ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ

bbc.co.uk Navigation

The Editors

Editors in tray
Jamie Donald

Injunction talk


I wondered if we were broadcasting nonsense on The Daily Politics this morning. I woke to learn from the Guardian that police were investigating whether Lord Levy, the prime minister's fundraiser, had urged Ruth Turner, the prime minister's director of external relations, to modify information that might have been of interest to Scotland Yard's cash for honours inquiry.

Was this not the story that for three days the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ had been referring to but not allowed to report? Could we not on the programme today at last put some bones and flesh on the story?

I then decided I couldn't. The ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ's senior legal and management teams had some very clear advice. Of course we could say that the Guardian had printed a story, but if we reported the content we would fall foul of the very strict injunction on the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ. The advice was also not to connect the Guardian story with the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ story for fear of falling foul of the same injunction.

Unfortunately we couldn't explain the terms of our own injunctions. And it would be better not to report that the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ was, that morning, asking for our injunction to be lifted or varied.

So we said what I thought we could. James Landale told Andrew Neil on air that the Guardian had a jolly good story which it had printed, but that he couldn't tell us about. And then he told Andrew the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ had a separate jolly good story involving Ruth Turner and Lord Levy. And er... that was it, because of all the legal complications. Then James called the whole thing Kafkaesque. My hero.

There were two more turns of the knife. Had you been watching Sky News when James and Andrew were talking, you would have seen Sky merrily reporting the full details of the Guardian allegations, discussing them with all and sundry, and reporting the just released and robust denials from Lord Levy.

And to top it off, the injunction against the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ was lifted just as we came off air, allowing Nick Robinson suddenly to report in full his story from Friday on News 24... about 12 hours after the Guardian.

Had I got this completely wrong? Maybe. Did the viewers understand what on earth we were on about? I suspect not. So should we have mentioned the story on the programme at all, given the limitations? Debatable, but I thought so. Was it a great day for the programme? You decide. But hats off to the Guardian.

Jamie Donald is editor of live political programmes

Peter Rippon

Wiped off the map?


Did Iranian President Ahmadinejad say Israel should be wiped off the map? There is a body of opinion who argue he did not, and he has been misquoted. The ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ does attribute the quote to him so I thought it might be useful to set out why.

The PM programme logoPresident Ahmadinejad made the remark at a conference. The comment was picked up and translated from the Farsi by the . Those who challenge the 'wiped off the map' translation argue other translations would be more accurate, among them:

"The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time".

They argue the President was merely repeating a quote from . They also point out that when subsequently asked about the quote President Ahmadinejad said he had not been advocating practical military action against Israel and that he was saying Israel has no legitimacy as a state.

ahmadinejad_203_300afp.jpgSo why do we continue to use it? The ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ's experts at the Monitoring advise "there is no direct translation into English of the Farsi phrase used by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Therefore there a number of possible ways of rendering the Farsi original into English. However, in the context of the whole passage we believe our original interpretation is an accurate reflection of the words."

At the end of last year after a complaint from a viewer that Andrew Marr had used the phrase "wiped off the face of the map", the position was investigated by the (before it was replaced by the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Trust). The judgement reads in part:

"The Committee carefully considered the wording of the translation of the speech from a number of sources, including translations from ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Monitoring and from the Middle East Research Institute in Washington. The Committee also reflected on how the speech had been translated in British newspapers and on Al Jazeera Online. The Committee noted the inherent problem with accuracy in translations. It noted that all the translations varied to a greater or lesser degree, and it was difficult to decide which, if any, was the most accurate. None of the various translations provided any evidence for the charge that Andrew Marr had misrepresented what the Iranian President had said.

The Committee felt that the language used by the Iranian President was highly emotive by its nature and had been recognised as such in the international condemnation of what he had said. Andrew Marr had done nothing more than highlight this in his introduction. The Committee was also clear that neither the language nor the tone used by Andrew Marr could be considered as showing bias."

Peter Rippon is editor of World at One, PM and Broadcasting House

Host

ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ in the news, Tuesday

  • Host
  • 6 Mar 07, 09:47 AM

Financial Times: Reports on ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Worldwide’s plans to increase revenue by inviting other UK broadcasters to use its new iPlayer as an alternative to Apple's iTunes for downloading audio and video. ()

The Guardian: β€œΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Worldwide's annual sales show for buyers from around the world reflects the broadcaster's need to make a profit from exporting its programmes to close the gap in funding after the recent licence fee settlement.” ()

The ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ is not responsible for the content of external internet sites