The BBC’s handling of investigations into shamed presenter Jimmy Savile will come under the spotlight next week as part of a new series of public talks at Edinburgh Napier University.
Val Atkinson, a former deputy Head of News and Current Affairs at BBC Scotland and Ray Snoddy, former Media Editor of The Times, will discuss the corporation’s fight for its reputation at the university’s Merchiston Campus on Monday 29 October 2012.
The special event will be held from 1-2pm in Room H5 of Merchiston Campus, and is part of the university’s recently launched Media Mondays series.
The public talks will see well-known members of the media debating the big issues of the day and are free and open to all.
Lined up for later this year are the journalists who broke and led on the story behind the demise of Rangers – BBC Scotland investigative reporter Mark Daly and Alex Thomson of Channel 4 News. They will appear at Merchiston on 19 November 2012.
They will be joined in the coming months by STV’s head of programmes, Alan Clements, on 5 November 2012 at Merchiston, and Newsnight presenter Kirsty Wark on 3 December 2012 at the university’s Craighouse Campus).
Other speakers planned for later in the year include BBC lawyer Rosalind MacInnes, who will give a tour of Scottish media law on 26 November 2012.
Broadcast journalism lecturer John Mair, who created the Media Mondays series, said:- “This is precisely where Edinburgh Napier needs to be – slap bang in the middle of contemporary big questions in the media.
“The Savile story has dominated headlines and the BBC now finds itself in the midst of a deep crisis over Savile and the human and reputational fallout stemming from his sexual proclivities. Monday’s session will look at where the corporation goes from here.”
Diane Maclean, Head of Journalism at Edinburgh Napier, added:- “The Media Mondays series gives our students as well as the public the opportunity to listen to and meet the masters of the trade of journalism.
“We have a long history of training journalists at Edinburgh Napier and we want the university to be a cradle of public debate around all the big media issues in the lead up to 2014 and beyond.”
For more information about the Media Mondays series please contact John Mair on 07785 378156, email j.mair@napier.ac.uk or visitwww.screenacademyscotland.ac.uk/mediamondays
Founding Editor of The Edinburgh Reporter.
Edinburgh-born multimedia journalist and iPhoneographer.
