Archives for January 2009

Journalism's job is to kick the powerful in the backside when they get things wrong - and they do, all too often - and see what happens next. If you doubt whether that precise definition is in the BBC Producer Guidelines, then you might have a point. (It is, in fact, written in a secret code on page 94 but if I told you how to crack it, I'd have to kill you).

This blog is dedicated to the victims of power gone mad, bad or just plain wrong. This summer for Panorama I met people in all three categories while spending five weeks travelling in China just before the Olympics. I duly noted the country's amazing economic growth, but came face-to-face with the authoritarianism of the powers-that-be in the Chinese Communist Party. I will never forget the day we went to see a school knocked flat by the earthquake in Sichuan while all the other big buildings around had stood intact. Our official minder told grieving parents, effectively, to shut their mouths lest they say anything critical about China. There's a clip on You Tube, so you can judge for yourselves.

Later on in 2008 working on a Panorama about tax havens, to be screened sometime in the New Year when the editor can be tempted to give it a slot, I met Jack Blum, a rare bird who happens to be a lawyer based in WashingtonDC and believes in ethical behaviour. Jack and I chewed the fat about how the super-rich like to park their money out of the taxman's reach but we also reflected on how some of the world's powerful states will cope with the 'crunchion'. (Don't bother look it up. I've just made it up because I couldn't be bothered typing out 'credit crunch generated recession'). 

Jack believes that the United States and Britain will take a big hit, but that both countries have democratic institutions strong enough to cope with the crunchion. Can the not-so-very democratic regimes in China and Russia - however alluring the topless shots of strong man Vladimir Putin fishing and shooting may be - withstand the storms to come? Wise man Jack shook his head, and fears trouble for those who march in step in Beijing and Moscow. We shall see.

Closer to home, injustice still creates great pain for pernicious and unnecessary reasons. Last spring I did a Panorama which questioned the safety of the conviction against Keran Henderson now in jail for manslaughter for killing little Maeve Sheppard, a child she was baby-minding. Keran, hitherto a pillar of the community in Buckinghamshire, denies she harmed the child. The only evidence against Keran was 'shaken baby syndrome' - a massively controversial scientific doctrine which some sceptical doctors and most bio-mechanics say doesn't make sense. Britain's child protection establishment, however, believes that Shaken Baby Syndrome is valid.

Keran is still in prison, but her appeal will be heard sometime in the New Year.

Meanwhile, don't tell the Panorama editor but I did a bit of moonlighting the other day for Newsnight, reporting on the long agony of Suzanne Holdsworth. She spent three years inside for murder for a crime that didn't happen. There are grave questions about the thoroughness and fairness of the investigation by Cleveland Police, but they've announced that they won't be apologising to Suzanne.Her partner, Lee Spencer, is not impressed by a police investigation that failed to take statements from two surgeons who were going to operate on the brain of the boy she was wrongly accused of murdering.

Suzanne Holdsworth is the eighth person wrongly convicted of murder or manslaughter I have helped clear the name of or free since joining the BBC in 2001, starting with Sally Clark,Angela Cannings, Donna Anthony, Lorraine Harris, Ray Rock, Angela and Ian Gay.

But I'm afraid there are plenty more people inside who shouldn't be.

Meanwhile, fans of Scientology's number one parishioner, Tom Cruise, will be interested to see how he plays anti-Hitler hero Claus Von Stauffenberg in the upcoming film Valkyrie. If you can't work out what I think about that, you shouldn't be reading this blog.