This morning's Sunday Morning Live was quite engaging and featured admirably well-balanced panels for its three main discussions.
Its 'big questions' were typical ones for the BBC on a Sunday morning - 'Is America failing its black community?', 'Is Islamic extremism caused by religion of politics?' and 'Are transgender athletes playing fair?' - but, thankfully, there was none of the 'bear pit' atmosphere you usually find on The Big Questions.
The central discussion - the one on Islamic extremism and the Iraq War - featured Douglas Murray, Lola Adesioye, Charlie Wolf and Remona Aly and there was more agreement between them than might have been expected, despite two being for the Iraq War and two being against it. Quality guests, quality discussion. (Take note, Nicky Campbell!)
The only hint of BBC bias came in a couple of nervous interventions from presenter Naga Munchetty when either Douglas or Charlie were speaking about specifically Muslim aspects of Islamic extremism:
(interrupting) Let's make clear...let's make clear, picking up on Remona's point, that Muslims are being attacked here. This is not just a Muslim problem. This is not just Muslims attacking. Muslims are being attacked.
(interrupting) And Remona...and Remona, you would, of course, say these acts are abhorrent and not reflective of the whole Muslim community - a tiny, tiny part who have been effected. But how responsible are our politicians in the UK for firing that up?
Remona ought to have been left to speak for herself (which she did very well) rather than having her interesting and fair-minded points shoehorned or pre-packaged into Naga's nervous BBC 'talking points'.
The programme, incidentally, ended with a performance to mark the Muslim festival of Eid by a Muslim singer, Saif Adam, who, as Naga put it, has "been reflecting on extremists who use Islam as an excuse for violence". The title of his song was "Not in my name".
I don’t usually warm to Naga Munchetti, but I’m beginning to think she’s slightly less annoying than Sian Williams in the role of anchorperson to SML. I agree that it was a remarkably civilised discussion this week. Everyone made interesting contributions. But the programme is still marred by those silly emails that the public are continually urged to send in. Not only the emails themselves, but the peculiar way they’re read out, even though they’re on a huge screen we can all read for ourselves by Tommy Sandhu, or as one might well ask, Tommy Sand-who? What is he for?
ReplyDeleteAt least they didn’t send him out on the road today.
They returned to the discussion with nary a mention of the emails after he’d read them out. They are irrelevant and an interruption. Get rid.
The transgender item was kind of scary. I don’t want to get into trouble here with any unintentional transgenderist gaffe, but I always wonder why so many male-to-female transitioners favour the most unflattering accoutrements to define their femininity. Some of the make-up and hairstyles they wear would look tarty and cheap on anyone, but on a six-foot hunk with a bass vocal range the general effect is comical. Sorry if I’ve said something clumsy.