Piranha savaged by BBC sharks bites back

BBC political correspondent Gary O’Donoghue once told me that the press corp at Westminster was “a piranha pool”, writes Ian Macrae.

But it seems that those piranhas are nothing compared to some of the sharks that patrol the media’s news management.

In August 2007, it was O’Donoghue, a Pol-Corr (to use the jargon) of 15 years’ standing, who broke the story that foot and mouth disease had once again become critical and forced the Prime Minister to return from his holiday.

That day, O’Donoghue was all over the radio and TV news, bringing the story to the viewing and listening public in his typically professional way.

The story was deemed big enough to lead that evening’s Ten O’Clock News on BBC1. The BBC’s parliamentary team was contacted at its offices at Millbank and duly offered O’Donoghue as the reporter who had broken and covered the story. But top brass, in the form of the then deputy editor of the Ten O’Clock News, Daniel Pearl, refused the offer, reportedly saying that he wanted a proper political correspondent.

People might well argue that achieving the relative heights of political journalism as a disabled person made O’Donoghue extraordinary enough, though clearly Pearl didn’t think so. He saw fit to bike Gary’s copy round to a fellow Millbank journo, comfortably ensconced in her PJs in front of the telly, and sent another reporter, June Kelly, to Westminster to gauge reaction there.

Unsurprisingly, Gary O’Donoghue regarded this treatment as blatantly discriminatory and said so to anyone who’d listen. The event created something of a storm, eventually, I understand, engaging the interest of head of news Helen Boden.

But resolution was only achieved when the journalist started anti-discrimination proceedings, the Beeb eventually settling to avoid the case going to tribunal.

But, as with many stories, this one has a final ironic twist. In reporting the case, papers like the Daily Mail, not known for championing disability rights, are using the BBC’s failure to live up to its own statements and standards on equality as a stick to beat it with.