National Union of Journalists (NUJ) general secretary Jeremy Dear has strongly criticised the BBC Trust and the corporation’s strategic review of its online activities in a post on his blog.
He describes the Trust’s decision to delay the launch of BBC iPhone apps as a move to “prostrate themselves before the commercial sector”, before suggesting that the proposed changes to the BBC’s websites don’t add up:
They are going to cut 25 per cent of staff – and yet every time they are asked which sites and which staff, they refer to mothballed sites, links that just redirect or pages that haven’t been updated since 2006. So we ask the question again – come clean. Which sites and which staff are to be axed. You are paid lots of money. You’ve had months to come up with the plan. So tell us. Or do you intend to wait until the consultation is over, then spring it on staff and readers.