PANORAMA PPE PROGRAMME ‘BREACHED EDITORIAL STANDARDS’: A report in the Daily Mail (24/7), said that the BBC,, having initially defended an edition of BBC One’s Panorama programme about the provision of personal protection equipment (PPE) by the NHS, had now admitted that it had breached editorial guidelines. The ruling, by the Editorial Complaints Unit (ECU), was that the programme, called …
News-watch Launches BBC Bias Digest
BBC Bias Digest is now a key, regularly updated feature of the News-watch website, and a central focus of our efforts. To try and hold the BBC to account in the public interest To facilitate reform in its governance. Each day, we are combing newspapers and the web for stories about the BBC relevant to its Charter obligation to deliver …
BBC Bias Digest 23 July 2020
BBC ‘WRONGLY BLAMES CHURCHILL FOR INDIA FAMINE’: Writing for The Critic magazine (21/7), Christopher Howarth accused the BBC, ‘the most powerful megaphone in the land today’, of airing ‘a one-sided attack’ on Winston Churchill. He wrote that a feature, by the BBC’s Yogita Limaye, which was broadcast on Radio 4’s Today programme (20/7), only included voices critical of ‘Britain’s most …
BBC Digest 22 July 2020
LABOUR PARTY PAYS ‘SUBSTANTIAL DAMAGES’ TO BBC PRESENTER’: A report in the UK Press Gazette (22/7) said that the Labour party had paid substantial defamation damages to John Ware, the veteran BBC Panorama presenter’, over an edition of the programme broadcast in July 2019 which investigated the extent of anti-Semitism in party ranks. The report explained that an official party …
BBC Digest 21 July 2020
BBC PRESENTER ‘SAVAGED’ OVER LICENCE FEE CLAIMS: The BBC’s Breakfast presenter Naga Munchetty – paid £190,000 a year by the Corporation – had been savaged by viewers after saying that the BBC licence fee was ‘worth it’ to ensure that people were ‘educated’ (Daily Mail 21/7). James Gant noted that a storm of tweets had followed Ms Munchetty’s claims in …
BBC Bias Digest 20 July 2020
NEWSWATCH COMPLAINT: ‘BBC HAS FAILED BRITAIN’: David Maddox (Express 19/7) said that the media monitoring organisation News-watch had accused – in a complaint to Ofcom – the BBC of ‘systematic failure’ to comply with its charter obligations of impartiality over 20 years. Political editor David Maddox said the complaint had been registered in a week where the BBC’s director of …
BBC Bias Digest 19 July 2020
TORY MPs: ‘AXING OVER-75 FREE LICENCE FEES IS KICK IN THE TEETH’: The Blue Collar Conservative group of 66 MPs had written to BBC Director General Tony Hall to demand a re-think on the decision to charge over-75s for their licence fees (Express 19/7). Ciaran McGrath reported that, pointing to the BBC’s £5 billion annual income, the letter had attacked …
BBC Bias Digest 18 July 2020
BBC “WEAK MANAGEMENT’ FACILITATES ‘WOKERY”: In his regular column for the Telegraph (£ 17/7) Charles Moore compared recent developments at The New York Times with the situation at the BBC, arguing that the weakness of the newspaper’s management there in the face of ‘militant wokery’ has parallels with the weakness of BBC management here in confronting BBC staff over bias, …
BBC Bias Digest 17 July 2020
BBC ‘FACES FRESH IMPARTIALITY QUESTIONS’: Paul Revoir, noting that Guido Fawkes had found evidence that BBC community affairs correspondent Rianna Croxford had made a series of pro-Labour and anti-Boris Johnson tweets, said the Corporation was facing fresh questions about its impartiality. Mr Revoir said that Conservative MP Andrew Rosindell had observed that it was hard for people to have confidence …
BBC Bias Digest 16 July 2020
BBC ADMISSION ABOUT ‘EGREGIOUS TWEETS’ WAS ‘JAW-DROPPING’: Mick Hume (Daily Mail 16/7) said that the admission to the House of Lords communications and digital committee by David Jordan, the BBC’s director of editorial standards, that Corporation staff had been guilty of sending ‘egregious’ tweets, was a ‘jaw-dropping’ moment for those like himself who had been complaining for years about ‘the …