Roger and out...time for Amol again?

The closing section of this week's Feedback on Radio 4 was a question-and-answer session directed at its sacked presenter Roger Bolton, marking his very reluctant last appearance. 

As the embittered 73-year-old BBC veteran couldn't interview himself, the programme got a faithful listener to put the questions. She turned out, bless her, to be the living embodiment of a stereotypical elderly Radio 4 listener - with views to match.

Everyone loved Roger and she loved the BBC, and at the end of this long-farewell love-in they agreed on the corporation's importance/necessity.

Roger wasn't keen on the present BBC bosses though, and repeatedly slammed them for being reluctant to come on his show. Many of his criticisms will strike a chord with 'people like us' who know how the BBC handles such 'watchdog' programmes.

Unfortunately, he has also subsequently gone on to tell The Observer that Emily Maitlis was right, especially over her criticisms of the BBC's Brexit coverage for not being anti-Brexit enough.

I see in our archives a huge pile of often very long and detailed pieces slamming Roger Bolton for being biased on that issue - and several others. 

He's not been shy about it either, openly stating his disdain for criticism of the BBC from 'people like us'. 

He's never been a wholly impartial champion of the Radio 4 listener. Though he's had his moments, he's mainly been the champion of that stereotypical Radio 4 listener, and been given free range by the BBC, until this year, however far he's strayed on Feedback into various kinds of advocacy. 

And regular readers might also recall yet more exhaustingly long posts here recording his anger at John Humphrys after JH slammed the BBC, especially over pro-EU bias - despite JH later stating that he'd voted Remain himself.

As we said at the time, Roger Bolton truly took the hump against the former Today presenter for straying from the BBC straight and narrow. It also sounded like he strongly disagreed and that he took it as a personal affront. JH became a regular Feedback target thereafter. I wrote here, several times, about it seeming something like a vendetta.

What Roger Bolton's saying now as an 'ex-BBC presenter' is exactly what we claimed he believed while being an active BBC presenter because, whilst hiding being BBC impartiality, he frequently wasn't impartial, framing discussions in certain ways and asking particular questions in differing ways and giving his own opinions.

I know he has many fans - maybe some of you - but I think the new BBC management are well shot of him - as they are of Emily, Jon and Lewis. Clear the whole lot out, and take Mark Easton and Jeremy Bowen with them off to LBC too, to join James O'Brien and our old friend Rob Burley where people don't have to pay for them!

If only those BBC bosses can now hold off from the urge to really 'troll' their underlings - and the public - and make Amol Rajan the next Feedback presenter. I'm hoping if gobby Gary L gets the Golden Boot from Match of the Day after one too many egregious tweets about women footballers and bras that Amol will get that gig too. Plus Gardeners' World and Fake or Fortune? And if, as we hear, the BBC is bringing back that old ITV Saturday night classic of bread-and-circuses British TV Gladiators, I'm hoping Amol will be the new Ulrika alongside Mishal Husain. 

I've given up my old habit of predicting Newswatch's Samira Ahmed for every job vacancy as she never gets them, especially since her pay row triumph over the BBC. She may mouth off on Twitter from time to time, and join protests, and write articles, and be very anti-Nigel Farage, but she's much better at keeping her opinions to herself while broadcasting than Roger Bolton and she reads out views she almost certainly doesn't agree with without the Boltonian distancing tone. If only she hadn't humiliated the petty, vindictive, defensive BBC, a BBC that bears grudges.

Not that I'm stirring...

Talking Trump (BBC-style)

The latest BBC departee to speak out - Mr Mark Mardell, formerly of The World This Weekend - said this on yesterday's Feedback:

I mean, my worry about the reporting of Trump is that people behave...and, I mean, I'm not saying he's not a strange man, he's not weird, and he's not an unusual president. He is. And I'm certainly not saying we should be bland and not say all of that. But a lot of the reporting over the years seems to me just going, "Wow, that's amazing! How extraordinary! My jaw's dropped again and again and again!" And it's like you drag an elephant on the stage and say, "Look at that funny long nose! Look at those tasks!" 

Now, if anything describes Jon Sopel's reporting over the past four years, this is surely it. Jon has always been very much a "Wow!" and "OMG!" man when it comes to reporting Donald Trump. 

His jaw has been in permanent freefall for at least four years now. 

Given that Mark Mardell preceded Jon Sopel as the BBC's North America Editor, was Mark having a pop at his far less high-minded successor there? 

I strongly suspect that he was. (Bitterness is quite a common thing).

Anyhow, Mark continued:

But you're absolutely right. I think people got this election wrong, or got the support for Trump wrong...because people weren't going out and talking to people, finding out what they believe, why they support Trump. To me that's the heart of what journalism should be about, not understanding what's obvious but the difficult things, understanding why...you know, he is a strange man, he is a strange president. Why do people still vote for him in such huge numbers? It's essential to go out and talk to people.

Hm. I've heard enough of Mark Mardell's encounters with "strange" people who vote Republican or UKIP or Leave (etc) over the years to suspect that 'talking to people' isn't quite the guarantor of accuracy or foresight or impartiality that he claims it is if you work at the BBC. 

Camus, the Plague, and the BBC

 

In his latest Spectator piece Rod Liddle, as is his way, sums up what many of us feel about the BBC so well that he pretty much renders further comment from us superfluous. 

And his way with words remains a thing of wonder, e.g. "The distance the BBC travels each day from the values of its core audience will soon be measurable only in astronomical units." 

(At the moment I can only dream of being at least 3.9 parsecs away from Newsnight's Lewis Goodall - a man whose unbearable smugness would embarrass Douglas Adams's Zaphod Beeblebrox).

Even Rod sounded somewhat staggered though by Radio 4's latest, 'woke' dramatisation of Albert Camus's masterpiece The  Plague. 

As he describes it, for no comprehensible reason other than 'wokeness', the main character in the novel - a man - was turned into a woman, and placed in a lesbian relationship with her "wife". The setting, however, remained late 1940s Algeria with "its Arab population" (mentioned in the broadcast) - not a time or a place exactly known for its acceptance of openly lesbian couples or same-self marriages (or - by the by - for its 160,000-strong Jewish population which, having survived Vichy France's collusion with the Nazis over the Holocaust, was then getting driven out following the formation of the state of Israel. As you probably know, there are now no Jews in Algeria).

It's not that a story about lesbian relationships in 1940s plague-stricken Algeria mightn't have made for an interesting original drama, Rod argued, but that this trivialising piggy-backing on Camus has nothing to do with Camus and is simply silly.

Rod quotes the head of BBC audio drama, Alison Hindell, sticking up for the changes on Feedback and saying that they provided "contemporary resonance". 

Rod strongly doubted that, suspecting its pointless "contemporary resonance" barely extended beyond London dinners parties hosted by and attended by BBC production teams. 

Apparently, according to Rod, Ms Hindell rejects such charges of London/metropolitan-elite-centric groupthink by saying...drum roll...that the BBC will be running A Season of Nigerian Literature soon. Therefore, a season of Nigerian literature proves that the BBC isn't part of BBC, London-based groupthink. 

QED. 

Now, I'm just reading Rod here and enjoying him and nodding my head and raising my eyebrows and pursing my lips at the appropriate moments, but I didn't hear that Alison Hindell Feedback interview myself. Did she really show herself up like that? I think I ought to do her the courtesy of at least checking first...

Well, she certainly did play the "contemporary resonance" defence: "It helped the play feel feel like it was in The Now"...

...but she also raised a "practical" advantage to changing the sex of Dr. Bernard Rieux from a man to a woman: that otherwise the cast would have been all-male and that "voice differentiation and distinguishability" helps "the ear of the audience to follow the story". 

That's reasonable. It spoils listening to radio dramas if you can't tell who's speaking because the voices are too similar, though, that said, (a) I can imagine it being far from impossible to differentiate the voices of an all-male cast and (b) I don't think it really answers the question of why it had to be the main character rather than some of the minor, more plausibly changeable characters, who got changed.  

(Feedback's Roger Bolton stuck entirely to the change of sex question, not the ahistorical-seeming same-sex in Algeria issue).

Her other defence of why it was "a perfectly legitimate choice" to change the sex of the main character was literally this: 

There are a lot of women doctors in the world today. 

Interestingly, she said that this was the first time Camus's estate has given its blessing to a radio adaptation - which certainly sounds very much like a French artistic estate doing something French artistic estates rarely do, and (if you accept Camus's estate as speaking for the long-dead Albert) somewhat undercuts the charge that the play goes entirely against the spirt of Camus.

And she argued - quite accurately - that this kind of mucking around with original texts (changing the sex of main characters, using ethnic voices - here a Jamaican voice instead of a French-Algerian voice, etc) is now commonplace on the stage and in radio adaptations, reinterpreting things to fit "the social mores and expectations of the world the we live in today". (The world she lives in, some might say). 

Still, the playwright who adapted The Plague for Radio 4, Neil Bartlett, is no novice. He's a man with a long back history, so they didn't just grab him off a far-left street protest. It was a theatrical work first, and featured a female actress as the male main character -  the same Jamaican-born actress (Sara Powell) as on Radio 4....

....ah, I'm seeing, casting-wise, light-bulb-going-on, just why Neil would probably be just the man for the BBC at the moment!

Obviously, using one radio adaptation to represent the abyss into which 'woke' BBC drama has fallen doesn't amount to a clinching argument. It's a mere swallow in the wind. But it's a telling swallow nonetheless.

On Rod's point that Ms Hindell rejected charges of London/metropolitan-elite-centric groupthink by saying...drum roll...that the BBC will be running A Season of Nigerian Literature soon...

...well, in fairness to her, that did come about because of Feedback presenter Roger Bolton - a long-time BBC left-winger - raising the 'London/metropolitan-elite-centric groupthink' by asking her, of all things, whether Radio 4 audiences are far too South East England-focused and...guess what?...yes, not what people in the North or Cornwall or in seaside resorts like Morecambe might think, but what BAME listeners might think of that. 

Listening to the Radio 4 play itself, my main disappointment was on how pedestrian it was. Camus's The Plague struck me as a profound masterpiece when I first read it thirty years ago. This just struck me as a plodding radio play with intrusive music. 'Why was it so clunking and banal?' was my main question. 

Sarah Sands sounds off

Today editor Sarah Sands sounded off on this week's Feedback over the question of the Government's decision to boycott the Today programme in protest against BBC bias:

Well, what's happened is that you can see the Government won a big majority, it sees Labour in disarray and it thinks it's a pretty good time to put the foot on the windpipe of an independent broadcaster. 

So the strategy, as we know, is quite Trumpian - to delegitimise the BBC. 

So, at the moment that's the policy. I  don't think it will last because it's shortsighted and its' pretty discourteous, I think, to our 7 million politically engaged and intelligent listeners. 

Comparing apples and pairs

"Hello, and welcome to Newswatch with me, Samira Ahmed"

I was aware that Newswatch's Samira Ahmed was pursuing an unfair pay case against the BBC but I didn't ever read what it was specifically about until this week: 

She's complaining that the very famous Jeremy Vine is paid £3,000 for each edition of Points of View while she gets 'just' £440 for each edition of Newswatch, which she considered "equivalent work". 

The BBC's first defence was to say that Newswatch is far more niche than Points of View, to which Samira's side countered that Newswatch (by being on the BBC News Channel on Friday night and BBC Breakfast the following morning actually gets higher viewing figures (though that is debatable). 

Then the BBC argued that Points of View is a long-established entertainment programme requiring (and having) a presenter with broad public appeal, while Newswatch is a news programme presented by a journalist. Plus Jeremy Vine is a household name; Samira Ahmed (despite the best efforts of this blog!) isn't. 

That's surely the BBC's best line of defence, and I think that Gary Oliver at The Conservative Woman nails it by comparing the matter to the equivalent case of two of Samira and Jeremy's respective predecessors: Raymond Snoddy of Newswatch and Terry Wogan of Points of View. Who would seriously have argued, back in the day, that Old Tel should have been paid the same as Ray Snoddy? No one sensible, I'd bet.

Incidentally, though no one seems to mention this, there's also Feedback to consider. 

The big question here, surely, is: 

What does Roger Bolton get paid per edition, and how does his pay compare to Samira Ahmed's? 

Roger's radio programme is twice as long as Samira's but Samira's TV programme runs for considerably more of the year. I'm guessing Roger will be much nearer the £440 a week mark than the £3,000 mark. (No offence, Roger!). But is that the case?

More feedback

Meanwhile...

Before going out wining and dining tonight, I transcribed the following. It's from today's Feedback and saw Roger Bolton putting various points from clearly ardent Remain-supporting Radio 4 listeners to Gavin Allen, the BBC's Head of News Output. (Very Radio 4). 

Roger Bolton: One of the key executives who has to solve this conundrum is the BBC's Head of News Output Gavin Allen, who joined me earlier to answer your questions. I began, however.with the general election coverage. Will it be different this time?
Gavin Allen: I think there are certain elements that inevitably will underpin what we do. So to be trusted, to be accurate, obviously to be duly impartial, etc, to explore policies I do think we are constantly looking at the audiences and trying to work out what is it that audiences need from us, what essentially is useful about our coverage. So I do think there will be an even more relentless focus on, when we are doing something, when we are asking a question in an interview, when we're pulling together a piece, what is of use about this to our audience and if we're doing it again that sort of Inside the Beltway way - to win an argument, to score a point - I do think that's the point we have to row back and think 'Hold on a sec. What are we doing that question for?'.

Listener 1: My name is Alan Walker. I am deeply concerned about the misleading use of vox pops in virtually all news bulletins. These vox pops are routinely presented as representative opinions but in statistical terms they represent nothing.

Roger Bolton: So do you accept Alan Walker's point that vox pops are in statistical terms...they represent nothing?

Gavin Allen: Yes, in a word, of course...

Roger Bolton: (laughing) But why do them? Why do them?
Gavin Allen: But of course they're not statistically representative, but there are indicative. And, look, I'm not going to sit here and defend every vox pop that the media does. I think almost the caricature of a vox pop of 'I'm for a general election, I'm against general election, I'm not sure what I think about the general election' is sort of useless. I totally accept that. But, equally, we don't mislead the public. I think a lot of people do get their views from hearing opinions from other people, not just from politicians or from people in authority. 

Listener 2: Lucy Deech. I feel very strongly that the BBC is perpetuating the myth of People versus Parliament and that you, the BBC, need to take responsibility for the way you are choosing to report the current national crisis. By always interviewing members of the public who voted Leave and who hold extreme views and use extreme language it is giving the impression that these people represent 'the public'.

Roger Bolton: What's your response to Lucy Deech?
Gavin Allen: We do have to take responsibility for what we do, of course, but I think we should be careful about using words like 'extreme'. Is it 'extreme' to be pro No deal? Is it extreme to want a second referendum or to just simply remain?

Roger Bolton: (interrupting) It might be extreme to express those views in terms like 'surrender', 'betrayal' and these sort of terms, which worry a wider audience. I mean, Lucy has a particular point but, more widely, there is a worry about this sort of language. Can you do anything about it?
Gavin Allen: Well, if it's being spoken by the Prime Minister, barring the idea of we just veto what he's saying it and somehow censor it, you have to put it into context. Everything is about explanation in context. And, so, even the framing of People versus Parliament, it's not the BBC that is framing it in that way. We are trying to convey that in the case of the Government they are clearly or were clearly trying to portray it as a People versus this dead Parliament in their views. So it's important that we're explaining that to the public. But there's a difference between explaining something - conveying it and giving it context and, indeed, giving it the sort of rebuttal side to that - and the BBC itself espousing that view. 

Roger Bolton: Some of our listeners are bothered that you're giving too much emphasis to the more extreme points. Often the middle is squeezed. Do you think there's a danger that has happened and continues to happen?

Gavin Allen: I think, more widely than that, I think there is a danger that the media generally does love issues that it can portray as black or white when, truth be told, almost all issues are pretty grey and there are nuances to everything. So whilst I think it is true that we can oversimplify, I don't think with the case of Brexit that hearing from people at, I think, the sort of polarities of the argument...I don't think think it's extreme again....but I don't think we've hollowed-out the middle. What's interesting is that if you talk to psephologists they will say that, actually, a lot of opinion is congregating at one end or the other. But that doesn't mean that we ignore though who aren't at those ends. You have to hear the full breadth of views.

Listener 3: My name is Peter Ward and I'm calling from West Wales. We often hear on BBC News reports of 'sources' or 'comments made off the record'. I am really impressed by your correspondents' inside knowledge, but the constant drip, drip of unattributed briefings, primarily from within the Government, which they report, is distorting the boundaries between news, speculation and carefully targeted misinformation. My question is: Will the BBC consider a policy of refusing to report unattributed gossip, speculation and manipulation?

Roger Bolton: So, Gavin Allen, will you?

Gavin Allen: Well, obviously, we're not going to report gossip, in that way, in those bold terms, but the sort of short answer, again, is probably 'No' to that commitment. I think sources, unattributed sources or anonymous sources, it is a really difficult area for journalism - much more wide than the BBC - and it is important we are as clear as we possibly can be with audiences of who is saying this - Is this a junior minister. Is this someone close to Boris Johnson? - which is terribly vague, and often means Boris Johnson himself or his senior advisor. Even terms like 'special advisor to' is probably alien to most people. But, equally, you also have to accept that people like Laura Kuenssberg are expert at what they do as the Political Editor of the BBC. She makes a judgement. She doesn't just get a comment from Person A and just parrot it blindly. She's bouncing that off against whatever other information that she's getting, where does that sit within the sort of political viewpoints that she's hearing, and makes a judgement as to how to convey that to the audience. But she's not just saying it's a fact. She is saying that Number 10 is briefing that dot, dot, dot. 

Roger Bolton: Do you believe that we should, the BBC in particular, should pay less attention to off the record briefings? Or, in a more radical sense, say "unless I can report who said this I'm not going to say it"?

Gavin Allen: I think the latter is....Look, in an ideal world, yes, of course, everyone would be on the record, everyone would give their name and we would simply report what they said or they'd say in their own words. The truth is you won't get briefings on that basis, and there are a lot of briefings that are incredibly useful for the audience to know. But the key is we are not blind to the fact that, yes, of course, people are trying to play us, people are trying to frame the debate in exactly the way they want it framed. But that is about the expertise of our journalists to see through that, to make that judgement.

Listener 4: James Fairnam. At this year's Edinburgh Festival Dorothy Byrne, head of Channel 4 News, said news organisation should "call out liars". In this general election, will the BBC stand up for the truth and "call out liars"?

Gavin Allen:  Going back to the Dorothy point, it was a brilliant speech, it was a funny speech, it made a lot of very important points but, no, I don't think it helps in... in fact, I really, firmly, don't think it helps...for the BBC to wade in to what is already a pretty toxic, at times, political discourse and public discourse and be calling people out as "liars" and imputing motives behind them. Absolutely, via Reality Check, we'll say really clearly when something is inaccurate, untrue, misleading, etc. but "liar" is such a weighted word. And it's not timidity. I just think you undermine your own impartiality, undermine actually what is useful political discourse - to hear other people's viewpoints without calling someone "a fascist" or "a liar". I so see how that serves the public or the public debate.

Roger Bolton: My thanks to Gavin Allen, Head of BBC News Output, who came in on his birthday to do that interview. Must have made his day!

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.

Radio 4 listeners I

The main story on tonight's Feedback was the BBC''s coverage of Extinction Rebellion. 

If the range of voices chosen by Feedback was representative then Feedback's complaint bag is bulging with pro-XR people griping that the BBC isn't covering their rebellion anywhere near enough. 

I did rather admire the listener who complained that Radio 4 had ignored the Met's clearing of the protests on Monday evening. She'd obviously monitored the stations output during Monday night and through most of Tuesday. She said The World Tonight hadn't reported it, the following morning's Today hadn't reported it, nor had The World at One. PM reported it in its headlines, and Radio 4's Six O'Clock News reported it 20 minutes in. I checked TV Eyes to see if she was faking it, but she wasn't. She was right in every respect.

Such complainants could, of course, be activists writing in as part of a campaign or just your average Radio 4 listener. We'll probably never know for sure.

Anyhow, Roger talked to an ex-BBC journalist turned academic, who was largely sympathetic to the XR-friendly listeners' complaints - as, indeed, sounded Roger himself.

It's an odd programme at times. I still think Newswatch does it better. 

"Investigating Extremism on Radio 4"

Freya from 120 db (one of the women featured)

Echo chambers don't just apply to social media - despite what you might hear on Lord Hall's mainstream media. 

As the whole Trump-Russia conspiracy stuff showed, the mainstream media can be just as bad, if not worse - especially because they are meant to be professionals and have vast reserves of money to fund their 'trusted' reporting.

Sometimes, however, the two echo chamber worlds meet. 

Radio 4's Feedback, for example, is increasingly the venting place for the left-liberal section of UK Twitter's collective spleen - at least as far as griping about the BBC and right-wingers, climate change deniers, social conservatives and John Humphrys (etc) goes.

And poor Roger Bolton increasing sounds like a ventriloquist's dummy for such people  - though once, if you recall, he actually said on air that he smelt a campaign behind one such campaign. 

This week's edition began with another collective Twitter outcry from the usual echo chambers: Why oh why was the BBC Radio 4 "giving a platform" to "neo-Nazis" and "friends of Tommy Robinson"? Doesn't the BBC risk "giving legitimacy" to (what Roger called) "such divisive figures"?

The programme in question was the "controversial" (pace Roger Bolton) Radio 4 documentary In the Right, broadcast this past week.

"Should these voices be heard on BBC radio?", asked Roger.

Who were the voices that the echo chamber wanted silenced, even before the programme went out? Well, people like YouTube campaigner Lauren Southern and 'Panodrama' star Lucy Brown (the young lady John Sweeney famously treated to a lot of drinks) - "a former associate of the far-right figure Tommy Robinson", as Roger called her.

Some Feedback commenters though, on actually hearing the programme, felt it uncovered an important, under-reported story - which was also the BBC staffers' response later. 

Again, we're entering 'mad world' territory here. The idea that a (left-liberal) BBC Radio 4 documentary hosted by someone from the (left-liberal) open-Democracy website would be giving such "reactionary" women a free and unedited platform without (left-liberal) editorialising is preposterous.

It was presenter Lara Whyte's personal view ultimately, channelled via the BBC, and she gradually made that view crystal clear.

The programme might have tried to give these 'far-right' women some justice, but that justice would never be anything other than heavily circumscribed by Lara & Co's telling of it.

Now, on the opposite end of social media (nearer to us), there have been very different opinions about this programme. 

(So it's been "controversial" for reasons other than those mentioned by Feedback!).

Though some welcomed the programme for giving the likes of Lauren and Lucy a tiny bit of BBC airtime (the very thing the other side got so cross about), it's been mostly about 'our gals' getting 'stitched up' by the BBC and a presenter - from the Soros-funded openDemocracy website - making her ultimate disapproval of these right-wing women clear.

So, are Lauren Southern and "Nazi necklace"-wearing 'Friend of Tommy' Lucy Brown genuinely far-right and dangerous? Or are they being smeared?

(Lucy, for one, thinks that Lara and the BBC smeared her). 

Such questions, of course, won't concern Roger Bolton's Feedback, because such questions would never arise in the massively-overlapping Venn diagrams that are beginning to overwhelm the programme, and the BBC as a whole. But should they concern us?

Reality checking

Feedback time.

Readers with long memories might recall various posts here about Professor Justin Lewis of Cardiff University, including the following:

The biases of Professor Justin Lewis

Small world

Why Cardiff University's claims of BBC 'right-wing' 'impartiality' are not to be believed

Have you forgotten something, Cardiff Uni?

To boldly go...into the 'Independent' comments section

To summarise: Professor Lewis has been involved in many reports about media bias over the years, including ones about the BBC. He 'found' (a) that the BBC was pro-Iraq War, (b) that the media exaggerates the threat from Islamic terrorism, (c) that the media gives Muslims a bad press...

...and (d) that the BBC is pro-Eurosceptic, and (e) pro-Conservative, and (f) pro-right wing think tanks.

Yes, really.

Despite this, he remains broadly supportive of the BBC. 

But he's anti-consumer capitalism, and believes that we must "change the way we organise media and communications" to get ourselves beyond consumer capitalism. 

Knowing all of this about Professor Lewis, you can probably imagine my surprise on hearing Roger Bolton, whilst discussing Peter Lilley & Chris Morris and the BBC's Reality Check, preface his interview by saying:  

Time for me to turn to an impartial journalistic expert. He's Justin Lewis, a Professor of Journalism. He spoke to me from his office at Cardiff University.

Astonishing!

And guess what? Professor Lewis is a fan of the BBC's Reality Check and stuck up for Chris Morris. 

Moreover, he speaks the same language that leading Remain critics of the BBC speak when it comes to the question of BBC impartiality on issues like Brexit. 

********

Here's a transcript. 

Fair does to Roger Bolton for putting some reasonable points along the way, but Professor Lewis - the "impartial expert" - didn't surprise me in anything he said, and some of it struck me as being slightly sinister:

********

Roger Bolton: I asked him whether he thought the BBC's reality check was worthwhile.

Justin Lewis: I think it's a very valuable piece of public service broadcasting. I think that most listeners find it difficult, I think, in an age when they hear politicians on either side debating an issue, and you get that tit-for-tat argument, especially around issues like Brexit or the economy. What they want to know, I think, is: what does impartial expert opinion say on this? Is there a consensual view, and what it that? So I think actually Fact Check is an extremely useful thing to do.

Roger Bolton: If there is, indeed, anything impartial. This seems to be one of those issues where impartiality is almost impossible. Both sides believe they're right. Both sides immediately condemn anybody who questions what they do as being obviously of the other side.

Justin Lewis: Absolutely. And I think it's one of those issues where objectivity and impartiality push you in different directions. If you want to be objective you have to report what you think of as the most likely or plausible version of the truth is, but if you're being impartial you don't really pay as much regard to that. You just give both sides equal say, regardless of whether one side has more evidence on it than the other. I guess we saw that around climate change. For a long time climate change was reported as a controversy, and you would get roughly equal time for sides pointing out that there might be something called climate change and those that disagreed with that. Now the BBC, I know, has moved on from that, as many broadcasters have, and acknowledged that the scientific consensus is so overwhelming on one side that there's no longer really a controversy to be discussed.

Roger Bolton: This comes to be...the difficulty, it seems to me, it's called 'a reality check'. Some would call in a 'fact check'.

Justin Lewis: Yes.

Roger Bolton:  Actually, in some ways, if you're not careful, it can be a view of a judgment. When we're talking about what will happen in the future about negotiations, what is likely to happen, it's very difficult to have a reality check about a judgment - something that would rise in future negotiations.

Justin Lewis: That's true, but I think what people like Chris Morris, and other people who do fact checking, try to do is point out what the factual basis is for making a judgment one way or another, and I think he was quite careful actually, when he was challenged, to say what he was trying to do was establish what we know.

Roger Bolton:  But it was unfortunate, wasn't it, to have a situation in which a supposed reality checker gets involved in an argument with a politician? It's not ideal. But it was an accident waiting to happen. I've noticed on other occasions, for example, when a Today presenter would interview, let's say, the Prime Minister or someone else, and afterwards you'd come to Laura Kuenssberg who was asked, basically, 'What do you make of that? And do you think she's telling the truth? What's she not saying?'. If you do an interview with someone and then immediately afterwards you have a reality checker the impression is, well, 'actually you shouldn't really trust this politician but you should trust us'.

Justin Lewis: Brexit is an issue where this was inevitably going to happen, because this is an issue where there is quite a large body of evidence and some of that evidence clearly favours one side, some might favour the other side, but I don't think one can just say, well, you've got two equal bodies of evidence here. I think it's the responsibility of a broadcaster to basically say here's where the evidence appears to lie, now you can hold this view or this view but we're going to tell you what we think the evidence says. And I think listeners want to hear more of that.I think they're a little tired of getting the kind of claim and counterclaim around issues when it's very difficult to make any kind of judgment about what is true and what isn't. So I think a good faith attempt to try and establish what the factual parameters are around an issue is absolutely something the BBC should be doing.

Roger Bolton: And do you think it's more important now in the age of what we call fake news that we need reality checks in a way almost more than ever before?

Justin Lewis: We really do. I mean, we have too much opinion now and not enough facts. And I think there is a real...a  real hunger, I think, for reporting that focuses more on a kind of sober analysis - or even not necessarily a sober analysis, any analysis - of where the factual evidence lies, and less claim and counterclaim, because we get an awful lot of tit-for-tat - this politician says that, this politician says the opposite - and it really doesn't leave us anywhere the wiser.

Roger Bolton: But the danger for broadcasters is that they get drawn into a situation where they're portrayed as the opposition. So a broadcaster in a situation of a highly contested area has got to be very careful that pointing out the reality of the facts doesn't lead them into providing the opposition to one of the sides, one or other of the sides.

Julian Lewis: I think that's true, but I think we have to ask ourselves: suppose you have two particular viewpoints and one side says something that is demonstrably untrue. Should an impartial broadcaster just sit back and make no comment, or should it say, actually, we know that is demonstrably untrue,  or here is an expert to say that it's demonstrably untrue. I think we do need to know that, If we don't do that then really anybody's view becomes as valid as anybody else's. And I think in this instance the BBC has to bite the bullet a little bit and be an adjudicator. And it's going to get really criticised for doing it, we know that, but I think it's the responsibility of a public service broadcaster .

Roger Bolton: Our thanks to Professor Justin Lewis. And if you go to the BBC's Reality Check website you can find lots more statistics to argue over.

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Maybe next week's edition of Feedback will have Lord Lilley on to give his view of Professor Lewis!!

The back with two beasts

Below you'll find two transcripts concerning the BBC's editorial policy regarding climate change. 

I'll use this post then to shove in my tuppenceworth. 

I've said before that I find that BBC TV's Newswatch and Radio 4's Feedback are different beasts. You're more likely to hear complaints of the kind we make on Newswatch than you are on Feedback. And Newswatch tries to project a more impartial style than Feedback, with Samira Ahmed taking more care to appear even-handed than Roger Bolton. And Feedback does seem to me to be more agenda-driven than Newswatch. 

So here you'll see that Newswatch features viewers' opinions from both sides of the climate debate while Feedback features just one side. And you'll see Samira Ahmed put questions from both sides too (albeit rather half-heartedly from the 'deniers' side') while Roger Bolton is relentlessly one-sided in his questions. And Feedback has been banging this one-sided drum for a long time now, leading the charge against 'deniers' being allowed on the station for at least a couple of years. 

That said, it was Roger Bolton who really made the BBC boss squirm this week. You'll note that both James Stephenson and Richard Burgess (one of whom said much the same as the other!) were reluctant to admit that the BBC got it wrong despite the BBC itself already having said that they got it wrong, with Mr Stephenson wriggling in particularly awkward ways and Roger calling him out on his use of weasel words and then embarrassing him even further by pointing out to listeners that he didn't look comfortable answering a particular question. All credit to Roger Bolton for not being a lickspittle there. 

And credit to Feedback too for highlighting the scientific ignorance of BBC Radio 4 journalists - bulletin writers and senior presenters, including Feedback bete noire John Humphrys and Sarah Montague. (That was the thing James Stephenson got particularly uptight about). It was a serious lapse in accuracy on Radio 4's part - and if both John and Sarah were involved that didn't mean it was simply a problem with one programme. It must have been both Today and The World at One. 

To end: One thing that unites both Feedback and Newswatch is their consistent use of 'denier', without inverted commas. This old term of abuse is evidently now an acceptable description for BBC presenters and editors to use. You'll see that in both transcripts. Why is that acceptable?

The Alternative Factor

Last week's Observer featured a three-page piece by Miranda Sawyer headlined Trouble at the Today programme: is it losing its grip? 

I had to smile at the tone of it. It reminded me, ironically, of BBC reporting. 

Miranda presented herself as someone dispassionately, you might almost say 'impartially', attempting to get to grips with the growing criticism of Today. 

But she then proceeded to give all the programme's critics free rein, and to slip in her own partisan barbs in support of those critics, and to frame her 'balancing' challenging interview with Today editor Sarah Sands with Sarah Sands-undermining comments.

(If she wasn't very clearly being deadly earnest, I might have suspected her of brilliant satire here. As it was, she was being deadly earnest, so I'll just add that if Mark Mardell were to step aside from The World This Weekend she'd surely be his ideal replacement!)

Anyhow, all of the criticism of Today in her piece came from a certain type of person - socially liberal, pro-EU, left-wing...

...though this probably wasn't particularly surprising given that the criticisms she aired derived entirely from reading her own media & social media feeds - i.e. her own echo chambers.

When you boil it down to its essentials, her piece makes a number of points:

Firstly, these people are complaining that Today gives overly-aggressive interviews to people they like and underly-aggressive interviews to people they don't like. They'd prefer it the other way round. 

Secondly, they want the BBC to cut all pretence of balance when it comes to debates on contentious issues (including climate change and Brexit). They want primacy given to experts who agree with their point of view and want non-experts (or wrongheaded experts) who don't share their point of view to be either shunned or scolded by the BBC. 

Thirdly, they want shut of John Humphrys because he's not in tune with the #metoo spirit of the age and they think he's pro-Brexit (and shows it).

This kind of thing is like entering a hall of mirrors.

And today's Feedback on Radio 4 was a hall of mirrors within a hall of mirrors, with that Observer piece providing a launch pad, and various selected like-minded listeners piling in against John Humphrys, and with Sarah Sands facing a probing from Roger Bolton.

(Their discussion about John Humphrys, with Roger leading the charge against the Today veteran, reminded me of several ITBB posts past where I kept on wondering aloud about whether Roger Bolton had it in for John Humphrys - eg. here, here, here and here for starters).

I thought of transcribing it for you but Sarah Sands's style of speaking is too conversational to render easily without wasting hours doing so, but I'll try to distil her merrily rambling responses nonetheless:

She blames a more polarised news landscape and an increasing intolerance of views that aren't shared and - doubtless having a dig at Miranda Sawyer - says that people are building up 'evidence' based on their Facebook feeds.

She defended herself from the charge (raised by Roger Bolton) that she was siding with pro-Brexit types by being shown on images posted on social media being at a lunch party with Nigel Farage and Liam Fox by saying she was with Sadiq Khan at that same event.

(She didn't say in her defence -and Roger didn't add in her defence - that she was openly for Remain in the referendum).

And she defended John Humphrys against further charges of being out-of-touch on social issues by citing praise for him, putting his remarks in context and saying that when it comes to holding power to account there's still no one quite like John.

You'll have to listen to it for yourselves to get the full effect but - like that Observer piece - this Feedback edition, ringmastered by Roger Bolton, felt like entering an alternate universe.

Is the BBC biased against Jeremy Corbyn?

'Is the BBC biased against Jeremy Corbyn?' was the questioned asked by Roger Bolton on today's Feedback in the light of a three-part Radio 4 series called The Long March of Jeremy Corbyn.

We heard from four listeners:

• My name is Karen Lakin. I listened with interest to 'The Long March of Jeremy Corbyn' this week and I was relieved by the balanced approach of the reporting. It highlighted to me the not-so-subtle misrepresentation of Jeremy. 
• Duncan Shipley, Dalton. Hatchet job drivel dressed up as documentary show. Extremely weak.
• Nick Hyder. 'The Long March of Jeremy Corbyn' is an essential listen.
• Simon Warner. Although Steve Richards did make a worthy attempt to create a balance portrait of Jeremy Corbyn I rather felt as if the programme was light on centrist voices within the party. The usual suspects, like Owen Smith and Margaret Hodge, did stand-up and express a more negative reading of the Labour leader but the programme more generally relied on voices who were in favour of what he was doing - Len McCluskey, John McDonnell and so on.  

So plenty of praise there, including for the programme's impartiality, but also complaints of bias from both sides of the Labour divide - which cancelled each other out in true 'complaints from both sides' fashion. (Very nice for the BBC).

The overall effect (accidental? deliberate in the juxtaposition of self-cancelling voices?) was to make this programme sound as if it actually might have been impartial (as least as far as Labour's factions go). 

What followed was an interview with Steve Richards, transcribed below. It too had the effect of making it seem that The Long March of Jeremy Corbyn is a particularly fine piece of impartial BBC broadcasting (as least as far as Labour's factions go).

But what of the BBC as a whole?

Steve says the BBC failed to grasp the significance of Jeremy Corbyn to begin with. It underestimated him. Only the 2017 election changed that.

That seems true to me, though Brexit has probably had something to do with the fluctuations in the BBC's attitude to him too.

Steve also says that the BBC has been excellent at giving voice to the range of Corbyn supporters, thus changing the political debate....

....which is an interesting idea.

It's an idea that could easily (and mischievously) find itself recast to parody a familiar line of argument from the likes of Samira Ahmed & Co. about Nigel Farage and his (in)famous 31 appearances on Question Time: By so heavily platforming voices from the far-left, the BBC is guilty of normalising them.

I have to say though that I'm personally entirely comfortable with hearing the broadest range of views possible, and don't begrudge Owen, Ellie Mae, Rachel, former Newsnight Paul, Kerry-Anne & Co. their generous season tickets to appear on the BBC in the slightest. The more the merrier I say.

Roger Bolton (a man with a left-wing past) then pursued a fascinating line of argument over how the Left has been accustomed to seeing the BBC as a bulwark to balance out the right-wing press.

I think there's something in that too.

By implication, that's surely also why the further reaches of them are now so constantly angry at the BBC for not being sufficiently enthusiastic about/reverential towards oooh Jeremy Corbyn.

And that's surely why the likes of (far-left) Media Lens - very early, lonely pioneers of this kind of left-wing BBC-bashing - have always singled the BBC out, along with the Guardian and the Independent, for especially intense criticism. They seem to see them as 'traitors' - a soggy, left-liberal 'centre ground' constantly letting the Left down by not being even more biased in their direction than they already are.

(The newer crowd, however, appear more likely to unthinkingly accuse the BBC of being 'Tories' or 'right-wing', being less grounded in intellectual politics than those old-school Media Lens activist types.)

And something similar might well explain the remarkable Lord Adonis/Alastair Campbell double act and their stupendous campaign against the BBC's pro-Brexit (sic) bias.

Roger Bolton has cracked it!

Anyhow, that's more than enough of that. Here's the transcript:

ROGER BOLTON: The series has three different presenters. The first programme was presented by the political journalist Steve Richards, who two years ago was the man behind a previous series called simply The Corbyn Story. I asked him why he felt now was a good time for another programme. 

STEVE RICHARDS: I made a series of three programmes about Jeremy Corbyn at the end of his first year as Labour leader, and it seemed to me that at the end of the first year since the general election there was an equally compelling case to re-visit Jeremy Corbyn. It seems to me he is still living through the most extraordinary story in British politics since 1945 - the rise of this figure who had been on the backbenches now established as a leader after that election, which I consider to be a success for him even though he lost. And so, he is just fascinating and I wanted to follow through that curiosity for a second time. 

ROGER BOLTON: There's a lot of suspicion of though the BBC - not necessarily of you. A lot of emails to us talk about you being extraordinarily fair-minded - but that's not the BBC. I mean there are emails like, "I see the BBC has a whole series now of Corbyn-bashing", "hatchet job drivel dressed up as a documentary show", etc, etc. So there's a great suspicion. Do you think on the whole that the media have been, and the BBC has been, fair to Corbyn? 

STEVE RICHARDS: Well, it depends what you mean by 'fair'. I think at the beginning all media outlets, including the BBC, struggled to quite recognise the significance. That was up until the general election. I think he was viewed in the media through the prism of 'this is all gonna be heading for disaster'. I think since the election there has been a greater understanding of his significance. And the BBC now - and this I think is a healthy thing and one of the consequences of Corbyn - are very good actually at putting up a range of voices who are close supporters of his, and that has changed the political dialogue on the media.  Not surprisingly it did take time. 

ROGER BOLTON: But you'll never satisfy the Left in one way, will you? They look and say the media is biased against it. They look at the Daily Mail, they look at the Daily Telegraph, they look at the Sun, whatever, and, therefore, they look at the BBC, in a way, to counteract the balance. 

STEVE RICHARDS: Well, certainly those who thought my programme was biased against Jeremy Corbyn should listen to it again. I mean, the majority of contributions...Because we were trying to understand him you have to speak to those who are close to him and, therefore, the majority of the contributions were from people trying to shed light on him from a quite sympathetic perspective. But, you're right. The role of the BBC is not counter the Daily Mail. The role of the BBC is to be  balanced and, therefore, you have to include other points of view as as a matter of duty. But also it would be an inaccurate picture to present the current situation within the Labour Party as some sort of harmonious paradise. I mean, that would be wrong. So the BBC has duties of impartiality that are well known but you also got to tell the story as it is in reality. 

ROGER BOLTON: Do you prefer making these sort of documentaries to doing straight interviews, in the sense that a lot of our listeners say a lot of political interviewing has become 'bang bang', 'yes, no', 'polarised positions'? Do you prefer though gradual exposition and exploration of ideas? 

STEVE RICHARDS: I love doing considered political journalism, at a time when politics is so fast-moving, but I think the interviewing is also...I agree with some of those listeners who think it's too much of a sort of shootout at the O.K. Corral style of political interviewing. And I wish in some ways that the interviews we did for the series could be put on a website or something because the interviews themselves, I think, are quite interesting, because if you just have a conversation with these people they engage with you... 

ROGER BOLTON:  But don't you think there's an additional problem here? That those who were operating from outside what was the political consensus need more time to have their ideas expressed or exposed? 

STEVE RICHARDS: I completely agree. And they need to be tested over time. And you have to get through all the cliches about, you know, 'back in the 1970s', you know, in the context of, say, that Corbyn programme. It's much more complicated and interesting than that. And that does take time and it needs space, And, if you've got three minutes you just say to Corbyn or McDonnell, 'You know, so you want to take us back to 1970 with nationalisation?', they'll say 'No, no, we're not. We want to do this, this and this', and it's over. So, yeah. I haven't thought about it like that before but the old consensus was familiar terrain for the interview and the listener, and this is all new, and it needs space. 

ROGER BOLTON: Our thanks to Steve Richards. 

To cover a protest or not to cover a protest....

The BBC News website currently has a UK political protest as one of its lead stories:

What protests, marches and demonstrations the BBC chooses to cover is a hot issue these days. Those whose protests don't get reported can become very angry at the BBC, and the BBC is facing more and more accusations of 'BBC bias' as a result - especially when other much (like this one) are given ample coverage?

Back in March the BBC's almost non-existent coverage of a day of anti-Brexit marches provoked a social media storm (starring Lord Adonis). 

And a couple of weekends ago a pro-Scottish independence march in Glasgow (which apparently drew between 40K and 80K attendees) and a pro-freedom of speech rally in London happening on the same day (which apparently drew around 4k attendees) also received the cold shoulder from the BBC, much to the fury of those taking part and those supporting each protest.

So why is the BBC giving this TUC-led rallies of "thousands" such prominence having given those either next to no coverage or no coverage whatsoever? 

Well, here's a transcript I prepared earlier (but didn't post) from the 30 March edition of Radio 4's Feedback in which the BBC's UK News Editor Richard Burgess lays out five criteria for assessing whether (or not) the BBC will cover a protest:

• How much of a live issue is it? 
• How much of a developing issue is it? 
• Is this march likely to bring about significant change? 
• Has it been influenced by very recent events? 
• Is there a real developing new story around this march?

Obviously some protests do meet those criteria. 

The 'Enough is Enough' protest by Jewish groups and various parliamentarians in late March is one example: Antisemitism in the Labour Party was a live issue, and a developing issue; the march could have brought about significant change; it was influenced by very recent events; and there most definitely was a real developing new story around that protest.

Others, however, don't meet those criteria.

BBC One (Monday to Friday): A Brexit Survey

As I said in the previous post, it's us who claim that the BBC is biased against Brexit who have the evidence. 

And here's some more...

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Using TV Eyes, I've tracked every mention of Brexit on BBC One over the past week (Monday-Friday).

As TV Eyes uses the London version of BBC One, the following includes BBC London news programmes too. 

65 results came up.

And here's what BBC One has been up to...

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Monday began (overnight) with two reports on a campaign by anti-Brexit campaigners to have a second referendum.

And then came a Hardtalk interview with an anti-Brexit Northern Irish politician (Monica McWilliams of the Women's Coalition (Sample - BBC interviewer: "Maybe one reason, for more than a year, it hasn't worked is because Brexit seems to be directly affecting the mood of people in Northern Ireland, because one of the biggest controversial and unknowns right now about Brexit is what it's going to do to the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. How big a factor is that, do you believe?" Monica McWilliams: "Huge, and it's - you've put your finger on it, it's unknown. It's the uncertainty, it has driven us back into silos that we did not need to go back into"). 

Further repeats of both followed. 

BBC Breakfast discussed Brexit in the course of a segment on farming. The BBC interviewer's question was "And that is one element of the cost, that the weather has been so bad when there is extra bedding and feed to pay for. A lot of uncertainty as well around Brexit, which will affect what farmers invest in" and the reply came" and the reply was negative and about the problems faced because "our biggest market is Europe". No one said anything optimistic about Brexit.

A later interview with the Manic Street Preachers promised they'd be "political" about Brexit, but, oddly, they didn't mention Brexit. So that was a damp squib (probably thank goodness). 

BBC One's News at Six cryptically tied in Brexit with the Windrush controversy. (John Pienaar: "This department is under pressure. Brexit is coming and they will be watched very closely as they deal with people in this country, individuals and families, many of whom have been here for you is").

BBC London's local news programme majored on "a senior business group [the Institute of Directors]...warning there's an "information drought" on Brexit - making it hard for companies to plan ahead". A company worrying about access to the Germany market was its focus. It wants something like the Single Market we have now to continue. Opposing voices weren't featured.

Soon after the same BBC London local news programme discussed the pressure on secondary school places in London. "All this is a real headache and a constant balancing act. House prices have an effect, Brexit has an effect", we learned. Quite what effect Brexit was having wasn't explained, but it was obviously somehow adding to the "real headache".

Next came this gem from Eastenders:

How can I say it? ..a con woman. Yeah! Ye... No, it's nothing to be proud of. I've been called worse. Well, why not try to prove them wrong by boosting the local economy, providing employment during these tough Brexit times, eh? I can get you your money, Mas. All of it. In a week. 

BBC London's late night news bulletin repeated the 'worried about Brexit' company and the IoD's concerns.

A repeat of Have I Got News For You mocked David Davis over his negotiations with the EU.

******

And God saw that it was biased and the evening and the morning were the second day, Tuesday.

And Tuesday began with some early morning good news:"The British pound has hit its highest level against the US dollar since the Brexit referendum in June 2016".

There was nothing else Brexit-related until a Stephen Lawrence documentary that evening featured  clips of a small white supremacist group in the UK chanting for repatriation and a black man saying that "Brexit has changed the nation" and "brought back these feelings of, 'Maybe I'm not part of this community'", thus tying Brexit to racism.

That night's News at Ten had John Pienaar on again, relating Brexit to the Windrush controversy. ("More broadly, this could make harder her mission of protecting Britain's standing and influence up to Brexit and beyond. A member of the negotiating team says that Europeans may fear harsh treatment when they assert their rights to stay in the country. Ministers would deny that, as they you would expect, but this has all come with a cost in moral authority, certainly to the Government, possibly also to the country").

******

And God saw that it was biased and the evening and the morning were the third day, Wednesday.

Overnight came extensive clips from a parliamentary committee interview about Cambridge Analytica, Brexit, Arron Banks and Leave.EU featuring the testimony of someone highly critical of the aforementioned. 

A business interview around 5.45 featured a newspaper report saying that if we get a decent Brexit deal it could see the UK outstrip the Eurozone. The response? It's all about uncertainty. It's "difficult to predict". Will we get a decent deal? That's "the big thing here". 

For Wednesday's BBC Breakfast, the Windrush-related angle was:

Questions about the competence of the Home Office and this morning. Also questions from Brussels about what all this says about how the Government will handle the registration of EU citizens who will be staying here after Brexit.

A business guest at 6.45 am was optimistic that we will get a Brexit deal and said "that has given a short-term slight stability to the outlook for Britain versus what we've had in the past." The BBC interview (looking on the dark side!) responded, "We know how quickly that can change, so if we're looking at this and thinking we're in a good position right now, how do we make the most of it and bank that rate?" 

A BBC Breakfast interview with Bill Gates about malaria saw the BBC immediately reminding him about his earlier plea that Brexit shouldn't lead to UK aid budgets to tackle malaria dealing slashed and asking him if he was "still concerned about that happening". Mr Gates refused to be drawn on that into making further derogatory remarks about Brexit.

A very brief news report then said:

British firm De La Rue has said it will not appeal against the Government's controversial decision to choose a Franco-Dutch company to make the new blue UK passports after Brexit. De La Rue, the current passport provider, said that it had "considered all the options", but would not challenge the move, which will see the half a billion pound contract handed to Gemalto, which has its headquarters in Amsterdam.

On BBC One's News at One we were being given the EU's perspective on the Windrush controversy: 

In Brussels, officials are watching with concern. The government's handling of the Windrush fiasco has not filled them with confidence about how EU nationals will be treated in the UK after Brexit.

That evening's BBC One News at Six covered the House of Lords voting down the government and demanding that the UK stay in the EU Customs Union. (The word "unelected" wasn't used). It wasn't good news for the Government and John Pienaar concluded by saying, "You may have thought the Battle of Brexit had gone quiet, but there are plenty of battles still to come. And the shape of Brexit and the authority of the government and the Prime Minister rest on the outcome". 

The same story was covered on that night's BBC One News at Ten with the same report.

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And God saw that it was biased and the evening and the morning were the fourth day, Thursday.

Naturally, overnight the BBC continued reporting the pro-EU Lords' defeat of the Government over the Customs Union.

And then a BBC Click episode about automation on farms. This was classic BBC as far as language about Brexit goes - e.g. (from the BBC presenter):

1. "Brexit threatens to cut down the number of people available to work on the land"
2. "There are fears about the availability of migrant workers post Brexit".

Brexit also got a mention on that evening's BBC One News at Six. Kamal Ahmed has been talking to Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England:

He said why this is a big year for Brexit and that would weigh heavily on their decision-making. The big picture, for people watching, is that, yes, prepare for a few interest rate rises over the next few years.

The story that a cross-party alliance of MPs will follow the Lords in forcing a vote to make the UK stay in the EU Customs Union was also a story on BBC One News at Six.

The One Show had a Brexit-related quip:

It would be nice if it was cold during the week and hot at the weekend. We should make that a condition of the Brexit deal .

Mark Carney was a lead story on BBC One's News at Ten that Thursday:

The Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, has told the BBC that a rise in interest rates this year is still likely, but that any increases will be gradual and will depend on progress in the Brexit negotiations. 

The phrase "Brexit uncertainty" was used repeatedly.

This Week featured Richard Madeley (of Richard and Judy fame) reviewing the week. He covered the latest calls for a second referendum and the Lords' defeat of the government over us staying in the EU Customs Union. Quite what Richard's view of Brexit it I'm not sure after this. Pro-EU Alan Johnson and anti-EU Priti Patel then debated it. (Fair enough).

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And God saw that (except for This Week) it was biased and the evening and the morning were the fifth day, Friday. 

The early hours saw an airline business owner being asked by a BBC reporter, "How worried are you and your clients about the Brexit effect and the open skies agreement?". The businessman said his company had "prepared to switch to other countries" but his "personal opinion" was that "I don't think [the worst case scenario] will happen".

A review of parliamentary proceedings included a section beginning, "The Transport Secretary has dismissed the idea that holiday-makers could face air travel delays after Brexit". An SNP MP had raised a scare story. 

By the time of BBC One's News at One, James Lansdale was back linking Brexit to the Windrush debacle:

Theresa May had hoped to use this summit to highlight Britain's global ambitions after Brexit. But the row over Caribbean immigration has made that harder.

The same bulletin later including a segment beginning:

Newsreader: The EU's chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, has warned there is still a chance that talks on Britain's withdrawal deal from the bloc could fail. Mr Barnier said that while three-quarters of the deal had been agreed, the Irish border issue remained a key stumbling block. Our correspondent Gavin Lee is in Brussels for us with the latest. Tell us more. 

Gavin Lee: This is the EU's chief negotiator for the EU making crystal clear that whilst three quarters they are pretty much in agreement on what the Brexit deal or the withdrawal agreement of both the UK and the European Parliament have to ratify by March next year, the last 25% come because of the series issues involved, said could be problematic and risks failure, he said. 

BBC One's News at Six was back at it too, linking Brexit to the Windrush debacle:

Newsreader: The meeting of the Commonwealth leaders was supposed to be a chance for Theresa May to talk about matters such as trade but instead it ended up being overshadowed by the row over the Windrush migrants.
John Pienaar: That's right. This week, the Commonwealth Summit was supposed to be a show of Britain's weight in the world. Instead, we saw the Prime Minister saying sorry for the mistreatment of Commonwealth migrants and their families by a country once known as the mother country. And not just the government, the Home Office, which Theresa May lead for years, reflecting her own unyielding approach to immigration control in a way that her successor Amber Rudd described as appalling. Mrs May was meant to be standing tall among Commonwealth leaders but we saw her saying sorry again and again to leaders of countries Britain wants to have as friends and needs as trading partners in the world beyond Brexit. 

The latest Have I Got News For You - just like the previous week's edition - made a joke at David Davis's expense, EU-negotiation-wise, and a passing quip at some comedienne insulting a pasty eater saw a comedian quip "This is how Brexit happened".

Finally, BBC One's News at Ten saw John Pienaar continuing the BBC Theme of the Week, Brexit-wise, over the Windrush affair:

Downing Street clearly wanting to be seen to be making amends. Climbing out of that hole. Maintaining Britain's influence and standing and its weight in the world with Brexit approaching, that was always a challenge, and there will be many more challenges as time draws by. But I think the Windrush scandal may just have made that mission that much harder.

Just read the language of that! I don't think Lord Adonis would mind it one bit.

Indeed, Lord Adonis has nothing to complain about as far as any of this is concerned.

That said, there's certainly been plenty of bias on display here, and it's all gone the other (anti-Brexit) way.

Seriously, can anyone read the evidence I've detailed here and still content that the BBC isn't biased in a negative way about Brexit?

I know the dangers of confirmation bias, but this is a list covering every mention of Brexit on BBC One over five days and the evidence couldn't be clearer, could it?

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Despite what we heard on Feedback, the BBC still has a case to answer. 'Complaints from both sides' won't wash.

The Adonis/Campbell side has nothing substantial to go off.

This side has.