Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Exclusive: BBC breaches Official Secrets Act over Panorama programme


I'll admit that I don't like Jeremy Whine, and seeing him as the presenter is evidence that Panorama has been dumbed down. I did not see the programme going out live last night on BBC 1. However, I have now watched it twice on the BBC website. Jeremy Whine clearly suffers from plurals in his introduction: "Prison Officers in fear of their lives", the programme showed a singular prison custody officer on her first day on the Wing. Make no mistake, it is not a holiday camp environment. "Prisoners murdered in their cells". Prisoner, singular, murdered in his cell. The murder rate within UK jails is very low, far more have been killed by police officers in police vans and police stations. "Officers on the take". No evidence to support this claim at all, however, a single custody officer was approached by an inmate with the intention of using him to bring in drugs.

Then there was this silly statement made by Jeremy Whine "comfort of their cells". If he does not know the difference between spartan conditions and conditions of comfort then this idiot should not be presenting Panorama even in its dumbed down version.

Rye Hill is at the lower end of Category B High Security Prisons (formerly known as Dispersal Prisons), even still, it is a gross breach of security that on the one occasion that 17 drug parcels came over the wall, the prisoners managed to get away with 13 and the authorities only managed to secure 4.

Then the idiot Jeremy Whine referred to "corporate offices" when prisoners cells are nothing like.

It is a shame that not only has Panorama dumbed down, but it also has swapped facts for fiction. Apart from the outright lies, there was a couple of so-called "reconstructions", but these were not reconstructions but constructions more associated with artistic licence for dramatic effect.

Perhaps the BBC will now be doing a Panorama programme on why it broke the law under the Official Secrets Act 1989 to film this programme within a prison?

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