BBC's Alan Yentob in 'noddy' controversy
The BBC has admitted that Alan Yentob, the corporation's creative director, has performed 'noddy shots' on interviews that he did not personally conduct for his arts series Imagine.
In the first instance of a senior BBC executive being drawn into the TV trust issue, a senior corporation source admitted that Mr Yentob often does not conduct all the interviews on Imagine - even though he appears nodding or reacting to.
Mr Yentob, one of the BBC's most senior figures and widely seen as the corporation's ambassador, conducts many of the major interviews for the series, which most recently featured British artists Gilbert & George and a profile of artist Scott Walker that featured interviews with musicians Jarvis Cocker, Radiohead and David Bowie.
However, it is understood that scenes featuring Mr Yentob reacting to some of the more peripheral figures and experts featured in his programmes were edited in even though he was not actually present. Editing work on the programme later gave the impression that he was present.
The BBC declined to issue a statement about the matter last night. It comes after the BBC director general, Mark Thompson, last month told staff that those involved in deceptions could face dismissal.'Nothing matters more than trust and fair dealing with our audiences,' he told staff in an internal broadcast. 'We have to regard deception as a very grave breach of discipline which will normally lead to dismissal. If you have a choice between deception and a programme going off air, let the programme go. It is far better to accept a production problem and make a clean breast to the public than to deceive.'A senior BBC source admitted that Mr Yentob had engaged in so-called 'noddy' shots for interviews he did not conduct but declined to name which instances.
The source robustly defended the practice, insisting that Yentob was unable to attend every interview that appears on his show because of his workload.'Everybody does it - it is a universal technique,' he said. 'The important point is to ask - does this change the meaning of what you are doing and the answer is no it does not.'If you had everybody who did interviews featured in them you would have have 11 or 12 people nodding at different times which is getting into the realism of the ludicrous. This is standard practice across the industry.'The debate over 'noddys' was given added impetus last week when the Channel Five News editor, David Kermode, decided to ban what he called 'rather hackneyed tricks' in his channel's bulletins.'I genuinely believe that if we lead the way by stopping some of the tired old 'showbiz' shortcuts, we can help restore trust in our medium and make our programmes more creative too,' Mr Kermode told MediaGuardian.co.uk.
However many senior figures within the BBC were reluctant to follow Five's lead, with one senior news source describing Five's move as a 'publicity stunt'.The BBC source added: 'No wonder Channel Five can do that - their news reports aren't long enough anyway so they can do it but the BBC bulletins are usually much more in-depth. It was pure attention seeking on their part.'Having asked its viewers if it should ban staged shots, Peter Barron, the editor of BBC2's Newsnight programme, recently decided to ban contrived introductory 'walking shots' in which a reporter and interviewee are shown walking before a cut to the interview. However the programme, while limiting the use of noddy shots, has decided not to ban them.
In July, the BBC was plunged into crisis after admitting to six incidents in which BBC staff had passed themselves off as members of the public or a fictitious winner had been announced on programmes.
They included incidents during the BBC's flagship telethons Children in Need, Comic Relief and Sport Relief.
The BBC Trust said it was 'deeply concerned that significant failures of control and compliance within the BBC ... have compromised the BBC's values of accuracy and honesty'.The media regulator, Ofcom, had already already fined the BBC 50,000 over an incident in which a girl on a studio tour was persuaded to pose as the winner on a Blue Peter competition.
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Personally I think the whole controversy is worth it just to get the phrase "Alan Yentob's 'noddy' shots".