One of the big stories breaking overnight is the news that Labour front bench Northern Ireland spokesman, Eric Joyce, has resigned due to being done for drink driving yesterday. Apparently this story is not worthy of appearing in the 9am news bulletin on Radio 4 just now and does not appear on the BBC’s UK news front page, updated at 8.37am. Even the Scotland news page, updated at 8.42am only puts the Joyce story up 4th even though Joyce is a Scottish MP. After yesterday’s wall-to-wall coverage of the Tories’ embarrassment over Lord Young’s faux pax you can only conclude that the BBC is happy to knock a Tory when he is down but will also happily cover up for a Labour MP.
The picture of the unshaven, tieless Joyce used by the BBC was taken by Mike Day and published by the BBC website yesterday at 4.58pm, see here.
What really stands out from this story is that somebody stopped for drink driving and is tried and convicted the next day. That is justice.
Phil Taylor 
2 replies on “BBC double standards – again”
a bit naughty of the bbc phil but you shouldn’t really be using the pic without paying the fee… £which is £125 plus vat.
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Mike,
I did think that your picture was great. It did convey the drama of the event. It is a shame that the BBC did not use it more prominently.
I did research fare dealing before using it, probably not sufficently well I have to say. I thought that acknowledging the source and author of the material and using it in the context of news reporting consituted fare dealing. Further research indicates that pictures are not covered by fare dealing exemptions in the UK. I have replaced your picture on its own with a screen grab of the BBC News Scotland website.
I hope that you think that this is fare use. The blog is essentially my hobby and I don’t make any money out of it. Paying £125 plus VAT out of my personal spending money isn’t very realistic.
I would be interested to hear your thoughts.
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