![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Farewell Fincham
Oct. 6th, 2007 09:05 amAnd so, farewell Peter Fincham, now ex-controller of BBC One, and as predicted here on Friday July 13 (when Fincham himself said that he had no intention of resigning).
The only disappointing aspect in this is that, once again, incompetence does not appear to be a crime. The main reason for the departure, folowing an investigation into the affair, appears to be that the BBC failed to issue a correction quickly enough. In other words, they failed to make it clear that they had made a balls-up. Fincham said that he was resigning as "a matter of honour" but once again, made pains to emphasize that there had been no deliberate deceit on the part of the BBC.
It often seems to be the case that it's the cover-up (a distinct act, easily identified) that incurs a greater penalty than the crime. See for example Marion Jones, found guilty of lying to the Feds about drug abuse in the lead up to the 2000 Olympics. Her possible jail time is for the lying, not for the drug abuse.
In Fincham's case, the real sackable sins were twofold: 1) His boasting to the journalists about a "hot" piece of TV where the Queen appears to flounce out of a painting session, while failing to check that the clip had represented events accurately (the old case of, "the better the story, the more you need to verify it") and 2) the penny-pinching of TV stations when it comes to paying production companies, which is what causes these independent production companies to make mistakes such as putting clips together in a misleading way.
The first offence, however, was incompetence, rather than malfeasance. English criminal law is the basis of much of our attitude to 'life', hence the universal excuse of "Bu I didn't do it on purpose!". Motive rather than effect is seen as the overriding factor. Fincham didn't mean to deceive the journalists watching the clip, so that's alright then, is it?
No, not really. We should look more on the effect of things rather than the intention of the perpetrator. There's far too much "but he meant well" in this world, and too little "but he should have known better".
The second offence, the penny-pinching, is one for which Fincham is not exclusively to blame, and it is, needless to say, not even a point mentioned by the investigation. If you pay junior people in the media absolute shit (because so many people want to get in) then you will get donkeys. Hell, a lot of people want to get into Goldman Sachs, but the bank doesn't cut its salaries as a result. It just gets to choose the best, not the ones who will work cheapest.
++++++++++
Great stories fron Hugo Martin on Pokerverdict: The 'Martin Johnson' tale is an absolute beauty, summing up marketing departments worldwide.
'What do you call someone too stupid to go into marketing or PR?'
'I dunno, when I find one, I'll tell you'.
http://www.pokerverdict.com/Poker-Blog/Hugos-Blogspotting/5117/hugos_blogspotting_5_october.html
One quote from someone responding to a luckyjimm post...
Never let anyone think that winning at this game is easy.
++++++++++
There's been a player on NoIQ who has been driving me mental. I've only played 400+ hands against him, so it's possible that his performance is a mere statistical quirk. He's seeing 50%+ of pots and winning 40% of the flops that he sees. A third of the time he goes to showdown and he's winning just over half those showdowns.
Part of his technique seems to be to defend his big blind tenaciously; and it seems to be working for him, in the small sample that I have to hand.
Purely in the interests of experimentation, I decided to try to play against him in a slightly non-standard way, just to see how he reacted. With luck, he might be put out of his comfort zone. I suspected that he had a style that worked against tightish ABC players who always continuation-betted, but tended to fold to check-raises more than they should.
Tobe frank, I was just trying to see how this guy thought and played. This was the cheapest (although perhaps not the best) way to find out one bit of the puzzle.
( a hand against a laggy opponent )
The only disappointing aspect in this is that, once again, incompetence does not appear to be a crime. The main reason for the departure, folowing an investigation into the affair, appears to be that the BBC failed to issue a correction quickly enough. In other words, they failed to make it clear that they had made a balls-up. Fincham said that he was resigning as "a matter of honour" but once again, made pains to emphasize that there had been no deliberate deceit on the part of the BBC.
It often seems to be the case that it's the cover-up (a distinct act, easily identified) that incurs a greater penalty than the crime. See for example Marion Jones, found guilty of lying to the Feds about drug abuse in the lead up to the 2000 Olympics. Her possible jail time is for the lying, not for the drug abuse.
In Fincham's case, the real sackable sins were twofold: 1) His boasting to the journalists about a "hot" piece of TV where the Queen appears to flounce out of a painting session, while failing to check that the clip had represented events accurately (the old case of, "the better the story, the more you need to verify it") and 2) the penny-pinching of TV stations when it comes to paying production companies, which is what causes these independent production companies to make mistakes such as putting clips together in a misleading way.
The first offence, however, was incompetence, rather than malfeasance. English criminal law is the basis of much of our attitude to 'life', hence the universal excuse of "Bu I didn't do it on purpose!". Motive rather than effect is seen as the overriding factor. Fincham didn't mean to deceive the journalists watching the clip, so that's alright then, is it?
No, not really. We should look more on the effect of things rather than the intention of the perpetrator. There's far too much "but he meant well" in this world, and too little "but he should have known better".
The second offence, the penny-pinching, is one for which Fincham is not exclusively to blame, and it is, needless to say, not even a point mentioned by the investigation. If you pay junior people in the media absolute shit (because so many people want to get in) then you will get donkeys. Hell, a lot of people want to get into Goldman Sachs, but the bank doesn't cut its salaries as a result. It just gets to choose the best, not the ones who will work cheapest.
++++++++++
Great stories fron Hugo Martin on Pokerverdict: The 'Martin Johnson' tale is an absolute beauty, summing up marketing departments worldwide.
'What do you call someone too stupid to go into marketing or PR?'
'I dunno, when I find one, I'll tell you'.
http://www.pokerverdict.com/Poker-Blog/Hugos-Blogspotting/5117/hugos_blogspotting_5_october.html
One quote from someone responding to a luckyjimm post...
So, like you, Jimm, I wait here with my laptop, the web, my poker addiction, and pass the days until I die.
Never let anyone think that winning at this game is easy.
++++++++++
There's been a player on NoIQ who has been driving me mental. I've only played 400+ hands against him, so it's possible that his performance is a mere statistical quirk. He's seeing 50%+ of pots and winning 40% of the flops that he sees. A third of the time he goes to showdown and he's winning just over half those showdowns.
Part of his technique seems to be to defend his big blind tenaciously; and it seems to be working for him, in the small sample that I have to hand.
Purely in the interests of experimentation, I decided to try to play against him in a slightly non-standard way, just to see how he reacted. With luck, he might be put out of his comfort zone. I suspected that he had a style that worked against tightish ABC players who always continuation-betted, but tended to fold to check-raises more than they should.
Tobe frank, I was just trying to see how this guy thought and played. This was the cheapest (although perhaps not the best) way to find out one bit of the puzzle.
( a hand against a laggy opponent )
