Tricky

Catching up with the past week's typically turbulent BBC-related news [and, as ever, thank to you for keeping us up to date on the open threads]...

That Daily Telegraph story about how the BBC's ultra-worthy 50:50 equality project is going wrong and leading to complaints from within the BBC that the corporation is “disappearing women” by allowing the female side to be filled “by those who self-identify as female” included some fascinating details. 

As the BBC itself might say, I've not been able to independently verify the Jeremy Vine discussion about women’s sports on BBC Radio 2 where the voices on air were four men and three trans people with no women, but I have checked out the edition of Radio 4’s Moral Maze a year ago last June where two men and two trans women discussed women’s sport. 

Which does seem odd.

The Telegraph quotes “a senior BBC insider” saying that the BBC presenter behind the 50:50 equality project, Ros Atkins, “has gone along with” redefining the word 'woman' - “a word which we all understand”, something the BBC has done “without any public debate”.

As for the whole 50:50 equality project, it is interesting how one [male] BBC presenter, such as Ros Atkins, could have such a massive impact - for good or for ill - on the BBC's behaviour. His agenda has pretty much consumed the BBC since 2017.

This is something Radio 4's Media Show, or the BBC News Channel's Outside Source, or the BBC's Analysis Editor might want to tackle...

...if only the man behind the 50:50 equality project wasn't also a main presenter on Radio 4's Media Show, and the main presenter on BBC News Channel's Outside Source, and the BBC's Analysis Editor.

And called Ros Atkins.

Tricky.

One of Our Episodes of The Moral Maze is Missing

I just saw a tweet from the redoubtable Jane Kelly: 

The Moral Maze on Wednesday not available. About immigration, replaced with an anodyne repeat from a previous series & taken down from BBC Sounds. Perhaps Michael Buerk was right about a growing intolerance of free speech at the BBC?

Update: Ah, it was 'technical issues' on the night apparently.

Even Michael Buerk is slamming Radio 4

After Lord Blunkett and Libby Purves, now BBC veteran and Moral Maze host Michael Buerk is joining the chorus of concern about Radio 4's turn towards 'woke'. The Times quotes comments he makes in the Radio Times:

“It survives, even prospers, despite the temper of the times,” Buerk, 75, said of The Moral Maze. “In the wider world — and in some parts of the BBC — more and more is being put off limits, things that cannot be said. Freedom of speech is seriously under threat.” 

However, the presenter said that show does feel this strain and he admitted that the programme was a “bit less abrasive” than it used to be. 

Buerk praised the BBC for sticking with the programme, however, even if he sometimes worries about “how long that will last”. 

He claimed that Radio 4’s “yearning to connect with yoof” and “increasingly woke” editorial choices put it at odds with listeners. 

He said: “Half the audience may feel like drowning themselves in their cornflakes after a typical Today programme, but touch one hair of Nick Robinson’s head (yes, all right, but you know what I mean) and the world would fall in.”

The BBC gives a typical 'BBC' response: 

We’re proud of the huge range of quality programming, which is as rigorous and curious as it has ever been, that caters for and represents a wider range of listeners.

I think there will be many who think, 'No it isn't, and no it doesn't'.

Update:  The Daily Telegraph is also reporting this and adds Michael Buerk's word “voguish” to his description of Radio 4's “increasingly woke-sounding board”.

The long march through the institutions

The biggest disadvantage of having a two-man blog is that if both of us are out of office for more than a couple of days the ‘above the line’ content lags behind the cutting edge of broadcasting-related commentary.

Developments and issues that have been discussed on other blogs have turned into yesteryear’s chip paper before you’ve had time to log on.  The current episode of The Moral Maze - the one about the Beeb - is one such.

I listened to it on iPlayer (BBC Sounds) and it struck me that the programme could have gone on a lot longer if it were to have any kind of meaningful outcome. It didn’t seem to get anywhere. I find the issue of funding less important than the issue of, well, what sort of BBC do we want?  

If we are going to be happy with another commercial organisation, then the subscription model seems apt. But if we want a kind of reliable, independent ‘public service’ Beeb, then the telly tax is best. The trouble is that we seem to have ended up with the worst of both worlds. A tax-funded commercial outfit which we’re compelled to pay for, like it or lump it.

Personally, I’d choose to ditch the ratings-driven need to compete with commercial channels. A slimmed-down, politically diverse BBC would be better.

Did anyone watch the latest video from the New Culture Forum, in the ‘Counterculture’ series?   Your man Rafe Heydel-Mankoo summed it up thus: (of the Conservative government)

“They’ve won the battle by winning this election. The culture war is going to be tackling the long march through the institutions and to actually address things like the BBC, address things like the bias in universities and the department of education, in the civil service, and they’ve got ten years now to try to redress that balance, because they will have lost the culture war if they’re actually unable to attack this liberal elite who’ve got no support in the country, but they control all the levers of power and have all the ways in which media is consumed and I know for a fact that that a key issue being pushed for over the next few years is how do we actually get over the final stage of the culture war, which is to go over the top and get control back.

So there you have it. In about ten years’ time, we might achieve something like balance and political diversity; something worth the licence fee.

As for the Moral Maze, I thought the most telling segment of all was during Matthew Taylor’s grilling of witness Robin Aitken, and he (Taylor) said 

”The BBC has always been the voice of the ‘educated establishment” 

and

 “the university-educated are more ‘liberal left’”

(which, impliedly, is a jolly good thing.)

He posed the question, what if the BBC were forced to ‘platform’ (give equal billing to) non-experts and give equal weight to flat-earthers and we university-educated experts?

Yes, indeed. That would be ridiculous if it weren’t for the fact that the ‘educated experts’ have been fully immersed in their own special type of ‘flat-earth’ morality for so long that they’re stuck in a state of atrophy without quite realising it. 

The most glaring gap in the discussion was that political correctness has effectively stifled comedy.  You’d think, with Andrew Doyle on the panel, someone might have brought that up. 

In the olden days, as Matthew Taylor said: 

“the educated establishment was more conservative than the rest of the population”. 

Yes, in pre-60s broadcasting, the establishment lagged behind the rest of the population, but in the 60s ‘cutting edge’ did effectively ‘cut’ the edge, and to good effect. 

In the politically correct 2020s, no-one has so far dared to cut any edges on the BBC. It’s all happening elsewhere.

cause célèbre

The Moral Maze - the one about antisemitism.

Melanie Phillips writes about this programme here. 

“I discussed this with my fellow-panellists Matthew Taylor, Mona Siddiqui and Tim Stanley. Our witnesses were baroness and rabbi Julia Neuberger, Jewish writer Robert Cohen, the Bishop of Worcester the Rt. Rev.Dr John Inge, and Adam Sutcliffe, professor of European History at King’s College London 

This topic was particularly frustrating for me because of the format of the show. What many listeners don’t realise is that the Maze is not a normal discussion programme where an issue gets comprehensively thrashed out in a debate that follows wherever the participants want to take it.”

It’s a frustrating listen, too. A theme that always runs through this type of programme occurs almost every time this particular topic is addressed. It’s a thing called “the Palestinian Cause.”

People like Mona Siddiqui (she’s by no means the only one) use the phrase as a shorthand term for something ‘we all know’, which carries the undertone that a terrible injustice needs to be put right. The assumption is that immediately upon Israel’s declaration of independence “the Jews” slung the indigenous ‘Palestinian’ Arabs out of their homes crying “It’s my house now!’ in the manner of Papa lazarou 

This is one of those ‘everyone knows’ delusions that, through constant repetition, I’m sorry to say exacerbated by the likes of the BBC, establish themselves as ‘fact’. 

History tells you that the reality is complex and quite different from that interpretation. There are so many things wrong with it that it’s impossible to sum up the reality as succinctly as the falsehood, but suffice it to say that it would be more accurate to define “the Palestinian Cause” as a strong desire for Israel and the Jews to go away.  From the river to the sea.

That is ‘the Palestinian cause’, and it hasn’t changed since the concept of establishing a modern Jewish (Zionist) state was but a twinkle in Theodor Herzl’s eye. 

All along, it was the Arabs’ intractable hatred of Jews that is behind the seemingly insurmountable problem we have today. But for that, everyone could have thrived. 

I listened to this programme a couple of times, and my other observation was Michael Buerk’s irritable and snappy manner with Melanie Phillips.

"Thoughts are my own"

I’m used to finding myself in a minority, and I’m probably in a minority over the Shamima Begum fiasco, but I find myself agreeing with all sorts of contradictory arguments from a whole lot of people I don’t normally agree with. 

Was Sajid Javid playing to the gallery with his hasty revocation of Ms Begum’s citizenship? 

Obviously, it resonates with public opinion, but if you think about it, what’s a Muslim Home secretary to do? Damned if he does; damned if he doesn’t.

It’s illegal to make anyone stateless; the Today Programme’s expert de jour said Javid’s decision couldn’t possibly be legal, as Bangladesh denies Ms Begum’s existing citizenship and rejects the possibility of her obtaining any in future. 

Is Javid playing a long game, knowing she’ll win her appeal? Is it his heavy-handed bid for promotion? Who’s paying for the legal fees? An Islamic charity? Crowdfunding? Anyone?) Ah! Tasnime Mohammed Akunjee is offering his services pro bono. (But surely more legal costs will be accrued than just his.)

The Begum family’s lawyer, Tasnime Mohammed Akunjee, has been speaking on the BBC. 

This piece in the Telegraph reveals a few of his best bits - his past statements and affiliations so you can get a picture of where he’s coming from. (9/11 was an inside job; has links to  Cage; wants Amber Rudd to find herself in a concentration camp; wants to ban products decorated with union jack; blames security services for ‘creating’ Lee Rigby’s killer by making life difficult for him; has been pictured with Jeremy Corbyn)

Another prominent Muslim individual has also spoken again on the Today Programme recently. Ex-police chief Dal Babu, who suffers from a heavy ’racial’ chip on his shoulder and describes himself as a friend of the family. He repeated the observations he’s made previously on the BBC, blaming the authorities (the police, the school and “Tower Hamlets”) for not telling the parents that their daughters were being groomed and radicalised, though he knows the authorities were well aware that this was happening. Had the girls’ parents known, he claimed, they would have stopped them from travelling. (I understand Shamima, at least, stole her sister’s passport to travel.) 

Again he mentioned the infamous warning letter, meant for the parents, that was found in the schoolbag too late. None of these points reflects very well on the quality of parenting. Perhaps they were all completely ignorant of their daughters’ religious proclivities or they were aware, and sympathetic, like Hassem Abase.

There is some confusion. I understand that another girl with a similar first name and also a ‘Begum’  was one of the influencers/groomers that enticed the girls to flee to Syria. She was the girl who was born in Bangladesh, and she was the one whose mother had died. Shamima’s (Bangladeshi) mother is alive, and Shamima was born in the UK. 

I listened to the Moral Maze. I was sorry Melanie Phillips wasn’t there. Clare Fox, Anne McElvoy, Mona Siddiqui (definitely the best of the lot) and Giles Fraser wrestled with Myriam Francoise Cerrah, formerly one of the BBC’s The Big Questions’ favourite Muslims and the most annoyingly sanctimonious person you’d ever wish to clap eyes on, and Haras Rafiq as well as Richard (Counter Terrorism) Walton. It arrived at little or no satisfactory conclusion.

The argument for allowing Begum and child back to face ‘due process’ hinges on the vagueness of what constitutes substantive evidence. “What am I supposed to have done?” “ I’ve only been a housewife” and so on.

If she hasn’t committed any actual violence and is merely an ‘enabler’ can she be convicted of anything much? It looks doubtful. On the other hand, if she’s left to the mercy of fate, what about the baby, who is technically British? 

Some so-called experts say these people can never be genuinely un-radicalised. I don’t know about that - lingering tribalism is one reason why I’m still a tiny bit wary of Maajid Nawaz. On the other hand, look at Mosab Hassan Yousef aka Son of Hamas. He seems like a genuine, thoroughly un-radicalised guy. But was he ever radicalised in the first place, or was he one of those rare individuals who was born with innate curiosity and cynicism?

Anyway, I still don’t think Shamima Begum’s fate is the most important issue. It seems like an inordinate waste of time and money, endlessly anguishing over that one individual. By all means, keep her away from the public, but let’s focus on the real problem, which is the Islamification of the west. 

God, if only Tommy Robinson would stop using the word Mumpf  instead of the conventional ‘month’ and start pronouncing ‘anything’ and ‘everything’ without the emphatic, nay, percussive k at the end, he might acquire the credibility that prevents people like Douglas Murray and Melanie Phillips viewing him with a kind of classist disdain. Join forces! Tommy’s got the chutzpah and the pugilistic derring-do and you’ve got the eloquence and education.

I myself am a terrible snob - but not a classist-type snob.  (Can you be snobbish about the abject stupidity of stupid people who think they’re clever?)  If so, I’m either that kind of snob, or I’m actually that kind of person. Or both. (Don’t tell me which one you think fits best) 

Tonight's 'Moral Maze' on 'Whither the BBC?'

It's a while since I've tuned into Radio 4's The Moral Maze. 

Back in its early days - the days of Rabbi Hugo Gryn - I was quite a devotee, but seem to have got completely out of the habit over the past decade or so.

I was lured back today because the subject was "Whither the BBC?" and David Vance at Biased BBC had posted that either he or Alan would be on, so I was very keen to listen to that. 

Unfortunately, neither of them appeared after all. They must have been 'bumped'. (Stephen Glover from the Daily Mail and Ryan Bourne of IEA were on instead.)

Had they been on they might have added a bit of needed grit and energy to what turned out to be a deadly dull edition of the programme. (I wish I hadn't wasted three quarters of an hour listening to it now.)

For starters, the panel consisted of three avowedly pro-BBC people (Giles Fraser, Matthew Taylor and Anne McElvoy) and just one critic (Jill Kirby), and one of the pro-BBC people (Anne McElvoy) was required to bat for the 'anti-BBC' side. 

If there ever was a time to have Melanie Phillips on, this was it. She's a well-known critic of the BBC. So why wasn't she on instead of Anne McElvoy? Was she deliberately not invited, or merely unavailable?

Then they all pretty much spent the whole time missing the point of everything. Stephen Glover was far too easily drawn into spending most of his contribution saying what he liked about the BBC and, like Ryan Bourne, almost entirely failed to tackle the issue that bothers us here - BBC bias. 

Giles Fraser ranted on as ever, barely ever pausing for logic, extolling the wonders of the BBC and it's role as a national unifier, something that makes him feel 'all Rule Britannia', a beacon of what best about Britain.....but, oh, despite that, he thinks it's got a bit of a pro-Right bias - something he's obviously very prepared to live with!

The two pro-BBC 'witnesses' - left-leaning official BBC historian (unpaid, she insisted) Jean Seaton and left-leaning former BBC executive, Independent and New Statesman editor and former Moral Maze regular Professor Ian Hargreaves - managed to get their pro-BBC points across more forcefully, despite some good questions from Jill and Anne. 

The whole thing was a fairly tedious affair - though, oddly, I did find myself agreeing with some pro-BBC points (though having to listen to points of view I disagree with)....

....especially the much-mooted idea that the BBC forces people to listen to other people they don't agree with, and that the evidence suggests (as indeed it does) that if we didn't have such a forum we would instead tend heavily to read/watch only those outlets which reinforce our own views and avoid the rest, and that that would be a bad thing....

....the snag being - which no one pointed out - that such a presentation of the BBC is all very well as an ideal (and one which I strongly support) but it doesn't work out like that in practice anywhere near as much as it should - hence the point of this blog, and blogs like it!

Incidentally, given all the many posts we've done here at ITBB? about Cardiff University Media Department's central part - thanks to a strange alliance of leftist academics and former BBC bigwigs - in providing the BBC [and its left-wing supporters] with "impartial", "academic" evidence that it isn't biased towards the Left (and that it is, if anything, quite the reverse)...

...it was intriguing to learn (which if I already knew I'd managed to forget) that Prof Ian Hargreaves (the left-leaning, former BBC bigwig turned ultra-pro-BBC guest here) is yet another of those Cardiff University academics working on media matters. (Things keep slotting neatly into place here).

Michael Buerk kept a very low profile thoughout. As well he might.

The Moral Maze

Tonight's The Moral Maze was quite something. 

To do justice to the thoughts it provoked would demand a post that took longer to read than it actually took to listen to the programme (and no one wants that), so I will simply sketch my initial impressions of it.

The panel contained two strongly pro-Israeli speakers, namely Melanie Phillips and Jill Kirby (making her debut), and one strongly pro-Palestinian speaker, Giles Fraser. The final speaker, Matthew Taylor, was happier to sit on the fence but dangled his feet on the Palestinian side.

The 'witnesses' were Colonel Richard Kemp and Dr Hugo Slim on the Israeli side, and Mehdi Hasan and Ted Honderich on the Palestinian side. 

Michael Buerk gave a characteristically fine introduction (firm but fair). 

Then came the first witness, Mehdi Hasan. 

Mehdi (characteristically) was very canny in making repeated denunciations of Hamas, saying that they too had committed war crimes. Of course, that concession allowed him to repeatedly make his main point - that Israel is committing war crimes and that Israel is worse than Hamas because of its superior military strength and because it is 'the occupier'. 

His argument didn't convince me but I can well imagine, unfortunately, that his fluency might have struck home with many a Radio 4 listener. 

Melanie's repeated attempts to talk him down, and both her and Jill's attempts to get him to condone Hamas rather misfired. He was perfectly happy to condemn Hamas (#Taqiyya?) in order to make his condemnation of Israel tell, thus (in the process) somewhat taking the wind out of their sails.

Next came Colonel Richard Kemp. 

He was very persuasive, making Israel's case with considerable reasonableness (as opposed to Mehdi's excitability). I suspect (and hope) that Radio 4 listeners will have responded well to his arguments. 

Both Matthew Taylor and Giles Fraser gave him space to make his arguments and seemed rather hard-placed to argue with them. Giles, characteristically, was passionate but also seemed somewhat disarmed by Col. Kemp's quietly-made points. It was a clear win for Col. Kemp.

Then came Ted Honderich. 

Prof. Honderich is a philosopher. [I own an encyclopedia of philosophy edited by him]. He sought to make a philosophical case in defence of Hamas. Yes, really.

I suspect (like me) that most Radio 4 listeners will have failed to make much sense of his arguments. All I took from his contribution is that he thinks Hamas is good and that Israel is bad, and that he thinks that Hamas is justified in deliberately seeking to kill Israeli civilians. Philosophically-speaking.

I almost wish that Michael Buerk hadn't cut him off so curtly from making his initial argument as I suspect that Radio 4 listeners would have been even more put off by the result. (Michael clearly didn't like Ted Honderich). Partly as a result, Prof. Honderich made very little headway here. 

His remarkable (and reprehensible) appearance was dominated by his spiteful encounter with Melanie Phillips. Insults flew in both directions. 

Finally came Dr Hugo Slim, who put the case for Israel well, but who was also willing to give his hands a good wringing in the process. Giles Fraser tried to wax passionate against him but seemed to find him too likable (too liberal) to get into a proper fistfight with, and Matthew Taylor appeared to reach a meeting of minds with him. 

The final panel discussion was lively. Giles Fraser came out (extraordinarily) as being sympathetic to Ted Honderich's pro-Hamas points (well, he is a Guardian editorial writer these days). Melanie Phillips tried to talk him down (and everyone else - until Jill Kirby made a good, pro-Israel point). Jill Kirby floundered somewhat, though she made some good points (first day nerves?). Michael Buerk had a dig at Giles for seeming to back up Prof. Honderich, and Matthew Taylor sat on the fence. 

All in all, a fiercely balanced programme. 

I did note that some people on Twitter denounced it as biased, though I couldn't work out in what direction they meant (and was deeply unwilling to check their Twitter feeds).