ticker

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that the BBC press office had said that a post-Hutton ban on journalists writing about political controversies had been rescinded, and had defended the article as being a piece of ‘journalistic analysis that holds to account the handling of examinations by all the political parties that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’.

BBC’S N-WORD APOLOGY ‘UNHINGED’: Tom Slater (Spiked! 12/8), commenting on the use of the ‘n’ word in  a report about a hit and run accident in which the perpetrators had shouted the word at the victim, a black NHS worker,  by BBC reporter Fiona Lamdin  said the suggestion now being made, that the use of the word was ‘de facto racist’ was ‘unhinged’. Mr Slater noted that more than 18,000 people had complained about the use of the word,  a BBC DJ had resigned in protest over it, and InfluenceHers, a group of black professional women had called for a 24-hour boycott of BBC content. He asserted:

‘But apparently the desire of a journalist and a victim’s family to plainly present the facts of a suspected racist attack is irrelevant. The BBC, having originally stuck by the report, has now said it was a mistake and apologised. ‘The BBC now accepts that we should have taken a different approach’, wrote director general Tony Hall in an email to staff. Inevitably, this statement has been met with outrage that he didn’t cave in sooner.’

Mr Slater concluded:

‘InfluencHers, the professional group calling for a BBC boycott, has genuinely said the report’s use of the n-word could itself ‘constitute a race hate crime’. What an absurd, and telling, accusation. The great and the good seem to have spent more time expressing outrage at Lamdin quoting the n-word than they have about K-Dogg having it spat at him while he was run over by a car. This shows just how screwed up your priorities become once you buy into the idea that words really do wound’.

Gary Oliver, also discussing the developments following Ms Lamdin’s use of the ‘n’ word (Conservative Woman 10/8), concluded:

‘Director-General Tony Hall has now overruled the BBC’s earlier justification and issued a mea culpa, but heaven only knows what nonsense will result from his nebulous promise. One can only laugh at BBC bosses. They obsess over internal Diversity and Inclusion, persistently impose the corporation’s metropolitan mores on the rest of the country, yet continue to upset the minority groups to whom they constantly pander.’

BBC DROP ‘RACIST’ KIPLING POEM FROM VJ DAY PROGRAMME:  Sebastian Shakespeare (Daily Mail 13/8) claimed that the BBC had dropped a sung version of the Rudyard Kipling poem Mandalay being included in a special programme  being broadcast this weekend (15/8) to celebrate VJ day, after the singer Sir Willard White – who was due to have performed it – allegedly objected that a line in the poem was ‘racist’ and refused to sing it. Mr Shakespeare said the line in question was, ‘an wastin’ Christian kisses on an ’eathen idol’s foot’, adding that Sir Willard’s agent, Julia Maynard, had confirmed that he had been due to sing it, though had declined to say whether he had voiced any objections to the poem.  Mr Shakespeare  said that Phil Crawley, of the Burma Star Association, which still had 1,400 members who had served in the war against Japan, had commented that the poem Mandalay had ‘intense emotional significance’ for members and was a favourite marching tune. He had also noted that Charles Dance had read the poem in a BBC programme about the 2015 celebrations to mark the 70^th anniversary of VJ Day. Mr Shakespeare said the BBC had declined to say why the poem had been dropped.

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?’