Home » Posts tagged 'BBC Trust'
Tag Archives: BBC Trust
I am not going to tolerate this long smear tactic by the BBC : no conflict of interest?
I find it incredible personally that the Chairman of the General Standards Board at the BBC Trust, Chita Bharucha, feels that there is no conflict of interest in her adjudicating on a BBC news story when she is also on the General Medical Council.
I am waiting to see what her judgment is. I am hoping that the decision by her won’t show the same degree of lack of accuracy, impartiality and balance as the original article, or further actions against sickening journalism will have to be taken by me. I am not going to tolerate smear tactics from the BBC.
An open letter to the BBC General Standards Board
My problem is that, even after abstinence, I can’t seek restoration to the General Medical Register in January 2013 or admission to the Solicitors’ Roll on successful completion of my training contract, realistically, whilst this story persists on the BBC website; and assuming I maintain my clean sheet on character and suitability issues following my coma in iTU in the summer of 2007. Both professions are very concerned (quite rightly) about trust in the profession, and its reputation, and given that I have now been successfully rehabilitated from alcoholism I feel the BBC should remove them. So I am now sending this open letter to the BBC General Standards Board to explain my problem. It is a very serious one, and should be given some thought and attention by some very senior people.
The letter is as follows:
Dr. Shibley Rahman
[redacted]Chairman of the General Appeals Board (21/07/10), 24 July 2010
180 Great Portland Street
London
W1W 5QZDear Sir,
OPEN LETTER : URGENT
As you will have inferred from all my correspondence to the General Standards Board, I am really concerned about the damage that this BBC story (actually whose central allegation that I am a stalker is actually in fact incorrect) is doing to my personal reputation in July 2004. You have already been sent this evidence on numerous occasions, as you are aware. This incident for which I received a harassment warning in the context of me being drunk was not criminally classified as stalking. This was one of the items of evidence that led to my ultimate erasure in July 2006 by the General Medical Council. Your news items are still on the BBC Online website today.
Despite the fact I am disabled, but because I have been abstinent for three years, and written two books on postgraduate medicine and completed my PhD in medicine, will be applying for restoration in January 2013. Please note that the ‘Duties of a Doctor’ from the GMC currently provide the following:
“Never abuse your patients’ trust in you or the public’s trust in the profession.”
As I have been abstinent for three years, and it is six years since the event itself (2004), I think it is essential that the BBC remove this, to prevent damage to my personal reputation in my reapplication.I still remain angry about your ‘Entertainment’ stories run during the actual hearing of 2006, which I feel compromisd the fairness of my trial, although I have no intention of recourse to legal action over this.
I am especially concerned, as I am now an upstanding individual. I intend to apply to be a solicitor with proven rehabilitation, and similarly the Code of Conduct of Solicitors provide:
Members of the public must be able to place their trust in you. Any behaviour within or outside your professional practice which undermines this trust damages not only you but the ability of the legal profession as a whole to serve society.
Trust IN me is potentially impossible when your story is number 1 of a Google search of my name, whilst the BBC continues not to remove this story, which is extremely damaging to me.Please remove these stories before I seek for advice from the General Medical Council and the Solicitors Regulatory Authority, as to what to do about these stories. I cannot seek restoration/admission to the Solicitors Roll if the BBC refuses to acknowledge my rehabilitation, and therefore undermines me as a professional.
My problem is that, even after abstinence, I can’t seek restoration to the General Medical Register in January 2013 or approval for the Solicitors’ Electoral Roll after completion of my training contract, realistically, whilst this story persists on the BBC website. Both professions are very concerned (quite rightly) about trust in the profession, and its reputation, and given that I have now been successfully rehabilitated from alcoholism I feel the BBC should remove them. So I am now sending this open letter to the BBC General Standards Board to explain my problem. It is a very serious one, and should be given some thought and attention by some very senior people.
I am still hopeful for a sensible outcome.
Yours sincerely
[ELECTRONIC SIGNATURE]
Dr Shibley Rahman
Queen’s Scholar
BA(1st) MA MB BChir PhD (all Cambridge) MRCP(UK)
LLB(Hons.) FRSA MSB
Master of Law student at the College of Law of England and Wales
Associate Member of the Institute of Directors
Company Director of Law and Medicine Limited
Serious letter from Shibley Rahman to Sir Michael Lyons 12/7/10 BBC Trust (from which no reply)
Dr. Shibley Rahman
[address]
Sir Michael Lyons, 12th July 2010
Chairman of the BBC Trust,
180 Great Portland Street,
London.
W1W 5QZ
Dear Sir,
URGENT AND CONFIDENTIAL
I know that you must be incredibly busy, and it is a honour and privilege for me to write to you. I suspect that you will know nothing of my case yet, which has been going for 8 months nearly.
To serve as background, I am copying you a copy of a letter which I am sending to Fran O’Brien, BBC Head of Editorial Standards, today. The purpose of this present letter is that I should like you very much to bear witness to how my complaint has been managed thus far by BBC Complaints, and for you to consider what lessons – if any – that can learnt from this incident. In a nutshell, the BBC reported my regulatory case with the GMC in a highly inaccurate way across three online news stories within a space of about a week in 2006, claiming I was working at the Brompton at the time (inter alia), when the case involved me as a doctor with a severe alcohol problem. These stories should never have been classified in the ‘Entertainment’ section, but actually this label reflects rather well the ‘gutter-press’ style and content of the articles. They gave the impression that this was a stalking case (this case was nothing to do with stalking) and failed to allude to the substantial alcohol problems which had made it impossible for me to continue my professional career in medicine. Although medicine constitutes over a decade of my life that I have no wish to return to, I feel that the BBC should have some degree of human compassion for me: a human, now disabled human-being (due to a coma in 2007 due to meningitis), who has given up alcohol for four years, and who is trying desperately hard to rebuild his place in society.
The upshot is that I would like three online news stories from 2006 to be removed, because I have proven that they offend the BBC’s editorial guidelines on accuracy, balance and/or impartiality. I simply do not understand why [NAME REDACTED] fails to understand the basic issue involved that (a) I have never been a stalker, (b) I have a Police National Computer check which proves this. The BBC running these stories so many years down the line is very damaging to me both professionally and personally (they are instantly Google-able). I (and senior lawyers) feel that they are indeed defamatory, but I see no reason why the BBC cannot remove them after having admitted their faults as regards their own Charter and editorial policy.
My hearing has been scheduled for 21st July 2010. Finally, I should explain that the purpose of my letter is to explain to the Chairman of the BBC Trust fully the hurt that I have experienced over this protracted complaint, and just in case Fran O’Brien is unable to bring this to the meeting due to any summer vacation. This does matter a huge amount to me. I have opened up this can of worms, as I can tolerate such abusive behaviour from the BBC any longer.
I am still deeply disturbed that anyone reading these three ‘entertainment’ stories will come away with the idea that I was a nuisance stalker (not true), rather than a very sick doctor with alcoholism who needed to help and who needed to be removed from the register (true). This should have been priority for any decent journalist covering the story legitimately.
I clearly feel that the articles are in stark contrast with the professionalism that the BBC is supposed to stand up for, and I would like the BBC Trust to give this careful thought. In particular, I should like the BBC to consider how it can liaise with the Law Society or the General Medical Council to cover their cases in such a way it cannot prejudice the hearings.
I take solace, in fact, from the fact that [NAME REDACTED], Legal Advisor to the BBC, feels that my complaint is not legal, in that I feel that resolution by the BBC Trust is entirely appropriate.
I will always abide by what you judgment the BBC Trust provides, but I hope that the Trust can consider my distress sympathetically. Finally, I will always be proud of the BBC.
Yours sincerely
Dr Shibley Rahman (mobile [redacted])
E-mail: management@lawandmedicine.co.uk
Queen’s Scholar
BA(1st) MA MB BChir PhD (all Cambridge) MRCP(UK)
LLB(Hons.) FRSA MSB
Master of Law student at the College of Law of England and Wales
Associate Member of the Institute of Directors
Company Director of Law and Medicine Limited
Plea to the BBC : I have never been a stalker
Public confidence is a big deal to the regulatory bodies in law and medicine. Likewise, I feel that it is time for me to protect myself at long last against three stories on the BBC that call me a stalker. They have refused to get rid of this despite months of me asking them to do so (via BBC Complaints). Of course, I’m upset as the BBC ran this story during the actual hearing itself. There is in fact such a thing as article 6 to protect against this sort of thing – right to a fair trial. I believe that this was a big reason why the GMC (General Medical Council) took a somewhat kneejerk reaction to erase me off the medical register, when everyone knows I’ve had a long and now successful battle against alcoholism. I was unconscious in a coma for 2 months in 2007 the year after beings struck off, and I have never touched a drop of alcohol since. The thing actually I feel most embittered about is that the GMC never appointed a health supervisor whilst I was on the register for 2004-2006, in other words they breached their own ‘duty of care’ towards doctors, and that they have only suspended doctors for plagiarism, attempted manslaughter/murder or failure to detect child abuse in the subsequent years. I was a sick doctor who needed treatment. I am under a psychiatrist today, and I am very proud of recovery. I have done two law degrees, set up my own private limited company, done two books and written three research paper.
I am however thoroughly sick of it, as I have six degrees, and when people do a search on my name they find the offending article. It stops me possibly getting jobs. I applied for 30 jobs last year, and didn’t get any of them. So I would like to say something about public confidence. The public should not be confident in a huge organisation such as the BBC making mincemeat out of someone bordering on defamation. I am too poor to go to a lawyer such as Carter Ruck who would sort this sort of rubbish out instantly. Read the letter below. All my friends on Facebook are too polite to mention it. I would like to think that a lot of my friends there are genuine and see beyond the spin. I won’t even go into why this story has been given rocket boosters by BBC. I find it insulting that after 10 years in medicine including a PhD I ended up in the Entertainment section, with a picture of my elderly frail father there against his will. The BBC first became aware of this in December 2009 and refused to do anything about it. I am really sick of it, as I keep on being told it undermines public reputation in me.
I believe in a new innovative approach to reform of the criminal justice system and mental illness, as one would expect!
