To wendle or not to wendle?

The BBC editor in the not-so-hot seat on this week's Newswatch was blog favourite Mike Wendling of BBC Trending. 

I thought it worth transcribing the whole segment as I found it interesting. The subject under discussion was: Is the BBC News website (including BBC Trending) dumbing down?

One thing I noted, in passing, was Samira Ahmed seeming to signal her view of one critic's complaint by introducing him as "fulminating". At least she didn't say "frothing at the mouth". 

As for Mike Wendling, well, I think he put up a pretty good defence of himself and of the need for light as well as shade in the BBC's news output. I was even won over by his stout defence of the "My boyfriend dumped me but how do I tell my cat?" story.

I also spotted that the BBC journalist who wrote the cat story, Dhruti Shah, thanked her boss on Twitter for sticking up for her. I do admire a boss who sticks up for his underlings, however much I'd like BBC editors to go off message:

Thanks Mike Wendling for defending my journalism. I still remain proud of my BBC Trending cats piece. It was always about taking a different look at relationships and it succeeded.

In an unrelated point, however, the BBC's Dhruti isn't a happy bunny today. Here's another of her tweets:

All this talk of diversity - people want you because they want you to tick their boxes and make them look good; but what they don't want is what your "diversity" represents - difference. When your difference starts spilling out the box... you are squashed. It's an awful feeling.

Wonder what brought that on?

Going back to Newswatch...

Naturally, I'd have preferred the focus on Newswatch to be on matters of bias - Is the BBC News website too 'woke'? Does it push various agendas? Does it pursue the youth audience too much? Is BBC Trending far too like an offshoot of The Guardian? Does it pander to certain obsessions, like the far-right and Russian interference in UK/US elections? What does it miss? 

Anyhow, here's the transcript, prefaced by a screengrab of a particularly fine 'look to camera' from Mike Wendling....

*******

Samira Ahmed: Now, last week, an article appeared on the home page of the BBC website which sparked something of a debate about the value of the Corporation's online output. "My boyfriend dumped me but how do I tell my cat?", read the headline, and the story that followed prompted fresh allegations that BBC News online was dumbing down. Neville Mind wondered:

"Anyone else bored by the lazy journalism? BBC describing what someone said on Twitter about their cat is not news".

Nigel Cummings agreed, fulminating:

"More rubbish from the national disgrace that is the BBC. Australia on fire, Iran poised for more action, Syria in uproar and they publish rubbish about a woman wondering how to tell a cat that her boyfriend has left her. It's hard to believe the UK public pay a licence for this dross!" 

And Bryn Harris widened out that criticism: 

"The sheer triviality of the BBC News website these days: 'My boyfriend dumped me but how to tell my cat?' 'Beauty YouTuber reveals she's transgender', 'Girl's lemonade stand for bushfire relief a hit'. What the hell is going on?" 

Well, the feature about the boyfriend and the cat came from BBC Trending, a strand devoted, as it says, to in-depth reporting on the world of social media. Their stories appear across a number of BBC social media outlets. On Facebook and Twitter, as you would expect, but also via podcasts, on World Service radio and on television. Recent examples of the work range from women equate being trafficked online to the rise of the Brazilian butt lift. With me to explain more is Mike Wendling, the editor of BBC Trending. Thank you for coming on Newswatch. The story did strike a bit of a nerve, I think it's fair to say, is 'How to tell my cat my boyfriend dumped me?' really what qualifies as a new story for BBC News? 

Mike Wendling: Yes. Let me explain it like this. News, all news, our website, newspapers, any news outlet, usually has light and shade, right? Feature stories that might be a little bit ighter and stories that might be a little bit heavier. The bit that I'm responsible for, the very small part of the BBC News website, BBC Trending, has also recently reported on Russian interference in the UK election. We had a viewer, a reader who mentioned Australian bushfires, well, we published a story that was very popular about misinformation online about the Australian bushfires, about a discussion on social media in Iran about the downing of the Ukrainian airliner. So, you know, there is a whole range of material. Now, I want to actually address what's actually in the story, because I feel like a lot of the reaction came, not necessarily about the story itself, but about the headline. You can say, oh, it's a silly thing about a post about a woman and her relationship with her cat. But if you frame it in a different way, if you say that it's actually about grief, relationships, break-up, and mental health, which essentially is what the story was about, and it got into these issues and we spoke to experts about those issues, than it looks a little bit less like fluff or light or clickbait. 

Samira Ahmed: OK. And suppose people might say, yes, BBC Trending overwhelmingly covers quite seriously stories, but isn't it important that anything should tell you about wider social issues and global concerns. You ate saying it does, just the headline was misleading, because there are stories which people feel don't have that defence. 

Mike Wendling: Well, that may be the case, but I don't think that this story qualifies, to be completely honest with you. I think that it was a perfectly legitimate thing to take a look at this issue. It started a wider conversation on social media, and we look at those. Now, all of the conversations that we look at on social media are going to be about say, Russian misinformation in the UK election, this is simply a different topic and a simply different way of looking at social media. 

Samira Ahmed: It's interesting you say 'starting a conversation'. People are saying 'is that BBC News's job to be starting a conversation which might seem trivial, and which other outlets can do, that BBC News should be focused on clear news'. 

Mike Wendling: So, what we do, what we aim to do with every piece, right, is to take a look at what people are interested in, which is actually one of the fundamental definitions of news, things that people are interested in, and crucially, not just sort of repeat, you know, it's not like we just sort of put up that woman's post, We add value. We look at the issues behind it. We talk to the people who originally may have produced the post. Sometimes, we go to the sources of disinformation or misinformation online. That's where we add value. That's our purpose. 

Samira Ahmed: Is the real controversy underneath all this that there is a generational divide among BBC consumers about what counts as news? 

Mike Wendling: Well, I have no idea how old the people who are writing in are. But I suspect that, and the numbers bear this out, that a lot of the people who are reading this particular story were younger. It was younger in general than the people who read BBC Online. So, that could be a part of it. Look, I mean, we run a general service here at the BBC, right? So, you know, if you do not want or are not interested in our coverage in this particular area about relationships or pets or whatever, you may be interested in our political coverage. You may be interested in hard news, the day to day news that appears on BBC Online, which of course is the mainstay of the website. It's a general service, and we provide part of that service to, quite frankly, an audience that has been ignored by a lot of the BBC for a long time. 

Samira Ahmed: Mike Wendling, thank you so much. 

Radio 4 listeners II

...And talking of 'just your average Radio 4 listener', Feedback is running a feature at the moment which aims to 'take Radio 4 listeners out of their comfort zones'.

Every week the two chosen listeners give their own 3 Desert Island Disc choices of Radio 4 programmes.

So far this series every one - male, female, young or old, posh or even posher - has included Woman's Hour in their personal Top 3s.

Even the old chap today who first named Farming Today and Just a Minute then rounded off his list with Woman's Hour.

How Radio 4 is that!

Hilariously Roger Bolton took them 'out of their comfort zone' by asking them to listen to Trending on the BBC World Service. Trending is as Radio 4-like a programme as you could ever wish to hear, frequently 'woke', regularly obsessing about race.

It may have surprised Roger but it didn't surprise me that they'd love it and didn't feel remotely 'out of their comfort zones'. (They sounded the type - no offence)! 

The subject of the programme was "Can an algorhythm be racist?" 

And Roger Bolton himself loved it. He even said so:

And, so, do you think it was a good subject? I mean, from my point of view I hadn't really thought about algorithms being racist so - and it's a terribly important issue - so I was impressed by the choice of subject.

That didn't surprise me either.

White People and Dreadlocks

Of course, Newsnight isn't alone in providing a platform for promoting the grievances of “Social Justice Warriors” like Emma Dabiri and Breitbart London featured another splendid rant - by Virginia Hale - on the subject of BBC Trending:

BBC Trending was launched in 2013 “to investigate social media trends around the world and the stories behind them” – yet even the most cursory glance at its website and YouTube videos reveals the platform of Britain’s public broadcaster, which claims “impartiality lies at the heart of public service”, is little more than a mouthpiece pushing the views of “Social Justice Warriors” (SJWs).

So guess what's the subject of the latest edition of BBC Trending on the BBC World Service?

'BBC Trending' goes on the attack against ex-Muslims

Even by the BBC's standards this is an absolute shocker...

BBC Trending on the BBC World Service today discussed the use of the hashtag #ExMuslimBecause. As the programme's website put it:

Thousands explained why they left Islam online, using the hashtag #ExMuslimBecause, but some thought the discussion was badly timed, and labelled it ‘hateful’. We meet the woman behind the campaign, and ask if she intended to create such a pointed conversation.

Before coming to the programme itself, it goes without saying that many people 'lose their faith' or convert to another religion, and that we tend to think it's OK for them to do so, given our commitment to freedom of belief. 

As is well known, however, a lot of Muslims disagree. A sizeable number don't think that their fellow Muslims should be allowed to stop believing in Islam, and a fair proportion of those also believe in death for 'apostates'. Some 13 Muslim-majority countries still proscribe the death penalty for 'apostasy', here in 2015.

That being the case, the large-scale global use in recent days of the hashtag #ExMuslimBecause for people to explain and share their own reasons for leaving Islam is undeniably significant and brave, and you might think that the BBC would be interested in giving it a respectful hearing.

The BBC did not give it a respectful hearing here. Instead, this programme put its users in the dock and condemned them.

Presenter Anne-Marie Tomchak outlined the nature of the hashtag before saying that it had been strongly countered by people claiming it was "hateful". 

Her guest in the studio was Mobeen Azhar, a journalist and film maker for the BBC who you may have seen on Newsnight following the Paris attacks, and who was one of Ed Stourton's guests on Paris: Could It Happen Here? last week. 

Mobeen Azhar

He said that, for a time, #ExMuslimBecause was the top-rated tweet in the UK last week and that it aroused a strong response, including strong criticism that it was "Islamophobic...opportunistic...and shouldn't be happening right now".

Anne-Marie interrupted to say, "People were really upset about it as well because it's such a sensitive issue".  

"And I think a lot of this has to do with timing," replied Mobeen, before expanding on that:

You know, we're in a situation where Muslims, I think, feel slightly attacked and they feel that their lives and their beliefs are being constantly discussed. You know, they're on the front page of lots of newspapers constantly. And so for that reason I think a lot of people thought this was bad timing.

Anne-Marie Tomchak then introduced an individual from an organisation associated with the hashtag, the very brave Council of Ex-Muslims. Her introduction to the group sounded (to my ears) somewhat disdainful: 

It was actually started by this group, the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain.

She then spoke to its spokeswoman, Maryam Namazie - though not before Mobeen had mocked her for winning the 'Secularist of the Year' award. "It's not the sexiest title!", he said, laughing, before adding that her opponents would say she's "quite opportunistic".

Here is a transcript of Anne-Marie Tomchak's interview with Maryam Namazie. 

Please keep an eye on both the ratcheting-up of the BBC presenter's questions - and the nature of those questions - and Maryam's answers, which repay close attention:

MN: One of our activists said that, "Being ex-Muslim is not being anti-Muslim. It's just criticising an idea that I don't agree with". And that's actually how it started. And we never expected it to trend in this way. We actually initially said that we were collecting statements from people for December 10th, which is International Human Rights Day, to show that leaving Islam, saying one is an ex-Muslim, is a basic right. But it just took off. And it shows just how much people needed to express themselves via this hashtag. 

A-MT: What kind of stories have you noticed people sharing around this hashtag online? 

Maryam Namazie

MN: Yeah. I think there are some really funny ones, of course, like, you know, "I'm #ExMuslimBecause I wanted to eat pork".,And then there are, of course, those that are saying, you know, "My father is a sheikh and he's forced me to marry", "My own mother told me I ought to die because I've left Islam". So there's a wide range of stories. A lot of the hashtags just said that they felt that they're not alone, because I think a lot of people do feel alone and isolated - which shows how much people need to know that they're not alone and that there are many of us out there. 

A-MT: Is there a risk that there are others out there who would look at a hashtag like this and might not necessarily be prepared for the kind of backlash that might lie in store for them? 

MN: Yeah. I don't think that anyone is encouraging anyone to take a risk because if anything we know the risks more than anyone else. For example, even though I don't have threats for my family I do have it from Islamists all the time. But again, you know, blaming us for speaking up for the death threats and the intimidation that Islamists impose is sort of blaming the victim in a way. You know, how else are we going to challenge this movement if we're not able to say that we think differently and we have a right to think differently.  

A-MT: One of the tweets that I noticed was saying that this hashtag was more or less giving people an opportunity to bash Muslims. What do you have to say in response to a statement like that? 

MN: Yeah, well I mean, you know, those who bash Muslims bash me as well because we all look the same to them. I've got a Muslim name. The minute I defend refugee rights they tell me to go back home. But we've been very clear from the start that we're ex-Muslims not because we want to be anti-Muslim but because we want to defend the rights of ex-Muslims. And there has to be a space for that.

A-MT: 'Can you speak?' is one thing'; 'when to speak' is another. And when you look at the recent news events - say, for example, what happened in Paris, the Paris attacks. Let's look at the refugee crisis around Europe. Did it occur to you that this was possibly not the right time to put out a hashtag like this? 

MN: Yeah, but Paris is maybe your marker as someone in the West, but our marker has been bombings in Iraq, in Afghanistan, sharia law in Saudi Arabia, for decades. That is our marker. To see it only within the context of Paris doesn't see the humanity of all those people who are dying, day in and day out.

Anne-Marie Tomchak's questions there - and the tone she delivered them in - weren't sympathetic (unlike her questions to Mobeen Azhar). Maryam Namazie was being firmly challenged here. 

Maryam, in response, gave some very interesting answers, occasionally couched in language that you might expect would strongly appeal to the left-liberal instincts of a BBC reporter/presenter - if you didn't know how strangely such people react to anything that concerns Muslim sensibilities.

And here's the really shocking thing about this edition of BBC Trending. As soon as that interview with Maryam Namazie had finished, the BBC's Anne-Marie Tomchak said the following:

So quite a strident tone coming from Maryam Namazie.

That was truly a "WTF?" moment for me. And Mobeen Azhar gave it a clear 'hmm' of agreement.

There was nothing strident about Maryam Namazie's tone there. Or her comments. 

Anne-Marie Tomchak

And it got worse.

Anne-Marie then went on to explain what she meant:

So quite a strident tone coming from Maryam Namazie. And the way she uses the term "Islamists".

And, yes, Anne-Marie Tomchak paused before the word 'Islamists' in order to put it in inverted commas. 

Bear in mind that Maryam Namazie has received death threats from such people.

Mobeen Azhar agreed:

I mean, it's quite uncompromising. I think that one of the problems that might come from that 'Islamist' broadly refers to this idea of Islam the faith being used as a political ideology. Now the fact is, within that there are many shades of grey. And I think lumping these people together is not going to be the most helpful thing, and could be misconstrued, and could be quite problematic. 

Another "WTF?" moment. And bear in mind again that Maryam Namazie has received death threats from such people, and yet Mobeen Azhar is fretting about her comments being "problematic" towards Islamists.

And what did Anne-Marie Tomchak of the BBC say in response to Mobeen Azhar of the BBC's frankly jaw-dropping comments?

Did she respond with some kind of "WTF?" too? Of course she didn't:

But let's just talk about her tone again because you described it as 'uncompromising'. How do you think what she's saying is going to be interpreted by Muslims around the world?

Mobeen Azhar then replied: 

Well, you know, this really takes us back to this thing about Muslims feeling attacked because I think pretty much for 15 years now - you can say since 9/11 - a lot of the Muslim community around the world has felt that they are on the defensive. They feel that there's fingers being pointed at them. I think in terms of Maryam's tone, it might make Muslims feel attacked again. 

Unbelievable, isn't it?

And on it went. Here's what the BBC presenter said next:

Well, they have demonstrated that on social media. There has been quite a defensive tone, even a counter-hashtag #MuslimBecause, and then outlining the reasons why they are Muslim and defending the faith. Some people found the #ExMuslimBecause hashtag quite offensive. One tweet I saw said, "I find this campaign hateful. It paints all Muslims as bad. Almost 2 billion humans can't all be the same." And then they've used the hashtag, #NotoBigotry. Other practising Muslims tried to engage with the hashtag, which is interesting. And one of those is Rashid Dar. He works with a think tank over in Washington DC and he posted a tweet where he offered to meet ex-Muslims and have a coffee and have a chat. 

We duly heard from Rashid Dar, calling for both sides to "tone down the vitriol" and expressing his desire to talk about what his Muslim faith means to him in a positive way. 

No challenge came from Anne-Marie Tomchak (at least as BBC World Service listeners heard it). It was just a short statement. Instead, she asked Mobeen Azhar what he made of what Rashid said and they both laughed. Mobeen joked that "social media is not like a coffee shop".

And that was that.

I try to be as dispassionate as I can be on this blog, but this was an absolute disgrace.

Anne-Marie Tomchak and Mobeen Azhar's behaviour here was beyond belief - and very far from impartial. 

Worse, it was far from impartial in the most appalling way. Instead of sticking up for brave people like Maryam Namazie they put her in the dock and then pronounce a sentence of 'guilty' on her - and all in the interests of her critics, many of whom are Islamists. 

Thanks to Anne-Marie Tomchak and Mobeen Azhar, the last straw has broken the camel's back here. I've had enough of them.


Update: I see others have picked up on this too and Maryam has posted her own response.

I came across this edition of BBC Trending via a tweet from Nick Cohen and a Facebook posting from Atheist in a Headscarf that said "the BBC should really be ashamed of for further silencing us by promoting the idea that somehow, SIMPLY STATING we are Ex Muslim and why is tantamount to Islamophobia".

Maryam's blogpost states that Anne-Marie Tomchak interviewed her for 30 minutes. Only 3 minutes of that interview made it onto today's programme.


Further update: Alan at Biased BBC recalls that this isn't the first time that Mrs Namazie has been given the 'BBC treatment'. As she wrote on her blog five years ago:

BBC Sunday Morning Live invited me to join its debate on whether ‘it is right to condemn Iran for stoning’ on 5 September 2010 via webcam. During the debate, the programme allowed only two interventions via webcam (that of Suhaib Hassan of the Islamic Sharia Council and Mohammad Morandi of Tehran University – both of whom were in support of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani’s stoning and/or execution). I (who had presumably been invited to defend Ms Ashtiani and oppose stoning in the debate) was never given the opportunity to speak. 

Another update: Intriguingly, Rashid Dar is also concerned that the BBC omitted most of his interview with Anne-Marie Tomchak. And the parts he says were omitted appear particularly telling, and damning. He says the BBC chose not to air his criticisms of the Muslim community: