BBC and the royal scoop that wasn't

The BBC has described this week's royal row as regrettable "human error". The interesting question is which human made the error.

It looks like the mistake may have been compounded by the fact that the offending clips of the Queen definitely not stomping away from a photo shoot where compiled by the company that's making the documentary, and not the BBC itself.

Much has been made in the press of the BBC needing to put its house in order. This may be the BBC's responsibility, but it becomes much more difficult when production is outsourced.

I meet many freelances working in independent production who have to flit from job to job and know that they are only as good as their last position. There is no security and very little concept of training and development.

It doesn't make you a bad person, but the pressures to stay ahead of the pack are enormous. Central tennets of public service broadcasting are often not uppermost in the mind.

Contrast that with the rigour with which the BBC trains its journalists and the tonnage of bricks that would come down on any staffer who mislead the viewers in such a high profile way.

But the juggernaut of outsourcing rumbles on. In such a competitive media world I suspect this week's human error won't be the last.