Guess who is to blame?

I see Matthew Price and Tina Daheley are still doing their daily podcast Beyond Today. 

Monday's edition asked the question Australian fires: who is to blame? The programme blamed the Australian government, the country's coal industry and, of course, Trump. 

There wasn't even a single mention of arson.

So what's Beyond Today like these days? Well, it's the kind of BBC programme where the presenter, here Matthew Price, can say things like this:

One of the things that makes this even sadder for a lot of Australians is that it almost feels a bit self-inflicted. The country's carbon footprint is massive. Australia's the third-largest exporter of fossil fuels. Every day you get these ships full of coal making their way out past the Great Barrier Reef heading up to China. Now, the climate change deniers - and some of them are in the Australian government - they say there is no link between their coal industry and the fires. They're wrong of course.

Wonder how big its audience is?

Beyond Parody

Inspiration for Harriet

Fans of Radio 4's podcast Beyond Today will doubtless have been delighted for BBC producer Harriet Noble. She finally got her way, with an edition based around Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - something, Matthew Price told us, she'd been wanting for ages. 

And a gushing Harriet, who follows the Democrat congressperson on Instagram, also told us: "Because I saw that AOC uses press-on manicures I decided to give myself one too". 

Isn't that sweet?

Anyhow, here's what DB thought of the matter:

Later in that edition came an interview with Jon Ossoff, another millennial Democrat. 

Mr Ossoff, being fairer than the BBC, said that there were also interesting Republican millennial politicians out there as well as Democrat ones. 

I doubt Harriet & Co. would even have given a second's thought to interviewing one of those though.

Some world of long ago past

For those who want a taster of Radio 4's Beyond Today without having to listen to it for more than a few seconds, this should give you an idea of what it's been like so far:

How has #MeToo changed American politics? 🇺🇸

BBC White House correspondent @Tara_Mckelvey offers a glimpse inside Donald Trump's presidency on the new #BeyondToday podcast

Listen now on BBC Sounds 👉https://t.co/kBs0wQ2E8y pic.twitter.com/QXFfUgv0jl

— BBC Sounds (@BBCSounds) November 9, 2018

Themes without variations

An earlier post looked at the first few episodes of podcast offshoot of the Today programme, Beyond Today, hosted by Tina Daheley and Matthew Price, and found them to be little different to the Today programme (except that, being aimed at a younger audience, Matthew Price was speaking more slowly and pretending not to know stuff, such how to pronounce the new Brazilian president's name). 

Overall, I thought that the themes - including fake news, hate speech, middle-class drug abuse and concerns about Instagram and WhatsApp - were very BBC/Guardian-type themes. 

The four subsequent episodes have focused on (1) diversity in the media (especially class), (2) #MeToo, (3) whether misogyny should be considered a hate crime....and (4) the US midterms. 

Again, lots of very BBC/Guardian-type themes there. 

The one about diversity in the media - an extended discussion between Tina D and Amol Rajan - was very informal, more a chat even, and very interesting. Tina D, in particular, considers herself working class and, like Amol Rajan, thinks there's a significant problem of under-representation of working class people like her at the BBC. Indeed, Amol argued that the reason the BBC kept failing to see things coming - Brexit, Trump, the rise of Corbyn, various elections - is because of that under-representation of working class people. And he may very well be right about that. 

So, yes, more working class people at the BBC might well help expand the BBC's mind, but it's diversity of opinion that really matters...and, as Beyond Today is proving, the BBC mindset is a very resilient and rigid thing. I doubt that many of the readers of this blog or most people (working class or otherwise) would have come up the topics the makers of Beyond Today have been coming up with as the concerns of Beyond Today seem to spring from a very particular world view. That way of thinking needs a massive amount of fresh air letting in. 

The danger for the nation

They can't help it. Even the best of them. 

Justin Webb was going so well at trying to be impartial on the latest Beyond Today podcast for Radio 4, and then he said this:

Even with those messages, this kind of sense that actually that message about the other, that that message, as the Democrats would see it, about hate actually works to an extent. 

And Donald Trump, you know, when he was going around the country, when you look at the places he went, his people have done pretty well and he's done pretty well. 

And that, I think, is a template. 

The danger for the nation is that that's the template for 2020, because he's seen what worked and will use it again.  

They can't help it. Even the best of them. 

Is 'Beyond Today' tomorrow? (Probably not)

Having written about it last weekend I thought I ought to at least sample Beyond Today - the podcast offshoot of the Today programme aimed at a younger, newer audience. So I tried Thursday's edition 'What's up with WhatsApp?', presented by Matthew Price. 

Was it something new and exciting? Well, except for Matthew going for that younger audience by speaking slower and asking some stupid-sounding questions which he obviously already knew the answer to (won't da youth find that a bit patronising?), it didn't seem that much different to the rest of the BBC's current affairs output. 

And Matthew talked exclusively to other BBC reporters - namely Juliana Gragnani from BBC News Brasil and Kim Gittleson in New York. (Maybe Kim covers for Nick Bryant when he's in Washington - which he always seem to be?). 

I had to rewind during Kim Gittleson's bits though to check that she was a BBC reporter as she sounded highly opinionated. (Maybe she's a Katty Kay understudy?). 

And the subject was ‘fake news’. (Yes, so early on in the series). 

The BBC, of course, were the defenders of 'true news' here against the big, bad social media companies (who just happen to be their commercial rivals).

The starting point was the contention that misogynistic, homophobic, racist Jair Bolsonaro won in Brazil because of WhatsApp's role in spreading 'fake news', and there was a passing suggestion that hate speech and political violence might have risen because of Donald Trump. 

Lots of smoke, little fire.

Is Beyond Today going to catch on? 

I have to say I can't - on the strength of this episode - see how it will appeal to people who aren't already Radio 4 listeners. It just sounded exactly like Radio 4. 

If existing Radio 4 listeners start liking podcasts it might survive, for a while at least. 

Other episodes in its first week dealt with 'middle class drug abuse' (how Radio 4 is that!) and Instagram (is it "dangerous"? - which sounds much the same as the episode I heard!), and there was an extended interview with Amol Rajan, the BBC's Media Editor and regular Radio 4 presenter (oooh!). 

Maybe I'm not its target audience though and am wrong. Or maybe I'm its wrong target audience and am right. You're as free as this blog is to read to listen for yourselves and decide.