Of course, Nick thinks the BBC is pretty much getting it about right and that the BBC is much 'greater' and much more 'super' (one for Reggie Perrin fans) than mean, dodgy old social media, but he also cites an old Steve Hewlett programme on Channel 4 that deliberately set out to shine the spotlight on voices that go against the liberal consensus and suggests that the BBC might pursue that route. It sounded excellent.
A much greater plurality of voices is certainly desperately needed on the BBC.
Naturally Nick doesn't point out that it is entirely typical that it was Channel 4 rather than the BBC which broadcast such a consensus-defying programme and that the BBC has (or had) no such equivalent programme to boast of, though I suspect he must have thought it as that was my first thought on reading that bit of his speech.
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BBC staff on Twitter (reporters, editors, presenters among them) have been in full tally-ho mode today against leading alt-left sites like The Canary and Evolve Politics after the former posted a falsehood about Tory Laura Kuenssberg.
The Canary claimed she'd agreed to make a speech at the Tory Scum party conference.
In fact Laura K had refused the invitation to make a speech (at a centre-right think tank fringe event).
The alt-left, being caught red-handed, then rammed the brakes on but ended up skidding all over the place because they couldn't quite bring themselves to lose face by conceding that they'd cocked up, even though it was clear from their tweets that they knew they had cocked up. They wormed and wriggled and weaselled - as (alas) we bloggers too often do when we're caught out.
I say 'we' but I'd like to think that whenever your actual we (meaning 'us' - me and Sue) get it wrong (as occasionally happens) we at least have the decency to admit it.
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Godwin's Law only embraces mentioning the Nazis, doesn't it? It doesn't mean that bloggers aren't allowed to make comparisons to Weimar Germany, does it?
Reading my Twitter feed over the last couple of days has made me think that there are elements in the Labour Party that would be better suited to Weimar Germany.
Reading my Twitter feed over the last couple of days has made me think that there are elements in the Labour Party that would be better suited to Weimar Germany.
As Sue wrote, why aren't the BBC going crazy about this?
For years-gone-by (at least until the party collapsed) every fruitcake utterance by even the most obscure UKIP councillor would receive bags of unfavourable coverage from the BBC but today's Labour's fruitcakes are vastly more numerous, much much fruit(cake)ier and far, far, far nastier. They are coming out with outrages almost by the hour, and yet the BBC isn't splashing their every foul utterance or misdemeanour - or any of them really.
Why not?
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The BBC certainly keeps them coming.
Within the past couple of days alone we've had The Muslim cosplayer who uses the hijab in her outfits and Muslim woman 'touched' by anonymous gift (the gift was of 25 hijab-wearing dolls). The BBC also promoted the first of those stories on Twitter:
Oddly (as a Google search shows) there have been no such good-news stories about sari-wearing women from the BBC.
Is the BBC guilty of hijabaphilia? (Answer: Yes).
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Via Mice Height at Biased-BBC you can watch a fascinating interview between the famous Milo Yiannopoulos and BBC Trending guru Mike Wendling.
At the beginning of the YouTube video Mike states that his interview with Milo will form part of a Radio 4 'special'. He wasn't any more specific than that but I'm guessing that it's going to be a Radio 4 'special' on the alt-right.
Milo probably has a point that the violence of the far-Left and Muslims is seriously underplayed by people like BBC journalists while the much smaller threat posed by the far-Right is vastly overplayed - and, to be fair, Mike didn't exactly give Milo grounds for disbelieving that with his questions.
It will be interesting to hear that Radio 4 'special' and compare it to this YouTube interview posted (and, presumably, filmed) by Milo and his friends.
Incidentally, Mike has a new book out in April 2018 called Alt-Right: From 4chan to the White House. Hopefully, a sequel called Alt-Left: From The Canary to BBC Trending will be out in April 2019.
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On tonight's BBC One News at Six George Aligiah posed the following question to a BBC reporter:
Some people are going to say that the very fact Theresa May is defending the free market suggests Jeremy Corbyn has hit the spot?
The "Some people are going to say" is classic BBC of course, and it's a canny way of putting it. Call it 'degrees of separation' if you will.
Some people doubtless will be saying that very thing (especially Corbynistas).
George's question is an interesting choice of question though, isn't it? What do you make of it?
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Here's one for The Canary crowd. The last chairpersonage of the BBC Trust Rona Fairhead has been given a peerage and made a minister in the present Conservative government.
Meanwhile for those getting ahead of themselves on Upstart Crow on the BBC iPlayer, there are some excellent jokes at the expense of Benedict Cumberbatch on the final episode of this excellent BBC comedy. (Their only decent BBC sitcom of recent years?)
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Meanwhile for those getting ahead of themselves on Upstart Crow on the BBC iPlayer, there are some excellent jokes at the expense of Benedict Cumberbatch on the final episode of this excellent BBC comedy. (Their only decent BBC sitcom of recent years?)
