So what they're saying is...

 

On the same theme as the previous two posts, here's a transcript from Channel 4 News on Cathy Newman's interview with Tim Montgomerie and Ed Vaizey.

I'd only add in advance that Mr Vaizey - a former minister for culture - is out-of-date (ill-informed) as far as LBC is concerned. Nigel Farage was forced out of LBC in June.

Cathy Newman: Fair, balanced and impartial, that's the law for anyone broadcasting news and current affairs programmes in the UK. But two new channels are hoping to capitalise on what critics of the BBC have described as its "woke, wet" agenda. One is spearheaded by former Downing Street advisor Sir Robbie Gibb, the other is reportedly being mulled by Rupert Murdoch's News UK. Both insist they will be impartial. Well, to discuss I'm joined now by the former culture minister Ed Vaizey, who's talked of the BBC's "massive public support", and Tim Montgomerie, a former prime ministerial adviser who's accused the corporation of "Guardianista wokeness". And before we start, I should say in the interests of transparency, this is my main job, but every Friday I also present a show on Rupert Murdoch's Times Radio. Tim Montgomerie, it is denied that it is going to be Fox News, either of these channels, so how different is it from what we have at the moment? 

Tim Montgomerie: I hope, I don't know, I'm not part of either initiative, but what I would hope would be there would be true diversity in terms of the editorial rooms of these proposed channels. There is a lot of focus, and it is a good focus, on diversity of gender and ethnicity in BBC and I'm sure Channel 4 editorial staff conferences. But where, for example, are the Brexiteers? Where are the people who go to church? Where the people who would take the side, for example, of Israel rather than Palestine in the Middle Eastern debate? What there seems to be a lack of in the main establishment broadcasters in Britain at the moment is the sort of intellectual, philosophical diversity that I think produces programmes that really will understand where the whole country, the whole of the viewing audience, is. If it that is sort of diversity then we will get real impartiality from these channels. 

Cathy Newman: Ed Vaizey, do you agree with that? 

Ed Vaizey: Yeah, I do - up to a point. I think the comparison of these channels to Fox News is a distraction, although it helps get their news on the news as it were. I think the model is more closely aligned actually to Times Radio and to LBC. I think the people behind the channels have seen, for example, the amazing success of LBC, which is owned be Global Radio, a UK company, and is now thanks to digital radio a national station. And opinion ranges. And the key about LBC is that, on the one hand, you have Nigel Farage, who may be meat and drink to Tim, and, on the other hand, you have people like James O'Brien, who is more of my sort of politics if you like, and that way it sort of achieves impartiality, but each programme has a particular slant, and it it does attract listeners - though there is no doubt at all that these two channels are also potentially looking over their shoulder at Fox News, which is an absolute cash machine for the Murdoch empire and has been proved very lucrative for them. 

Cathy Newman: Tim Montgomerie, is opinion really needed? I mean, I accept what Ed's saying. You can be opinioniated, as long as across the board it is impartial and it balances out so you keep within the law, but is that sort of opinion style of broadcasting really needed?

Tim Montgomerie: Not necessarily. But what a broadcaster chooses to report is also a reflection I think of the diversity of who they employ. Channel 4, for example. Recently Krishnan Guru-Murthy had an interview with the head of the Metropolitan Police, and it was an interesting interview, but of all the questions were focused on questions of institutional racism. Those are legitimate questions, but when I saw the interview I thought, 'Where are the questions being asked on behalf of Londoners who are worried about violence or an inadequate police response to the violence?'...

Cathy Newman: (interrupting) Well, I mean, did that happen to be the whole...but Tim, I must interject there. The whole issue of racism is a huge story at the moment with the Black Lives Matter protests, so a legitimate line of questioning to the Metropolitan Police commissioner. 

Tim Montgomerie: It is, and I wouldn't deny that for a second. They were very legitimate questions. But a lot of Londoners would also say they're very worried about knife crime and they're very worried about other forms of crime, and those questions were not asked. And I think a different kind of person who was on a channel with a different philosophical background might sort of have said before that interview was made, 'Aren't we going to ask about these questions, which worry Londoners just as much as questions of racism?'

Cathy Newman: Without getting into a discussion about Channel 4, we have repeatedly covered issues about knife crime and repeatedly put those questions too. But Ed Vaizey, is this really just a way of bashing the BBC? Tackling the BBC? Should the BBC rather be cherished rather than chastised? 

Ed Vaizey: Well, obviously the BBC should be cherished against its detractors like Tim who seem to be obsessed with what the BBC is doing wrong. We should cherish the BBC for a number of reasons. First of all, obviously interviews are driven by the news and you quite rightly point out you can have the Metropolitan Police commissioner on when Black Lives Matter is in the news and you'll have her on when knife crime is back in the news and you'll challenge her then. But secondly, we live in an age of grotesque disinformation, particularly on the internet. We need more than ever our public service broadcasters. And I don't understand, for example, why the launch of these news channels has to be predicated on the fact that they are only good because the BBC is so terrible. That is absolute rubbish. We depend hugely on the BBC in this kind of 21st Century digital age. Around the world people look on the BBC as this extraordinary broadcaster...

Cathy Newman: (interrupting) Tim, I just want to...OK...we are running out of time...

Ed Vaizey: ...and I can't believe we are full of people just denigrating it. 

Cathy Newman: Sorry to interrupt. Just want to get Tim Montgomerie to respond to that cos...Do you think the licence fee should be scrapped? Is the BBC failing us, or is it a jewel in the crown?

Tim Montgomerie: Despite what Ed says, I actually do want the BBC to continue...

Ed Vaizey: Good!

Tim Montgomerie: ...but a poll yesterday in the Daily Mail...and by 52% to 17% the people who pay that licence fee think the BBC is too politically correct. If those people who really believe in the BBC want to save it, that problem needs to be addressed and not pretend that it doesn't exist. 

Cathy Newman: Thank you. Tim Montgomerie and Ed Vaizey, I'd love to carry on talking...

Ed Vaizey: So would I!

Cathy Newman: ...but thank you both very much. We will. Yes, thanks very much for that.

The BBC just asked the BBC for an interview but the BBC said that nobody from the BBC is available yet

Having been at work today I appear to have quite a bit of fun over the report from auditors PwC into BBC pay, which found "no evidence of gender bias" and, hilariously, actually found a 23% pay gap in favour of women among senior BBC correspondents - i.e. the Carrie Gracies of this world! 

Adding to the entertainment, poor Jane Garvey of Woman's Hour said, "The report would say that, wouldn't it? This is a PwC report commissioned by the BBC and, without being overly cynical, I might venture to suggest that the PwC has delivered the report the BBC has asked for". Many might say the same about the BBC's landmark impartiality reviews over the years!

And Guido Fawkes picked up on an amusing slip this morning, tweeting "On Radio 4 Today discussing pay Mishal Husain asked if as a public service broadcaster the BBC had a duty to protect “the taxpayers”. Officially it is a “licence fee”. In reality...". Quite!

Not bovvered

Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters were outraged at the audacity of Cathy Newman’s ambush  of their hero in some back alley t’other day.

It was filmed and widely disseminated on the internet. 

Newman questioned him on his association with Hamas and Hezbollah and friendships with antisemitic individuals like Raed Salah, to which he protested  “they never said anything antisemitic in front of me”, and of infamous holocaust denier Paul Eisen “I didn’t know he was a holocaust denier.” 

His main defence seemed to be that his mother stood alongside the Jewish people and the Irish people against the fascists in the notorious Cable Street demonstration.

As if those answers weren’t feeble enough, Cathy Newman’s questions were pretty feeble as well. 

Let’s not forget that Channel Four is as censorious and condemnatory of Israel’s defensive activities as anyone. Jon Snow is probably more guilty of promulgating pro-Palestinian propaganda  than Corbyn. 

However, apart from the actual holocaust deniers, most Israel-bashers will concede that the Jews suffered at the hands of Hitler; some of them even admit that Jews have suffered in a unique way. This does not translate into sympathy for Israel. Somehow, somewhere on the journey between universal sympathy for survivors of Belsen and Auschwitz and the establishment of the Jewish state in the historic homeland of the Jewish people, something went awry. Logic, history, facts, documentary evidence - all flew out the window.  Out with the philosemitism, in with the antisemitism.

Personally I feel that insincere challenges from the likes of Cathy Newman are futile because the bulk of Corbyn’s supporters couldn’t care less about his friendship with Salah, Sizer, Eisen, and now, another scandal, his association with a fellow named Dyab Abou Jahjaj.

The most damaging aspect of these revelations is that Corbyn seems to have forgotten his  friendship with this man altogether. Various investigators have come up with all sorts of evidence, which indicate that he’s a liar, or, if you prefer, economical with the actualité. In other words their hero is behaving in the manner of someone to whom the truth is irrelevant. 

The Telegraph has joined in the fun. 

And so has the Daily Mail:

“As to my position towards Palestine, it is guided by anti-racism and decolonisation logic. The racists are the Zionists themselves.”  

Opines Dyab Abou Jahjaj.

“Douglas Murray, of the human rights think tank the Henry Jackson Society tonight accused Mr Corbyn of being a ‘cheeerleader’ for Jahjah.He said: ‘Jahjah is a well-known thug on the Continent, particularly in Belgium and Holland’.‘Mr Corbyn hosted him in London in 2009 - long after his views because widely known. Indeed he was banned from entering the UK that year by the Home Secretary.‘But it’s not just the fact that he was receiving Jahjah – he was cheerleading for him. That is what makes this case so troubling.’”

The Jewish Chronicle posed some questions a few days ago, and it seems Corbyn has now attempted to answer them, through a spokesperson from his office.

All his answers are rather pathetic. He was unaware of the antisemitic beliefs of the individuals he befriended at the time he befriended or supported them He didn’t know. He didn’t recollect. He didn’t mean ‘friends’ literally when he said ‘friends’. He meant it as a term of diplomacy. He condemns antisemitic language, even when he’s spoken at rallies where antisemitic posters are being brandished in front of cameras; he was unaware of them. Raed Salah never said anything antisemitic in front of him. Dyou Abou Jahjah never expressed nasty views in front of him, and he claims he didn’t  even know him.

Doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter. Water off a duck’s back. Corbynistas will say it’s a smear campaign. They don’t care. Are they bovvered? No. They.  Ain’t.

Internet rage and real rage

The other day I grabbed a trolley in supermarket entrance, but unbeknownst to me someone had silently crept up behind me, very close, like a kind of pedestrian tailgate.  Taking a step back to extricate the trolley I came unexpectedly into contact with a body; smack!

Slightly shocked, I let out an involuntary “Sorry” - for the bump - not an admission of liability; for who in their right mind would push the trolly further into the stack when removing it, rather than taking a small step back? Not I.  

The collision was obviously the fault of the person facing forward, (again not I) who had unwisely and unnecessarily come into close proximity with a person (me) whose next move could only be backwards.

I know you need to look behind when you reverse a car, but I am not a car. I have no rear view mirror. I am in a virtual dead end and I am going to reverse one small step. I have no choice.

Who would have come up from the rear so close?  my husband, maybe? But no. A woman of  “Backpfeifengesicht”  from whom emerged a short burst of foul expletives.

 “That fucking hurt!” she whined “Why don’t you look where you’re fucking going?” and with that she suddenly about-turned and fled.  I muttered weakly, to thin air: “It’s you who should look where you are going.” No one else was there, and it wasn’t just any old downmarket supermarket, it was M & S Food!

Anyway, I came across this new word which comes in German only, (H/T Nick G on H/P) and it beautifully describes Yasmin Alhibai Brown whose exaggerated facial expressions and gesticulations I have written about before. Eye-rolling, smugness, hubris,  faux despair, pomposity, primping, priggish self-importance and, as they say in those ads, much, much more.

Other candidates for das Backfeifengesicht, with varying degrees of annoyingness include Paddy Ashdown, Russell Brand,  and of course Diane Abbott. Peter Oborne comes close.  I’m sure everyone has a favourite. (Someone might nominate me!)

Caitlin Moran has a piece in today’s Times Magazine (£) in which she suggests the internet needs policing. She argues that people ‘on the internet’ think that if something happens on the internet it’s ‘not real’, when she believes it is real.

Depends what she means by ‘something happens.’ If someone actually threatens violence online they already don’t get a free pass - people were jailed the other day for making threats online, as they would have been for doing so in person. It’s very true that “the internet’s tone is increasingly one of hair-trigger fury and paranoia” but we are emboldened by our anonymity and everyone knows that’s the case; it’s tacitly understood and accepted. We radicalise each other with our ever-increasing verbal audacity.

There already is the internet police. It’s public opinion, so it is. Look at that hysterical Twitter-related palaver that began with Yasmin Alibhai Brown’s nasty interview on Channel four, when an MP called Michael Fabricant got into trouble for Tweeting that YAB made him feel like punching her in the throat. If he’s said face instead of throat he  might have got away with it. “Throat” sounds too graphic, and goes with “slit”, not “punch”, and sounds more threatening. But he didn’t actually make a threat, whereas Yasmin boasted in her most annoying manner, with her funny little cupped-hand movements, that she loathed Rod Liddle, and she felt somehow proud of this loathing, which to me sounds quite similar in tenor, if not worse, than what Michael Fabricant Tweeted. 

Then there was a sequel, in which Channel Four’s Cathy Newman revisited the whole thing by interviewing James Delingpole and bringing Yasmin back for an encore. Dellers went some way to demolishing Yasmin’s self-pitying, race-hustling argument but came a cropper when he seemed not to have heard of another incriminating Tweet concerning ‘deportation’, which momentarily gave Yasmin half a leg to stand on.

There has been a ridiculous furore over this trivial pantomime, but the upshot is that public opinion has policed it by expressing its disapproval, which has pressurised Fabricant to apologise and so we don’t need another hastily thought-through law that we’d have to repent at leisure. 

People are saying that Yasmin Alibhai Brown sometimes talks sense, that some of her criticisms of Islam are intelligent, but I think that’s what makes people like her even more annoying. Practically all my suggested candidates for  Backfeifengesicht can be sensible some of the time. Even George Galloway manages to say normal things in certain situations. So does Oborne. The more credibility they have, the more you want to punch them in the face when they suddenly “go off on one”. You want to say “That’s fucking crap!” and “I’d like to punch you in the fucking face,”  then, maybe, about-turn and flee.