SKY ARTS ‘TO FILL GAP LEFT BY BBC CUTS’: Luke May (Daily Mail 28/7) reported that satellite broadcaster Sky had decided make its dedicated arts channel available from September on the Freeview platform with no extra charge because cuts on the BBC Four television channel meant there was an important gap to fill. Mr May said that the BBC had …
BBC Bias Digest 27 July 2020
BBC ‘FINALLY ADMITS’ PANORAMA BREACH: Guido Fawkes (27/7) said that the BBC had finally admitted – after receiving 800 complaints – that its April Panorama programme ‘Has the Government Failed the NHS’ had breached editorial standards by not labelling one of the contributors, Dr Sonia Adesara, as a Labour activist. But the article also declared: ‘The organisation, however, refuses to …
BBC Bias Digest 26 July 2020
BBC VETERAN ATTACKS ‘SPITEFUL AND VENOMOUS’ REPORT ABOUT CHURCHILL: Writing in the Mail on Sunday (26/7), veteran BBC investigative reporter Tom Mangold – who joined the Corporation in 1964 – expressed ‘sadness’ at the BBC, provoked by watching ‘for the tenth time’ an ‘outrageous’ News at Ten report which branded Winston Churchill a racist responsible for the 1943 Bengal Famine. He …
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, …