I do think it is important that this is a safe place we can air our views on here as a community even where we disagree. I think it is important that we can critically analyse the file on 4 programme as we do with virtually everything else ME related on PR and we should not have to censor this to please journalists or researchers or charities. Hell, we can hardly meet down the pub and have these discussions can we?. To me it is healthy and vital.
I don't think anything that has been said on here is rude, abusive or derogatory to the journalist at all and for someone who produces work for the public domain, I would have thought people having differing and sometimes critical opinions on programmes he is involved goes hand in hand with what he does.
If he had come out passionately fighting for us as a community determined to expose this I would be very grateful, but I did not get this impression, he may well feel like this privately ( I really hope he does) and he had to temper it, he may have had constraints from powers above, I don't know, so I feel neither grateful or ungrateful.
That to me is very different from making a complaint to the BBC for bias or unfair coverage. I certainly don't feel the need to make such a complaint regarding this programme, I did when St Esther Crawley was interviewed last year. I don't feel it was unfair or biased, I would have just have liked it to be more honest and hard hitting and exposing the myths and lies and really the scandal behind how we have been treated.
Perhaps my expectations were to high, are too high, I do have expectation and hope that what is essentially a terrible injustice will be exposed and uncovered and those responsible will face difficult questions and be held accountable.
Time and time again Wessely and Crawley and White and co get off the hook and act with impunity as if they were untouchable, perhaps I was hoping this would begin to change with the BBC interviewing the likes of Nigel, getting information from Tymes Trust and interviewing Ron Davis and Co and going to invest in ME conference.
Perhaps I just expected with such excellent resources and information to draw on it would have been more informative and hard hitting. I do recognise the time limits thought with such a programme.
At the end of the day, this programme did nothing to ease my sense of injustice, rage or grief I feel as an ME sufferer individually and for the community as a whole.
It didn't worsen it, like Crawley's interview did, but it did not ease it.
Will it make a difference? I don't know. Will it provoke debate outside ME circles? I don't know.
I personally feel the BBC Scotland programmes have had more impact and were more positive for us, and I also wrote and thanked Kay Adams.
I am sure there will be many who do write and thank the BBC and journalist, just not me this time, I shall wait and see what else they produce.
