- Tricks of the trade - 10th March 2025
- Lifting evidence - 6th March 2025
- Blunderbuss - 5th March 2025
During 23 years with the BBC, and a 41 year journalistic career (when he was trained to use clear and simple language, avoiding jargon), confronting the tricks used by criminals to conceal their identities or true activities has always played a major role for our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry, and this is now highlighted by news that in one country extraordinary measures are being taken to get round oppressive government rules.
It’s always fascinating (although disturbing) to learn the details.
As I have researched the background of individuals or organisations for television programmes, I have come across any number of extraordinary methods to conceal the truth.
In one instance I remember from the 1990s, an extremely dubious firm created a huge number of shell ‘companies’ to conceal the facts about what the original one was doing.
Getting to the bottom of all this was extremely difficult as it was so complicated!
In fact that was the case in a lot of the investigations I have undertaken over the years.
I always used to liken it to swimming.
You would dive from the surface past a lot of things you didn’t understand, until you reached the bottom and you were sure of your ground.
You would then swim back up to the top and the things you pass then made sense, until you emerge on the surface into sunlight, and you were certain of what was happening!
All of this has been put centre stage for me by details of what is now coming out of one country – China.
There, people go to astonishing lengths to get round burdensome rules imposed by Xi Jinping.
Over the past decade, as Chinese governance has become more politicised and a fear of punishment has taken hold, local officials have changed the way they do things.
Many are holding more meetings and issuing a greater number of documents; but much of this is just show, according to Hanyu Zhao, a scholar who tracks the bureaucracy.
People in the party have to look busy, but this is often passed down to lower-level cadres, some of which are getting creative.
In one example highlighted by Ms Zhao, a group of officials were required to hold two (unnecessary) meetings each day as part of an anti-poverty campaign.
Instead they met ONCE every three days, taking SIX photos per meeting wearing DIFFERENT outfits, with ALTERNATIVE lighting and OTHER seating.
Brilliant.
In this case, though, these are the good guys – unlike the people I had to deal with…
The memories of Phil’s, incredible award-winning career in journalism (including some of the tricks of the trade) as he was gripped by the rare neurological disabling condition, Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in a major book ‘A GOOD STORY’. Order the book now!
Tomorrow – after a top-level investigation finds that celebrity chef and television presenter Gino D’Acampo drew an explicit picture of a female TV producer during live filming, we re-publish our story about him from last month, making clear that the BBC too has major questions to answer.
