Lord Reith said its mission was to "inform, educate and entertain". Those who have succeeded the BBC's founding father, however, appear intent on concentrating solely on entertainment, in a shameless pursuit of ratings success.
Senior BBC bosses think that their current affairs programmes, including the award-winning Panorama, are too dull and serious. Instead, they want less serious shows which, they believe, will appeal to younger viewers.
A Holocaust survivor who experienced flashbacks to his war ordeal after he was jailed for his part in a £6.9million money laundering operation was freed as an 'act of mercy'.
Since being incarcerated five weeks ago, 76-year-old Mendel Rand, originally from Poland, had relived daily the trauma of being kept hidden from the Nazis in horrible conditions as a boy, the Court of Appeal heard.
Mr Justice Openshaw accepted that 'the wretched old man' had suffered enou... (more)
A pro-US weblog by three Iraqi brothers has become the unlikely setting for a huge web spat after conspiracy theorists alleged it was a fake.
Iraq the Model, a weblog detailing the more positive aspects of the US-led occupation of the country, is one of the most popular Iraq sites on the web.
But some anti-war activists said it was a CIA-sponsored propaganda tool.
The brothers strongly denied the claims, but the row has led to severe ructions in the o... (more)
Yesterday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) told radio host Bill Bennett that President Bush’s escalation is working. “There are neighborhoods in Baghdad where you and I could walk through those neighborhoods, today,” he said. Today, when CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked McCain why Americans still aren’t able to safely leave the Green Zone in Iraq, the senator replied that Blitzer was giving ... (more)
HELL is a place where sinners really do burn in an everlasting fire, and not just a religious symbol designed to galvanise the faithful, Pope Benedict XVI has said.
Addressing a parish gathering in a northern suburb of Rome, the Pope said that in the modern world many people, including some believers, had forgotten that if they failed to "admit blame and promise to sin no more", they risked "eternal damnation - the inferno".
Hell "really exists and is eternal, even ... (more)
British government officials have backed the methods used by scientists who concluded that more than 600,000 Iraqis have been killed since the invasion, the BBC reported yesterday.
The Government publicly rejected the findings, published in The Lancet in October. But the BBC said documents obtained under freedom of information legislation showed advisers concluded that the much-criticised study had used sound methods.
The study, conducted by researchers from Johns H... (more)
WASHINGTON, March 20 (UPI) -- The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is setting up its new HQ in a former lunatic asylum.
The DHS says it will consolidate most of the 60 offices it has across the Washington, D.C. region into a single new headquarters building.
The $3 billion move will begin in 2011, according to a plan prepared by the DHS, once a new building is ready in the grounds of the former mental hospital, St. Elizabeth's.
Hong Kong triads, or organised-crime gangs, are believed to be behind a sinister and elaborate poison-dart device embedded in the turf near the starting point for races at the Happy Valley racecourse.
During a routine examination of the track an inspector came across the poison dart shooter, which had 12 metal tubes, each around a foot long, filled with darts buried in the grass under the spot where the starting stalls would be placed for the three races over 1,200 metr... (more)
When a felon's not engaged in his employment
Or maturing his felonious little plan
His capacity for innocent enjoyment
Is just as great as any honest man
... (more)
Though al Qaeda is the biggest threat to US forces in Iraq, intelligence officials feel that the Qaeda branch there "poses little danger to the security of the U.S. homeland," reports the Washington Post.
"Attacking the United States clearly remains on bin Laden's agenda. But the likelihood that such an attack would be launched from Iraq, many experts contend, has sharply diminished over the past year," writes Karen DeYoung and Walter P... (more)
