Well, here's a thing (with a firm tip of the hat to Biased BBC)!...
Do you remember Jasmine Lawrence (known at the BBC as Jasmine Williams), the BBC News Channel editor who was taken off election duties for the BBC and forced to delete her Twitter feed during the 2014 local elections after tweeting the following to the world (in breach of the BBC's editorial guidelines)?:
#WhyImVotingUkip – to stand up for white, middle class, middle aged men w sexist/racist views, totally under represented in politics today—Jasmine Lawrence (@journomummy) May 21, 2014
Well, James Stephenson, News Editor for BBC News and Current Affairs, has (Biased BBC informs us) now sent out an email to BBC staff:
Dear all,
I am delighted to announce that Jasmine Williams has been appointed as Deputy News Editor on a year’s attachment. She is currently an Assistant Editor on the News Channel, where she has combined editing with a substantial planning role. Jasmine has a wealth of experience working across platforms as a news editor and deployment editor on the desk, planning editor and assignment editor.
Jasmine will be sharing the weekend news editor role and the planning editor role with Toby Castle, rotating between the two sides of the job each month. She will be taking up her new role in May.
James
Just in time for the EU referendum!
It's what one might call a Reality Check.
ReplyDeleteIt's always the editors who are the worst. Yet the BBC removed a regional radio presenter was removed from his show and moved to a 'less news-based slot' for the duration of the general election campaign because he was engaged to a Tory MP, even though he had never said or tweeted anything revealing his beliefs. A clear double standard.
ReplyDeleteThere is only one way to hit the BiasedBC and that is to stop paying the TV tax. I haven't paid for many years, I get a nice monthly threatening letter, which I find comforting as it means someone is thinking of me and it also means a letter for the postman to deliver and keep his job going. So, what's not to like?
DeleteOFF TOPIC: Anyone else catch Newsnight tonight? It wasn't an example of gross bias (and incidentally, Daniel Hannan put in a good performance as always - shame he stuck with the Tories) but there there was some what I would call "pressing down on the scales". For instance, in the run up to the studio debate there was a long intro which included a "Brexit nightmare" imagined news summary from 2030. This was followed later by a "Dream Brexit" imagined news summary from 2030 that lasted a mere 44 seconds! How can that disparity be justified?
ReplyDeleteAnd of course, then we had the entirely unnecessary "summing up" from Evan "Remain" Davies: that the consensus was a Brexit would be "negative but not a catastrophe". Er - sorry Evan, that's what we call an opinion - an opinion dressed up as "consensus" (the oldest trick in the opinion manipulator's handbook). There is literally no way that anyone can possibly compare in any objective sense the outcome of Brexit versus Remaining at 2030. Either side could be completely wrong - and ALL economists could be completely wrong as they often are. It may be reasonable to hang a programme on short term results e.g. 10 billion net contribution versus higher interest rates perhaps - these are within the realm of reasonable prediction and debate...but 2030 with specific figures? Come on! Not possible. Therefore Newsnight made an editorial decision to debate something that it is simply not possible to debate. The issue is why make that particular decision, rather than say focussing on EU corruption?
Sorry - missed out the salient fact that the
Delete"Brexit nightmare" imagined news summary was 1 minute 30 seconds long. That is about 100% longer than the "Dream Brexit" news summary. Why the disparity? Simply not acceptable in my view.
Yes, Newsnight struck me as pressing down on the scales last night in just the ways you describe (like the timings too by the way!), and in a couple of others too. I don't think Evan Davis was even-handed during the studio discussion (he was much sharper with the three Leave guests than the three Remain ones) and Chris Cook's reports rang strong alarm bells as well. Dan Hannan, as you say, was excellent though and rather put the rest of the panel in the shade. The undecided voters panel - the same one as last week's - surprised me though. They didn't go where I expected them to go. The 5:3 split in favour of Britain being "daring" rather than "cautious" suggests a few of them might be voting Leave after all.
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