These hoary old snake oil salesmen, Messrs Cut & Splice, have landed the BBC in trouble. Apparently they joined up two of President Trump’s remarks, fifty minutes apart in a political speech, to make it appear that he was inciting his followers to storm the Capitol, after he refused to recognise the result of the 2020 presidential election. This happened a year ago, but has only now come to light, thanks to the investigative reporting of the Telegraph. President Trump has signalled that he intends to sue the BBC for “between one and five billion dollars”, and, on board Air Force 1, he thanked a Telegraph reporter for his paper’s exposure of “fake news”.
During the past week the BBC has spent an inordinate amount of time introspectively mulling over the whole saga. In News, it’s always a problem when the reporter becomes part of the story. But it’s clearly a big story, because the Director General and the Head of News have both resigned. Allegedly the cut and splice episode is merely the tip of the iceberg, and apparently the BBC is, culturally, deeply dysfunctional. Run by a bunch of liberal lefties, according to some. That would certainly imply that the Corporation would be anti-Trump. Biased. Not so, says an opposing faction. Look at the amount of air time they afford Mr Farage! Champions of the BBC often point out that if the charge of bias is being laid from all sides, then the BBC have probably got the balance about right (by which I mean correct, rather than politically conservative). There’s a massive Conspiracy Theory doing the rounds, that the current scandal is merely the culmination of a prolonged concerted attack on the public broadcasting service by its competitors in the private sector, jealous of the clout that the licence fee affords the BBC.
Bias (Chambers) n a one-sided mental inclination; a prejudice; any special influence that sway’s one’s thinking.
Speaking as a doctor, erstwhile emergency physician, I can’t help feeling it’s all a storm in a teacup. Nobody died. (Well, I say that, but people did die, on January 6th 2021, at the Capitol.) But now, unless there is a settlement out of court, we have the prospect of hearing the case of Mr President versus the BBC, perhaps in the jurisdiction of Florida. Teams of lawyers will “deploy arguments”. What a ghastly, dismal prospect. It could run for months, perhaps years. Irrespective of who “wins”, it will cost a fortune.
I have a rule of thumb about going to law: don’t do it, unless you absolutely have to. Don’t get enmeshed in that imbroglio. I’ve read my Dickens; I’ve read my Kafka. The endless case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce. Joseph K., spending an eternity before the door to the court, waiting for it to open. When working in New Zealand I was required, on a number of occasions, to give evidence in court, thankfully only as a witness (but there but for the grace of God go I), usually in cases of medical “mishap” or “misadventure”. On some of these occasions, somebody did die, or on other occasions incurred life-changing injuries. On one occasion, for example, the case involved a child who had been sent home from the emergency department with a diagnosis of “tension headache”. In fact, the child had meningitis, and succumbed shortly afterwards. You see, that puts the charge of cutting and splicing a tape into some sort of perspective.
I never felt that the combative nature of legal procedure, with a prosecution, and a defence, was a particularly effective way of getting to the truth of a matter. The procedure of the hospital Morbidity & Mortality (M & M) Meeting always seemed to me to be far more informative. Here, the facts of the case were presented, and then discussed. Doctors tried to formulate a coherent account of everything that had happened, chiefly in order to learn, and in order to avoid a recurrence of the episode in question. Of course, if there is a stark difference of opinion, particularly with regard to a burden of guilt, then a combative scenario becomes inevitable.
Another anomalous feature of court procedure with regard to medical misadventure was the stark contrast between the constraints of time suffered by a usually harassed and overworked emergency physician, and the temporal latitude enjoyed by the court. The court might take a week to consider a critical decision that a doctor had felt obliged to take during a fifteen minute consultation.
If I happened to be taking part in the “Cut’nSplicegate” M & M Meeting, I would want to hear the facts of the case. What is the error? Who committed it? What was the motivation? Was the cut and splice a slipshod editorial happenstance or was it designed to mislead? Was there editorial oversight and if so, what was the chain of command? Did the alleged misdemeanour actually cause harm? What, indeed, was its resultant morbidity, and mortality?
Call me naïve, but I would suppose that men and women of good faith and good heart could answer these questions during the course of a morning. Why is going to law so expensive? I don’t remember ever being recompensed for attending an M & M Meeting, or a court case, or a hearing before the General Medical Council. What is so expensive in law?
Obfuscation.
Then there is the question of compensation. Has somebody been damaged to the extent they need $5,000,000,000 to make up for it?
I always remember the advice I heard from a lawyer speaking at a meeting in, of all places, the Ayrshire hotel that was to become Trump Turnberry. He said, “When you seek the help of lawyers, you imagine you are inviting us into your world. But it is quite the opposite. We are inviting you into ours.”
And it’s a different world altogether. To most of us, it is unrecognisable.
jamescalumcampbell 