In one of his rare TV appearances Lord Hall, the person in day-to-day charge of the BBC said it is "an organisation which increasingly people want to feel involved in, and they should feel involved in, and we should explain ourselves." (Lord Hall - Points of View on Sunday 24th November 2013) But when push comes to shove, neither Lord Hall himself nor other BBC employees seem very happy to do that.

My previous blog as well as my blog on 10th February 2014 illustrate how the BBC has tried to avoid discussion of human rights abuses.

In this interview with IOC president Thomas Bach, BBC Sports correspondent David Bond criticises David Cameron's decision not to attend the Sochi Games - hardly exactly an impartial position for a BBC journalist to take, especially given the circumstances of which we are all aware. But then, as I've noted before in this Blog, David Bond has never really shown any significant interest in the human rights of LGBT people. In this tweet he sneers at AT&T for being one of the few sponsor companies to show support. And a couple of weeks ago he suggested, in an interview with UK Government minister Maria Miller, that Britain helping gay rights organisations "could be seen as quite incendiary."

For those who don't know, BBC Director General, Lord Hall, is a member of the Organising Committee for UK/Russia Year of Culture 2014. Could that be the reason why the BBC's coverage of the Sochi Olympics has been presented in such a positive light? Tony Hall's empathy with Russia might partly explain the bias, but there's also the TV licence fee to consider. Having forked out for the Sochi Games coverage, the BBC wouldn't want viewers to question whether it was right to participate. The answer, therefore, was to show the event in a good light and minimise the issue of human rights abuse.

There are, of course, thousands of other questions that could be asked about BBC's coverage, but why bother? The pusillanimous athletes and Britain's national broadcaster gave Putin exactly the propaganda victory he'd hoped for from the start. Perhaps Channel 4 and the Paralympians will do better?

Martin Luther King Jr, once said "In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."

Jean Seaton shows scant understanding of the inner workings of the BBC in her recent Guardian article. At the time of Lord Hall's appointment to the director generalship of the BBC, Professor Seaton believed that being a member of the House of Lords was incompatible with his new role.

Ms Seaton starts her Guardian piece by acknowledging the recent criticism of larger-than-necessary payoffs by the HoC Public Accounts Committee. But, in trying to mitigate the damage, she distorts the truth - ironic in view of her association with The Orwell Prize.

Take this example ..

The real question is why did BBC salaries get so large? One issue were (sic) the non-executive directors, appointed from outside on to the executive board. These business people were supposed to be a solution but turned out to be a problem. The philosophy behind their appointment was that people from "outside" brought "commercial" realism to the BBC. But they did not seem to understand the actual business of public service, and they brought with them the 90s and noughties belief in, and casual acceptance of, gross salaries.

Of course the reason these people were brought into salary oversight was precisely because they were thought to be compliant when huge salaries are involved. This is the 'bonus culture' so encouraged by the banks, and enthusiastically embraced by BBC management for so long. People involved, like the Barclays Bank former chairman Marcus Agius, who told the Public Accounts Committee that he was entirely happy signing off on Mark Byford's payoff. He said "After sustained challenge and debate we were finally persuaded that, in the circumstances, it was the right decision on value-for-money grounds."

Ms Seaton seems to suggest that it was some terrible mistake that the executive board led to the excessive payoffs, rather than a much more likely deliberate policy to appoint people thus inclined to be helpful to management. After all, just think how few other people would have such an attitude. So it's not only the outside directors who didn't understand 'public service' but, more significantly, BBC management itself. Naturally Mark Thompson and Mr Agius continue to maintain the payoffs were justified completely. However the Public Accounts Committee concluded:

.. It is unacceptable for the BBC, or any other public body, to give departing senior managers huge severance payments that far exceed their contractual entitlements. .. Some of the justifications put forward by the BBC were extraordinary. For example, the former Director General, Mark Thompson, claimed that it was necessary to pay his former deputy and long-term colleague Mark Byford an extra £300,000, not because the BBC was obliged to, but to keep Mr Byford "fully focused" instead of "taking calls from head hunters". This increased Mr Byford's severance payment to more than £1 million.

The PAC went on to say that there was a failure at the most senior levels of the BBC to challenge the actual payments and prevailing culture, in which cronyism was a factor that allowed for the liberal use of other people's money. So the question arises as to what changes to the BBC's ethos will Lord Hall make? The omens are not good.

On 1st December 2011, both Nel & Hayley wore red ribbons on the 5pm edition of Newsround to mark World AIDS day. However, Graham Norton was censured very recently for wearing just such a ribbon. The BBC received numerous complaints that the Corporation was applying double standards. Some even suspect that homophobia accounts for the way Norton has been treated, especially as all his guests were wearing ribbons.

Hundreds of people wrote directly to Lord Hall, but despite a growing chorus of criticism Hall has shown a pathetic lack of concern. Last month he told BBC viewers: "I'm enjoying myself at the moment, and that's sufficient enough for me"


Tony Hall speaking to Jeremy Vine on Points of View last month