BBC faces further barracking for Question Time Glasgow move
The BBC's plans to move Question Time from London to Glasgow have come in for more hostile press coverage today, with a Times report claiming the BBC will pay thousands of pounds to fly staff to brief host David Dimbleby.
Dimbleby has already spoken out about the politcal programme's move out of the capital and, according to the Times, he will not be expected to visit the new Scottish office.
Instead the paper claims the licence-fee payer will have to stump up the air fares and hotel costs for upto four producers to fly from Glasgow to a weekly Wednesday briefing which will remain in London.
This, however, has been disputed by the BBC. A spokesman said one producer would fly from Scotland while another would be based permanently in London.
Today's coverage is the latest in a string of negative headlines emanating from the London-based national media about the BBC's decision to move 50 percent of its programme expenditure outside London by 2016.
The Daily Mail recently blasted the corporation's move to Salford Quays as "lunacy", an attack which compelled BBC director general Mark Thompson to hit back at "exaggerated" reporting.
He wrote in the Guardian: "We think of the licence fee not just as a charge the public pays for outstanding services, but as a seed corn for the creative industries.
“You wouldn't realise that, of course, if you read some of the London-based print media for whom our move is not about present success or future potential but a gloriously exaggerated story of distraught presenters (if you have tears, shed them now) and cost overruns."
The mainstream media criticism of the BBC's move is the subject of this week's leader article in The Drum magazine, published on Friday.
Editor Gordon Young writes: "Certain camps need reminding that the organisation under discussion is the BRITISH Broadcasting Corporation."