(h/t DB)
...breaking news....breaking news....breaking news...breaking news...
Another po-faced (or should that be Poe-faced?) BBC journalist has fallen victim to Godfrey Elfwick.
You may remember Godfrey from his recent appearance on the BBC World Service, after a BBC World Service producer spotted his tweet attacking Star Wars as racist and thought (as you do if you're a BBC producer who can't tell a spoof from the real thing) that someone denouncing Star Wars as racist would be just the ticket.
Here's what he said on the World Service about Star Wars:
It was very low quality. It's not my cup of tea at all. From what I have seen of the old Star Wars films there's a lot of social problems with them. They're rooted in homophobia, casual racial stereotypes. Gold robot C25, or whatever he's called, he's a camp, neurotic coward. The only main female ends up in a space bikini enchained to a horny space slug.
The main bad guy...what's he called, Dark Raider?...is black, he has a deep voice, he listens to rap music. It’s just a really bad racial stereotype.
The BBC was widely mocked for taking his tweet at face value and inviting him on.
And today it happened again.
BBC Trending's Mike Wendling, reporting on the black civil rights campaigner who turned out to be white, spotted Godfrey on Twitter and - doubtless thinking he sounded 'right-on' enough to fit the tone of his piece - added his tweet to the article:
I stand by #RachelDolezal.
10% of all people are born #WrongSkin
It's not a joke and you have no right to shame us pic.twitter.com/2qWlPMdQKg
— Godfrey Elfwick (@GodfreyElfwick) June 12, 2015
That passage has now been removed from the BBC website article and the following added:
********
Godfrey looks to have had a busy day:
Update: I'm finding it hard to keep up with the BBC's continuing 'stealth edits' here. I'm nigh on certain this wasn't included the last time I looked, but here it is now:
Soon the hashtag #transracial was trending. Some were using it for jokes and satire, but others were making serious points, "People mad about RachelDolezal claiming to be black but you guys ok with Caitlyn Jenner. Make up your mind," tweets @PerfectLegend. Many users found the comparison wrong or even offensive: "There is nothing 'trans' about #RachelDolezal. Stop w/ the false equivalencies to transpeople. Rachel is a lying, deceitful fraud. The end." says @ReignOfApril
The BBC is constantly updating, it seems, and constantly making itself appear 'down' with the 'right-thinking' types that give every impression of inhabiting an increasingly large chunk the social media spectrum (except blogs about BBC bias, of course).
This 'stealth edit' was a clear riposte to Godfrey's 'gotcha', and about as clear a declaration of where its 'stealth editor' stands (whoever that might be), socially-speaking, as you could possibly imagine.
All those years at university and then training sessions about social media at the BBC College of Journalism prevented the editor from daring to judge, so it was swallowed whole. And why isn't the opinion of actual black people the main focus of the whole thing? Instead, it's all about the reporter's covering his own ass while they're all running around blindly trying to figure out where the correct right-on position is. Everything they believe, all their natural instincts are lying to them on this one, and they can't figure out what's happened. Hilarious. Not an adult in the room.
ReplyDeleteGodfrey is rapidly turning into a national treasure suckering the BBC's infantile editors over and over.
ReplyDeleteOf course they control the edit, so instead of holding up a mirror they get busy reorganising history to suit.
Their backside-covering stealth editing is also getting as extensive as it is shameless.
Whilst still funny, this highlights just how compromised the BBC is by its addiction to twitter (a free, foreign Wild West aggregator), both in terms of what staff treat as gospel and absorb, but more crucially regurgitate, either as RTs (not endorsements, despite almost always being in one ideological direction), Views (their own) or then boosted up to actual web or broadcast stories (quietly erased if caught napping).
This is serious, as the BBC appears determined to establish twitter as a no-responsibility limbo land, where on one hand they can use it to create news but on the other hand deny it is anything to do with them if it turns out to be pants.
I am currently trying to get this through the skulls of the BBC via some FOIs, which they have so far refused, but one has been allowed to be knocked up the greasy pole to the next level, as if a more senior BBC blow off is any better than drone level.
Frankly I should leave it alone, as they seem to cop more blow-back from this addiction than anything.
I just find the bovine refusal through all levels to accept responsibility typical, but an affront to professional integrity, claims of transparency and simple common sense.
Godfrey is emerging as a genius, simply able to find the wet-liberals sweet spot, and then drive a coach and horses of satire through it all!
ReplyDeleteMixed race metaphor rules apply in that last sentence...trans-metaphoria IS a DSM category requiring my own show and shedloads of cash from the NHS?
His recent 5Live spoof on Star Wars remaking was brilliant-and this is a worthy follow up.
At last-a University lad who still is able to think for himself, after years on campus...he`s got a stellar future once the BBC goes!