Let’s [that's right isn't it sub's? I'm so de'sperate to get a piece slagging the Beeb onto the web'site that I can't be bothered checking which words should have apostrophe's] me quickly spell out a couple of things (using a numbering system that will go up beyond a couple) that have emerged from the revelations about a Daily Telegraph blogger’s shameful attempt to pretend they were not taken in by a fake transcript that had been admitted to be fake a good twelve years ago.
First, the Daily Telegraph over a period of minutes turned a deaf cliche to tweets that one of its bloggers had been taken in by a fake transcript from a television show that was all over the twitter yesterday and which had been written (and admitted to be fake) years ago.
Second, the Telegraph moved words from the page without acknowledging there had been an earlier mistake other than a series of self-justificatory tweets pretending firstly that the transcript might not have been a fake, and then that it knew it was a fake all the time, guv, honest.
Third, the Telegraph suppressed reports about the well-known activities of Jimmy Savile other than revealing in its obituary that there were rumours about him but reporting that “the fact that no allegations of impropriety ever appeared in print seemed to
confirm Savile’s own insistence that he had “no past, no nothing”.”
Underlying this is a huge scandal and something that merits proper examination – but using it as a vehicle with which to fulfil a political agenda to attack the BBC or any other newspaper group seems dishonest and misguided.
You’d think the fact that the transcript was filed under “jokes” would be enough of a clue. Besides, the idea that Merton and Hislop would be truly damning of a genuinely disreputable guest is clearly ludicrous.
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