Britain - BBC Caught Hiring Hecklers

The BBC has been caught red handed hiring hecklers to disrupt Tory leader Michael Howard's speeches.

Strangely, This report is from the BBC itself. Damage limitation exercise, I suppose.

The Tory party has demanded an apology from the BBC over a programme which it says encouraged heckling at a meeting where Michael Howard was speaking.

The Sunday Telegraph says it accused the BBC of "serious misconduct" after producers equipped hecklers in Horwich, near Bolton, with radio microphones.

But the corporation said it was making a legitimate programme on the history and art of political heckling.

Come on, pull the other one.

The Telegraph notes the important bit the BBC usually leave out.

Last night, the BBC claimed that the exercise was part of a "completely legitimate programme about the history and art of political heckling" and said that other parties' meetings were being "observed". However, The Telegraph has established that none of Tony Blair's meetings was infiltrated or disrupted in similar fashion.

And

Tory officials became suspicious at the meeting in Horwich, near Bolton, last Wednesday, when they saw BBC camera crew focusing on the hecklers rather than Mr Howard. They twice challenged the two men and a woman involved, and discovered they had been equipped with radio microphones.

Mr Black said that they described themselves as "shoppers". In fact, they were under direction from a BBC team making a programme called The History of Heckling for the BBC3 channel. The programme, whose producer is Paul Woolwich, is in the process of being edited.

History of Heckling? Who would watch such a show?

The BBC try and claim this is much ado about nothing but as the Telegraph points out:

The [BBC] spokesman was unable to provide details of any other campaign meetings attended by the BBC3 crew. He said that the hecklers had not been paid a fee, but could not say whether they had received expenses.

What a pathetic, biased and bumbling organization the BBC has become.

See here for a long list of worse BBC sins.
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