Hey Piers, Ye canna hack a Nokia if you throw it at someone first.. |
Media Commentator Julian Bray writes:
Cannot believe that I've sat through the entire Select Committee hearings today and I'll leave it to the Guardian to give you the detail and for my part I'll see if I can draw some kind of conclusions from all of this. Accept that my commercial background is Broadcasting, Journalism, Television Management and Management Consulting.
It is however hard to understand how the Select Committee of ill assorted MP's all with different size axes to grind, can with all honesty materially add to anything that the civil and criminal investigations currently underway will turn up.
The most staggering conclusion from todays round is that few of the MP's should ever be given a speaking part, the questioning ranged from blatent grandstanding to snide to considered and finally to plain stupid.
Perhaps we all expected these committees to be on a par with a court room or public enquiry, but here few if any lawyers are seen in to be in action and the standard of chairmanship ranged from weak to adequate. The hounding (and juvenile custard pie throwing ) of an 80 year old tycoon on worldwide television was hard to justify or take in. Even harder to understand on a World Service radio feed. The UK can and must do better than this.
Tom Watsons performance verged on bullying and made me wince. The earlier demonstration with posters should have at least put the authorities on alert and again calls into the question the whole idea of staging the Olympics whilst we are participating in two wars, going through dire economic times and possibly now facing a snap General election - before the games.
It was counter productive as I found myself unwittingly pulled into the Murdoch camp despite the robotic responses from Murdoch Junior, but it was the fascination with Murdoch Senior and his flat hand bang of the desk to get points home.
He does this in public and he also does it in the Board Room. Rupert clearly deeply upset that he has worked a lifetime for this to find that a one percent contribution to overall revenues by the News of the World could unleash a firestorm of adverse comment and publicity. Twittering throughout I found that my comment were not only being picked up by the rich and famous but I'm also in agreement with Sir Alan Sugar! Still I suppose it could be worse. Michael Winner? Perhaps a couple of notches up from that... all in all not a good day for democracy and for Westminster? Major questions remain to be asked, in fact far more than when we started this morning and its now 7pm Mrs Brooks is still politely answering questions... but the committee is still on the road to nowhere...
Contributor: Media, Aviation, Politics & Travel Expert, Broadcaster Julian Bray UK Landline: 01733 345581 Mobile: 07944 217476 ISDN2 downline +44(0)1733 555 319 (B'cast ISDN Remote Studio) G722/APT-X Dual Codecs Glensound C5
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