Snowmail: BBC action on foul language

Has Mary Whitehouse been proved right from beyond the grave?

Is the BBC truly contrite for putting out expletive-filled and sexually boastful banter from its highest paid (male) presenters on the airwaves?

The BBC Trust has promised to review the use of filthy language and sexual banter, whether on late night TV, or Radio 1 when the kiddies are listening.

Its 59-page report was mainly into the BBC's incompetent handling of the Russell Brand/Jonathan Ross abusive phone calls broadcast on Radio 2 last month.

Sir Michael Lyons and (ex-ITN executive) Richard Tait of the Trust said the phone calls should never have been recorded, let alone broadcast; blaming an almighty "lack of editorial judgement" with "primary responsibility rest[ing] with editorial management."

Viewers and listeners who'd felt old-fashioned sexism infected some of the comments, might see some significance in the Trust's criticism of Ross for (as they rather amusingly put it in this morning's news conference) using the F-word in "a sexually active way" in an interview with Gwyneth Paltrow on his Friday night BBC One show; and Brand's banter about Andrew Sachs' granddaughter with Chris Moyles on Radio 1's Breakfast show, when up to 300,000 children might be listening.

The detail of the Ross/Brand timeline makes interesting reading: Radio 2 controller, Lesley Douglas (since departed) it emerges, agreed to the Sachs phone calls being broadcast with a one word email reply of "yes" sent from her remote handheld BlackBerry device.

David Barber, the head of compliance (also departed) thought the show was "very funny."

My programme editor tonight (initially not keen on the story), having gone through it now admits the Trust report makes "grimly fascinating" reading.

BBC cuts local news online plans

And while that was what the attention was on, the Trust also put a stop to the BBC's plans to expand into local online video news in a big way (more happy news for the newspapers, baying for BBC's licence fee blood, whose regional titles are continuing to haemorrhage circulation and advertising).

I've been talking to ex-BBC executive, Will Wyatt, who authored the last damning Trust report into a BBC scandal (the Queengate row over editing a promo about HM out of sequence) about why BBC management are still apparently so "dumb" (his word on their behaviour over Queengate), and whether Ross can really come back to work as normal when his 3 month suspension is over in January.

All of it presenting an editorial irony for our programme about how much foul language to transcribe and treat with ****s, and how much to bleep in John Sparks' report.

Honda and London

Also tonight: As Honda extends its partial closure of its Swindon plant to 2 months, we look at the crisis in car manufacturing and sales in the UK.

London Mayor Boris Johnson gives our political correspondent Cathy Newman an exclusive interview with some unexpected policy views on what the capital and the country need now.

From Washington with warning

From Washington and ready for President-Elect Obama's in-tray, a report warning him to prepare for a nuclear-armed Iran, water shortages fuelling war, mass migration and eco-disaster, and the sun going down on America's pre-eminence as a global superpower.

The 4-yearly assessment by the National Intelligence Council brings together the views of the US intelligence community.

It's all quite a shift from the last such report from the NIC 4 years ago, when the focus was on the global threat from Islamist terror. So what's the thinking behind the shift, I'll be speaking to one of the report's authors.

Buggies research

And, as new research suggests babies suffer stress and emotional problems and developmental delays if they're routinely pushed in a forward-facing pushchair, rather than facing the parent, I'll be asking Dr Miriam Stoppard about what difference it makes.

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