Dear Madame Arcati,
Thank you very much for your email which we received today. I was very impressed with your website, humorous, vitriolic and brilliant! I applaud your criticism of the Anti-Bullying Alliance, not many people do criticise it, which means that its purpose is often misunderstood or undefined. However, for us professionals working within the anti-bullying sector, the ABA does provide a useful forum for sharing best practice. I suspect they add more value to the profession than to the public. But I’m not in the business of defending them.
On the matter of whether anti-bullying organisations should have spoken out against the bullying on Celebrity Big Brother, I respectfully disagree with you. We were asked many times all last week to comment to media on the story, but we declined. We have a strict policy of never commenting publicly on specific bullying incidences, and certainly never vilifying an individual involved in a bullying case. We adhere to this policy even when we have all the evidence, and we had nothing even close to the entire evidence in the CBB case.
We spend all our time working with schools, youth groups and young people from all over the country on the ground everyday. We don’t have the resources to scrutinise Big Brother and cast judgment on the contestants. However, you are not alone in your concern. We have had a number of members of the public asking why we weren’t commenting, that is why we eventually put up a statement on our website on Thursday www.beatbullying.org. It is certainly disappointing compared to some of the more emotive soundbites that have been doing the rounds; boycott Jade, etc. I think it would be grossly irresponsible for an anti-bullying charity to go after an individual like that no matter what their crime, wouldn’t you agree?
Once again, thanks for getting in touch, do let me know if I can assist you in future and well done on a great site with a great truthful tone.
Regards,
Niall Cowley
Head of Communications
beatbullying
Tel: 020 8768 1017
Mobile: 07904 343 950
Fax: 020 8771 8478
Text DONATE to 61211 to set up a standing order to beatbullying
niall.cowley@beatbullying.org
www.beatbullying.org
www.bbclic.com
www.antibullyingweek.org
www.myspace.com/beatbullying
5 comments:
Carphone Warehouse sponsored Celebrity Big Brother and is also a partner of Beatbullying! http://www.cpwplc.com/cpw/media/press/2006/2006-08-01
Jade is not a bully;she is a diamond geezeress.
Oh come on "jade fan" - she's a bully/and has anger management problems. We've seen it on the edited highlights that made it onto the news.
Whether she's truly racist is another question.
But "diamond geezeress"? Your invention, your court, your ball. If you really think that, I'm in Melbourne.
The Anti-Bullying Alliance will be thrilled to have one of its own members applauding criticism of it. What a terrible error of judgement.
Hi, Beatbullying here. Surely all fair and constructive criticism should be applauded. How else do people/organisations learn and develop? Why shouldn't we applaud criticism of the Anti-Bullying Alliance? We even applaud Liz Carnell's criticsm of us.
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