Re: [Fsfe-uk] BBC slander

[P.L.Hayes]

On Friday 06 February 2004 10:18, Kevin Donnelly wrote:


> This is surprisingly naff, but certainly up to the standards of recent BBC
> "journalism".  The Broadcasting Standards Commission is now part of Ofcom
> at http://www.ofcom.org.uk/.  Could you perhaps draft a balanced note to
> them, and air it here first, before despatch?  You might include such
> points as: - there is absolutely no evidence that this attack has been
> orchestrated by Linux users;
> - leading members of the free/open-source community have specifically
> condemned this attack (eg http://www.perens.com/SCO/DOS/);
> - it is increasingly accepted by commentators that the SCO case is ulikely
> to succeed, and therefore there would be no sense in Linux users
> undertaking such an attack, especially since the case has been ongoing for
> almost a year now;
> - the journalist appears to have only a very superficial understanding of
> the issues involved, and yet he has been content to cast a slur on all
> users of Linux, among them many companies and government units, including
> the BBC; - the virus progagates due to basic shortcomings in Windows, yet
> there is no criticism of either this operating system or its users.

Ahh! - ofcom - thanks Kevin, I will certainly have a go at draughting 
something to ofcom, later today hopefully. That article was not the first 
time Stephen Evans has presented the extremely partisan views of particular 
groups in industry to the exclusion of any others. He did the same in a radio 
piece about EMI presenting their desire to extend copyright to 95 years like 
in the U.S. as perfectly reasonable. It certainly seems like he has been 
bought and paid for like Fourtou, McCarthy, Bolkestein etc. but I'd never 
really considered corruption in journalism before. Is it not just as 
dangerous - if not more so - than political corruption? Anyway, I will not 
make such unsubstantiated allegations in my letter to ofcom of course ;)

Cheers,

Paul.