Sweeney’s rant at the Scientologists

Ah, now, this is what we pay our licence fee for. A maniac screaming at a maniac. I hope you caught the latest edition of the BBC’s Panorama, during which the presenter, John Sweeney, went berserk at a spokesman for the Church of Scientology — bellowing in his face at full volume in the manner of an inmate at Rampton being told that his pornography allowance has been stopped. If you didn’t see the show itself, then check out the incident on YouTube on the internet — it’s been posted there by the Scientologists as if to say look, everybody, this is what we have to put up with, abuse and harrassment. The clip is quite wonderful — perhaps the most arresting moment of TV this year and utterly hilarious. Sweeney has latterly apologised for his behaviour, and the BBC announced that he had been given a ‘severe reprimand’. I daresay the Corporation’s deep and abiding regret at the incident will have been counterbalanced by its pleasure at the doubling or maybe quadrupling of Panorama’s usual audience figures as a result of all the publicity. Perhaps this is the way forward for all of the Corporation’s news and current affairs presenters — to abuse interviewees and perhaps kick or punch them. Brings in the punters.

In fact, there are certain sorts of people whom the BBC thinks it’s all well and good to be fairly nasty to, and Scientologists are among them. Indeed, there are certain groups of people whom the BBC feels that its personnel must roundly abuse or even phy-sically chastise if it is going to give them airtime, such as, for example, the British National Party, or members of Islamic groups that are not on the ever-shifting list of politically OK Islamic groups. These people all come under category one in the BBC producer guidelines.