Frank Farian, the man behind Boney M and Milli Vanilli, and many others died yesterday, aged 82. Rather then going tonto details of his life and sometimes controversial career, lets focus more on some of his music.
Staring of with the good man singing himself.
Boney M
Eruption
In 1986, Farian produced and mixed the Meat Loaf album Blind Before I Stop. He also sang backing vocals on the album’s lead single, “Rock ‘n’ Roll Mercenaries”, which was credited to Meat Loaf featuring John Parr.
On 14 November 1990, Farian confessed to orchestrating the events leading to the Milli Vanilli scandal. As a producer, he assembled a group of session musicians and fronted it with physically attractive dancers Robert Pilatus and Fabrice Morvan. Following a 1989 performance where a backing track error first revealed the singers had been lip-syncing, Farian later confirmed to the press that others had sung on the albums. Milli Vanilli’s 1990 Grammy Award for Best New Artist was revoked, and at least 26 lawsuits were filed in the United States under U.S. consumer fraud protection laws.
Farian also started the supergroup Far Corporation (named after the first syllable of his last name), which featured Steve Lukather, David Paich, Bobby Kimball, Simon Phillips (all from Toto fame), and Robin McAuley. Far Corporation were the first act to chart with a cover version of Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven”; their cover was a top 10 hit in the UK, reaching number 8 in October 1985.
Public Broadcasting is so important in a world where it becomes increasingly difficult to differentiate between facts and fiction.
What is Public Broadcasting? According to a Cambridge dictionary definition, it is, “television and radio programs that are broadcast to provide information, advice, or entertainment to the public without trying to make a profit.” UNESCO defines it as a meeting place where all citizens are welcome and considered equals. It is an information and education tool, accessible to all and meant for all, whatever their social or economic status. Its mandate is not restricted to information and cultural development-public broadcasting must also appeal to the imagination, and entertain. But it does so with a concern for quality that distinguishes it from commercial broadcasting. The seven core pillars of Public Broadcasting or Public Service Media are Accountability, Accessibility, Impartiality, Independence, Pluralism, Reliability and Universalism. A good Public Broadcasting system is good for democracy.
However, what happens if the Public Broadcasters, and especially the National Public Broadcasters can’t be trusted?
In several European countries, there have been a number of scandals, each of them undermining the credibility of the organisation.
Germany
On Monday, 15 August 2022, Patricia Schlesinger, manager of the Berlin regional public channel RBB since 2016, was immediately dismissed from her position after an almost unanimous vote of the board of directors.
She had resigned a few days earlier from her position as director of ARD, the association of the country’s nine regional stations – one of the three pillars, along with ZDF and Deutschlandfunk radio, of the German public broadcasting system – after being involved in several scandals revealed at the end of June. Ms. Schlesinger was accused of abusing the privileges of her position, without any supervisory authorities intervening. The press revealed that, in addition to her salary of more than 300,000 euros per year, the former investigative journalist had benefited from lavish “bonuses based on objectives” granted under conditions that were not very transparent.
The German case seems comparable to the current scandal with RTE in Ireland.
Ireland
Irish broadcaster RTÉ admitted on June 22, that Ryan Tubridy, the former host of The Late Late Show, received a series of payments totalling €345,000 above his published salary between 2017 and 2022. The RTÉ Board said that in late March of this year during a routine audit of RTÉ’s 2022 accounts, an issue was identified in relation to the transparency of certain payments.
Tubridy’s earnings for the years 2017, 2018, and 2019 were understated by €120,000, while earnings for the years 2020-2022 were understated due to the payments which went through a Barter Account, “a common practice in advertising and marketing businesses where goods and services are traded through an intermediary company which charges a fee for its services.”
The Board said that €150,000 was paid to Tubridy’s agent (on his behalf) from the barter account in 2022. This is related to the guaranteed income for 2021 and 2022. It resulted in an overall cost to RTÉ, from this account, of €230,760 (inclusive of fees incurred through the barter account process).
In light of the ‘actual earnings,’ Tubridy’s earnings were €545,000 in 2019 and €515,000 in 2021, representing an overall reduction of 5.5% in 2021 earnings compared to his 2019 earnings. This came at a time when other staff had their salaries reduced by 15%. In context, the top salary of a researcher is €55,600.
The Netherlands
In the much-watched and award-winning talk show De Wereld Draait Door,(The World goes on) there had been structural transgressive behaviour behind the scenes. As a result, dozens of employees fell ill between 2005 and 2020. De Vara (later BNNVara) had been warned several times about the unhealthy working atmosphere in its success program, but never fundamentally intervened. This has emerged from research by ‘de Volkskrant’, on 18 November 2022, for which more than seventy former employees were interviewed. The newspaper also has medical files, communication with lawyers, confidential emails, conversations from app groups and settlement agreements that substantiate their stories.
More than fifty of the former employees qualify the behaviour of presenter Matthijs van Nieuwkerk and several editors as “crossing the line.” It involved extreme outbursts of anger and public humiliation, which ensured that a culture of fear was maintained. “The feeling was: the scythe can always fall unexpectedly,” says an editor. “Without knowing why. Working at DWDD for a long time was the ultimate recipe for burnout.’
The current management of BNNVara, who recently also spoke to employees, admits that there has been inappropriate behaviour. “The final editors and presenters should have been held accountable for their behaviour and culture at the editorial office. The fact that this did not happen at the time is painful for the (former) colleagues who are affected by this.’
United Kingdom
The BBC was hit with a major scandal concerning Jimmy Saville. In October 2012, almost a year after his death, an ITV documentary examined claims of sexual abuse by Savile. This led to extensive media coverage and a substantial and rapidly growing body of witness statements and sexual abuse claims, including accusations against public bodies for covering up or failure of duty. Scotland Yard launched a criminal investigation into allegations of child sex abuse by Savile spanning six decades, describing him as a “predatory sex offender”, and later stated that they were pursuing more than 400 lines of inquiry based on the testimony of 300 potential victims via 14 police forces across the UK. By late October 2012, the scandal had resulted in inquiries or reviews at the BBC, within the National Health Service, the Crown Prosecution Service, and the Department of Health. In June 2014, investigations into Savile’s activities at 28 NHS hospitals, including Leeds General Infirmary and Broadmoor psychiatric hospital, concluded that he had sexually assaulted staff and patients aged between 5 and 75 over several decades.[As a result of the scandal, some of the honours that Savile was awarded during his career were posthumously revoked, and episodes of Top of the Pops presented by Savile were no longer repeated.
One would think that lessons were learned from this, but apparently not. On Friday 19 May, the family of a young complained to the BBC about one of its presenter’s behaviour. The presenter allegedly paid the young man, for sexually explicit photos.
On the basis of the report by the Sun, the unnamed “household name” eventually began asking the young people for pictures when they were 17 years old back in 2020 and has made many payments throughout the years. The publication stated that the presenter has been suspended following a complaint from the family on 19 May
As news of the scandal emerged, a number of big names at the BBC – including Jeremy Vine, Nicky Campbell and Rylan – took to social media to state that they are not the presenter in question after malicious posts linking them to the allegations.
On Monday BBC Radio 5 Live’s Campbell took listeners to his show that the false allegations had left him “distressed”. He added: “Today I’m having further communication with the police in terms of malicious communication and with lawyers in terms of defamation.”
Vine added on his Radio 2 show: “It goes without saying that, for legal reasons, we won’t name the person. During the day it may change – you may find there are developments, but let’s see.”
“By virtue of talking into this microphone, I can’t believe I’m even having to say this, it can’t be me.”
The unnamed presenter has now been suspended. The BBC is meeting the police on Monday to discuss the matter.
It is clear that in all of these cases, there had been an evident lack of corporate governance.
History of Sorts 
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