The latest Telegraph report on Donald Trump’s $10 billion dollar defamation action against the BBC presents the Corporation as moving decisively onto the offensive. It is seeking access to Trump’s private communications and to material gathered by Jack Smith, the former US Special Counsel appointed to investigate Donald Trump’s actions surrounding the 2020 election and the alleged attack on the Capitol …
Labour’s sinister Ministry of Truth is a step on the road to dictatorship
THE gauleiters of this deeply inept and sinister Labour government are now pushing for legislation which could become the biggest threat to free speech in this country’s modern history. Their target is the public square. Their weapon is the news feed. Their excuse is ‘trusted news’. Among the final utterances of failed Prime Minster Sir Keir Starmer is that Labour …
How the BBC conspired with open border activists to rig Question Time and ambush Reform
SMALL-boat migrants to the UK who confronted Reform UK’s Zia Yusuf on a BBC1 Question Time immigration special late last year were placed there by pro-immigration campaigners. That is the devastating central finding of a Daily Telegraph investigation: the Corporation’s flagship current affairs programme, which is supposed to reflect public opinion, was rigged. In the audience were two asylum seekers who vociferously challenged Yusuf, then …
BBC admits Brexit bias – then attacks the critics who exposed it
FOR the first time in News-watch’s 27 years of monitoring the BBC, the Corporation has partially upheld a complaint about EU-Brexit coverage. ‘Partially’ is crucial in showing the contortionist nature of its accountability. The BBC’s Executive Complaints Unit (ECU) accepted that flagship Radio 4 Today programme breached impartiality by presenting the case for closer alignment with the European Union without acknowledging the opposing …
Hamas critic sacked, Hamas fans get a slap on the wrist at two-tier BBC
THE BBC insists that its journalism is impartial. According to a report in the Daily Telegraph , former local radio reporter Sean McGinty’s treatment by the Corporation suggests that instead, impartiality has become a crude instrument of institutional discipline, applied most ferociously against its own staff who do not conform to its worldview . McGinty, 61, a former BBC Radio Lancashire presenter, …
Government picks Net Zero ideologue as chair of Ofcom
THERE is a huge and troubling paradox in the selection by the Government of Sir Ian Cheshire as preferred candidate to become chair of Ofcom. He has been presented as a safe pair of hands because he is a former chief executive of Kingfisher, the FTSE 100 retail group behind B&Q; a former chairman of Barclays UK and, until recently, chairman …
A BBC Director General to take on Netflix but not to root out bias
THE post of Director General of the BBC has, over the past two decades, become a poisoned chalice. Greg Dyke was forced out in 2004 by editorial failings in coverage of the war in Iraq; George Entwhistle was disgraced by his mishandling of the Jimmy Savile fall-out in 2012; Tony Hall was engulfed in 2020 by his allegedly dishonest handling of the Panorama interview …
Will Lisa Nandy take this golden opportunity to end BBC bias?
THE deadline for submissions to the Government’s consultation on the renewal of the BBC Charter has closed. Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy must now find ways to purge the massive structural bias which has infected the Corporation for decades. What are the chances that this Government will act in the public interest and improve BBC accountability? Practically nil. If Nandy opts for the …
This ‘independent’ review entrenches BBC bias instead of rooting it out
BBC thematic reviews were created by the Board of Management in the aftermath of the Serota Review (2021) into the catastrophic handling of the Princess Diana interview scandal. They were an attempt to restore transparency, impartiality and editorial integrity. The fourth thematic review, published last Thursday — on ‘portrayal and representation’ — achieves the exact opposite. It shows that the BBC has cynically perfected the …
‘Dianarama’ – the conspiracy of deceit exposé that should sign the BBC’s death warrant
THERE are moments when an institution’s mask slips so completely that it can never truly be put back on. Former BBC journalist Andy Webb’s scorching book Dianarama, published last week, is such a moment for the BBC. On top of the unfolding and escalating scandal about the Prescott dossier, which concludes that the BBC Board (and its predecessors, the Trustees and …