Mark Pack

The Press Gazette reports: The Scottish National Party has dropped its legal challenge against the BBC’s decision not to allow its leader Alex Salmond to appear in its televised debate in the run-up to the general election. A judicial review of the matter was scheduled to be heard at the Court of Session in Edinburgh. [...] »

Dear Nick, Sorry to be boring and quote things like numbers and evidence. But on the 10pm news you said, “I think both sides agree the Tories have won the politics of the first week”. I’d have thought the public should get a look in on this and you know what the public’s verdict is? By a slim lead [...] »

Yup, Any Questions has done it again with this week’s panel featuring a Tory MP, a Labour MP, a right-wing pundit and a Green candidate – but no Liberal Democrat. Details of how to lodge your complaint with the BBC here.  »

Of course, I read that caption from earlier today as a mark of praise rather than of exasperation:  »

Earlier this week the Electoral Commission published a new report, The completeness and accuracy of electoral registers in Great Britain, looking at how electoral registration is working in the UK. Although it's been widely covered, the coverage has been very similar - taking the top line figures from the report and covering press release without digging in to what the report really says. So if we venture in to the inner reaches of the report, what do we find? »

The BBC itself reports: Cornwall MP Julia Goldsworthy says the BBC should consider scrapping Radio 1. The Lib Dem communities spokeswoman was responding in a BBC3 debate, First Time Voters’ Question Time, about the BBC’s strategic review… But Ms Goldsworthy said: “They should be looking at other areas where there is already competition in the market, like Radio [...] »

The BBC's website regularly feature in the lists of the ten most popular websites in the UK - and are usually the only ones in the top ten from a British organisation. So the BBC's plans to refocus and shrink its web presence are likely to be widely felt. The 79 page strategy document ranges over [...] »

We’ve covered before the habit of BBC Question Time of dropping a Liberal Democrat from the panel (three times in four weeks most recently) and also of loading up the panel with a far from politically balanced set of non-Parliamentarians. But it’s not only Question Time where that’s a problem. BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions? has [...] »

The BBC has just published a draft of the internal guidelines for its election coverage. The 14 page document is similar to the guidance at previous elections and includes a set of sensible rules which other media outlets would do well to emulate, including: There will be no online votes or SMS/text votes attempting to quantify [...] »

A follow-up to my post When is it ok to ban a journalist?, about the habit in football of clubs banning journalists who say things they don’t like (can you imagine the uproar if a public sector body tried to do the same?): Sir Alex Ferguson will have to end his six-year ban on giving interviews to [...] »