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BBC PROMS DECISION ‘IN BREACH OF CONTRACT WITH BRITISH PEOPLE’: Under a multiple by-line, the Daily Mail (25/8) said that the actor Laurence Fox was leading protests to defund the BBC after the Corporation had decided that the last night of the proms would be staged on September 12 with orchestral versions of Rule Britannia and Land of Hope of Glory which would not  include the ‘patriotic’ sung version of the words. The article contained numerous quotes from politicians who wanted the sung versions to be retained, with culture secretary Oliver Dowden stating:

‘Rule Britannia and Land of Hope and Glory are highlights of the Last Night of the Proms. Share concerns of many about their potential removal and have raised this with the BBC. Confident forward-looking nations don’t erase their history, they add to it.’

The authors of the story included quotes from Michael Fabricant MP, Richard Holden MP, former MEPs Richard Tice and Nigel Farage, and Father Marcus Walker, rector of Great St Bartholomew’s church. Richard Tice said in a tweet:

‘If BBC wants to cancel our patriotism & our history by not singing Rule Britannia & Land of Hope & Glory, so I want to cancel my license fee. They are in breach of their contract with the British people #DefundTheBBC.’

The article reported that a BBC source had said that the two songs would not be included because they could not be performed properly without a full choir and audience to sing along.  But it added that arts commentator Norman Lebrecht had said there was no reason why they could not have people singing, because, for example, the nearby Cadogan Hall was putting on concerts with audiences.

Guido Fawkes (25/8) said that Conservative MPs, cabinet ministers and ‘basically all the non-woke’ were bashing yet another decision by the BBC that brought into question whether ‘its London-based pandering leadership can even remember their audience’. The article added that the corporation had been forced to release the programme for September 12 early and had revealed that the songs would go ahead – without the singing. It concluded:

‘Guido’s not sure why anyone’s surprised at the BBC’s decision – they’ve been trying to stamp out hope and glory for years…’.

Kurt Zindulka (Breitbart London 25/8) claimed that the BBC decision not to include the sung versions of Rule, Britannia and Land of Hope and Glory in the last night of the proms programme was an indication that it had bowed to the Black Lives Matter Movement.  Mr Zindulka reported that Nigel Farage had reacted to news by stating that the only thing that needed cancelling was ‘the BBC itself’.

BBC ‘NEVER MORE NEEDED’, SAYS HALL: The BBC was vital to democracy and had never been more needed  to counter the spread of fake news, Tony Hall, the BBC’s outgoing director general had told the Edinburgh Festival (inews 24/8). Adam Sherwin reported that Lord Hall had also claimed in the speech that the BBC had played a crucial role in countering ‘a misinformation pandemic’ about Covid-19 and could help encourage public take-up of a vaccine.  Other points in the speech had included:

• The BBC needed to make greater strides on diversity, and attract people who had different ideas and came from different backgrounds
• Referring to his decision that the use of the n-word on the BBC in a report about an attack on a black man was wrong, even though it had been uttered by his alleged assailants, that the BBC needed to listen and learn from its mistakes
• That the BBC could help Britain to forge a new place in the world after Brexit, thus backing Boris Johnson’s ‘global Britain’ agenda. He asserted that no one could do more to carry Britain’s voice and values to the world and that the corporation could help UK trade

Mr Sherwin said that Mr Hall had revealed that the BBC was bidding for extra funding from the foreign office for the World Service to double its current audience to one billion by the end of the decade, and also had ambition to expand the current schools Bitesize offerings into a permanent ‘open school’ on lines similar to the open university.

SALMOND ‘CONSIDERING SUING BBC OVER TRIAL DOCUMENTARY’: Kathleen Nutt (The National 23/8) said that former SNP leader Alex Salmond was considering launching legal action for libel against a BBC2 documentary programme fronted by Newsnight presenter Kirsty Wark about his trial in March on 13 sexual assault charges. Noting that Mr Salmond had been cleared on all the allegations against him, Ms Nutt  said that the programme had sparked a backlash from his allies who had said it amounted to a “TV retrial’.  She reported that he was now believed to be consulting lawyers about the legal action, and was also planning to make a formal complaint to the BBC about the documentary before commencing legal proceedings. Ms Nutt said the BBC had insisted it stood by the programme.

BBC MIGHT DROP ‘RULE BRITANNIA FROM LAST NIGHT PROM’: Faith Ridler (Mail on Sunday 23/8) said that, under pressure from 35-year-old Finnish conductor Dalia Staseveska, the BBC was considering dropping both Rule Britannia and Elgar’s Land of Hope and Glory from this year’s  last night of the proms, due to take place on September 12. Ms Ridler said that Ms Staseveska, said to be a big supporter of Black Lives Matter, believed that this year’s concert – being performed without an audience and with a reduced complement of musicians – was a ‘perfect moment to bring change’. Ms Ridler said that Jane Younghusband, head of BBC music commissioning on television, had confirmed that the content of the last night prom was under review, and had claimed the reduced number of instruments could mean it was not possible to perform Rule Britannia.   Ms Ridler also noted that last month BBC columnist Richard Morrison had said Rule Britannia and Land of Hope and Glory should be dropped from the proms because they were ‘crudely jingoistic’ and were ‘a toe-curling, embarrassing, anachronistic farrago of nationalistic songs’ which should be replaced by something which did not ‘create offence or ridicule’.

Craig Byers (Is the BBC Biased 23/8) said that, according to a poll conducted by You Gov, 69 per cent of respondents wanted the proms to continue as they were now, while only 11 per cent wanted the axing of the songs.

BBC ‘COULD SCRAP WORD TELEVISION FROM ITS BRANDING’: Kate Dennett (Mail online 23/8) said that BBC was considering plans under which BBC Television could drop the word ‘television’ from its title in a rebranding exercise  designed to attract younger viewers in the 18-34 age group. Isaac Crowson (The Sun 23/8), reporting on the same theme, said that ‘television’ would be replaced by ‘BBC screen’ in moves which could cost the corporation ‘well over £1 million’. He added that BBC Radio’s programming department had already made a similar move, and was now known as BBC Audio.    Ms Dennett said that bosses were reportedly relaunching the services to appeal to a younger demographic, who, it was claimed, tended to veer towards newer streaming services such as Amazon Prime and Netflix.

NEW BBC CHAIRMAN ‘MUST SORT OUT IMPARTIALITY’:  Harry Yorke (Telegraph 23/8), discussing the forthcoming appointment of the new BBC Chairman in succession to Sir David Clementi, who would stand down in February 2021, claimed that government sources had told him that there was ‘mounting frustration’ about a lack of impartiality in the corporation’s news programmes, including Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis’s recent attack on Dominic Cummings. He also said that the sources had played down the idea that there was a firm favourite to land the job, insisting that ministers were waiting to see the field of applicants before deciding.   Mr Yorke – after observing that ministers believed that new director general Tim Davie was in the ‘mood to be radical’ – quoted the source as saying there was ‘considerable concern’ around impartiality and objectivity’, not because of overt bias towards Labour, but because news programmes seemed only to be interested in picking holes in the government or digging up embarrassing quotes.  Mr Yorke also noted that Conservative MP Mark Jenkinson had urged colleagues not to appear on the BBC in protest about the corporation’s decision to charge over-75s for their licence fees.

BBC ‘TO SPEND £100M TRACKING DOWN LICENCE FEE DODGERS: Liz Hull (Daily Mai  21/8) reported that the BBC had said it would spend £100million in the coming year chasing TV licence fees and pursuing non-payers via the court system. She explained that the existing evasion budget of £59 million was being boosted by a further £38 million following the decision that from August 1,  the over-75s, who previously had been exempt from payment, would now have to buy a licence. Ms Hull described as “shocking” the amounts being given to licence fee collection subcontractor Capita, and reported that older people’s groups had said it was ‘sickening’ that dealing with the over-75s entailed the hiring of an extra 800 staff.  Ms Hull added that TV Licensing, on behalf of the BBC, responded that the extra staff were working to provide over-the-phone support to older customers

ITV NEWS BULLETINS ‘WON’T BE AXED’: Anita Singh  (£ Telegraph 22/8) said that Mike Jermey, director of news at ITV – reacting to a prediction by BBC director of news Fran Unsworth that television news bulletins would be axed within a decade – said that by contrast, those on his channel were here to stay. Ms  Singh said that Mr Jermey, in a letter to her newspaper, he had asserted that television was the main source of news for most Britons and millions ‘value the curated news programmes that sit alongside entertainment and drama’.

BBC ‘REPORT ISRAELI-ARAB DEALS WITH OPPOSITE OF ENTHUSIASM’: Craig Byers (Is the BBC Biased? 22/8) said that the BBC’s low level of coverage of deals  between the UEA and Saudi Arabia was ‘something to behold’. He noted that the BBC’s middle east editor Jeremy Bowen had tweeted about the developments ‘with the absolute opposite of enthusiasm’.

BBC COVERAGE OF KEY ISSUES ‘INSULTING’: Jeff O’Leary (The Conservative Woman 21/8) claimed – in a letter to BBC director general Lord Hall – that the poor standards of BBC reporting of  the A-level grades issue, the Covid-19 pandemic and the Beirut bombing were matters of major concern. He asserted:

‘Why do I feel so strongly? I’m a geologist with a PhD in applied statistics. I have worked as a maths teacher in a secondary school in Bermondsey, as the reader in my subject and later as visiting professor at Imperial College, as chief geologist at Rio Tinto and as a managing director of one of HSBC Investment Bank’s industry teams. Following my retirement I served on the boards of a number of LSE listed companies. So I believe I am well qualified to comment, but more importantly I believe I should not be subject to the awful coverage offered by BBC news. I feel patronised and insulted by unprofessional would-be scientists feeding me biased and often downright incorrect information.’

BBC ACCUSED OF ‘AIRBRUSHING’ VIP PAEDOPHILE FANTASIST PROGRAMME: 

Glen Keogh ( Daily Mail 21/8) reported that ‘furious’ victims had forced the BBC to ‘hastily re-edit’ an upcoming BBC2 documentary dealing the case of VIP abuse fantasist Carl Beech (known as ‘Nick’).  Mr Keogh said that those accused by Beech had complained that the programme had ‘airbrushed’ out the alleged role of the former Labour deputy leader Tom Watson in ‘whipping up hysteria’ over VIP paedophile ring claims. Mr Keogh quoted Harvey Proctor, one of Beech’s victims:

‘Not including Tom Watson is like writing Hamlet without Hamlet. Tom Watson set the hare running when he put his question to Parliament about the existence of a VIP paedophile ring’.

Mr Keogh added that it was understood that the former MP would now be mentioned in the final version, which was broadcast on August 22.

NEWSNIGHT POLICY EDITOR LEWIS GOODALL ‘SHOULD RESIGN’: An article on Guido Fawkes (20/8) called on Lewis Goodall, the BBC2 Newsnight policy editor, to resign over an article he had written for the New Statesman magazine which, it was claimed, ‘spectacularly’ breached editorial impartiality guidelines on three grounds in that it expressed strong views,. Advocated against a single policy and exhorted a change in policy.  The article said that these points were:

• A claim that ’a government led by technocrats had nearly destroyed a generation of social mobility’ – which, it was claimed, was ‘a strong and controversial view’
• An attack for ‘political and moral’ reasons on the government’s use of algorithms to predict exam results
• The assertion that the exams crisis ‘demonstrates the weakness of this form of technocracy’ and was driven by Dominic Cummings.

The article also noted that the whole thrust of the article advocated a change in government policy.  It noted that the BBC press office had said that a post-Hutton ban on journalists writing about political controversies had been rescinded, and had defended the article as being a piece of ‘journalistic analysis that holds to account the handling of examinations by all the political parties that govern the UK’.    

JAN LEEMING: ‘I WON’T RENEW MY TV LICENCE’:   Eleanor Sharples (Daily Mail 21/8) reported that former BBC newsreader Jan Leeming – who presented bulletins in the 1970s and 1980s – had said that she would not be renewing her television licence after the current one expired because the corporation now presented only a handful programmes she would want to watch.

BBC  NEWS CHIEF PREDICTS AXING OF MAIN TV NEWS PROGRAMMES:  Jack Wright (Daily Mail 20/8) said that Fran Unsworth, the BBC director of news, had suggested in an interview that most ‘linear’ television news programmes such as BBC1 News at 10 could be axed within the next decade, to be replaced by news content in the ‘digital space’, and received via mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. Mr Wright reported that she had said:

‘I think TV journalism will still be around because of the power of pictures to tell a story, but it won’t necessarily be received in quite the forms it currently is. There might be one (bulletin) a day, or something. I think there’ll be fewer of them. But I think that the power of how you tell stories through television, pictures, video will just be in a different space. It’ll be in the digital space, it’ll be on, you know, iPlayer. It’ll be on your tablet, your iPhone. We have to think creatively about what the product is, but that’s the direction of travel and I don’t think that’s changed.’

Mr Wright said that although during lockdown more young people had been watching BBC bulletins, Ms Unsworth did not believe they would stick around, although she claimed they would now understand how the BBC was ‘mot just any other news source’. He added that she also believed the pandemic had ‘helped to mend relations between the BBC and Downing Street’ –  and that there had been fewer claims of bias.

OVER-75s ‘MISSING OUT ON FREE TV LICENCES’: Jess Sheldon (Express 19/8) said that according to a survey compiled by the charity Turn2Us, 39 per cent of over-75s pensioner households on state Pension Credit who were entitled to free licences – amounting to almost 600,000 individuals – were not claiming them.  Ms Sheldon explained that from August 1, as  a result of changes imposed by the BBC, most over-75s now had to pay for their television licences, but those entitled Pension Credit remained exempt from the fee.  She added that the largest number of those not claiming their entitlement were in the North-west of England.

BBC GUILTY OF ‘BREATH-TAKING DOUBLE STANDARDS’ IN ATTACK ON SALMOND: Christopher Stevens (Daily Mail 18/8), reviewing The Trial of Alex Salmond – a BBC2 programme about the former SNP leader’s trial on charges of sexual assault in March  – said that its approach smacked of ‘breath-taking double standards’. Noting that it had been presented by Kirsty Wark, of Newsnight, he observed:

“Salmond was cleared on all counts. But that didn’t stop Wark from raking up all the claims and interviewing three of the women who gave evidence. The report ended with an actress reading the words of one: ‘I know I was telling the truth. I know what happened to me.’ Another grieved: ‘I’m worried about what this says more widely to other women, or just to us as a society. I mean, where does this leave us? Clearly, it leaves us in a situation where a BBC documentary can pour doubt on the findings of a jury that ‘fails’ to deliver a guilty verdict in a sex case.”

Mr Stevens argued that this betrayed the double standards because Ms Wark had been a presenter of Newsnight since 1993, and ‘as she lamented the damage wreaked by the Salmond trial to the #MeToo movement’, she said nothing of her own programme’s failings in dropping a special investigation of the sex crimes of Jimmy Savile in 2011.

He added:

“Savile never stood trial and, even after he was dead, some at the Beeb tried to turn a blind eye to his vile activities. Alex Salmond won his court case, and he also scored a victory in an earlier civil suit against the Scottish government, over its handling of the allegations against him.

“Salmond conceded some of his behaviour towards women was boorish and shameful. But he maintained it fell far short of being criminal — and the jury agreed.

“Unless the BBC is trying to argue Britain’s entire judicial system is unfit for purpose, Kirsty Wark should not be suggesting the trial has done serious damage to women’s rights across the country. Instead, she should never lose sight of the fact that Jimmy Savile, a BBC employee, committed foul offences against women and children, sometimes within the BBC’s buildings. And the Newsnight report into that was dropped.”

BBC1 ‘LESS POPULAR AS MAIN SOURCE OF NEWS”: Charlotte Tobitt (Press Gazette 15/8) reported that Ofcom’s annual news consumption survey had found that 75 per cent of respondents chose television news services as their most-used platform for news, ahead of the web (65 percent), radio (42 per cent) and newspapers (35 per cent).   She also said that the amount of people using any BBC television channel for news had dropped from 87 per cent in 2018 to 83 percent in the latest survey, and that BBC1  was still the most likely to be someone’s single most important source of news, though this had dropped to 23 per cent of respondents from 27 per cent in 2018. The full Ofcom report is available here.

RADIO 1Xtra ‘PLAYS N-WORD’: Rod Liddle (£ Sunday Times 15/8), commenting on the decision by director general  Tony Hall to tighten up racism guidelines after a BBC reporter used the ‘n’-word in an account of a hit and run accident in which the perpetrators had allegedly shouted the word at the victim, said that a survey of the tracks played on the Radio1Xtra channel showed that many of the lyrics contained the word. He declared: “The term that springs to mind in response is ‘double standards’.” Mr Liddle also noted that the BBC had been covering the 75th anniversary of VJ day without taking into account properly that atomic bombs were dropped on HIroshima and Nagasaki – in the context that Japan would not surrender – to avoid 20 times more deaths if the conventional warfare had continued. Mr Liddle said: ‘. . . it rankles when the BBC coverage . . .mentions the how and the what (of the bombs being dropped), but forgets entirely about the why.’

On the same theme, Chris Hastings and Mark Hookham (Mail on Sunday 16/9) claimed that a bitter battle was raging within the BBC ‘between the old guard and the new’ over Lord Hall’s intervention in the ‘n’ word row. The authors claimed the row centred on David Jordan, the BBC’s director of editorial standards, who had decided that BBC reporter Fiona Lamdin’s use of the word had been contextually appropriate under editorial guidelines, and was now ‘attempting to protect the independence of reporters and editors by not bowing to noisy campaign groups and Britain’s mounting cancel culture’.  The authors added that sources at the BBC had said Lord Hall’s intervention to overrule Mr Jordan had been triggered after Radio 1Xtra DJ ‘Sideman’ (real name David Whitely) had resigned over the use of the word and the director general feared a wave of further resignations.

MUNCHETTY ‘WARNED FOR MOONLIGHTING’: Andy Halls (Sun 10/8) reported that BBC1 Breakfast presenter Naga Munchetty – whose salary from the BBC was £195,000 – had been warned about potential ‘conflict of interest’ after she appeared in a corporate video promoting the Aston Martin car company without prior permission of her bosses or declaring her earnings.  Mr Halls noted that the BBC’s editorial guidelines allowed journalists to carry out external speaking, or chairing, at private engagements as long as they maintained ‘objectivity and impartiality’, though he also reported that politicians had called for an end to the practice, and that Aston Martin was in the midst of a cost-cutting exercise which could result in the loss of 500 jobs.   Mr Halls added that  last year, Ms Munchetty was found to have breached the BBC’s impartiality guidelines by the corporation’s complaints unit after she condemned President Trump for telling some female politicians to “go back” to where they came from. That ruling had been overturned by Director-General Lord Hall, who said the BBC was not neutral on racism.

‘WOKE” BBC PRESENTERS ‘GET AWAY WITH MURDER’: Dan Wooton (Talk Radio 14/8), interviewing commentator Rod Liddle about his Spectator column describing BBC ‘woke’ issues (see BBC Bias Digest August 14), also picked up the Naga Munchetty story. This was part of the exchange (transcribed by Craig Byers, of Is the BBC BIased?):

Dan Wootton: If you are one of their woke stars – and I’m noticing this increasingly with BBC News. I know we’ve spoken about Emily Maitlis before but now Naga Munchetty as well – if you’re one of those woke news presenters you can get away with murder at the BBC. This week it was revealed by the i newspaper and The Sun that Naga Munchetty had been moonlighting making corporate videos for Aston Martin. She hadn’t declared the fact that she was doing this. She hadn’t told the Beeb how much she was being paid. For many presenters that would be a sackable offence at the BBC. And she got a very minor slap on the wrist.

Rod Liddle: They all get minor slaps on the wrist. Emily Maitlis…has consistently, almost with a deliberation, broken the rules every single week, either through her Twitter feed or occasionally live on Newsnight, and nothing ever happens. It is true…I think there are a few people at the BBC in senior positions who are genuinely worried about the grandstanding wokeness of these presenters but still nothing seems to get done about it. It’s remarkable. And the desperately sad thing is that that vast tranche of middle England remembers the BBC for good things. It remembers all the great stuff the BBC did to draw the nation together and now it’s being foisted with this agenda which has no relevance beyond NW3 frankly.

BBC ‘NOWHERE NEAR’ ETHNIC MINORITY TARGETS:  Katie Weston (Daily Mail 13/8) reported that June Sarpong, the BBC’s director of creative diversity, was aiming for a BBC mid-level and senior management structure made up of 15 per cent of people from a BAME (black, Asian and minority ethnic)background, compared to 12 per cent in the population as a whole.  Ms Weston quoted her as saying that the corporation was ‘nowhere near’ hitting its own targets and claimed it would take longer than had been hoped to attain them.  Ms Sarpong had said:

‘I think the BBC, like many big media organisations, is diverse at sort of entry level.  But certainly not diverse enough in terms of mid-level and senior leadership, not at all. I think anybody would agree and accept that. If you look at the targets that we’ve set ourselves, we’re not hitting them in the way we would like and so there’s a concerted effort being made to try and address that.’

BBC ‘IS ASTRONOMICAL UNITS’ AWAY FROM VALUES OF ITS AUDIENCE: Rod Liddle (£ Spectator 14/8), noting that the BBC had staged a Radio 4 play in which the male lead character of Albert Camus’s The Plague had been transformed into a woman engaged in a lesbian marriage,  said that the only reason he now tuned into BBC output was ‘in the expectation that its wokeness will give me a belly laugh’. He added that the distance the corporation travelled each day from the values of its audience ‘would soon be measurable only in astronomical units’. He noted that ‘woke’ values had now affected pronunciation to the extent that Angela Merkel was now delivered in a ‘ludicrous, hyperbolic manner’. He declared:

‘We are British and pronounce things phonetically, the way we see them. It is not a slight to foreigners that we do this; they do the same thing with us. It is especially galling with place names: Catalonia and Andalucia are both articulated by BBC reporters as if they were auditioning for the part of a waiter in Fawlty Towers.’

He concluded: ‘I suspect it is a case of the BBC telling us that the world should not be seen through a British prism – and is allied to the corporation’s far more egregious policy of replacing British-born foreign correspondents with (sometimes unintelligible, often simply not very good) locals. Whatever, it is another milestone on the BBC’s exciting journey away from its audience’.