THE TELEGRAPH: Crime author PD James has torn into the BBC, accusing it of losing direction, paying large salaries and ageism in an interview with director general Mark Thompson.
Baroness James of Holland Park, who is best known for creating the detective Adam Dalgliesh, repeatedly asked Mr Thompson to justify why so many managers were paid more than £100,000 a year.
The former governor of the BBC was questioning the director general in her role as a guest editor of the Today programme on Radio Four.
She likened the Corporation to a "large unwieldy ship" that was "bringing on more and more cargo and adding more decks, more officers - all comfortably cabined and usually on better salaries than their predecessors had enjoyed - and with customers feeling they paid too much for the journey and weren't sure where they were going".
The Conservative peer said the BBC had changed for the worse since its inception in the 1920s and was "very unwieldy, very bureacratic" and "less clear about what it should be doing".
There was “immense concern", she said, "about the salary structure – if indeed there is a structure – and the extraordinarily large salaries that are paid”. >>> Alastair Jamieson | Thursday, December 31, 2009 (New Year’s Eve)
THE TELEGRAPH: If you did not hear the interview conducted by PD James with BBC director general Mark Thompson on the Today programme today then I suggest you set aside 15 minutes or so to do so.
Reading the BBC news website’s account of this spectacular skewering you could be forgiven for believing that Mr Thompson gave a stout defence of the Corporation’s inflated salaries, oversized bureaucracy, patronising ageism and appalling reality TV shows. In fact, Thompson gave a faltering, stumbling performance, unable to answer in any convincing way the points that Lady James put to him, especially when she asked him to justify the huge salaries being paid to BBC executives. Thompson must have said “you know” more times than a footballer, and sounded even more inarticulate. >>> Philip Johnston | Thursday, December 31, 2009
