- Wordplay part four - 3rd December 2024
- Terms of endearment (Wordplay part three) - 2nd December 2024
- More ‘Water, water everywhere…’ (Copyright ST Coleridge) part two - 23rd November 2024
During 23 years with the BBC, and 40 years in journalism (when he was trained to use simple language, avoiding jargon), our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry has always been aware of key rules: that those caught out almost never say sorry; other people are to blame, and THEY are the real victims, so are NOT in the wrong.
These rules are put centre stage today by the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of S4C who was sacked amid bullying allegations, saying she was victim of “an unprecedented lack of governance”, and that one of her prominent officials was also dismissed “following receipt of serious allegations about her conduct”, but claimed it was ‘unfair’.
Previously he has described how he was helped to break into the South Wales Echo office car when he was a cub reporter, recalled his early career as a journalist, the importance of experience in the job, and made clear that the ‘calls’ to emergency services as well as court cases are central to any media operation.
He has also explored how poorly paid most journalism is when trainee reporters had to live in squalid flats, the vital role of expenses, and about one of his most important stories on the now-scrapped 53 year-old BBC Cymru Wales (BBC CW) TV Current Affairs series, Week In Week Out (WIWO), which won an award even after it was axed, long after his career really took off.
Phil has explained too how crucial it is actually to speak to people, the virtue of speed as well as accuracy, why knowledge of ‘history’ is vital, how certain material was removed from TV Current Affairs programmes when secret cameras had to be used, and some of those he has interviewed.
Earlier he disclosed why investigative journalism is needed now more than ever although others have different opinions, and how information from trusted sources is crucial.
I have always found it extraordinary.
After months (sometimes years) of detailed research, the subjects would not only deny the facts (which I expected), but would invariably claim that THEY were the real victims!
Let me give you an example.
Many years ago (using secret filming), I confronted one individual I suspected of being a multiple murderer, with the evidence.
Instead of fessing up, expressing remorse, and offering condolences to the family and friends of his victims, he wanted to show how HE was the real victim, and that HE had been treated unfairly!
This case (one of many) has come to mind, along with how the golden rules of investigative journalism have been highlighted, after what we have witnessed today.
I shouldn’t be surprised but I am!
Siân Doyle was Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Welsh fourth channel, S4C, but when she was off on ‘sick leave’ she was sacked, and she has bleated that she had been “dismissed by the Chairman of S4C, Rhodri Williams, in what I believe is an unprecedented lack of governance for a public body”.
She added: “I was dismissed by letter, without notice, without a meeting, without seeing a copy of the Capital Law report (on bullying in her former organisation) or any evidence, without a right of appeal, and without proper grounds”.
However the legal investigation into the “bullying and toxic culture” at her former organisation, took many months to compile, 96 people were spoken to, and it cost £350,000.
Even so, Ms Doyle has claimed it is all “sinister”.
She defended herself pathetically in one petulant interview by saying: “Anonymous texts were sent to two of my management team saying that I was going to make them accountable for the report, that I was going to save my skin effectively and that I was going to throw them under the bus.
“Another one was sent to one of the production companies warning her off supporting me implying that they wouldn’t get any more commissions.”
Ms Doyle has cried that details of her predicament were leaked to the media beforehand, saying: “When my letter arrived to dismiss me on a Friday afternoon, I didn’t know that it was coming but the BBC knew and were planning the story before the email landed. If I had been driving I could have heard about my dismissal on the radio.
“The contents of my sick note from my doctor was only known by three people. But it was quoted directly by Martin Shipton in Nation Cymru (a nationalist website which is supported by the taxpayer).”
Then there is the unbelievable case of her appointee, Llinos Griffin-Williams.
She was also dismissed from S4C (as ‘Chief Content Officer’), after just over a year and a half in the job following allegations of gross misconduct, but in a letter sent by her lawyers she said that she was left “utterly devastated” by her “unfair dismissal”.
Ms Griffin-Williams claims she was dismissed by Mr Williams, but that he had “acted unilaterally without the knowledge of the senior management team…and the S4C board”.
She has whined that she was “denied an opportunity to present evidence from the witnesses who were present (during the incident at the centre of it all) who refute the allegations made against me”, and a statement she has issued ends with the controversial claim that “two women in senior management roles at S4C” have made grievance complaints against Mr Williams.
Yet this action, too, only took place after a thorough inquiry into the facts of what happened.
Some may think now that there are serious questions to be faced by the Chair of S4C, Rhodri Williams (apart from those posed by Ms Doyle and Ms Griffin-Williams), on whose watch both these incredible events happened.
He did, after all, name Ms Doyle as CEO two years ago, and she was the one who then brought in Ms Griffin-Willliams.
But if he goes you can be sure that he is unlikely ‘i ddweud SORI’…
Details of Phil’s astonishing decades-long journalistic career (including his years in broadcasting, although NOT in S4C), as he was gripped by the rare and incurable neurological condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in an important book ‘A GOOD STORY’. Order it now.
Regrettably publication of another book, however, was refused, because it was to have included names.
Tomorrow, disturbing details about another senior figure in Wales – the controversial public monitor of South Wales Police (SWP) (who is paid over £86,000 in taxpayers’ money), who defended contentious comments which proved inaccurate after riots in Cardiff, emphasising as they do high-profile errors by the same force.
