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| James Cook |
Sue has just written, "All I can say is impartiality has been abandoned and value judgments reinstated, in new improved BBC-land".
I was just thinking exactly the same thing after reading BBC North America correspondent James Cook's website piece, Embracing the far right, Trump stains a history of democratic ideals.
(See also Alan at B-BBC and earlier comments here at ITBB).
If Trump wins "a modern apocalypse will be upon us", American writer Adam Gopnik said on Radio 4's A Point of View last year, prior to the US presidential election.
The programme's title told us that this was "a point of view".
No such 'warning label' has been attached to James Cook's impassioned BBC News website piece. It merely has a value-laden headline and the BBC man's own byline:
And yet it is very clearly no less "a point of view" than Adam Gopnik's piece for radio. And it comes from a very similar "point of view" to that of Adam Gopnik too - the view that Donald Trump is a stain on/a threat to democracy and that opposing him is morally justified.
Yes, BBC reporters mustn't call Islamic State "Da'esh" because using that "pejorative name" might give the impression that the BBC was siding with IS's enemies "and that would not preserve the BBC's impartiality". And BBC reporters mustn't use 'value-laden' terms like "terrorism" to describe acts of terrorism against Israelis because that would be seen to take sides too. But BBC reporters, it appears, can report in a fully 'value-laden' fashion and fling "the BBC's impartiality" into the bin if they are reporting about President Trump of the United States.
James Cook's piece seems to me to mark another gear change from the BBC. BBC presenters and editors (Jon Sopel, Katya Adler, Evan Davis, Andrew Neil, etc, etc) have already been given some leeway to 'editorialise' but now it appears that BBC reporters even lower down the food chain have also been given carte blanche to do the same - and more.
James makes the moral case for abandoning BBC impartiality here:
But it falls to reporters to describe in plain language what we see, and promotion of fascism and racism is all too easy to observe in the United States of 2017.
Yes, impartiality has been abandoned and value judgments reinstated in this piece of his but he believes he's reporting 'the truth' and that there's no alternative but to say what needs saying (in his view).
Maybe the BBC just needs to finally admit that 'BBC impartiality' is a thing of the past and that its reporters can use the BBC's many platforms to act as if they are columnists from partisan newspapers. As a lot of BBC reporters are now already doing that it wouldn't be as much of a leap as it might once have seemed.
Maybe the BBC just needs to finally admit that 'BBC impartiality' is a thing of the past and that its reporters can use the BBC's many platforms to act as if they are columnists from partisan newspapers. As a lot of BBC reporters are now already doing that it wouldn't be as much of a leap as it might once have seemed.
