those matters that demands interrogation. Consider yourself to be a serious and ethical BBC journalist? Then come to Jersey – and ask the damn questions of the BBC management and staff here.

The plain and obvious questions.

In the previous posting – I wrote of the “currency of concealment” in respect of child-abuse.

But the currency of concealment applies to most walks of life – most situations. Let’s face it – knowing stuff – embarrassing stuff – or problematic stuff – about people – having done them favours, or they having done you favours, by keeping schtum about certain matters – and helping each other up the career ladder, is how influence is peddled in Britain; it is how the nation “networks” – and, frankly, it has been for hundreds of years. Corruption, and the concealment of corruption, is endemic in the UK.

And in so many ways – the way the traditional media has worked, is simply a giant, technicolor, unsubtle cartoon version of that workaday custom – that way of “doing business”.

Don’t take my word for it. The journalist who broke the phone-hacking scandal, Nick Davies, said at the Leveson inquiry, “journalism doesn't begin with checking facts, it's about selective decisions on what to cover”.

That’s as good a one-sentence description of how journalism works as you will ever find.

Here’s something I noticed, when my career was in politics; journalists look down on politicians with contempt. And, in most cases, you couldn’t blame them. But lacking in the perspective of those journalists, is the realisation that they too float down the same gutter, perhaps clinging to a fractionally more elevated turd. And maybe not even that.

The blunt truth is that most journalists are lazy, uncourageous and useless. 95% of them are unspeakably crap – yet without even in mitigation, the self-acceptance that you might find amongst most politicians. The smug self-regard of broadcast journalists in particular is a revolting wonder to behold when you have the misfortune of attempting to work closely with them.

One of the questions that must be asked, is actually, “do we need to re-assess what we think journalist are for?” Our customary answer to that question might have been ‘reporting important news’, or, ‘holding power to account.’ But in reality, today – hell, for decades, the real function of most of the mainstream media has been to act as a ‘filter’, a kind of ‘control-mechanism’ on public discourse. As Nick Davies said, journalism is “about selective decisions on what to cover”.

And there can be fewer more pertinent examples than the corrupt concealment of child-abuse in Jersey – and the concealment of that corrupt concealment, by the traditional media – the BBC in particular.  The unacknowledged key, power of the traditional media – that of omission – has been both exposed, and rendered redundant by Jersey bloggers.

One of the things the media, even at a national level, still does not seem to have grasped, is that their major power (and perhaps their most serious cultural failing) namely the power of omission, is dead.

Let’s be clear – the power of the British media is simply immense, absolutely immense.

For all the fears, some justified, some not, the British media has of a post-Leveson world, in order to be reasonably confident of retaining their freedom, influence – and respect – the mainstream media has to wake up to a whole new paradigm.

That paradigm is this:

The editorial “freedom” that the media used to enjoy - to pick and chose what stories it would not run – that freedom to “omit” – that great power to filter  the very type of stories to be published, and thus control the terms of debate – is gone.

Gone forever.

The World Wide Web has killed it; killed that power of omission, stone-dead.

I’ve been an un-paid blogger, writing journalistically since February 2008. Consider this fact: during the time-period since then, to the present, I have written and produced more evidence-based investigative journalism – than every journalist, from all of Jersey’s traditional media - in all of the post-World War II years – combined.

Take, for example, just the following three blog-postings:

http://stuartsyvret.blogspot.com/2012/05/graham-powers-statement-part-1.html

http://stuartsyvret.blogspot.com/2012/06/jersey-independence.html

http://stuartsyvret.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-end-of-beginning.html

In  those articles  you can read approximately 94 pages of explosive and damming evidence – direct from THE key, centrally involved source – the actual Police Chief who was illegally suspended by Jersey’s government of shady spivs.

Suspended – for several complimentary  purposes of the Jersey oligarchy – primary amongst which was the local establishment’s wish to prevent the full and proper investigation of decades of concealed child-abuse. Child-abuse including that by Jimmy Savile.

The illegal suspension of the Jersey Police Chief took place, not in 1978 – but in 2008.

You are worried about child protection?

You wish to comfort yourself with, “well – most of the Savile crimes took place in the 1960s & 70s – it couldn’t happen today.”?

Wrong.

It happens today. It has happened.

A Police Chief who was exposing decades of child-abuse and cover-up was illegally suspended – without due process – on no even faintly credible grounds whatsoever – and was then unlawfully denied legal representation. This  happened in November 2008.

The Police Chief trying to expose the failures that led to decades of child abuse concealment – illegally suspended.

And the two Jersey politicians who led the executive responsible for this crime – were both subsequently awarded OBEs.

And what has been the response of the BBC to this contemporary and on-going scandal involving child-abuse cover-up?

The BBC in Jersey provided copious air-time to the politicians responsible for the corrupt suspension of the Police Chief, and proceeded to peddle – wholly unchallenged – a plainly false, obviously dishonest account of events. This is the BBC – pro-actively engaging in an illegal child-abuse cover-up. In the present day.

And no – before you ask – the BBC cannot claim to be the victims of some monstrous and manipulative fraud, some cunning exercise in hoodwinking them. The facts and circumstances surrounding the illegal suspension of the Jersey Police Chief were so patently extraordinary – so obviously devoid of due-process – so wholly lacking in any credibility – that the most cursory consideration raises many obvious and immediate questions – gut-instinct questions of the kind David Walsh asked - without even the need to engage in any investigative work.

Consider the situation: Jersey has only one Police Chief; under his leadership, for the first time, decades of child-abuse and failures by the public authorities are being investigated; the local politicians have made no effort to disguise their anger and irritation at the “bad publicity” and the questions raised about their competence and stewardship of public safety; suddenly – a couple of weeks before a Jersey general election, which might have gone badly for the traditionalists – the Police Chief is suspended with an attendant high-level attack by the local establishment upon the entire credibility of the child-abuse investigation, and a lot of spin to the effect that “there was no big problem after-all”.

As a journalist - what kind of questions immediately spring to mind when faced with that situation?

“Partisan politicians – suspending a Police Chief – who has been investigating decades of failure by those politicians? Could this be a profoundly dangerous and corrupt abuse of political power, to undermine and sabotage good, modern policing, for self-interested political purposes?”

“What – if any – credible reasons, or plausible justification, do those politicians have for going straight to such a “nuclear-option” of suspending the Police Chief? They have to explain.”

“Given the obvious and profound public interest questions that arise – was due process followed?”

“Just how plausible were the various assertions made in the press-conferences in the immediate wake of the suspension? Were those claims credible?”

“Given the obvious scope for the suspension being a politicised act – did the Jersey politicians seek any external advice, from Whitehall?”

“What was the state of knowledge concerning these events of the Crown’s representative in Jersey, the Lieutenant Governor?”

“Was that Office fulfilling its role lawfully, namely that of ensuring that her Majesty’s subjects in Jersey are protected from corruption and abuses of power?”

Those are just a few, a mere handful, of the plain and obvious questions that any serious journalistic endeavour on the part of the BBC would have asked.

Even before dramatic, documentary evidence was supplied to them on a plate, as I will explain below.

And this is not some criticism based upon a theoretical debate concerning the political economy of the mass-media. There are real people – real children – now real adults – who suffered appallingly, and who, in some cases at least, may have been protected from suffering – if what passes for the ‘Fourth Estate’ in Jersey had ever done its job properly.

Amongst BBC Jersey’s accretion of am-dram luvies, trustafarian brats, cocktail party air-heads, “Christian” social-climbers, and bicycling surf-nazis – not one of them,  not one  – has sought out and spoken with, and striven to get an understanding of what the dozens of victims of institutionalised child abuse in Jersey went through. Not one of them has tried to discover –and convey to the Jersey audience, what it was like to be raped by a well-connected freemason at the age of 12 – or sodomized by a civil-servant – or have your arm broken by another civil servant – or have mental health issues at the age of 14, and then be locked into solitary confinement – for two months. 

It is worse, even, than that. Not only has the BBC in Jersey utterly failed to do any of that basic journalistic leg-work – they’ve actually refused – flatly refused – to report stories – and use evidence – when it’s been actively handed to them on the proverbial plate.

The child protection scandal first erupted as a public controversy in Jersey in July 2007. I was the Health & Social Services Minister, and had spent the previous six months working with whistle-blowers and survivors, in investigating what was an ever more alarming catalogue of abuse, incompetence, failure and cover-up; a wretched history that plainly involved the senior civil servants routinely lying to me and other politicians when we asked questions. Having discovered some of the atrocities, I happened to be asked a question in the Jersey parliament – and I gave an honest answer, stating that “if I was being asked did I have any faith in Jersey’s child protection systems, frankly, I would have to say no, and I would be commissioning an independent inquiry.”

This triggered an illegal plot amongst the malfeasant civil servants, and the rest of the Jersey cabinet, to engineer my dismissal on the supposed grounds that by “publicly criticising the service”, I was “undermining staff moral”. We subsequently learnt of the illegal plot – because the civil servants in question attempted to co-opt the Police Chief Graham Power into supporting it. He rejected any such involvement, and wrote a file-note recording the incident. That file-note can be read at the following blog-posting:

http://stuartsyvret.blogspot.com/2009/12/letter-from-exile-9.html

Here’s a brief quote from the file-note:

“Bill Ogley and the others were persistent and I was left with the clear impression that they were attempting to draw me, in my capacity as Chief of Police, into a civil service led attempt to remove a Minister from Office.”

That file-note is as apocalyptic a piece of evidence of a high-level, quite deliberate – and criminal – conspiracy to conceal child-abuse as you are likely to come across in any of the noted child-abuse scandals in Britain.

How much reporting – indeed, how much reference at all – has the BBC made to that piece of dramatic, documented evidence?

None.

And I can’t say I was surprised that the BBC refused to report that evidence, when it came to light in late 2009. You see, I had realised just how wholly corrupted and decadent was the BBC’s operation in Jersey back during that summer of 2007, when I was fighting single-handidly to expose the child-abuse cover-ups. Back then, none of us were aware of the covert police investigation, so it seemed to the civil servants and oligarchy politicians that they could cram the lid back down on the decades of abuse and suffering and carry on the concealment – if only they could discredit me. The then Chief Minister, Frank Walker (who until recently had been the boss of the company that runs Jersey’s only “newspaper”) tabled a vote of no-confidence in me as Health & Social Services Minister. Knowing that this would be debated in September, in late August I e-mailed the then boss of the BBC in Jersey – Denzel Dudley – and suggested that the issues were plainly so important – accountability and standards in child-protection – that the BBC should have me and Walker live in the studio on the Sunday phone-in, to debate the issues, and answer questions from the public, before the Jersey parliament debate. The response of Dudley, in the name of the BBC, was to write back to me, saying, “Thank you for your offer, but the BBC does not host political debates in case it might influence the decision-makers.”

The exclusion, the deliberate marginalisation of opposition opinions – the ‘omission’ of any meaningful alternative to the entrenched local oligarchy - is the established modus operandi of the BBC in Jersey. That incident in particular was simply a corrupt act, on the part of the BBC in Jersey, designed to protect Walker and the rest of the Jersey oligarchy from meaningful scrutiny and challenge, in respect of their decision to support child-abuse concealing civil servants, rather than prioritising the protection of vulnerable children.

But that was back in 2007; surely, you may ask, the BBC must have recognised its mistakes since then? No, not the BBC Jersey outfit. It is certainly correct to say that for a period of maybe six months or so, the BBC at a national level started taking the matter seriously – and had to do so over the heads of the “gone-native” local operation. Some good TV coverage took place, including a Panorama program. But the corrupted “network” of influence within the BBC swung into place behind the scenes – and when Jersey’s good Police Chief Graham Power was illegally suspended in November 2008, the BBC, including at the national level, became entirely passive – wholly and extraordinarily supportive of the Jersey oligarchy position – notwithstanding all of the many very obvious, gut-instinct questions immediately arising in the face of the suspension.

All of those very obvious, and fundamental questions concerning the very safety and independence from political interference of policing in Jersey – questions concerning the protection of the public by the police, from the corrupt and illegal actions of government departments? It was as though none of those questions existed as far as the BBC was concerned.

And thanks to the internet and blogging, we needn’t entertain the customary lame excuses of the traditional media for not asking the obvious damn questions – like “well, we can’t possible ask such questions, because we have no evidence”; for as real journalists like David Walsh show, you don’t need evidence to at least ask the questions. But, as it happens, the BBC do have evidence. Dramatic and sensational evidence. They have that 94 page interim statement by the unlawfully suspended Police Chief Graham Power.

I know the BBC has that statement. I know – because it was me who supplied it to them. I am their source.

I e-mailed it to current BBC Jersey boss (though hopefully for not much longer) Jon Gripton, on the 22^nd September  2011. After some prompting, I eventual received a brief e-mailed acknowledgment from him. Then nothing.

To cut a long story short, my various attempts to discover what, if anything, the BBC planned to do with the dynamite document, ended with me writing these words to Jon Gripton, Laura Ellis and Rachel Hallett of the BBC: -

“Sadly, I note I have not received so much as an acknowledgment from Mr Gripton, to my e-mail of the 16^th, in which I asked why the BBC had not fulfilled its various obligations in respect of the evidence concerning the unlawful and repressive suspension enacted against Jersey’s then Police Chief Graham Power, Queens Police Medal.

You know - it’s a funny old world. Never in my most fevered imaginations – at least not until I started to witness it a few years ago - did I ever think that THE BBC would become so starkly and evidencedly collusive in the hushing-up of an unlawful sabotaging of a child abuse investigation.
 
Especially when THE BBC has been furnished – on a plate – with very dramatic documentary evidence, upon which it could base very substantive reports.”

There we have it – in grim coincidence, at a time when the true nature of influence, concealment and omission as practiced in the BBC – in respect of something so awful as child abuse - has had the spotlight shone upon it. Evidence which shows – even now, in 2012, in a child-abuse concealment scandal that actually includes Jimmy Savile as one of the abusers – still the BBC is covering-up the truth.

Even when they’ve had the evidence handed to them on a plate.

The conduct of the BBC gets no better. BBC Jersey hack Simon Jupp, when asked by me on twitter a few days ago why the BBC wouldn’t report the Graham Power statement, responded by saying, “Not a question for me, Stuart.” But, as I replied to him, “Simon - it most certainly IS a question for you, like this culture of non-reporting IS a question for ALL BBC staff now.”, and, “You, & other individ' BBC staffers, can't hide in the mechanism anymore. The moral responsibility to do something is yours.”

The BBC and its defenders at a national level, largely rely upon a claim that the Savile abuse, and the culture that enabled it, “was all so long ago. It couldn’t happen now. These days, our journalists would ask those questions – would not be afraid – would pursue those very obvious lines of inquiry.”

Really?

Do you want to know how many BBC journalists have asked me what must be possibly the most A1, vital and primary question which arises from the Jersey Child Abuse Disaster? How many BBC journalists have approached me and said: -  “Mr Syvret, you were – as Jersey’s Health & Social Services Minister – THE legally empowered “public authority” with responsibility for child protection and for investigating child-protection failures; when you were seeking to exercise those legal powers, as you were actually obliged to by law, you were pro-actively prevented from doing so by the senior civil servants and your cabinet colleagues. How can vulnerable, isolated children in the system expect protection by the actual legal authority responsible for that ultimate oversight, if it can be obstructed like that - and could it happen again?”

How many BBC staffers – in the pre, or even post-Savile era – have asked that core, obvious question concerning the systemic obstruction of the proper discharge of the Children (Jersey) Law, and the structural collapse of legal accountability in the child-protection apparatus?

None.

That’s how many.

Not one, single, solitary BBC journalist has – from the beginning of the controversy five years ago – to the present day – asked me that key, and obvious question. Not once.

We are swift enough – perhaps with justification – for assuming that various public officials – and politicians in particular – will frequently be corrupt. Why so rarely indeed, is the same thought publicly expressed – in the media – about journalists?

You’re asking me the question? Asking me to just look at how things obviously appear – and make a judgment-call? You want me – like Walsh, with Armstrong – to say what I think? What my gut-instinct is?

I think corruption is widespread in British journalism.

I think it’s endemic.

I go further: I think – upon any sober and wise consideration – it would actually be quite remarkable if it wasn’t.

It is axiomatic – that wherever you find power – of any kind, and any kind of influence over that power - you will find corruption.

I have no doubt – no doubt whatsoever – that amongst the many national journalists I have communicated with over the course of the last five years – when trying to expose the Jersey child-abuse cover-ups and other crimes – a number of them have been straightforwardly corrupt.

I believe they’ve been in acceptance of payments – of bribes – of some form of benefit or other – in order to skew stories in favour of the powerful – in order to relay, as spies, back to the powerful, what campaigners like me were saying – to work as private detectives, and convey what evidence we had  back to their employers. In particular, I believe journalists accept bribes, in order to simply omit certain stories, certain evidence. Bribes to exercise that ultimate media power – of simply making sure the damaging stories just “don’t appear”.

Why do I think that?

Because there can be no other rational explanation for some of the frankly astounding conduct on the part of various news outlets that purport to be straight and rational and honest.

As with David Walsh, and his deduction concerning Armstrong, you can demand of me “what evidence do you have for that?” And like Walsh I say, “well, I don’t have the evidence to prove anyone’s guilt – but I just feel that I have huge responsibility, a huge need, to go and ask a lot of questions”.

And I do. Because, when all’s said and done – putting in a spectacular performance in the ascent of Alp d’Huez – even though cheating your competitors, is still just entertainment at the end of the day.

Knowing that children have been battered, raped, sodomized for decades  – but then allowing immensely powerful politicians and judges to conceal such gross crimes by refusing to ask them the obvious questions - and refusing to report the available evidence – is a bloody atrocity.

Ask me – who is the bigger villain? Lance Armstrong? Or BBC staff who are – today – enabling the concealment of grotesque degrees of child protection failure and the political corruption that underpins it? The BBC staffers – without question.

Are we supposed to believe that rife corruption can exists amongst, say, MPs – most of whom are, let’s face it, pretty individually powerless in the big scheme of things – yet journalists who work for national media outlets – and who thus can exercise absolutely crushing, awesome power over certain events – for example, by exercising the power of omission – are rarely, if ever corrupt?

That they don’t take dramatic bribes – don’t have “pension settlements” established for them – don’t have BVI trust-funds with mysterious sources – that some of them don’t have lucrative “secondary employment” with the security services – or that they don’t have various tax-dodging arrangements set-up in places like Jersey, hence their reluctance to rock-the-boat of the tax-haven? Because, let’s face it, it could be very embarrassing  - or worse – for senior BBC figures if their use of Jersey’s off-shore finance arrangements became known. I mean, we could be speaking of far worse than, say the mere embarrassment that befell Jimmy Carr. When all’s said and done, his Jersey arrangements were at least legal. He wasn’t evading tax. Unlike a lot of Jersey’s clients. It’s worth remembering, the notorious gangster Al Capone was eventually nailed for tax-evasion. Just imagine – just how “influential” it would  be to have knowledge of the tax-fiddling of senior people in the media, such as the BBC?

Let’s face it – if you’ve “done business” through Jersey – the Jersey mafia know about it. Don’t ever think otherwise. “Client confidentiality?” You damn fool.

Consider; a couple of weeks ago, the Lib-Dem party was involved in some justified scrutiny of Jersey; Vince Cable had spoken  of the need to combat tax-avoidance through off-shore centres – and Lib Dem MP John Hemming had spoken in the House of Commons against the concealment of crimes by Jersey’s authorities. Then – hey – wouldn’t ya know it – the media get hold of a story about how a major donor to the Lib-Dem party is, in fact, based in Jersey. A co-incidental revelation? Or a shot across the bows of the three main UK parties – from the Jersey oligarchy, whose traditions, abuses of power and frequent overt criminality are unsustainable, and who are feeling embattled?

Just how many BBC staffers, journalists, editors, directors, trust members etc – have such things as “tax-efficient” remuneration arrangements?

How many BBC people have “off-payroll” remuneration set-ups, or are employed through “service companies”? Maybe through arrangements based in Jersey?

How many of them have had, and still have, “additional” sources of “employment” or remuneration – from third-party activities? And, to state the bloody obvious, what impact do such third-party influences have upon the conduct of the BBC?

What, indeed, have been the specific employment and remuneration arrangements for BBC Jersey staffers, editors etc during, say, the last 15 years?

How many of them – who have operated under “brand-BBC”, have, in fact, been “freelancers” – generating very handsome wealth-streams for themselves – in exchange for what the BBC in Jersey does – or does not – cover?

What commercial or financial arrangements have these people “working” under (or at least “using”) the BBC name, had with spin-doctor firms – of which there are many, with large budgets, in Jersey?  

I don’t have any evidence – just like David Walsh with Lance Armstrong – but I too have the gut-feeling – and draw the obvious conclusions just from seeing the reality I am watching – and am going to ask the obvious question – are some BBC staff corrupt?

If David Walsh can ask that question of Lance Armstrong – I can ask it of the BBC in respect of its staff in Jersey – and those in the UK who are responsible for letting the BBC Jersey operation become just so – obviously – corrupted. Corrupted – and collusive – in the concealments of child-abuse.

So corrupted, in fact – so startlingly and plainly – that it is actually quite remarkable that so many BBC people, and others, still maintain the collective fiction that this performance is “normal”, is “good” – like all those people in the parable of the emperor’s new clothes.

No.

This is not right.

This performance is not plausible.

Indeed – it’s so implausible, there has to be an explanation for it.

The BBC – certainly in respect of Jersey, at the least – is corrupted.

Corrupted to the point of actively participating, today – in the year 2012 – in the concealment of child-abuse cover-ups.

There are some blindingly obvious possible causes of this appalling conduct by the BBC.

And I am asking that question.

Will some decent “real” journalists do the same?

And if they will not, well – as with the Lance Armstrong drug usage – at least someone will have asked the obvious question, a question drawn from the obvious appearance of things.

The BBC today? A different culture to that which protected Savile over the decades?

No. Not unless it purges its entire Jersey operation.

Not unless it investigates, at a national level,  the relationships and contacts of all of its senior or influential people, with the Jersey establishment, and their financial arrangements with Jersey.

Not unless it finally holds the Jersey authorities to account for their plain and evidenced corruptions, oppressions and concealing of child-abuse. And in that regard, the BBC could make a start, by reporting the issues arising from the 94 page statement of the unlawfully suspended Police Chief Graham Power – and asking the Secretary of State for Justice just why he has failed to ensure the proper rule of law in Jersey?

Like David Walsh with Lance Armstrong – I’m looking at the BBC, and I’m saying I don’t believe you’re clean.

Stuart Syvret.