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BBC Controversies
This article outlines, in chronological order, the various controversies surrounding or involving the BBC. Early years 1926 General Strike In 1926, the General Council of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) called a General Strike to prevent wage reductions and worsening conditions for 1.2 million locked-out coal miners. Labour Party politicians such as party leader Ramsay MacDonald and Philip Snowden criticised the BBC for being "biased" and "misleading the public" during the strike. Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin was coached by John Reith during a national broadcast about the strike which he made from Reith's house. When Ramsay MacDonald asked to make a broadcast in reply, Reith supported the request. However, Baldwin was "quite against MacDonald broadcasting" and Reith refused the request. Baldwin's government blocked the BBC from broadcasting statements about the strike by the Labour Party and TUC leaders. When Philip Snowden, the former Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
General Council Of The Trades Union Congress
The General Council of the Trades Union Congress is an elected body which is responsible for carrying out the policies agreed at the annual British Trade Union Congresses (TUC). Organisation The council has 56 members, all of whom must be proposed by one of the unions affiliated to the TUC. Unions with more members receive an automatic allocation of seats, in proportion to their membership. Smaller unions propose candidates for eleven elected seats. In addition, there are separately elected seats: four for women, three for black workers, at least one of whom must be a woman, and one each for young workers, workers with disabilities, and LGBT workers. The General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress, General Secretary also has a seat on the council.Trades Union Congress,General Council and TUC structure Some members of the council are further elected to serve on the smaller Executive Committee of the TUC. The President of the Trades Union Congress is also chosen by the General ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jazz Music
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression in traditional and popular music. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, complex chords, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation. Jazz has roots in European harmony and African rhythmic rituals. As jazz spread around the world, it drew on national, regional, and local musical cultures, which gave rise to different styles. New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation. But jazz did not begin as a single musical tradition in New Orleans or elsewhere. In the 1930s, arranged dance-oriented swing big bands, Kansas City jazz (a hard-swinging, bluesy, improvisational styl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Burke Trend
Burke Frederick St John Trend, Baron Trend, (2 January 1914 – 21 July 1987) was a British civil servant and later Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford. Trend was educated at Whitgift School and Merton College, Oxford, where he took first class honours in Classics. He then joined the Civil Service, spending most of his career in the Treasury. He became Cabinet Secretary under both Harold Wilson and Ted Heath between 1963 and 1973. Trend was appointed a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (CVO) in the 1953 Coronation Honours. He was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) in the 1955 New Year Honours, promoted to Knight Commander (KCB) in the 1962 Birthday Honours and a Knight Grand Cross in the 1968 New Year Honours. On 7 March 1974 he was created a life peer as Baron Trend, of Greenwich in Greater London. He led an investigation in the 1970s into allegations of penetration of the British Secret Services from before World War II until the 1960s. His concl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lord Normanbrook
Norman Craven Brook, 1st Baron Normanbrook, (29 April 1902 – 15 June 1967), known as Sir Norman Brook between 1946 and 1964, was a British civil servant. He was Cabinet Secretary between 1947 and 1962 as well as joint permanent secretary to HM Treasury and head of the Home Civil Service from 1956 to 1962. Background and education Brook was born at 18, Cricklade Road, Bristol, the son of Frederick Charles Brook (1867–1937) and Annie (d. 1921), daughter of Thomas Smith, of Bradford, West Yorkshire. Frederick Brook was at different times a schoolmaster, inspector of schools, tax assessor, and district inspector for the Ministry of Health. He was the son of George Brook, of Bradford, a cabinet-maker. Harold Macmillan (although himself of recent undistinguished crofting ancestry, notwithstanding his grandfather Daniel MacMillan's success in founding Macmillan Publishers) was fascinated by the fact that, despite Brook, his Cabinet Secretary, having "no background" and being o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Atomic Bombings Of Hiroshima And Nagasaki
The United States detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945, respectively. The two bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians, and remain the only use of nuclear weapons in armed conflict so far. In the final year of World War II, the Allies prepared for a costly invasion of the Japanese mainland. This undertaking was preceded by a conventional and firebombing campaign that devastated 64 Japanese cities. The war in the European theatre concluded when Germany surrendered on 8 May 1945, and the Allies turned their full attention to the Pacific War. By July 1945, the Allies' Manhattan Project had produced two types of atomic bombs: "Fat Man", a plutonium implosion-type nuclear weapon; and "Little Boy", an enriched uranium gun-type fission weapon. The 509th Composite Group of the United States Army Air Forces was trained and equipped with the specialized Silverplate version of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pseudo-documentary
A pseudo-documentary or fake documentary is a film or video production that takes the form or style of a documentary film but does not portray real events. Rather, scripted and fictional elements are used to tell the story. The pseudo-documentary, unlike the related mockumentary, is not always intended as satire or humor. It may use documentary camera techniques but with fabricated sets, actors, or situations, and it may use digital effects to alter the filmed scene or even create a wholly synthetic scene. Film Orson Welles gained notoriety with his radio show and hoax ''War of the Worlds'' which fooled listeners into thinking the Earth was being invaded by Martians. Film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum says this is Welles' first pseudo-documentary. Pseudo-documentary elements were subsequently used in his feature films. For instance, Welles created a pseudo-documentary newsreel which appeared within his 1941 film ''Citizen Kane'', and he began his 1955 film, ''Mr. Arkadin'', with a pseu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peter Watkins
Peter Watkins (born 29 October 1935) is an English film and television director. He was born in Norbiton, Surrey, lived in Sweden, Canada and Lithuania for many years, and now lives in France. He is one of the pioneers of docudrama. His films present pacifist and radical ideas in a nontraditional style. He mainly concentrates his works and ideas around the mass media and our relation/participation to a movie or television documentary. Nearly all of Watkins' films have used a combination of dramatic and documentary elements to dissect historical occurrences or possible near future events. The first of these, '' Culloden'', portrayed the Jacobite uprising of 1745 in a documentary style, as if television reporters were interviewing the participants and accompanying them into battle; a similar device was used in his biographical film ''Edvard Munch''. '' La Commune'' reenacts the Paris Commune days using a large cast of French non-actors. In 2004, he wrote the book '' Media Crisis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The War Game
''The War Game'' is a 1966 British pseudo-documentary film that depicts a nuclear war and its aftermath. Written, directed and produced by Peter Watkins for the BBC, it caused dismay within the BBC and also within government, and was subsequently withdrawn before the provisional screening date of 6 October 1965. The corporation said that "the effect of the film has been judged by the BBC to be too horrifying for the medium of broadcasting. It will, however, be shown to invited audiences..." The film eventually premiered at the National Film Theatre in London, on 13 April 1966, where it ran until 3 May. It was then shown abroad at several film festivals, including the Venice one where it won the Special Prize. It also won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 1967. The film was eventually televised in Great Britain on 31 July 1985, during the week before the fortieth anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, the day before a repeat screening of '' Threads''. Synopsis Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Wilson, 1st Baron Moran
Charles McMoran Wilson, 1st Baron Moran, MC, PRCP (10 November 1882 – 12 April 1977) was personal doctor to Winston Churchill from 1940 until the latter's death in 1965. His book ''The Struggle for Survival'' revealed much about Churchill's physical and psychological state, possibly including clinical depression, while coping with the strain of high office. It was not, however, the strict historical record that it appeared to be, as it lacked any accredited sources, such as diary-entries or confirmed reporting of conversations. Some people also felt that it breached patient–doctor confidentiality. Background Moran was born in Skipton, Yorkshire, younger son and youngest of three children of John Forsythe Wilson, a physician and general practitioner from Northern Ireland, and his wife Mary Jane, daughter of the Reverend John Julius Hannah, a Presbyterian minister of Clogher. He was educated at Pocklington Grammar School then studied medicine at St Mary's Hospital Medical S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
ITV (TV Network)
ITV is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network. It was launched in 1955 as Independent Television to provide competition to BBC Television (established in 1936). ITV is the oldest commercial network in the UK. Since the passing of the Broadcasting Act 1990, it has been legally known as Channel 3 to distinguish it from the other analogue channels at the time, BBC1, BBC2 and Channel 4. ITV was for four decades a network of separate companies which provided regional television services and also shared programmes between each other to be shown on the entire network. Each franchise was originally owned by a different company. After several mergers, the fifteen regional franchises are now held by two companies: ITV plc, which runs the ITV1 channel, and STV Group, which runs the STV channel. The ITV network is a separate entity from ITV plc, the company that resulted from the merger of Granada plc and Carlton Communications in 2004. ITV plc holds the Channel 3 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Television Act 1954
The Television Act 1954 was a British law which permitted the creation of the first commercial television network in the United Kingdom, ITV. Until the early 1950s, the only television service in Britain was operated as a monopoly by the British Broadcasting Corporation, and financed by the annual television licence fee payable by each household which contained one or more television sets. The new Conservative government elected in 1951 wanted to create a commercial television channel, but this was a controversial subject—the only other examples of commercial television were to be found in the United States, and it was widely considered that the commercial television found there was "vulgar". The solution to the problem was to create the Independent Television Authority which would closely regulate the new commercial channel in the interests of good taste, and award franchises to commercial companies for fixed terms. Aware that TV coverage of the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC's headquarters at Broadcasting House, London. The station controller is Mohit Bakaya. Broadcasting throughout the United Kingdom, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands on FM, LW and DAB, and on BBC Sounds, it can be received in the eastern counties of Ireland, northern France and Northern Europe. It is available on Freeview, Sky, and Virgin Media. Radio 4 currently reaches over 10 million listeners, making it the UK's second most-popular radio station after Radio 2. BBC Radio 4 broadcasts news programmes such as ''Today'' and ''The World at One'', heralded on air by the Greenwich Time Signal pips or the chimes of Big Ben. The pips are only accurate on FM, LW, and MW; there is a delay on digital radio of three to five seconds and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
