Nick Robinson to the new Chancellor, Nadhim Zahawi, on Today on Wednesday: ‘I am asking you whether you told the truth and whether Boris Johnson told the truth and the simple answer is that you didn’t and he didn’t.’ Since he has the answers to all his own questions why does not Nick just interview himself?
One of the BBC’s most high-profile presenters has been criticised for using the term “pro-life” to describe anti-abortion campaigners in a discussion about the US supreme court’s overturning of Roe v Wade.The term, which is considered partisan, was used twice by Amol Rajan during Saturday morning’s Today programme on Radio 4, in segments about the landmark ruling ending Americans’ constitutional right to abortion.The BBC News style guide advises journalists to “use anti-abortion rather than pro-life, except where it is part of the title of a group’s name”.
Now, a BBC reporter using the term 'pro-life' in the context of abortion is not what I'd expect, given the BBC's pronounced social-liberal bias, but Christopher Snowden of the free-market think tank the IEA makes an interesting point in response:
Both sides picked a name that makes their cause sound more appealing (pro-choice/pro-life) and everyone understands that. Unless this guy called the pro-choice people “pro-death”, I don’t see the problem.
And Christopher points out that the Guardian/Observer is mired in this language slough as well. See the image at the top of this very post for that tweet and his proof of that.
It's an interesting one. Though 'pro-abortion' and 'anti-abortion' aren't perfect terms, especially for some 'pro-abortion' people, they are understandable and not quite as loaded as 'pro-life' or 'pro-choice'. Maybe the BBC should stick to those?
From my own perspective, which I suppose I ought to put on record, I think our British compromise on the issue gets it about right - as BBC editors appearing on the BBC's Newswatch would say.
Update (Sunday): To expand on Christopher Snowden's point, here's BBC Washington correspondent Nomia Iqbal yesterday evening on the BBC News Channel:
It is day two of those protests, not as many numbers as they were yesterday when that ruling came through but there are hundreds of protesters. I would say they are a largely pro-choice group. Earlier, there were anti-abortion protesters as well and there was a slight stand-off between them where you had pro-choice groups surrounding those anti-abortion ones and shouting, my body, my choice.
Nick Robinson: And you got 200,000 viewers at one point?Jerry Dyer: 238,000 live viewers at one point.Nick Robinson: They dream of that at GB News, I’ll tell you that”.
Every one of our viewers and, increasingly, listeners - is there because we've earned their interest, loyalty and custom. Our wages are paid, not by a broadcasting poll tax, but through the exercise of choice. Every sneer will cost you dear.
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| Qing dynasty art, attributed to Ma Quan [no relation to Ma Barker] |
TodayBBC Radio 4, 1 December 2021In an item about Chinese ‘debt trap’ diplomacy we interviewed Professor Deborah Brautigan, who explained that this ‘is the idea that China is deliberately luring countries into borrowing more money than they can afford with the goal of using that debt for strategic leverage, to seize assets of some kind or otherwise push the country to do China’s bidding.’ She went on to give an example of the Sri Lankan port of Hambantota, saying it was used by the Trump administration to promote this theory.However Professor Brautigan’s further point, that these ideas have little basis in fact, was edited out of the broadcast interview. In fact Professor Brautigan’s research shows that Chinese banks are willing to restructure the terms of existing loans and have never actually seized an asset from any country, much less the port of Hambantota.We apologise for the error.7/2/2022
Googling around, it turns out that the BBC also wrote directly to the China-defending professor and blamed an editing error by an inexperienced producer.
Guess what though? The BBC's 'correction and clarification' misspelt her name. She's Professor Brautigam, not Professor Brautigan.
Standards really are slipping at the BBC.
Talking of which, the other new 'correction and clarification' concerned yet another botched Newsnight report, and what looks like a particularly slipshod example:
NewsnightBBC Two, 13 July 2021
A graphic attributed the following statement to the Government Race and Disparities Report 2021:
Not a single police force in England and Wales registered an arrest rate of less than 20 for every 1000 black people.
By contrast not a single police force in England and Wales registered an arrest rate of more than 20 for every 1000 white people
We should have made it clear that this conclusion had been carried by The Independent newspaper the previous year in a wider survey of social and economic data on disparities between different ethnicities in the UK and reflected statistics from a different Government website which was now out of date.
The most recent figures show there are four police forces with an arrest rate of below 20 for every 1000 black people.
4/2/2022
As I've moaned before, it's hard to track the guilty BBC party after these BBC statements about poor BBC reporting, as the BBC keeps its mouth shut and rarely names names, most likely in order to spare their people's blushes. So it often takes a lot of patient digging to track down the culprit and the context.
'Advanced searching' on Twitter reveals however that it was my favourite Newsnight reporter, shiny-faced Lewis Goodall, who bungled it here.
Pleasingly, a retired police officer called him out on it for 'pedalling dodgy statistics' at the time - and for BBC-style race-baiting too:
A week in the life of Today that has made me despair of BBC bias: Flagship news show offers only a Left-wing progressive take on everything from Brexit to statue toppling and the NHS.
On Wednesday a jury in Bristol acquitted four people responsible for toppling a statue of the 17th-century slave trader and philanthropist Edward Colston in June 2020.
The following morning, Today interviewed the distinguished black historian David Olusoga. He declared that the acquittal, which he enthusiastically supported, was a ‘historic landmark’.
During a sympathetic interview by Nick Robinson, Professor Olusoga stated that the jury’s decision hadn’t created ‘a legal precedent’. That is highly debatable, yet he wasn’t challenged. Nor did Mr Robinson care to mention that Mr Olusoga gave evidence for the defence during the trial.
Colston was obviously responsible for many wicked acts. But no one was given an opportunity by the Today programme — Mr Olusoga being the sole interviewee — to say that it is wrong to go around toppling statues of long dead people, whatever some may think of them.
Yet another example of Today ignoring one side of an argument because it doesn’t approve of it.
Update: David Olusoga was also interviewed about it by BBC Breakfast that same morning.
Further Update: I see that blog favourite Dominic Casciani has been reporting developments in this story as impartially as ever yesterday evening and this morning, giving a wholly one-sided take on the matter:
If the Attorney General asks the Court of Appeal to review the case, it won't be able to reverse any of the acquittals, let alone order a retrial, but the judges could consider whether the case's outcome means the law needs clarifying for future cases. The protesters had told the jury the deeply divisive statue belonged to the city's people, who largely wanted it removed. They added that its continued presence amounted to crimes of indecency and abuse that caused distress, and far from damaging its value the graffiti-daubed statue was now worth vastly more since its installation in a museum. They also argued the prosecution was disproportionate in light of a recent Supreme Court ruling on the boundary between protest and crime. One of the defence team Raj Chada said there was no confusion about the law other than among some Conservative MPs. He said the review would smack of Trumpian politics and would undermine trial by jury, a cornerstone of British justice.
That defence case-style contribution evidently got the seal of approval from whoever edited Radio 4's Six O'Clock News and Midnight News.
TodayBBC Radio 4, Monday 13 DecemberIn an item about the rise in infections caused by Omicron and its impact on the NHS we said: ‘NHS England says between 20 and 30 per cent of critical care beds are occupied by Covid patients.... three quarters of those haven't been vaccinated.’We also said that the ‘vast majority’ of those in critical care are unvaccinated. In fact, the most recent figures from the Intensive Care and National Audit Research Centre (ICNARC) show that 51% of intensive care patients in England with Covid in November were vaccinated and 48% were not.15/12/2021
6.01 Mishal Husain: It's the first of December, so we will open the Today Advent calendar.
7.25 Simon Jack: It's December 1st, and the start of Advent.
7.42 Simon Jack: I've just got to say about our Advent calendar, which we started today on the first of December, we're getting quite a bit of pushback from people saying Advent actually started on Sunday, not today, it's got nothing to do with the first of December. Now that may well be true in terms of the religious holiday or the religious period, although I've never seen an Advent calendar, which is what we're doing, start on the 29th of November. So we're going to defend ourselves there.
Update: As JimS at Biased BBC notes, Simon Jack actually got the date wrong here. Advent started on Sunday, which was the 28th of November. No correction came for that.
[I re-checked to make sure the transcript was correct].
Lots of speculation about the identity of the suspect in the dreadful killing of Sir David Amess. We have learnt from official sources that detectives have established the individual is a UK national, seemingly of Somali heritage. We report this in the interests of accuracy.
Nick Robinson: The suspect is a British citizen, but he's also of Somali origin. Is that regarded as significant?Dominic Casciani: The Somali element – erm, no. The reason why some reporters have established this fact is that there has been some misreporting. Yesterday, during the day, there were some news outlets, and also on social media, some suggestions as to the identity of the individual. So I think the police are at pains to clarify in a statement last night that the individual is British. They haven't said anything about the heritage. But my understanding is that there was initially, potentially, some confusion over the individual's background and identity.
Nick Robinson: No, no, no, Prime Minister. You've made that point. You've made it at length in a series of interviews in the run-up to this conference.Boris Johnson: [jovially] Hang on, I haven't had the chance to make this point on your show for two years, by your own account.Nick Robinson: [sourly] That was your choice not ours.
Nick and Boris then squabbled for a while, interruptions flying, before Boris got a while to speak for about half a minute before Nick made his famous intervention:
Nick Robinson: You have made that point very clearly and I'm going to make...Prime Minister, you are going to pause. Prime Minister...Stop talking! We are going to have questions and answers, not where you merely talk if you wouldn't mind.
Remember that Nick Robinson had been talking for getting on for half of the interview by that stage.
And that shows [I think] what I strongly suspect, that Nick Robinson had his 'Stop talking!' interruption prepared in advance. My suspicion is that BBC editors encouraged him to deploy it.
After two years of avoiding the programme, Boris might now remember why he avoided appearing on the programme and might well begin avoiding it again.
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| Luxmy Gopal, not the first female newsreader |
The Prime Minister is re- shuffling his top team of government ministers. In the past few minutes, the former Trade Secretary Liz Truss has been appointed Foreign Secretary, the first woman to hold the role.
More ministerial appointments are expected to be announced today after Boris Johnson carried out an extensive cabinet reshuffle yesterday. Liz Truss became the first female Foreign Secretary after Dominic Raab was demoted to Justice Secretary.
SIR – I’m sorry that Michael Howard is turning off his radio. He will have missed some illuminating and civilised conversations this week on Today – with the head of MI5 and Tony Blair examining the fallout from 9/11; the Archbishop of Canterbury on climate change and the Health Secretary on the crises in the NHS and social care.
The joy of live radio is that it can move us – bringing joy when we hear of Emma Raducanu’s success; tears when we hear the memories of those haunted by 9/11 and, yes, sometimes anger when we shout at the radio at a politician who is being evasive or an interviewer who interrupts too much.
We presenters don’t always get it right but we do our best to balance allowing those we interview to get their message across and holding them to account.
I hope Lord Howard will be back listening soon and, perhaps, back in the studio too, where he has always robustly answered, rather than ignored, challenging questions.
The final straw, for me, was Nick Robinson’s interview with Nadhim Zahawi, the vaccine minister, on Tuesday of this week. Tuesday was, of course, the day when the Government announced its proposals for the reform of social care.
But as Mr Robinson well knew, the details had to be announced to Parliament before they could be broadcast. Indeed, had this convention been broken and caused a reprimand from the Speaker, the BBC’s journalists would have been the first, gleefully, to point to the Government’s discomfort.Yet when Mr Zahawi attempted to explain this and said that he had come on to the programme to discuss the £5.4 billion which had just been announced for the NHS, Mr Robinson said that this was a complete waste of time and threatened to end the interview there and then.You and I may think that listeners would have been very interested in how this money was going to be spent but not a single question was addressed to that topic. Instead Mr Robinson spent the whole interview berating the minister for not doing what Mr Robinson knew full well he couldn’t do.
So why did Nick Robinson avoid answering that? Was it a little too close to the bone?
On the 8.30am Today Prog news the BBC reported that Meghan had said a member of the royal family asked *her* what colour the baby would be. By the 9am bulletin the word *her* had been dropped but there was no apology for the earlier instance of misreporting. Why not BBC News?
Listen at 2hr33min35secs in as BBC News misreports Harry and Meghan's claims of racism against the royal family. Bulletin says "Meghan claimed a member of the royal family asked her how dark her and Harry's first child would be." Simply not true.
By giving this false account BBC News has reported Meghan's claim as first-hand testimony, skewing any attempt at objective assessment about what may have happened. I cannot believe it has not already acknowledged a serious mistake and apologised for it.
Looks like BBC News is just going to sail on without apologising for its untruth about the Royal Family on the Today Prog, hence further fuelling the idea of "Is it true or did you hear it on the BBC?" One day they'll come to regret such arrogance.
He described what happened correctly and sounded genuinely shocked, even though it's becoming pretty standard BBC behaviour these days.
(A case of 'Hope springs eternal' perhaps'?).
I'm sure we'll see something on the BBC's Corrections and Clarifications page - which hardly anyone but us knows about, or reads - sometime before the end of 2022, if Patrick's lucky.
Here's a Twitter chat that might interested you.
I saw the BBC article they're discussing being plugged myself early this morning and thought 'What's the point of that?'
It appears I wasn't alone.
Matt Kilcoyne, Adam Smith Institute: I do find what the BBC choose to cover, and how, one of the hardest things in media to crack. This is a prime wtf example. It is just an advert for a single office firm. It doesn't explore the actual issue or economics or politics, just quotes from their guy.
I can just about get a paper doing that if it's a firm that takes out huge adverts, but the BBC doesn't need to do that... why not do it justice with a look at arguments on mandating returns, employee bargaining, logic of collective action, costs, company policy vs legal reality?
Helping tens of millions of Brits facing uncertainty over what is and isn't allowed or is and isn't decided yet (both those managing and managed, with liability or not, directorship responsibility or contractual terms) could even be described as a public service broadcast.
Steve Mynott: It's probably just a press release they paraphrased. I'd expect it to appear in other media.
Emma: The question is why such a gigantic news organisation is having to write up press releases to bulk out the website. Surely if there's not enough national news there's some story from BBC Cornwall you can promote instead.
Steve Mynott: BBC journalists work quite hard but if free content arrives in their email they will copy and paste with some image library clipart since it's easier and they are only human.
Matt Kilcoyne: Yeah except they really get annoyed at that accusation, and they have the staff that other organisations don't to do digging and original stuff. And this kind of piece, organised with the Today Programme, is a multi-day operation. What do they have to show for it?
I do have another explanation, at least as far as the BBC News website piece goes (rather than the Today piece): It's a clickbait article - and a successful one too. It's already received 1,834 comments, and counting.
If this blog becomes nothing but sponsored ads then maybe we'll need Andrew Neil to launch Andrew Neil's Is the BBC biased?
He seems to be limbering up already. This was him on Thursday:
Should the state play a bigger role post-pandemic?Good question.BBC R4 Today just devoted its prime post-0800 slot to it.Three guests - all in favour of bigger, more active government. The consensus was never challenged.BBC diversity of opinion in action.
Here' a comment from Cue Bono on the Open Thread earlier:
I caught the ten past eight interview on Radio 4 this morning and the interviewee was a voice I didn't recognise. The tone however was very recognisable indeed. It was with the Vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi, a gentleman most would recognise has done an outstanding job in pushing the UK ahead of Europe in terms of vaccine distribution.
It began "Let's start with the good news" and indeed there was some very brief recognition that things were going well. Then began a list of people that the BBC feels should be at the top of the queue for vaccination and demands to know why they weren't. Anyone listening from another planet would conclude that the roll out has been something of a shambles.
Relentless negativity and pathetic attempts at "gotcha". So if indeed it was a new presenter it was still very much the old BBC.
If you missed it, here's a flavour of that very interview:
Simon Jack, BBC: There are some interesting questions to be asked about how you prioritise people. Now, the Daily Telegraph is reporting the rollout for under 50 will be done by age and ethnicity, rather than profession. Is that right, and what are the benefits of doing that?
Nadhim Zahawi: You're absolutely right. So the top 4 cohorts, to which we've just given the first dose, are 88% of mortality. The top 9 cohorts of Phase 1 are 99% or mortality. We are now going back to the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation asking the question as to what should Phase 2 look like. Should we be looking at those in professions like police officers or teachers or shop workers who may come into contact with much greater volumes of the virus? Should they be prioritised, or what do they recommend to be the prioritisation to make sure that we continue to bear down on serious infection, hospitalisation, of course, and death and...
Simon Jack: (interrupting) But if you're having schools go back on March 8, which is the target, surely putting teachers near the top of this is a no-brainer, isn't it?
Nadhim Zahawi: So here's the interesting thing. In terms of teachers, Category 6 is 16 -64 year-olds who may have an underlying health condition. That would capture any teachers who have an underlying health condition and therefore would be at higher risk of serious infection, hospitalisation and death. And of course any teacher over the age of 50 would be in Phase 1 as well because that's Category 9. The JCVI will look at the evidence for prioritisation in Phase 2, but I think it's right to ask them the question to say 'clinically do you think we should prioritise a profession because they come in much greater contact or should we be looking at other evidence, because we want to make sure that those who are in greatest need receive the vaccines first?'
Simon Jack: OK. It will surprise some I think that you haven't had the sort...haven't made those decisions already. But let me bring up something else. We had Mencap on earlier saying that adults with a learning disability...
And on Simon Jack went, working his way through his list.
The last paragraph quoted there illustrates one of my pet hates as far as interviewing goes - i.e. when the interviewer gives himself the 'last word', pops in an editorial comment (and/or criticises the person being interviewed), and then, instead of inviting the interviewee to respond, immediately changes the subject and 'moves on'.
As you've been noting in the comments, the BBC's Europe editor Katya Adler hasn't been having a good week.
This tweet caused considerable controversy the other day, as it simply wasn't true that the Johnson government had "berated" the EU:
Partly this is to do with pharmaceutical companies not honouring contracts, particularly AstraZeneca, with which the EU has a big row at the moment...
That is an unsubstantiated claim by the EU, apparently completely refuted by the copy of the contracts (which have now even been obtained in an unredacted version).
The BBC's Dan Johnson (best known as 'the Cliff guy') was on droll form on Radio 4 this morning, making light of the whole Biden/Churchill bust business that the BBC's so absurdly bothered about.
I think he may have enjoyed writing his Winston Churchill puns:
Never in the field of human sculpture was so much diplomatic significance imagined by so many yet acknowledged by so few. That's the tone of the US embassy's video, that trade links, military co-operation and the working partnership of presidents and prime ministers define the special relationship much more than a bust of Sir Winston Churchill and his proximity to power in the White House. "It's about people, values and trust", the video proclaims. Boris Johnson came to the sculpture's defense in 2016 after it was forced to surrender the sideboard in Barack Obama's Oval Office. It was Donald Trump who restored Winnie to the West Wing, but under Joe Biden those unmistakable features have been banished once more. But where? Shall we find them in the library? Shall we find them in the treaty room, or on the Hill? "An important question", the new White House press secretary conceded, though she couldn't immediately answer. Downing Street isn't making an issue of it, so bust out but no bust-up. The special relationship can grow. Its finest hour, quite possibly, still ahead.
Hope you had a lovely Christmas Day. Thank you for keeping the blog so well-fed with comments. There's been a lot going on, hasn't there?
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1. Yes, BBC newsreaders on BBC Radio 4 really are repeatedly saying "France has confirmed its first case of the new variant of coronavirus which originated in the UK" this morning - which is poorly-worded at best, and 'fake news' at worst. The BBC has previously acknowledged that the variant may well have originated outside the UK and merely been detected here first by our well-equipped scientists. At least they're not calling it "the English virus"...yet.
2. Watching the BBC Reality Check correspondent Chris Morris making countless appearance on the BBC News Channel on Christmas Eve made me think of 'Why the long face?' jokes, usually made about horses. Chris had a long face on all day. After all his endless scaremongering 'on behalf of reality' over the years, here was the thing he had been so relentless down on for years coming to fruition, against all his gloomy predictions. Never was a long face more easily explained. His misery later got translated into a very negative piece on the BBC News website containing plenty more gloom. He's still carrying on regardless, and will be allowed to do so by the BBC.
3. I read recently that June Sarpong OBE, the BBC's part-time diversity chief, has recently been made a trustee of the Donmar Warehouse. Her irresistible, seemingly limitless rise continues. Despite that she's talking about "the unfairness baked into our system" in Daily Telegraph today and using the highly divisive phrase "white privilege":
I don’t for a single second say that all white people are privileged. Of course not. But there are benefits even if you come from a low income and you’re white. You’re never judged on your race. You may be discriminated against because of class, you may be discriminated against because of your age, you may be discriminated against because of gender, size, etc, but you will never be discriminated against because of your race and that in itself feeds into the concept of white privilege.
On the big issue of black history, I'd have preferred to hear Lewis Hamilton challenged by a critic, than in conversation with the like minded David Olusoga. He could easily have dealt with it.
5. Returning to the theme of an earlier post which listed the recent questions put by BBC Politics reporters at the Downing Street press conferences and found that they were remarkably consistent in the pushing the 'The Government is not acting fast enough or hard enough' line over coronavirus, well, the last one before Christmas brought a double dose of that from BBC political correspondent Leila Nathoo. This is what she asked Matt Hancock & Co:
23 Dec: LEILA NATHOO, BBC: You've just said when it comes to coronavirus that it's better to act sooner but the Prime Minister said on Saturday that the new strain was present across the country, your chief scientific advisor said on Monday that it wasn't possible to stop it spreading beyond the South East. and you're only announcing today the widening of Tier 4 within the South East and East of England and only from Boxing Day. Haven't you wasted valuable time in trying to get ahead of the new strain of the virus? And if I may to Dr Harries, you talked about yet another more transmissible strain being identified from South Africa. How confident are you that the new four-tier system is strong enough to tackle that?
Wonder how many tiers would satisfy the BBC?
Tim Montgomerie: Could the BBC's Jon Sopel have been more gushing about Biden’s team?
That didn't go down well with Jon Sopel:
Jon Sopel: Just woken up to this Tim. What utter crap. Have just listened back. I say they are small c conservative, technocratic, unflashy and more diverse. I use no adjective - approving or disapproving. I’m asked what stands out. I answer. Without any gush.
Tim Montgomerie: You’ve endlessly critiqued Trump (often fairly) but critical faculties have been suspended over Biden. You would have found many negative things to say if you’d been asked what stood out about Trump nominees. It’s always Democrats good-Republicans bad on the BBC.
Jon Sopel: Just not good enough Tim. I was neither complimenting nor disparaging. You asked sarcastically if I could have been more gushing. Just give me one example where I ‘gushed’. If you can’t maybe you’d reconsider the tweet.
Tim Montgomerie: Any half-decent report would have referred too how this was a throwback to the Obama years when Russia, China, Syria and Iran were all emboldened. Instead you gushed about how diverse it was. No apology from me.
*********
I think we can adjudicate as to who's right here: I've transcribed the section in question and I think it shows that Tim Montgomerie is absolutely spot-on in his criticisms of Jon Sopel.
For starters, let's take Jon's claim "I use no adjective - approving or disapproving". Really? What about "very reassuring" and "incredibly smart"?
And, yes, Jon did "gush about how diverse it was", while using contrasting adjectives about the first Trump cabinet: "white, old and wealthy".
It's a sign of where we are that Jon Sopel could say what he said today and think it's outrageous that anyone would find it biased. What he said is biased!
Mishal Husain: What about the future Biden team, Jon? More names emerging. Who are the most striking to you, and what do they suggest about the new administration?
Jon Sopel: I suppose you'd say Tony Blinken becoming the Secretary of State. I think a lot of Europeans will find him a very reassuring figure. He's an internationalist. He's outward-looking. He supports the rights of refugees. It is a return to a normalcy of US foreign policy that has been a consistent line, if you like, since the Second World War that was broken with the Trump administration. So I think Tony Blinken is one. Jake Sullivan? I think incredibly smart, young National Security Adviser, who was a very close advisor to Hillary Clinton. And Janet Yellen, who was Chairman of the Federal Reserve, becomes the first woman to be Treasury Secretary. And I think what you're seeing in these appointments is a sort of small c conservatism. They are technocrats mainly. They are not flashy big name egos who will cause Biden trouble. It is all part of his bid that "I am here to unify the country, to get on with the job, and I want people who are capable to deliver it". In that sense you would say 'small c conservative'. But in another way you would say 'quite radical', because there is much, much more diversity. There will be the first woman who's going to be Director of National Intelligence. As I said, first woman who is going to be in charge of the Treasury department. There is going to be someone who is from a Cuban exile background to be Head of Homeland Security. And so you see a very different picture than the one that was gathered round Donald Trump's first cabinet table. which was white, old and wealthy. And I think Joe Biden is bringing in a much more diverse group.
