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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’.

BBC STAFF HEADCOUNT ‘FALLS BY JUST 2 PER CENT’:  Freddy Mayhew (Press Gazette 30/7) reported that despite the BBC spending £500m in severance pay and restructuring costs in the past 11 years, the headcount had shrunk from 22,874 to 22,401 – only two per cent. He said the Corporation’s annual reports showed that the BBC had been engaged in ‘constant drives to cut back on staff numbers’, including in 2009, a pledge to reduce its headcount by 10 percent (1,800 posts) and in 2017 to cut 2,600 jobs to make £750 million in savings. He quoted a BBC spokesman: “As ever, our staffing numbers and redundancy figures don’t tell the full story here.

“During this time, the Government awarded the BBC a grant as part of the biggest expansion of the World Service since the 1940s, we launched the BBC Scotland channel and developed our digital services, all of which could not have happened without taking on staff according to our changing business needs. We have also taken a value for money approach to contracts by bringing resources and some teams in-house whilst reducing the number of back office and support roles. As such, an independent report by Ernst & Young found the BBC among the most efficient 25% regulated and non-profit organisations in the UK.”

NEWSNIGHT ‘NONSENSE’ ABOUT LOCKDOWN ANNOUNCEMENT:  Guido Fawkes claimed (31/7) that BBC Newsnight policy editor Lewis Goodall had been responsible for spreading the ‘nonsense’ doing the rounds that health secretary Matt Hancock had announced the new North-west semi-lockdown via his personal Twitter account.  The article asserted that the imposition of new measures was actually released by the department of health  in a pooled television interview. It dismissed the idea picked up in some newspapers that the measure was designed to be ‘anti-Eid’.

BBC IS NOW ‘STUBBORN PET SHOP OWNER SELLING DEAD PARROT’: Joe Ventre (Taxpayers’ Alliance blog 30/7) argued that the BBC – in demanding that the licence fee should be retained – was selling the equivalent of a ‘dead parrot’ by pretending its services had unique value in a television environment which now contained rivals such as Netflix and Amazon Prime. Mr Ventre argued that the licence fee, which was being defended on the same terms as 35 years ago despite a massive explosion of choice,   should be replaced by subscription funding.  He stated:

‘When arguments around content inevitably fall away, Auntie’s admirers will turn to the supposedly unbiased and accountable nature of the broadcaster. Leaving spurious claims of impartiality aside, the fact of the matter is that the BBC leaves much to desire when it comes to transparency. Unlike most public bodies, the Beeb is granted special exemptions from the Freedom of Information Act (2000). This means that taxpayers have no recourse for finding out how much of their money is spent on material used in creative content. We’ve previously covered this topic when news broke of Holby City holding (and subsequently donating) real ventilators to fighting coronavirus. One issue with trying to find out if the BBC offers value for money is it won’t tell you how it’s spending the money!’

OFCOM SURVEY FINDS “MORAL DISLIKE” OF THE BBC AMONGST YOUNG:  Craig Simpson,  Daily Telegraph (£ 30/7), said that a report from Ofcom had found that younger audiences ‘are flocking to streaming services like Netflix to find shows with a “talkability factor”‘ and that BBC programmes ‘fail to provide “watercooler moments”’ for young people. The report found that, with attitudes to the BBC,  younger audiences are “more likely to be indifferent” than hostile to the BBC and many value the “societal glue” of the public service broadcaster. But it also said that a minority “cohort” of viewers from largely poorer backgrounds held a “moral dislike” of the corporation ‘over licence fee issues’, including ‘resentment that over-75s will have to pay for it, and because “they feel that the BBC lacks relevant content for their cohort, or that there is bias in the news.”

Mr Simpson reported that a BBC spokesperson responded: “This research highlights the importance of providing world-class, easily-accessible and universally available content that includes an impartial and trusted news service, alongside high quality, distinctive UK programming to bring the nations, regions and diverse communities of the UK together. Despite huge changes in the market, the BBC remains the most-used media organisation among young people with 80 per cent of 16 to 34 year olds using the BBC every week.”

BBC GUILTY OF ‘BREATHTAKING BIAS’ IN MURDOCH SERIES: Stephen Glover (Daily Mail 30/7) argued that the BBC Two three-part series Rise of the Murdoch Dynasty, which had concluded on 28/7, was a hatchet job which showed the BBC was ‘incapable of balance’.  He said that the case against Rupert Murdoch was put ‘one-sidedly by inveterate Murdoch-haters (such as Max Moseley and the actor Hugh Grant) whose own discreditable pasts were overlooked, while Mr Murdoch was treated as ‘low-grade Mafia’ with his achievements overlooked.  Mr Glover asserted:

‘the case against the tycoon was made at such length and so tendentiously that it was hard for this viewer to keep calm — particularly so when Murdoch’s hysterical accusers were wheeled out.’

Mr Glover noted that the programme made no mention of – for example – Max Moseley’s support for the South African apartheid regime; of former Labour deputy leader Tom Watson’s championship of Carl Beech, who had wrongly accused leading politicians of being part of a paedophile ring; or that Hugh Grant was a member of the ‘fanatical’ anti-press lobbying group Hacked Off.

BBC ‘HORROR’ REPORT ‘DENIGRATING WINSTON CHURCHILL’: Commentator GP Taylor, writing in the Yorkshire Post (29/7)  said he had ‘sat in horror’ when Huw Edwards introduced on the BBC One News at Ten a piece that condemned Winston Churchill and his role in the 1943 Bengal famine. ‘It was as if the contributors had been selected on the basis that they believed Churchill to be solely responsible for three million deaths from starvation’, he wrote, adding ‘It doesn’t take a genius to search the internet to find out the background to Churchill and why famine relief was not forthcoming.’ He describe the attempt to ‘blame one man’ as ‘a total disgrace’, calling it an ‘attempt to suck up to anti-establishment agitators’. Mr Taylor quoted LSE Professor of economic history Tirthankar Roy, who said that Churchill had not been a factor in the famine. It had been the government of Bengal, which could have imported grain from other regions but had not done so.

BBC GIVES MURDERERS MORE AIRTIME THAN CLIMATE ‘SCEPTICS’: Eric Worrall (What’s Up With That 28/7), reviewing ‘How they made us doubt everything’,  a 10-part  BBC Radio Four series about climate change, noted that the final two episodes were devoted to ‘vilifying’ astrophysicist and climate change analyst Dr Willie Soon, and then did not present Dr Soon’s response to allegations against him.   Mr Worrall concluded:

‘Regardless of whether you think Dr Soon is right or wrong….(he)  deserves better than this one sided gutter press assault on his reputation from the BBC.

‘Even dictators and murderers are often given an opportunity to argue their case on the BBC. But this is a courtesy the BBC “How they made us doubt everything” series has so far failed to extend to a mild-mannered law abiding climate scientist, who was unfortunate enough to be a prime target of their latest ugly smear campaign.’

Mr Worrall said the programme had set out to compare climate scepticism to rejecting the link between tobacco and cancer, but said this was ‘irrelevant to the climate debate’.

Comments on the article included:

‘The programme is comically and aptly named ‘How they made us doubt everything’. The ‘THEY’ is the BBC. The propaganda, bias and distortions dished up daily by the BBC and their fellow travellers have made us doubt everything. They could have called this programme ‘An example of how we at the BBC produce fake news and destroy trust in the media!’.’

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 described the six-minute report as ‘biased, partial, unbalanced and filled with the spite and venom of the worst of toxic woke culture now pulsing through the heart of the Corporation’, adding ‘Viewers were left in no doubt that the reporter agreed with her own preferential report’.

Mr Mangold said that had led him to wonder ‘what on earth has happened’, given that the BBC’s charter remains ‘unequivocal’ about its statutory commitment to impartiality.  He added:

“Today that holy contract is well and truly broken. And so it is that News at Ten is allowed to use Huw Edwards’s authority and credibility – and the Corporation’s reputation for truth – to call Churchill a racist killer. The protester who sprayed graffiti on the statue of the wartime leader during the Black Lives Matter protests, accusing him of racism, must be overwhelmed with gratitude at the BBC’s vindication”.

Mr Mangold attributed the breach in obligations  down to ‘the BBC’s bizarre obsession with youth, diversity and the ever-growing pressure of woke argument’. He suggested that it ‘threatens to become its final act of self-harm’ because the movements the BBC is seeking to appeal to ‘still represent in total only a very small part of Britain’, a ‘minority audience’.

He continued that,  though ‘the BBC at its best is the most wonderful public service broadcaster in the world’, now suddenly, the Twitter trolls, the social media addicts, the young, the immature and the often daft have become the BBC’s recruitment and audience target.’ He concluded:  ‘If you believe Winston Churchill was a racist killer, sit back and enjoy the product. If not, try to help the BBC leap off the greasy slope down which it is sliding faster every day.’

BBC ‘NOT HELPING’ NOSTALGIA TV SERIES: Simon Heffer , discussing the nostalgia TV service Talking Pictures (£ Daily Telegraph, 25/7) -which was run from a garden shed and claimed to have up had 6 million viewers a week  –  reported that the BBC had refused to sell founder Noel Cronin the rights to the 1960s TV series Z-Cars and Dixon of Dock Green.  Mr Heffer speculated that ‘either [the BBC] is being the dog in the manger, or perhaps its executives realise they have misjudged the viewing public, and have retro plans of their own’. He added that the latter would be better, as the Corporation was continuing ‘to force upon viewers programmes pandering to the right-on, metropolitan prejudices of the small but noisy minority they meet at dinner parties’. Mr Heffer  concluded: ‘If it really does think such nonsense, then the sooner the licence fee is abolished, the better.’

JOHN HUMPHRYS: ‘EU IS WONDERFUL ORGANISATION’: The Sunday Times (£ 26/7) reported comments made by former Today presenter John Humphrys during a Times Radio interview in which he said he was  ‘not a fan’ of Boris Johnson, claimed not to remember who he voted for in the 2019 general election and expanded on his Remain vote in the EU referendum. Mr Humphrys had said:

‘I felt fairly strongly about it. But I did my job, which was to question both sides with equal vim and vigour. I was born in the war. I believed one of the ways to stop it happening again was to join this wonderful organisation where the countries in Europe would be friends. That was what drove me to vote remain.’

The article also noted that Mr Humphrys had been accused of ‘seeming (to be) Eurosceptic’ in interviews by critics.

‘CREATIVE DIVERSITY’ AT THE BBC: The Observer (26/7) interviewed June Sarpong, the BBC’s director of creative diversity, quoting her saying that she had ‘rarely’ been on sets ‘where there were other people of colour’.  The article  also noted that the corporation was spending £12m of its commissioning budget ‘to making diverse and inclusive content’ for the next three years, devoting £100m of the current television commissioning budget to ‘on-air inclusivity’ and bringing in a mandatory off-screen target for ‘20% diversity across the networks for new commissions’ from April 2021.

BBC ‘GIVING NICOLA STURGEON A ‘PLATFORM TO SCORE PARTY POLITICAL POINTS’: The Sunday Times (£ 26/7),reported claims by opposition politicians that the BBC in Scotland hasd given Nicola Sturgeon an ‘unacceptable platform to score political points’ by continuing to broadcast her hour-long Covid-19 briefings on the BBC’s main Scottish channel while they ‘struggle for airtime’.  It was reported that the Labour Party has requested a breakdown of how much airtime has been given to Ms Sturgeon and Scotland’s other political leaders but it was said that the request this has been ‘declined’ by the BBC.

Labour party deputy leader Jackie Baillie had said:

‘The BBC’s refusal to answer these extremely significant and important questions is highly disappointing. The BBC has a duty to ensure that it remains an impartial broadcaster and that important broadcasts such as the first minister’s coronavirus briefings do not degenerate into the party political sniping and grandstanding we have seen in recent weeks. I urge the BBC to seriously reconsider its refusal to answer these very simple questions. If we cannot rely on the national broadcaster to be straightforward in its dealings, then serious questions around impartiality and professionalism will be raised.’.

ESTHER MCVEY ATTACKS OVER-75s LICENCE FEE DECISION: Former minister Esther McVey, and leader of the Blue Collar Conservatism group (Sunday Express 26/7) had warned that the BBC ‘could be mortally wounded’ by its decision to go ahead with requiring over-75s to pay £157.50 for their licence fee from August 1. She had asserted:

‘I think the best thing that you could do to keep the public on board is to actually be a public service broadcaster and look after the people in this country who pay £5billion a year for the service.’

The article noted that Ms McVey was one of 66 Conservative MPs in her BCC group who had written to BBC director general Tony Hall last week questioning the need to penalise over-75s when savings could be made elsewhere.

LICENCE FEE IMPLEMENTATION ‘DISTINCTLY AMATEURISH’:  Media correspondent Rosamund Urwin (£ Sunday Times 26/7) warned that the BBC was in danger of making a ‘complete hash’ of the implementation of the decision to force over-75s to pay for their licence fees. She reported that Caroline Abrams of Age UK had claimed that implementation was  ‘distinctly amateurish’ because the TV Licensing unit would only start issuing the 4.5 million ‘payment invitation’ letters on August 1 – the date the new fees were due –   and they would be  posted in batches, ‘so many pensioners face a longer wait’. Ms Abrams claimed the approach smacked of being a last-minute decision,  of a last-minute decision’ and added that it did not give much confidence that it would be well- administered.

BBC ADMISSION ABOUT ‘EGREGIOUS TWEETS’  WAS ‘JAW-DROPPING’: Mick Hume (Daily Mail 16/7) said that the admission to the House of Lords communications and digital committee by David Jordan, the BBC’s director of editorial standards, that Corporation staff had been guilty of sending ‘egregious’ tweets, was a ‘jaw-dropping’ moment for those like himself who had been complaining for years about ‘the pernicious impact of Auntie’s recent displays of bias’.  Mr Hume noted that Mr Jordan had also admitted that the BBC ‘had issues’ with tracking the rise of Euroscepticism and the growth of concern about immigration, and claimed this was unsurprising  because it was what happened when reporters and newsreaders became more interested in promoting their own political leanings and agendas and increasing the number of their online followers than unearthing facts.  Mr Hume opined:

“By seeking validation on Twitter, BBC staffers confine themselves to an echo chamber where their minority worldview is reflected and reinforced. According to its warped narrative, Leave was bound to lose the EU referendum, Hillary Clinton was a shoo-in for U.S. President and Boris risked being thrashed by Corbyn in the 2019 election. With such an unrivalled gift for misreading public opinion, it’s clear that many of its journalists simply don’t understand who their audience is.”

Mr Hume suggested that some senior journalists had ‘flagrant disregard’ for BBC impartiality, and instanced as the prime offender Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis, as well as BBC One newsreader Huw Edwards.

Breitbart London (15/7) also covered David Jordan’s evidence to the House of Lords. Victoria Friedman, noting that Mr Jordan had acknowledged ‘issues’ in the coverage of Euroscepticism, said he was perhaps the most senior BBC figure in post ‘to admit the broadcaster’s bias’. Ms Friedman reported:

“However, claims of political bias are nothing new. In 2010, former BBC Director-General Mark Thompson said that 30 years prior when he joined the organisation, it had a “massive bias to the left”.

“The organisation did struggle then with impartiality. And journalistically, staff were quite mystified by the early years of Thatcher, Mr Thompson had said. Recently retired journalist John Humphrys, a veteran of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, had said the BBC had failed since the 1990s to adequately cover people’s increasing concerns about rising immigration. Mr Humphrys said that during the 2016 referendum on European Union membership, BBC bosses “could simply not grasp how anyone could have put a cross in the Leave box on the referendum ballot paper”.

“Leave had won — and this was not what the BBC had expected. Nor what it wanted,” he said in 2019.

She added:

“Breitbart London has reported on studies that found by analysis the BBC elevated anti-Leave bias in their news coverage.

“News Watch said in 2017 that the Today programme, BBC radio’s flagship news broadcast, was “strongly biased against Brexit” in the week when the UK triggered Article 50, the mechanism for formally leaving the EU. In one example of bias, analysis by the news monitoring group found that only eight out of 124 guests on the subject of Article 50 were allowed to articulate the benefits of leaving the bloc. Think tank Civitas concluded in 2018 that the Today programme had suppressed Eurosceptic voices between 2005 and 2015, with only 3.2 per cent of guests being pro-independence. The broadcaster had also kept listeners “in the dark” on the left-wing and Labour arguments for Leave, angling the question of Brexit as a purely conservative position.

“When opinion in favour of leaving the EU has featured, the editorial approach has – at the expense of exploring withdrawal itself – tended heavily towards discrediting and denigrating opposition to the EU as xenophobic,” the authors had written.”

BBC ‘DENIES AXING ANDREW NEIL’:  Jack Wright (Daily Mail 16/7) reported that the BBC – which had cancelled Andrew Neil’s BBC Two interview show in a round of financial and job cuts – had denied axing Mr Neil and had said he was in talks over a new television presenting role which could be in the schedule of BBC One.   Mr Wright highlighted tweets which suggested that the decision to cancel Mr Neil’s BBC Two show showed that the Corporation was now fully dominated ‘primarily by left wing pro Remain establishment elitists’. Mr Wright quoted Fran Unsworth, the BBC director of news. She said:

“During this crisis audiences have turned to BBC News in their millions and I’m incredibly proud of what we, as a team, have been able to achieve. But if we don’t make changes, we won’t be sustainable. This crisis has led us to re-evaluate exactly how we operate as an organisation.”

Mr Wright also reported that Ms Unsworth had also announced that BBC News – which was cutting 520 jobs – would concentrate on fewer stories, with journalists pooled in centralised teams rather than working for specific programmes.

BBC ‘APPOINTS CORBYNISTA’: Guido Fawkes (16/7), noting that the BBC had appointed Rianna Croxford as a community affairs correspondent, claimed that she had in the past been a ‘diehard campaigner’   for Jeremy Corbyn at the 2017 general election, and had called on Theresa May to sack Boris Johnson as foreign secretary because he was ‘a clown’.  The article said that Ms Croxford’s tweeting record suggested she believed the entire press was a ‘pro-Tory echo chamber’ and saw that righting that was her mission.