Dystopia

In the brave new world:

• TV channels (the BBC, Sky, al-Jazeera etc) give us 4-hour non-stop coverage of a certain funeral. 
• Al Sharpton tells us that the dead man’s “only crime” was to be born black. 
• On the Today programme Chris Patten (!) suddenly becomes the voice of reason.
• 1q§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§qq (The cat typed that)
• The Times (!) (£) prints: “Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, released a two-minute racist outburst in which he accused police of being “soft-handed” at the protests because there were “too many people who aren’t white”.
• Hmmm
• I don't think Boris is very well. The other day his voice was weak and he looked frail. (No wonder)
• Wake me up when it’s over.

"The greatest broadcaster in the world" in action

That exchange on this morning's Today 02:39.15:

Nick Robinson: A last word on an organisation that you used to be in charge of...You were chairman of this organisation, of course, which you generously called "the greatest broadcaster in the world", the BBC. There are people on your side of the argument, who are in favour of remaining in the EU, who - to paraphrase them - say the BBC's bending over backwards to produce balance in this argument and doing so in a way that does not produce the facts. 

Lord Patten: Well, I think the BBC has an extremely difficult job. It's having to cover this referendum with the shadow of a charter review and Mr. Whittingdale hanging over it. I think that may make people excessively deferential when trying to produce balance. You have the governor of the Bank of England on or the IMF chief, so you feel obliged to put up some Conservative backbencher who nobody's ever heard of on the other side of the argument, and it does occasionally raise eyebrows. But I think I would prefer the BBC to be being criticised for being so balanced, excessively balanced, than for them doing anything else. It's a very great broadcaster which is dedicated to telling the truth - and that's an unusual thing in the world of the media. 

Nick Robinson: Lord Patten, Chris Patten, thank you very much indeed.

Keep swallowing that 'Tablet'

Damian Thompson of The Spectator and The Catholic Herald did a 'me' and speculated yesterday about what would be on this morning's Sunday on Radio 4:

Wonder if the wildly biased @BBCR4Sunday is planning a hatchet job on Cardinal #Pell tomorrow. Stourton is friends with Pell’s opponents.

— Damian Thompson (@holysmoke) May 30, 2015

No such hatchet job on Cardinal Pell took place; although he was mentioned.

Damian, however, shares my much-repeated belief that Sunday tends to sound like the audio equivalent of the liberal Catholic magazine The Tablet - of which the programme's main presenter Edward Stourton remains a trustee.

Years of unsympathetic, snarky comments about Pope Benedict have been followed by what feels like an ongoing deluge of sympathetic, appreciative comments about Pope Francis. And stories largely of concern to Catholics seem to be almost weekly occurrences on Sunday. Oh, and there's all the left-liberal stuff too. 

That said, am I am guilty of overstating the case against Sunday? 

Even since Is the BBC biased? (with subsequent help from Damian Thompson and others) exposed the programme's heavy use of guests from The Tablet back in 2012 (and the total exclusion of guests from the rival, more-conservative-inclined Catholic Herald), Sunday has brought in much fewer guests from The Tablet and some guests from The Catholic Herald (usually Madeleine Teehan) and other more traditionalist voices have subsequently appeared, giving the programme a somewhat better balance of voices.

Yes, there was that Tablet 175th anniversary edition a couple of weeks ago where the magazine got a lot of highly favourable coverage (aka 'a plug') and, yes, the programme does still focus unusually heavily on purely Catholic matters...

...but is it really fair to describe Sunday as 'The radio version of The Tablet'?

Surely that's just rhetoric of the kind we bloggers about BBC bias might occasionally over-indulge in?

Maybe.

Anyhow, the centrepiece of this morning's Sunday saw Edward Stourton talking about the Vatican's media operation (yes, I know!) and interviewing the man Pope Francis appointed to review it - namely, former BBC Trust head Chris Patten. 

It was a good-natured interview, with Lord Patten expanding on his points at length and receiving no challenging questions from Edward. (Please listen to it and you might almost hear Ed purring in the background).

Edward Stourton began by asking Lord Patten: 

Many might say you were brave to take this on. Certainly under the last pope [i.e. Benedict] scarcely a week seemed to go by without the Vatican apparently shooting itself in the foot in media relations!

He later asked: 

Were you impressed with Pope Francis?

Lord Patten replied: 

Oh, I mean, I'm a bit old to go into hero worship. I think he's probably the most remarkable person I've ever met. I mean, he's astonishing. He's like...sorry, to some people this may sound a bit soppy or sanctimonious, but it's like the Gospel of St. Matthew embodied in one person. He's just remarkable - witty, normal, not sort of behind great formality or ceremonial or ecclesiastical millinery. He's a wonderful human being.

Yes, I know that's exactly the sort of thing that leads me to regularly describe Sunday as 'The Tablet on air', but at least Lord Patten isn't a fellow trustee of Ed's at The Tablet.

Oh, hang on! What's this?:

"Its trustees include Lord Patten, Baroness Shirley Williams, Baroness Helena Kennedy and Edward Stourton"?

Oh.

Omnipresent Pang

And this made me laugh too:

Chris Patten to take up media adviser role to Pope Francis
Former Conservative MP takes up new role only two months after dramatically quitting as chairman of BBC Trust due to heart problems

How on earth does Chris Patten end up in every single job on earth. Is he actually a lizard person?
— Ed West (@edwest) July 9, 2014

A Dreadful Advert

Our household stopped subscribing to the Telegraph after one too many of those obnoxious and offensive articles in which Peter Oborne aired his pathological obsession with the Jewish Lobby, but I must admit the Telegraph seemed to  have a pretty interesting obsession of their own. (Dissing the BBC) 

However the Times isn’t entirely deficient in that department either.

Bottom of page 13, (£) a piece by Miles Goslett about Lord Patten, illustrated with a distinctly unflattering photo of the soon-to-be ex-chairman of the BBC Trust. 

“Patten a ‘dreadful advert’ for the BBC” says the headline.  Groups representing the licence fee-payers have penned a letter to Sajid Javid saying Patten’s mistakes must not be repeated.

“....due to his astonishingly patronising approach to anyone who has ever questioned him on any matter relating to the BBC.”

They say they the new appointee mustn’t be indulged like Patten, who is paid £110,000 for “three to four days per week,” has five corporate jobs with firms including BP and EDF, and is also the unpaid chancellor of Oxford University.

“In the letter, Patten is also accused of ‘covering up at least one major scandal”  ....the Pollard review into the Savile affair, which “failed to include key evidence about Mark Thompson” even though Nick Pollard, who chaired the £3 million inquiry, admitted its exclusion was “a mistake” .

Is the chair of the PAC biased? - live blog (up to a point)

Watching the start of the parliamentary Public Affairs Committee's committee grilling of Mark Thompson, Chris Patten et al, I was struck by PAC chairman (and Labour MP) Margaret Hodge's opening declaration of love for the BBC, and her confidence that that love is shared by us, the public - along with her declaration of interest that her daughter works for the BBC.

Indeed she does.

Following a tip from Beeboidal at Biased BBC, Ms Hodge's daughter Lizzi Watson has been a producer at Newsnight, so far as I can see, for well over a decade. (See here for 2001 and here for 2013). She was also a producer on BBC News 24 (around 2004), when the one of the BBC's most prominent political reporters, James Landale, called her “our producer, the indefatigable and incomparable Lizzi Watson.”

Margaret Hodge herself was a minister at the Culture, Media and Sport committee from 2007-10 so, unless Lizzi left the BBC for a while, it looks as if she would have been working at the BBC at that time.

Small world, isn't it?

Margaret Hodge, who seems to be on the BBC more than most other MPs (oh, for some stats to prove that!), has so far dominated this PAC committee, grilling (ex-BBC) Mark Thompson and Lucy Adams (current BBC HR head, who admitted a mistake over the issue) - "I’m not having any more lies this afternoon’" - but treating Lord Patten (ex-fellow politician, current head of the BBC Trust) with the mildest possible rebuke and a smile. ("PAC chairman bias!?!?!")

Ah, as time goes on Ms Hodge is taking a slightly smaller part, though she remains a dominating figure, and getting praise from the Telegraph for so doing  - and she's going after Mark Thompson - and Miss Adams, to a lesser extent - with a vengeance. ("Oh for goodness sake!", replied an exasperated Miss Adams). 

Lord Patten, so far, need not have turned up. He's spoken for about two minutes in the first hour and a half of this committee meeting. Is Margaret Hodge saving her fire for the present head of the BBC Trust for the end? 

Sir Michael Lyons, former Labour councillor, former BBC Trust head, is now (from around 16.45 pm) getting an pretty easy ride from Ms Hodge....

...well, what happened next it's impossible to say. The BBC News Channel pulled away from the coverage at that point.

Update 17.40 Watching Sky News, Tim Luckhurst, journalism professor at Kent University and former BBC editor, said that the committee failed to get to the bottom of 'who said what to who' (which I'd say is a spot-on assessment) and noted that it took one and a half hours (probably just about the time the BBC's coverage pulled away) for one of the BBC current or former staff to mention the concerns of the licence fee payer, which he said didn't reflect well on the BBC.

Update 17.55 Ross Hawkins on the BBC is saying that Lord Patten has been answering questions at the committee and defending the BBC Trust. We heard Ross's review of his defence, but no clips or counter-points. That that the part of the committee I most wanted to watch live. Thwarted!

Update 18.00 Having been thwarted I thought I'd check out the Telegraph live blog. There's nothing much above the line but the newest comments are suggesting to me that Lord Patten continued to get an easy ride:

angermanagement

20 minutes ago The whole tone changed when Patten spoke. Platitudes and blather. Criminal acts with licence fee money were being paraded before our eyes. And lies and cover ups demonstrated. Lyons like Patten started off with platitudes and was shown up for a liar.
Patten would be too if the MPs stopped sucking to him.
The whole bunch seem like underweight second rate and incompetent. You had a guy there on £280000 per annum who couldn't find an e mail. Says he!
Up til 5 mins ago a good attempt by the MPs. But why are they giving Patten a free ride??

The whole think was quite tense but didn't seem to get anywhere. No one's going anywhere as I result of this I'd say.

Margaret Hodge will have struck many viewers as a feisty interrogator, though what she achieved as a result I really, really can't say.

I'm sick of popcorn now. It was disappointing. The schadenfreude in the build up was so much more fun.

Update 18.15 I'll go with David Preiser at Biased BBC's summary here:

In the end, though, Hodge made it clear that nothing will come of this. This was apparently an excuse to air grievances and make a pretence of slapping a few wrists. She got to scold everyone, so can claim to have been tough and got it about right, but she said that this was all about protecting and saving and cherishing the BBC. It was fun hearing people mention DMI and Lonely Planet, but this was all a charade.

Nobody has to resign, nobody forced to apologize, nothing will happen. Job done.

Update 19.30 The award for the funniest review of today's PAC session goes to Iain Martin at the Daily Telegraph. "It was riveting stuff," he said. "I had no idea what on earth was going on, but my God it was gripping." Quite true.

He captures the modesty of that shrinking violet Chris Patten, "one of Britain's leading peerers over spectables", and the sort of man who "just sits there, eating his oysters, modestly". He also captures how Mark Thompson "said 'um' a lot but with such intensity that it was clear he really meant it".

And as for the lovely Lucy, "The HR director got a very tough time from her colleagues and from everyone else. This is the fate of the HR director down the ages". Indeed it is.

He also pinned down the "highly aggressive" "show trial"-like style of questioning from the show-boating MPs who never managed anywhere near that level of ferocity in the build up to the financial crash. If only that had, if only they had.

A Spot of bother

I might as well mention the edition of HardTalk featuring Lord Patten, Chairman of the BBC Trust. His interrogator was Stephen Sackur. This programme sets out, per se, to give the interviewee a hard time so no use complaining when the going gets tough. In any case, Chris Patten could do with a good grilling because of his failure to wisely guide the BBC  through its recent tribulations; oh yes, and a couple of his biases.

The issue here is not that Sackur did his browbeating too well, or too badly. It’s about the fact that amongst BBC types it’s a given that being pro-Israel is a deviation, like paedophillia, or whatever super-aberration du jour automatically renders one subhuman. 

The new head of News at the BBC, James Harding, has been outed. The admission that once upon a time, in a former incarnation (at the Times) he suffered from a debilitating affliction has been deliberated over by concerned individuals throughout the land. Why? As a potential impediment to his suitability, that’s why. What? Oh, he said he was pro Israel.

“I am pro-Israel and I haven’t found it hard because The Times has been pro-Israel for a very long time” quoth Sackur to Patten accusingly, which is HardTalk for you’ve irresponsibly appointed a monster who’s bound to contaminate the news with objectionable pro Israel views. “He won’t have changed his spots” declared Sackur.

“Are you comfortable for him to pronounce himself pro-Israel as head of news of the BBC?” He asks again. (That’s HardTalk for “You look like the smug, comfortable toad you actually are and you should be very uncomfortable indeed.”)

Patten has widely-known pro-Palestinian ‘history’, which he himself cites in order to evince a shining example of personal integrity triumphing over personal opinion, throwing in his Conservative party credentials for good measure. Sackur isn’t having any of it. “You’re not head of BBC News and you never have been.” he counters, quick as lightening.“No, but I’m chair of the BBC Trust.” comes the reposte. But Sackur persists:

 “James Harding is self-declared pro-Israel. Do you have any problem with that? Do you think that it might create problems for you and for the BBC when one considers that perhaps the most contentious issue we all in BBC news and current affairs have to deal with on a daily basis is reporting the Middle East?”

Obviously Sackur assumes that being pro-Israel disqualifies one from being  a reasonable person, merely because the default BBC position is “anti”. But here’s the rub. Why would the viewer be convinced that the BBC’s multitudes of 'antis' have the mental agility to put their personal feelings to one side and adopt professional impartiality on air, while one solitary 'pro' would be incapable of doing so?  Should the ideal BBC employee be scrupulously ‘of no opinion’ like an automaton, to ensure that he doesn’t skew the news in the wrong direction, or must he sign up to the official anti-Israel party line before temporarily casting it to one side the minute he puts on his BBC hat?

Stephen Sackur explains:

"HARDtalk isn’t about shouting, or point-scoring. It's about asking the intelligent questions our audience would be asking if they had the chance to sit in the HARDtalk chair."

But Tweets concerning a particularly hectoring HardTalk encounter with “settler leader” Dani Dayan at the time when the BBC was rife with off-beam predictions about the Israeli elections suggest these principles have been forgotten.

 Sackur may well be as unbiased as the next man and Lord Patten may have put his Arabist tendencies firmly behind him when he took up the chair of the BBC trust. That’s what we’re expected to believe is it not?  So why can’t James Harding?

As David Preiser says over at B-BBC:

“Probably most important of all, though, is that Sackur’s charge reveals just how much they really don’t believe the crap they feed us about how proper journalists leave their opinions at the door.So we just have to ask Sackur in turn: Are you concerned that Jeremy Bowen will not have “changed his spots” about Israel? Are you concerned that Paul Mason will not have “changed his spots” about his extreme-Left politics? Are you concerned that Stephanie Flanders will have “changed her spots” about her Left-wing, Statist economic views? Are you concerned that Richard Bacon or Victoria Derbyshire or Mark Mardell or James “If we win the election” Naughtie have “changed their spots” about their own political views? Or are they all magically superior to Harding for some reason, and are trusted to leave their personal opinions at the door?”

And that leads us to the Twitter question. Is the disclaimer “my views are my own” which must be attached to all BBC Tweets as meaningless to Sackur as it is to everyone else?  Or are left-wing, pro-Palestinian spots as indelible as James Harding’s and if so is Sackur comfortable with that?

But here’s the other rub. What exactly is wrong with being pro-Israel? It’s only organisations like the BBC and the Guardian that have turned this into something devilish. Being pro Israel means you support Israel’s existence as a Jewish state. It’s geographically tiny and civilizationally gigantic. What’s not to like?