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ROBIN AITKEN: ‘BBC WILL PAY THE PRICE FOR FAILING TO TACKLE BIAS’: Author and former BBC journalist Robin Aitken, writing in the Spectator ( £ 10/8), argued that the BBC had ‘only has itself to blame’ for ‘the [over-75s] licence fee mess’ by getting itself into an argument it doesn’t want to have – especially as ‘more and more younger people’ are ditching the BBC in favour of web-based streaming channels and ‘growing numbers of people on the right of politics’ are ‘withholding payment of the licence fee because of BBC bias’.

His contented that the BBC – despite the Hutton Inquiry – remained an essentially Blairite institution with ‘scant regard’ to ‘the sensibilities of Tories’ – a situation veiled, he claimed, by the ‘Tory-lite’ administrations of David Cameron and Theresa May, but made ‘evident’ by the administration of Boris Johnson. He asserted: ‘The BBC’s heartfelt opposition to Brexit represents an unbridgeable chasm’.

Mr Aitken contended that Dominic Cummings was a sworn enemy at the heart of government who believed the BBC was permeated by leftist ideology. He argued that despite his key role, the corporation had inflamed matters by broadcasting a documentary about Mr Cummings as ‘a sinister manipulator of public opinion for unsavoury political ends’, and then had launched  an ‘obsessive pursuit’ of Mr Cummings over his ‘notorious trip to the North’, culminating in a BBC2 Newsnight introduction in which presenter Emily Maitlis had decided she was ‘entitled to speak to the nation’; in condemnation of him. Mr Aitken argued that this amounted to ‘a forceful attempt to unseat the Prime Minister’s senior adviser’, and left Downing Street ‘incandescent with rage’ in a relationship already poisoned ‘by decades of covert hostility to the Conservative cause inside the BBC’.  He further argued that there was now strong sense in all this of a reckoning and of chickens coming home to roost.

Turning to the licence fee, Mr Aitken also claimed that there was an ‘irony’ in the BBC imposing a charge on a ‘vulnerable’ group (old people), the very people it used to berate governments for not supporting’. He said the licence fee decision had landed the corporation with ‘hard choices’: ‘Perhaps that half a million quid a year for that newsreader is a bit high? Perhaps that ex-footballer bloke doesn’t need a million for fronting Match of The Day? Perhaps some of those pointless middle-managers could be let go?’ Mr Aitken further contended that the decision to save money by sacking large numbers of ‘frontline journalists’ while failing to ’tackle the ‘rampant bias’ which stemmed from a total lack of political diversity among the staff was an error of judgment. He asserted: ‘Until the Corporation admits to that problem and starts doing something about it, the rift will not be healed’. 

He concluded: ‘Auntie needs more than cosmetic surgery; she needs to re-discover the meaning of ‘impartiality’ if her relationship with the government is to be repaired. A BBC that was once again trusted by all would not only be a great national asset but also the best guarantee of the Corporation’s future. As things stand the BBC has made an enemy of the government and will pay the price.’

’93 PER CENT SUPPORT LICENCE FEE STRIKE’: Emily Ferguson (Express 11/8) said that a poll  among readers had found that 93 per cent of respondents would support a strike by over-75s against paying the BBC licence fee.  Ms Ferguson reported that comments by the respondents included:  ‘The Bully Boy Corporation must be brought down. They are treating pensioners in an appalling manner and spending huge amounts of our money on attempts to modify public opinion on multiculturalism.  These are people who are out of control, providing rubbish services and think they know best. We must insist that the Government no only sorts out the no-charge licence for the over-75s but also provides a referendum on the licence fee.’

BBC IS ‘PROMOTING DIVISIONS OVER RACE’:  Calvin Robinson (Spiked! 10/8) observed that, despite clear evidence which showed that white ‘working-class boys’ were the most consistently disadvantaged social group in the UK, the ‘identity-obsessed left’ (including the BBC) was peddling ‘white-privilege theories’. He asserted:

‘For the BBC to be further perpetuating the critical race theory myth of ‘white privilege’ adds insult to injury. To suggest ‘privilege’ is primarily based on skin colour is overly simplistic and, frankly, somewhat racist. That’s precisely what the BBC commissioned John Amaechi to say on its educational outlet, BBC Bitesize, last week. Worse, when called out by Andrew Neil on Twitter, John Amaechi acted as if his words were not his opinions after all, but indisputable facts.’

He added:

‘The BBC is obliged by its charter to ‘bring people together… and help contribute to the social cohesion and wellbeing of the UK’. Instead, it is producing divisive material and fanning the flames of racial unrest, all while wanting a ‘greater role in children’s education’. It’s a scary prospect, and we cannot let it happen. It’s time to defund the BBC.’

LORD HALL ‘APOLOGISES FOR USE OF N-WORD’: Jemma Carr (Mail 9/8) said that, after a meeting with senior colleagues, Lord Hall, the BBC director general, had told staff via email that  the use of the ‘n-word’ in a report about a suspected racist attack on a black NHS worker had – though well-intentioned in journalistic terms  – been a mistake. Ms Carr, who reported that more than 18,600 complaints had been received, said the word had been used by BBC reporter Fiona Lamdin in an item about the hit-and-run attack on the BBC News Channel on July 29.  She said Lord Hall had said:

‘We are proud of the BBC’s values of inclusion and respect, and have reflected long and hard on what people have had to say about the use of the n-word and all racist language both inside and outside the organisation. It should be clear that the BBC’s intention was to highlight an alleged racist attack. This is important journalism which the BBC should be reporting on and we will continue to do so. Yet despite these good intentions, I recognise that we have ended up creating distress amongst many people.

‘The BBC now accepts that we should have taken a different approach at the time of broadcast and we are very sorry for that. We will now be strengthening our guidance on offensive language across our output.  Every organisation should be able to acknowledge when it has made a mistake. We made one here. It is important for us to listen – and also to learn. And that is what we will continue to do.’

Miss Carr also reported that June Sarpong, the BBC’s director of creative diversity, had welcomed the decision, saying she was ‘glad’ that Lord Hall has ‘personally intervened to unequivocally apologise’. She added that Channel 4 News presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy praised Lord Hall for the move, adding: ‘But once again it has taken a direct intervention by the DG to overturn a mistake on race previously defended by the BBC’s editorial policy managers.’

Miss Carr said that BBC Senior Digital Reporter Ashley John-Baptiste had posted on social media:

‘Every black member of BBC staff I’ve spoken to is tired. Plain and simple. From new recruits to the seniors – we just cannot fathom how it’s editorially justifiable for a white person to say the N word – period.  We get into this work to represent our communities and tell their stories. In instances like the one we’re witnessing, it’s hard to feel like we have any agency to bring about positive change.’

BBC ‘SIDES YET AGAIN WITH WOKE MOB’: Craig Byers (Is the BBC Biased? 10/8), suggested that Lord Hall‘s intervention in the ‘n-word’ row meant that yet again, he had sided with the ‘woke’ mob on Twitter to overrule the older, traditional BBC hands trying to uphold the Charter requirement for impartiality.  Mr Byers said:

‘After previously vetoing their ruling against Naga Munchetty for going against BBC norms and openly venting her personal distaste for Donald Trump’s ‘racism’ on BBC Breakfast, Lord Hall has now overruled his editorial colleagues again.  They had originally defended a white, female BBC News Channel/Points West reporter for using the n-word in connection to a vicious racist attack on a black man on the grounds that the (black) victim’s family wanted the word used in the report to highlight the racism behind the attack. They’d also noted that the report had flagged up the use of offensive language.

‘Regardless of that, over 18,000 people complained – after an online campaign encouraged them to – and Lord Hall evidently decided to play to the ‘Twitter mob’ gallery by apologising and saying they were right that the taboo word should never have been used because of the “distress” it causes – regardless, it seems, of any context.  With Lord Hall going, what’s next? Will his ‘woke’, Blairite protégé James Purnell keep on pushing in the same ‘woke’ direction, or will Tim Davie step in and restore sense?’

ANDREW NEIL ‘LINED UP’ TO BECOME BBC CHAIRMAN:  Steven Brown (Express 9/8) suggested that as part of a bridge building with the BBC, Boris Johnson was lining up former Sunday Times editor and BBC presenter Andrew Neil to succeed Sir David Clementi as chairman of the corporation. Mr Brown also said that Mr Johnson had reportedly held peace talks with Lord Hall, the outgoing director general, following a year of ‘tough exchanges’. He added that other frontrunners to succeed the current chairman when he retired in February included Nicky Morgan, the former culture secretary, Charles Moore, former editor of the Daily Telegraph, former Chancellor George Osborne, and Amber Rudd, the former home secretary, although the latter was likely to be opposed by senior Boris Johnson aide Dominic Cummings. Mr Brown quoted a senior government source as saying:

“The Prime Minister believes the BBC is one of Britain’s best assets, with the soft power projects abroad. He thinks it can do more of that.”

Tim Shipman (£ Sunday Times 8/8) also reported that Mr Neil was being considered as the next BBC Chairman. Glen Owen (Mail on Sunday 9/8) said that it could be revealed that Lord Hall, the BBC’s director general who was retiring at the end of the month, had held ‘peace talks’ with Boris Johnson, and was believed to have argued that number 10 should adopt a ‘less aggressive’ stance to Tim Davie, his predecessor.   Mr Owen said the prime minister was said to have adopted an ’emollient’ tone, saying he wanted to use the BBC’s global reputation to project British ‘soft power’ around the world, but stressing the need for ‘efficiency and savings’. He added that both Downing Street and the BBC had declined to comment about the talks.

BBC WHITE PRIVILEGE ‘DEATH WISH’: Tom Slater (Spiked! 7/8) said that ‘in its latest expression of its apparent death wish’, the BBC had put out in its schools education Bitesize section a clip on social media of psychologist and former basketball player John Amaechi ‘waxing lyrical’ on the subject of white privilege. Mr Slater, observing that the corporation – barracked by accusations of bias and campaigns to defund it – appeared to want to troll its critics, claimed that the Aamechi video seemed ‘particularly cheeky’ in that teenagers ‘can now get woke one the same site as they revise for their French GCSE’, and in showing how orthodox ideas around identity politics and privilege have become at the BBC.

OVER-75s ‘BEING PUSHED BY BBC INTO OVER-PAYING FOR TV LICENCE’:  Rosamund Urwin (£ Sunday Times 9/8) claimed that poor design on the BBC licence-fee website was pushing over-75s into paying for their TV licences  in six months rather than the 12 that they were allowed.  She said Caroline Abrahams of the charity Age UK had stated that it was ‘alarming just how clunky and counterintuitive the TV Licensing website is turning out to be’. Ms Urwin also reported that requests under freedom of information laws had revealed that more than a million Britons had been prosecuted for licence fee evasion since 2014, with nearly three-quarters of those prosecuted last year being women.

Glen Owen(Mail on Sunday 9/8)said that Tory MPs had warned the government about the ‘palpable anger’ of voters of the BBC’s decision to scrap free television licences for the over-75s after figures had shown that in some of their seats, nine out of 10 constituents who currently enjoyed the perk would have it taken away. Mr Owen said that in a total of 110 Conservative-held seats, at least 85 per cent of over-75s households would have the perk taken away.  Mr Owen quoted the MP Julian Knight, chair of the Commons DCMS committee, who had said: ‘It shows the scale of harm the BBC decision has caused to our voters. The question will be does the BBC get it in the neck or the government?’

CORRESPONDENT NICK BRYANT ‘BIASED AGAINST TRUMP’, RULES BBC:  The BBC’s Executive Complaints Unit (6/8) upheld a complaint against BBC New York correspondent Nick Bryant. The single complainant had claimed that an online article by Mr Bryant in March 2020 headlined ‘Coronavirus: What this crisis reveals about US – and its president’ ‘reflected bias against President Trump on the part of its author’ in its use of phrases such as “ridiculous boasts”, “mind-bending truth twisting”, “particularly vicious assault”, “pettiness and peevishness”, “narcissistic hunger for adoration” and “the tricks of an illusionist” in its descriptions of his behaviour.

The ECU, upholding the complaint, ruled that Mr Bryant’s ‘tone and approach’, especially in some of his ‘phrasing’, passed beyond ‘professional judgements’ towards ‘the language of personal views’.  It added that in terms of impartiality this ‘was not offset by the limited, and relatively restrained, criticism of the Democrats, Joe Biden and Congress’, saying that ”a great deal of alteration’ would have been needed, ‘as would normally have happened as a result of the process of editorial oversight applied to such pieces’, to bring it into alignment with the BBC’s editorial standards.

The ECU continued, ‘Whether or not Mr Bryant was in fact expressing a personal view of President Trump, some of his observations were couched in terms which might well have led readers to conclude that he was’. This, it concluded, amounted to ‘a departure from the BBC’s standards of impartiality’.

Craig Byers (Is the BBC Biased? 7/8) suggested that maybe Roger Mosey’s claim that there was battle going on within the BBC was reflected by their Executive Complaints Unit’s unusually trenchant criticism of BBC New York correspondent Nick Byrant.

Mr Byers said:

‘The ruling criticises Nick Bryant’s “tone and approach” and says some of his “phrasing” passes beyond “professional judgements” and comes “closer to the language of personal views”.  It even calls out the usual fake sops to impartiality that you often find in such reports, saying that this “was not offset by the limited, and relatively restrained, criticism of the Democrats, Joe Biden and Congress”. Ouch! The ECU says that only ”a great deal of alteration” would have brought it into alignment with the BBC’s editorial standards, and seems to suggest (“as would normally have happened as a result of the process of editorial oversight applied to such pieces”) that editorial oversight had been noticeably lacking.

‘They continued, “Whether or not Mr Bryant was in fact expressing a personal view of President Trump, some of his observations were couched in terms which might well have led readers to conclude that he was” This, the ECU concluded, amounted to “a departure from the BBC’s standards of impartiality”. What’s striking is that it’s a clear ‘Upheld’, not a partial one.

‘A ruling against Nick Bryant has frankly been a long time coming. He has been getting increasing out of control ever since his time as the BBC’s Australia correspondent.’

‘COURTS COULD BECOME CLOGGED BY TV LICENCE CASES’: Paul Revoir (Daily Mail 8/8) said that Julian Knight, chairman of the House of Commons digital, culture, media and sport (DCMS) committee, had warned that the amount of court time taken up by TV Licensing cases could ‘rise exponentially’ in the wake of the ending over free licences for the over-75s.    Mr Revoir reported that tens of thousands affected by the change had said they were determined never to pay and were willing to ‘go the whole hog’ and fight cases in court, even risking prison. He added that Mr Knight had pointed out that many of the over-75s might end up wanting to appear in court in person.

BBC ‘THREATENS PENSIONERS WITH BAILIFFS’: Continuing coverage of the BBC’s decision to charge 4.5 million over-75s for their licence fees from August 1, William Cole (Daily Mail 6/8) said the corporation was spending an estimated £38m this year on extra measures to make sure that they paid. He added that if ministers decided to make non-payment a civil rather a criminal offence – as was being considered – bailiffs could be sent into the homes of the over-75s to seize and sell their possessions.

Paul Baldwin, in a comment article for the Express (5/8), argued that in forcing pensioners to pay for their television licences, the corporation was currently pursuing them ‘like a grubby loan shark’. He also attacked the BBC’s ‘lefty politics’ as ‘sneaky and insidious’, and noted that John Humphrys, after his retirement as a presenter of the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, likened them to ‘out of touch Kremlin commissars’.

BBC MIDDLE-EAST REPORTING ‘DISTORTS HISTORY’: Hadar Sela (Camera UK 4/8) in an analysis of how the BBC had been presenting the framework of Israel-Palestine peace talks since the Oslo accords in the 1990s – when the potential terms were first set down by the US administration – said that the BBC continued to repeat wrongly that the accords had stipulated a ‘two-state solution’ involving reversion to territorial lines shown on the map before the 1967 Middle East war. Ms Sela said that BBC correspondent Paul Reynolds had first suggested , in 2007, that the Oslo accords had ‘implied’ a Palestine state.  She said the reality was that the first time it became an aspiration in the framework of formal negotiations expressed by Palestinian and Israeli representatives had been in  the Annapolis joint statement of 2007.  Despite this, Nick Robinson had said in July on Radio 4 that the two-state solution had been talked about ‘for decades’.