Screwing the Shinies

Shiny Media is, understandably, far from chuffed that the BBC's Panorama spent three hours filming Shiny journalists for a programme (disclosure: one of whom, the editor of the splendid Hippyshopper, is a very dear friend) and then failed to credit the organisation or its websites.

"Researchers from Panorama contacted the Catwalk Queen team (btw Catwalk Queen is the UK’s most-read pure fashion website - compare it with Vogue, Cosmo and the others etc on Google Trends) and asked if they could film the team talking about why and how Primark had become so popular in the UK. The Panorama team then spent three hours filming at shiny offices, which basically cost Shiny nine hours worth of blogging.

The team’s opinions were widely used throughout the show and in many ways their views held the piece together. However while every other single person on the show received a credit along with their work title (Mary Portas got a plug for her business, Yellowdoor, twice), the Catwalk team were not credited in any way. Instead only their names were used and they were billed as fashionistas or Primark fans."

Which behaviour leads Charles Arthur (HT for the quote above) to observe that journalists often treat bloggers pretty shoddily and Neil McIntosh points out the many ways in which the BBC could foster more innovation in UK media but, err, doesn't. (When your website is funded by the country's only hypothecated poll-tax to the tune of seventy-five million quid it is...quite staggering to overshoot that budget by another thirty-six million. But I digress.)

For my own part, I have to confess this looks like a single error by the Beeb rather than something systemic. When I've been interviewed by anyone at the Corporation they've always handled my detailed and presumably slightly unusual request for credit - to credit me solely as the writer of this blog and not imply that my views might represent those of my employer - completely professionally. And yet...even if it was an isolated error to use the Shiny Media journalists without attribution rather than a more general malaise, it's one that deserves apology and restitution. (Does the BBC website even have a dedicated erratum column? Can't find one, except on a programme-specific level.) Everyone loves the Shinies for building up the UK's only commercial blogging network and it's a shame to see them buggered about.

(Still, hopefully in the usual way the backlash from Panorama's lack of attribution will get them more exposure than the original programme ever would. Now let's try to get the Pope to condemn them for something and see the thing really take off.)

Comments

[awrc]

It was indeed pretty weird - at one point the narrator actually referred to the Shiny trio as "frenzied fashionistas". But the standard of journalism throughout was pretty pisspoor. When he showed a girl some footage of the children in India on the portable DVD player, I half expected him to peel an onion next to her just to make sure she'd look upset.

[Ashley Norris]

Thanks for highlighting the issue. The Panorama team has apologised which has smoothed things over a lot. I wouldn't have written the post if it was only about Panorama though. I believe that the BBC should be nurturing British social media talent, but so far it has consistently either been patronising about it, or borrowed from it invariably without crediting it. The existence of the BBC is one of the key reasons why we have so few high profile bloggers in the UK. As a publicly funded vehicle it could do a lot to encourage diversity of views. At the moment it is taking a very old media attitude of being fearful of blogs and social media, and that is fundamentally wrong.