mark thompson

The BBC is the neighbour at the end or your garden with a giant leylandii. He smiles at you and is a nice enough bloke. But the problem is his tree. It’s too big. It greedily sucks in nutrients from the soil and blocks out the sunlight. It’s an impressive tree by any standards, but it casts a massive shadow. And in that gloomy, publicly funded shade, other peoples’ plants struggle to get a foot hold. Some wilt and die. For years the community’s been talking about what should be done. Some people want the eylandii to be severely lopped.

I haven't used Cover It Live before, so tonight's Bob Friend Memorial Lecture, delivered by the BBC director-general Mark Thompson, seems a good opportunity to experiment.

Mark Thompson, the Director-General of the BBC, is to deliver the second Bob Friend Memorial Lecture at the Centre for Journalism in March.

At the same event one of our first year students will be awarded the Bob Friend Memorial Scholarship by Rob Kirk, Sky News's editorial development manager.

Both the lecture and scholarship were established in 2009 in a partnership between Sky News, the University of Kent and the Friend family, to provide a lasting memorial to the life and career of Bob Friend, who became the original face of Sky News after a long-standing career with the BBC.

It's taken nearly a fortnight, but the BBC has now responded more fully to James Murdoch's assault.
(See earlier blog for details and analysis http://www.centreforjournalism.co.uk/blogs/james-murdoch-analysis-bbc-li... )
BBC Director General Mark Thompson emailed the corporation's staff; "The most important thing to say about Murdoch's lecture and about many of the recent attacks on the BBC, is that they are desperately out of touch with what audiences themselves are telling us".