Results tagged “BBC” from Birmingham Mail - Veron Graham

Now the dust has settled after the BNP's Nick Griffin's appearance on Question Time, it's a little easier to speak objectively about this most emotive issue.

Whether Griffin enhanced his political credentials on the show or not, the fact remains that the BBC is a public service broadcaster, or supposed to be. Last time I looked, preaching racial hatred and inciting violence were crimes. So do tell me how someone who does these things be given such a high profile platform?

I don't much care if this 'party' has seats in European Parliament, there is no way the BBC should have allowed this criminal organisation on their show.

Those in authority at the corporation say that its European seats are the reasons Griffin was allowed on. Tell me this, if any of those men were from the racial groups that the BNP wants to be wiped off the face of God's earth, would they have taken this decision so lightly?

Did the Beeb see Griffin's inclusion on the show as a ratings winner?

Did you see the show? Do you think Griffin should have been allowed on the panel?

Veron
www.GMAgency.co.uk

It was a very warm afternoon way back in August 2002 and yours truly had just finished interviewing cricket legend Sir Viv Richards for BBC Midlands Today. As I prepared to do my piece-to-camera, I reckoned that Birmingham was on the brink of something huge.

The subject of the story was New Style Radio, which after years of effort by some seriously committed folks at the old Afro Caribbean Resource Centre in Dudley Road, Winson Green, had just won a broadcasting license to make it the city's first legal Black radio station.

With a potential audience of six million Midlands Today viewers, not to mention the hoards of readers of the numerous column inches the launch wracked up in local and national publications, it seemed as though the stage has been set. Surely now, with experienced presenters and journalists on board, New Style Radio could and would report on the Black community's news and accomplishments without fear of marginalisation or closure by the authorities.

Six years on, those early hopes have not been fulfilled, still don't think that there is a station that has the journalistic integrity and genuine interest in both reflecting and inspiring the Black community like New Style Radio could do.

Do you?

The station has encountered so much controversy in the intervening years. I've got too much class to go into what went wrong or to point the finger - but at least the station is still in existence.

Come on NSR, you know what needs to be done. Do it.