{"id":784,"date":"2008-01-15T14:05:00","date_gmt":"2008-01-15T20:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/?p=784"},"modified":"2008-12-20T20:39:28","modified_gmt":"2008-12-20T20:39:28","slug":"democracy-and-the-bbc-more-preached-than-practised","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/2008\/01\/democracy-and-the-bbc-more-preached-than-practised\/","title":{"rendered":"Democracy and the BBC: more preached than practised"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"drop_cap\">O<\/span>ne of my favourite quotes on democracy (disowned by its originator alas), comes from British educator <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.educationrevolution.org\/derhanrep.html\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Derry Hannam<\/span><\/a>: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Learning about democracy and citizenship in school is a bit like reading holiday brochures in prison.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Why do I trawl that quote up?<\/p>\n<p>Well, BBC Director-General <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Mark Thompson<\/span>, in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/pressoffice\/speeches\/stories\/thompson_trust.shtml\">an interesting and wide-ranging speech<\/a> addressing the trust gap in public life, comes up with a key goal for the <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">BBC:<\/span> <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>to transform the way we connect British democracy \u2013 and all its many democratic institutions \u2013 to the public.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I don\u2019t know about you, but I\u2019m more concerned about Britain\u2019s undemocratic institutions. The BBC, for example.<\/p>\n<p>Until the BBC takes democratising itself seriously, I for one find it hard to take Thompson\u2019s message seriously.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s a pity really. The BBC\u2019s own governance makes a mockery of the values it is charged with promoting. Discuss&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>And &#8211; thanks to the <a style=\"font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/main.jhtml;j?view=BLOGDETAIL&amp;grid=F11&amp;blog=yourview&amp;xml=\/news\/2008\/01\/14\/nosplit\/view14c.xml\">Telegraph<\/a> &#8211; you\u2019ll have a chance to ask him just that this afternoon at 1530 GMT (Wednesday, 16 January, 2008) when he joins them for an online chat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of my favourite quotes on democracy (disowned by its originator alas), comes from British educator Derry Hannam: Learning about democracy and citizenship in school is a bit like reading holiday brochures in prison. Why do I trawl that quote up? Well, BBC Director-General Mark Thompson, in an interesting and wide-ranging speech addressing the trust [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[81],"tags":[15,1517,2115,2187,1483,2186,275,1433],"class_list":["post-784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","tag-bbc","tag-britain","tag-british-broadcasting-corporation","tag-derry-hannam","tag-mark-thompson","tag-online-chat","tag-trust","tag-united-kingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=784"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2476,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784\/revisions\/2476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}