MICHAEL Grade – Baron Grade of Yarmouth – becomes chairman of Ofcom today. He takes over days after Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries published Up Next, her White Paper on the future of broadcasting. Main points include that the current BBC licence fee funding regime will eventually come to an end, Channel 4 will be privatised and that ‘TV-like’ content will be subject …
Mail on Sunday editorial slams ‘useless’ BBC complaints process
The Mail on Sunday December 26, 2021 The BBC is Silencing the viewers who should be heard THE BBC’s existence is an attempt to answer a series of linked riddles. How can you sustain a national broadcaster to pursue the best in everything, free from commercial pressure? How can the state collect the funds for such a body, without turning …
BBC censures presenters – but not very much
Two rulings have been made in the past ten days by the BBC’s editorial complaints unit (ECU) against Corporation presenters. Both the offending broadcasts, one an attack on Donald Trump, the other the ‘sneering’ handling of an interview with Rod Liddle about Brexit, took place in July. This is hold the front page territory. Usually, the unit dismisses everything thrown …
BBC complaints system and ‘fake news’ attacked
Guest post from BBC Watch, originally published on their website On December 31st the BBC News website published an article titled “How fake news plagued 2017” which provides readers with the following definition under the sub-heading “What is fake news?”. Completely false information, photos or videos purposefully created and spread to confuse or misinform Information, photos or videos manipulated to …
BBC’s Harlow ‘Brexit race hate’ claims debunked
On August 31 last year, the £1billion taxpayer-funded BBC news machine went into what can only be described as incontinent anti-Brexit overdrive in response to the killing of a Polish man in Essex. This, its headlines declared, was being regarded as a race hate killing triggered by the Brexit vote two months earlier. It emerged on Friday at the final …
Confirmed: BBC complaints process is unfit for purpose
At the heart of the BBC’s reform under its new Charter – due to come into effect imminently – is that for the first time, an outside body, Ofcom, will become the final court of appeal in complaints about impartiality. The idea is that this will clean the Augean stables and the Corporation will end its rampant bias towards Brexit, …
Bridgen putdown underlines rot at heart of BBC complaints process
As the crucial referendum vote looms, how DO you complain about the BBC? The reality is that the Corporation is its own judge and jury in dealing with complaints and has neatly-honed putdowns for almost every eventuality. The odds are particularly stacked in the EU debate, as the News-watch submission to the DCMS consultation on BBC Charter renewal outlines. In …
BBC apology over Quentin Letts’ climate change programme ‘is the stifling of free speech’
Once in a blue moon…? Hold the front page… because the BBC complaints department has actually apologised to someone. Not, of course, to the battalions of folk who have been saying for years that coverage of topics such as feminism, multiculturalism, the EU and immigration is beyond the pale. The response to them – as News-watch chronicles in its submission …