Friction over Bobby at the BBC (updated)

 

The Times reports today that BBC Asian Network presenter Bobby Friction has encountered resistance from BBC bosses after rubbing up against BBC editorial guidelines with a bitter, impartiality-busting tweet against the Conservatives (and Margaret Thatcher). BBC managers forced him to delete it. A BBC spokesman tells the paper that Bobby "has been reminded of his responsibilities as a BBC presenter." The question is: Will he take any notice though? 

The top-rated comment below the report reads:

It is self evident that the BBC has no control over its celebrity presenters and journalists who regard the BBC day job as the launch vehicle for their Twitter alter egos, where they can air their version of reality, mobilise their Twitter hate mob and, most importantly, tout for lucrative moonlighting assignments.

It's Tim Davie's job to get a proper grip on the problem. 

Update: Former GOAT minister under Gordon Brown Lord Digby Jones is aghast:

Bobby Friction, a presenter on the BBC Asian Network, tweets that “this f***ing government is a festival of faeces” & what happens? 

The BBC “remind him of his responsibilities as a BBC presenter”. Unbelievable! What do you have to do to be sacked at the BBC?

BBC Asian Network editor charged over naming Rotherham child abuse victim

Arif Ansari

Do you remember Arif Ansari? He used to be the BBC's North West political editor and appeared on local news programmes in our area over many years. I must say I always rated him as a decent reporter and a decent presenter. But he moved on and moved up in the world and became head of news for the BBC Asian Network. And now he's been charged under the Sexual Offences Act over a BBC Asian Network report which mistakenly identified a Rotherham child abuse victim. It wasn't his report but prosecutors have charged him personally with overall responsibility for it. The BBC believes that that was unfair and that the prosecutors ought to have brought the criminal action against the corporation as a whole. He intends to plead not guilty and the BBC is backing him. You can read all about it in the Times and the Daily Mail. The Times, which broke the story, says:

Mr Ansari, 43, faces a potentially unlimited fine if found guilty. A £5,000 cap on fines for identifying sex crime victims was lifted in 2015. The Asian Network editor was charged more than a month ago but the BBC issued no public statement. 

This week, after being approached by The Times, the corporation said that the reporter who named the victim “genuinely believed the name he broadcast was a pseudonym”.

Weekend Ramble (I)

As it's becoming nigh on impossible to find the time to watch the BBC let alone blog about it, here are some very random thoughts on things that have managed to cross my increasingly wonky radar over the past few days....

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The Daily Fail (or Daily Heil, to taste) has quite a story today about the goings-on at the BBC Asian Network. 

I don't know whether to laugh or cry about it, so I'll do neither. 

Due to an "accident" a private group conversation on supposedly privacy-guaranteeing WattsApp between a small number of BBC producers, DJs and presenters (somehow) ended up being seen by the very same female BBC Asian Network producer who they (or at least some of them) were lusting after. Their lust for her then (somehow) became public knowledge. As did their lust for a female presenter - and (oh dear!) their private banter about "Pakis" (who they mocked), and their "homophobic" language. 

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!

Naturally, the Daily Mail saw fit to publish a photo of the lust-inducing female presenter in a particularly lust-inducing photo - something that we at ITBB would never consider appropriate. #everydaysexism.

Of course, at one level, it's screamingly funny that there's a 'scandal' about the hyper-PC BBC's Asian Network featuring a bunch of BBC 'lads' being about as un-PC as it's possible to be and landing the BBC in it. But it's also grimly depressing that a purely private bit of un-PC banter that should never have been made public was made public. (Who at the BBC helped make it public?) 

And one producer has been given a written warning, the other sacked, the DJ has been told he can't do any extra shifts, and our old friend Tommy Sandhu (of Sunday Morning Live and The One Show 'fame') is said by the Mail to be fighting for his career at the BBC.

Purely private banter, leaked (somehow), and BBC Asian Network staff are sacked, reprimanded, sanctioned or under investigation, and yet more famous BBC staff, including senior reporters, can publicly say what the heck they like on Twitter regarding matters of political controversy, in breach of both the letter and the spirit of BBC impartiality, and get away with it with impunity. 

There's something wrong here somewhere. 

Should we start a Free the Asian Network Four campaign?

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So the BBC has finally given Alan Partridge a new series. (Hopefully those lapdance fantasies will finally stop now).

In an interview with The New European, his agent Steve Coogan tells us that he'll be returning to the corporation and our TV screens next spring and, yes, he'll be talking Brexit:

Alan would have voted Brexit for sure. Hard Brexit, given the choice. He’s a Brexiteer because the Daily Mail told him to be.

And why does Steve Coogan think that Alan's back on the Beeb?:

It’s conceivable, because in this age of Brexit, they (the BBC) might think they need to get in touch with the ‘Little Englanders’ they ignore.

Now, yes, the BBC may well be making the anti-farmer, climate-change-believing Norwich celebrity who holds impeccable BBC-friendly views on other things too ("Never, never criticise Muslims. Only Christians. And Jews a little bit") into a Brexiteer rather than a Remoaner, and it's more than likely that the programme will mock Brexit supporters without any counterbalancing mockery of opponents of Brexit, but that's BBC comedy for you! It's nothing if not impartial, except for not being impartial.

Anyhow, what struck me about the second quote above is that even Steve Coogan appears to believe that the BBC are out of touch with Brexit supporters. Back of the net!

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Oh, and talking about BBC comedy, there's a funny and spot-on TCW piece, a kind of moral fable, by Nick Booth about the kind of comedians who litter the BBC's schedules, doing the same old routines about Trump and the Daily Mail. (You might call them 'BBC comedians'). It's well worth a read.

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James O'Brien was a big surprise to his parents. They found him on the doorstep. They were expecting a bottle of milk.

Evan Davis went to buy some camouflage trousers the other day but he couldn't find any.

Ian Katz sleeps like a baby. He wakes up screaming every morning around 3am.

Emily Maitlis was a dancer once in Swan Lake. She fell in.

Kirsty Walk goes into a pet shop. She says: ‘I’d like to buy a wasp please.’ The shopkeeper says: ‘Sorry Ms, but we don’t sell wasps.’ Kirsty (interrupting) says: ‘But you’ve got one in the window!!’

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Alan at Biased-BBC is perfectly correct about this being a misleading headline: 

It makes it sound as if she's making a positive statement. When you listen to the interview though it's clear that she's not making a positive statement. Far from it. (The opening word "Unfortunately" is a big clue). No one watching it could doubt that she'd much prefer to be performing under the Russian flag. 

The blurb below the headline is just as misleading, and even manages to slightly-but-tellingly misquote Miss Klishina. She doesn't say, "It doesn't matter about the flag". She says, "Everyone who's coming to compete here in London from Russia, we know where we're from. And everyone knows that we're Team....erm...It doesn't matter which flag they will see in the stadium, so....inside, and I'm sure that all spectators they know where we're from."

The lads from the Asian Network would probably have had something to say about Darya on WattsApp, poor things.

P.S. My friends have a dog that looks exactly like Vladimir Putin (except that the dog has bigger ears than the Russian leader). True story. 

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Brian Cox (the pop star professor turned BBC presenter rather than the actor) believes that the idea that we - you, me, Sue, Brian Cox, everyone alive on Earth, the whole solar system, the Milky Way, every other galaxy, our entire universe indeed - are, logically, more likely than not to be part of one giant simulation created by and run by a superior civilisation. He really does. 

We learned that from this week's edition of The Infinite Monkey Cage, where the theme was: 'Are We Living in a Simulation?'. It was absolutely fascinating, but it was proof positive to my mind - and, though he didn't say it explicitly, to one of the programme's guests - that such thinking is no more and no less logical than St. Anselm's or St. Thomas Aquinas's proofs for the existence of God. 

It also suggested to me the truth of the famous saying of G.K. Chesterton's that when people stop believing in God they'll believe in anything. 

I'd amend that, however, to "when some people stop believing in God they'll believe in anything" - case in point, Prof. Brian Cox (if he really exists). 

Naturally, being the BBC, Robin Ince & Co. repeatedly joked about the superior civilisation having a laugh by running the 'Trump wins' simulation of reality - a simulation, Robin & Co. didn't add, where comedians like him might well have been programmed by our superior virtual reality creators to crack nothing but jokes about Trump (or the Daily Heil) and, thus, be condemned to a virtual eternity of being a Radio 4 comedian. 

Clickbaity

Among this week's big BBC bias controversies has been the following tweet:

It certainly didn't get a favourable response on Twitter (or elsewhere), with some calling it "a new low" for the BBC to even be asking that question in that way. 

Samira Ahmed also used Twitter to canvass opinions, adding her own in the process:

Update (14:00): The BBC Asian Network has apologised:

Further update (20:00): This isn't the first time that the BBC Asian Network has posed a "provocative" question. This. for example, was asked in the days immediately after the brutal 'religiously motivated' murder of Glasgow Ahmadi shopkeeper Asad Shah by a Sunni Muslim (who claimed Mr Shah had "disrespected Islam"), and days before leaflets were found at a South London mosque calling for the slaughter of Ahmadis:

Further update (19/3, 11:30): You may have missed this yesterday (I did), but the BBC News website published an article about the BBC's apology. I came across it by chance just now.

Priorities

You may have read in The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Mail, The Daily Mirror, The Daily Express or Metro, etc, about Nissar Hussain, a Christian convert who was violently attacked outside his home in Bradford. 

He was beaten with a pickaxe handle by two men while on the way to his car. He's now in hospital with a broken hand and kneecap. 

Both he and his wife converted to Christianity in 1996 and, according to reports, have experienced intimidation and violence from the Muslim community following their appearance in a 2008 Channel 4 documentary on the mistreatment on converts. (It's not surprising that such a documentary was on Channel 4 rather than the BBC).

The left-liberal media, The Guardian, The Independent and, of course, the BBC are avoiding reporting this story...

...though, in fairness, listeners to the BBC Asian Network might have heard about it. Nihal did an interview with Nissar and his daughter Anniesa about the intimidation they've been facing on the channel a few weeks before the attack (on 27th October). If you're not a listener to the BBC Asian Network, however, your chances of having heard about it on the BBC appear next to zero. 

The differing priorities of various news organisations becomes all too apparent when these kind of news stories arise. The tabloids and right-leaning broadsheets go one way, the left-leaning broadsheets and the BBC go the other. Each have their own biases when it comes to choosing what to report and what not to report.

The BBC, of course, is different to the rest in that it's not supposed to have any such biases.

The burning question (for the BBC)

Morning! @TherealNihal is asking - are British security services to blame for Jihadi John? Give us a shout - text 81869.
— BBC Asian Network (@bbcasiannetwork) February 27, 2015

"Yeah, what are you saying? Are you saying about fighting?..the Arabs he said..Who are the Arabs? Are they Muslim?"

Last night's Down The Line (BBC Radio 4, 7.15) was an absolute treat. The subject of the phone-in, hosted as ever by the award-winning Gary Bellamy, was the UK's Olympics legacy. Here's a sample of the discussion:

Lord Declan: My main point is that since the Olympics the whole country has been enthused. Now there are young lads in the east end of London and the inner city parts of Birmingham, stout Geordie chaps, and they want to be out rowing and sailing and doing equestrianism and all that. And it's up to me to enable them to do that, to really bring dressage into the inner city ghettos.

Gary: Yes, it's a very expensive sport, isn't it, you know? How do you get horses into schools, for example?

Lord Declan: In the lasagne.

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Caller: It's Sadiq from Bradford.

Gary: Hello Sadiq.

Sadiq: You know this thing about the Olympics, right, it's un-Islamic man, you gotta ban it. You know, swimming, volleyball, gymnastics, even archery because sometimes, bro, you can see their armpits and all that, doyouknowwhatimean. All that exposing the flesh. It's very un-Islamic. The Saudis are right, doyouknowwhatimean. Just ban it.

Gary: What if they did all these sports covered up?

Sadiq: All I'm getting is funny thoughts, doyouknowwhatimean, about Jessica Ennis and all that, Rebecca Addlington's thighs, doyouknowwhatimean.

Gary: Yeah.

Sadiq: When I go to watch beach volleyball I don't want to see all these naked bums and stuff, doyouknowwhatimean. You want to see a proper game.

Gary: Then don't watch it!

Sadiq: You've got to watch it though, haven't you!

Gary: Yeah, they do look great in those skimpy outfits, don't they? Yeah but, no, the answer isn't just to ban everything, is it? Banning will just sent it underground and there'll be underground illegal volleyball playing, underground illegal gymnastics or underground illegal swimming. 

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Gary: Hello, next caller, who's there?

Caller: Hello, Gary, it's Khalid.

Gary: (Deep sigh). Well, hello Khalid.

Khalid: What is point Down Line? What is point Down Line?

Gary: (Sigh)

Khalid: What is point Down Line?

Gary: Well, I'll tell you what the point of Down the Line is. We allow people to make points, to talk about topics, discussions. We give people a voice.

Khalid (loudly): What is point give public voice?

Gary: Where else do they have a voice?

Khalid (loudly): Don't care about giving the public voice! What is point give stupid people voice? [Hangs up]

Gary: I sometimes wonder myself, Khalid, but I persevere.

Curiously enough Down the Line came to mind while I was listening to a fascinating discussion programme on the BBC Asian Network, which I heard via Nota Sheep. You really must listen to it.

The topic under discussion was whether the UK government should ban Jihad Watch's Robert Spencer and AtlasShrugs's Pamela Geller from entering the country. It was hosted by the doubtless-award-winning Nihal. Nihal's guests were Robert Spencer himself and, arguing against him, Imam Yunus Dudhwala and Nick Lowles of 'Hope Not Hate'. As Nota Sheep says, Nihal did a fair job of fairly interviewing them all. (That's the 'BBC bias' bit, folks).

Though the topic is, of course, a deeply serious one and there was a hostile tone at times, I found myself laughing out loud many times. I'll let Nota Sheep describe one such moment, as this obviously tickled his funny bone too:

I found especially interesting the part from around 12 minutes in when Nihal asked Robert Spencer to give him some passages from the Koran and Hadith that he found objectionable and then asked the Imam to counter these claims. From around 17:20 listen to the Imam complain that the Qur'an was more Robert Spencer's field than his. I did enjoy Nihal responding incredulously "But you're an imam!" 

That could have come straight out of a Down the Line-like spoof. 

The funniest part of the show though came when the phone lines were opened and the calls begin coming in. I really could have sworn I was actually listening to Down the Line at times - an impression helped by Nihal's uncannily Gary Bellamy-like way of hosting the discussion. (They even sound a little alike).

It had everything - from the host's habit of giving his personal opinion (such as "unfortunately we are seeing Sikhs and Hindus getting involved on certain EDL timelines") and his rather aggrieved-sounding 'so there!'-style slapping down of a critical e-mailer (over what the word 'jihad' means. "Unfortunately.....you're wrong", he said - with feeling), plus his obvious complete astonishment at the sheer dumbness of one of his callers (Cameron), right through to the inevitable angry caller, the caller who admitted she didn't know much about the EDL yet still wanted to speak her brains on the subject (as they used to say on The Day Today), the not-very-bright academic...

....and, above all, the final caller, Cameron from Birmingham, whose bizarre line of questioning to Robert Spencer has to be heard to be believed. (I'm still not entirely convinced that Cameron wasn't actually Paul Whitehouse in disguise). Go to 38:33 and enjoy! 

Now, I'll freely admit that the whole Cameron bit had me laughing so much that I may have missed the substance behind it. (I'm sure you won't miss it though!) Plus, once you've heard such a brilliant spoof as Down the Line it can become hard to hear other topical phone-in shows in quite the same way again.

Maybe that's not unlike what happened to me after watching Leslie Nielson & Co. in Airplane. I only saw Airport, the disaster movie it spoofed so hilariously, after seeing Airplane and, as a result, when I first watched Airport I found myself creasing up with laughter as po-faced disaster after po-faced disaster befell its characters.

The upshot of all this is...please listen to Down the Line and enjoy, and please listen to Nihal's show and enjoy!