Profiling

You may have read at Guido Fawkes or in the Daily Mail that the BBC had to temporarily withdraw their latest Radio 4 Profile of Conservative cabinet minister Kemi Badenoch.

The programme has now been edited and made available again, but the BBC is being tight-lipped about what they've changed, according to the Mail:

The BBC would not reveal what had been changed in the episode, but it is understood that a claim in the original broadcast, that Mrs Badenoch, 42, had stuck 'male' and 'female' signs on the doors of gender-neutral toilets at her leadership launch venue, was corrected.

This story has a few interesting implications, especially concerning journalism. 

Firstly, I'm intrigued that the Daily Mail couldn't find out what the BBC changed. I've been able to find out though, thanks to TVEyes.

The Mail correctly 'understood' the first change - concerning these signs:

The original broadcast said:

This summer, after Boris Johnson quit as PM, Badenoch threw her hat into the ring to become leader, sticking 'men' and 'ladies' signs on the doors of gender-neutral toilets at her launch venue.

This caused a stir on Twitter with many people quoting a Twitter thread on 12 July - the date of Mrs Badenoch's leadership launch - by leading 'gender-critical' voice Maya Forstater. This called journalists out at the time about it:

This story is not what you think: These are the toilets at Policy Exchange. I first noticed these signs on 17th of May at meeting about sex based rights with various gender critical groups. At first i thought the paper signs had been put up specifically for our benefit. What I think is happening here is that Policy Exchange (or their landlords) put in nice new gender neutral toilets and the staff don't like them. They probably feel uncomfortable. Men leave the seat up etc.. so they've put the signs up for everyone's comfort.

Yet here was BBC Radio 4 repeating this discredited claim four months on.

The edited version goes like this:

It was reported that 'men' and 'ladies' signs were cellotaped on the doors of gender-neutral toilets at her launch venue but evidence later emerged that this had been done before the event.

Even this edit risks being misleading. "Evidence later emerged that this had been done before the event" might suggest that rather than Kemi herself 'sticking' up the signs, it was done "before the event" i.e. done for the launch. What Maya Forstater, and others, showed is that those signs were up a couple of months before the launch, so not connected to Kemi Badenoch in any way.

Indeed, it's so potentially misleading that Guido Fawkes apparently misread the revised version as a simple repetition of the debunked claims from the original version:

Despite the editing, the profile still reeks of W1A’s woke inclinations. It repeats debunked claims about Kemi removing gender-neutral toilets at her campaign launch, albeit with a caveat.

Maybe the programme needs withdrawing and re-editing again to remove this ambiguous wording?

What both Guido and the Mail missed though was the second edit. The original broadcast said:

It's not just race. LGBTQ activists have accused Kemi Badenoch of being anti-trans Ben Hunte, a senior reporter with Vice World News. "I've had for a number of organisations and individuals who are really concerned about Kemi Badenoch's behaviour in government. I've exposed a leaked recording of Kemi Badenoch saying that trans women are men", the government insisting her comments had been taken out of context. "I have released a report about the equalities minister saying she doesn't care about colonialism." She's been criticised for abstaining on a vote to extend same sex marriage rights to Northern Ireland. And this week, ITV News reported that Bedenoch has now paused work on a promised ban on the use of conversion therapy. "There have been a number of situations over the past year that really do kind of raise your eyebrows about what it means to be an equalities minister when you don't necessarily believe in all forms of equality within your portfolio".

The revised version edited out this line:

And this week, ITV News reported that Bedenoch has now paused work on a promised ban on the use of conversion therapy.

That concerns a 'scoop' by ITV's Paul Brand that the Government took to Twitter to dismiss. BBC Radio 4 clearly got cold feet about Paul Brand's journalistic 'scoop' too.

Both Guido and the Daily Mail note the inclusion of the activist-like Ben Hunte. The Mail uses the c-word about him - "controversial":

That made me smile because of how Radio 4's website introduces this programme. They also use the c-word about Kemi Badenoch, asking "Is the controversial trade secretary and equalities minister a future PM?":

Another thing that struck me about controversial Ben Hunte's controversial inclusion is that Radio 4 - unlike the Mail - didn't mention that Ben used to work for the BBC [and got the Corportation into quite a few scrapes]. Profile simply introduced him as "a senior reporter with Vice World News". None of his contributions were re-edited.

A final thing is that the version you can now here on BBC Sounds - which begins by saying that the programme has been edited, but not why ["This programme has been edited since broadcast"] - ends with quite of list of BBC staff behind this edition of Profile: the researcher, producers, production co-ordinators, and editor. 

Not sure I'd have wanted my name on this piece of BBC broadcasting. Maybe they'll be tempted to edit those out next?

When's the funeral?

 

"The BBC lives or dies by its impartiality"

Some hilarious comments under this!

Looking back

WARNING: This is one of those posts that got more confusing the more I wrote. And you may feel the same by the end of it. Apologies in advance...

The Defund The BBC campaign group tweeted the following this afternoon:

Surprise, surprise, the BBC’s ‘impartiality guru’ has locked his Twitter account after being found to be completely biased against both Boris and Brexit calling Brexit result ‘utterly stupid’. It’s no wonder the BBC is so shamelessly partisan!

They are a bit out-of-date though...by over two years. 

They linked to a 15 June 2020 Guido Fawkes article BBC IMPARTIALITY ADVISER’S ULTRA PARTISAN ANTI-BORIS, ANTI-BREXIT TWEETS where Guido did a spot of 'Twitter archaeology' on Richard Sambrook, the former BBC executive turned Cardiff University media professor turned BBC official reviewer tasked with assessing whether the BBC's social media accounts are going against the BBC's impartiality policy. 

Guido found a string of partisan tweets, all in the usual direction, from the man appointed to assess BBC impartiality on Twitter and other social media.

An update that day on Guido Fawkes said:

Following our story this morning about his clearly partisan public tweeting, [Richard Sambrook] has now locked his Twitter account making his tweets private.

...which was an absolute joke and should have led to the BBC dropping him instantly.

Prof. Sambrook was appointed to review the BBC's social media on 29 May 2020. Guido was on it just over two weeks later on 15 June 2020.

I remember all this because - not to blow our own trumpets, while actually blowing them like Dizzy Gillespie  - looking back, we were actually well ahead of Guido there. On the 29 May 2020 itself I posted a piece where I wrote:

Salford, we have a problem.  The Times reports today that the BBC is so concerned about their journalists discrediting them by expressing their views on Twitter that they've now hired their former head of news, Richard Sambrook, to look into the problem. Mr Sambrook was, you may recall, the co-author of a much-cited, BBC-backed Cardiff University report which 'found' that the BBC didn't just not have a pro-EU bias but 'actually' has a pronounced anti-EU bias. His own Twitter feed reveals him to be anti-Brexit. Wonder what he'll find and recommend?

And Sue, that very same day, wrote: 

Hiring Richard Sambrook to review how the BBC “maintains impartiality on social media, amid concerns that journalists are discrediting the corporation by revealing their opinions” is a bit like getting the Supreme Court of Injustice to adjudicate on the lawfulness of something Lady Hale isn’t keen on.

We'd even done a piece in November 2019 on one of Richard Sambrook's impartiality-free 'chats' on Twitter, when he was a mere Cardiff University professor overseeing monitoring of BBC impartiality, which ended with the line:  

The people traditionally presented by the BBC as those worthy of holding them to account aren't exactly reassuring me here about their own impartiality.

It's still worth returning to all of this though because the 15 June 2020 Guido Fawkes piece ended with this:

There will now be no confidence in his review, as a former journalist he should know that cover-ups always backfire and transparency would have been better. He will surely have to step aside from the impartiality review…

What happened next? Well, as per various BBC reports from later that year that mentioned his review in passing, he didn't step aside, and he and the BBC seem to have carried on regardless. New guidance on social media use by BBC staff was issued on 29 October 2020, though that apparently came before the Sambrook review itself was finished. 

And that's where things get cloudy. Was the Sambrook review ever published? If I ever knew, I've forgotten. 

[That's what comes of closing the book and losing your page].

If anyone knows please let me know below. 

Not another one?

They say the internet never forgets, making 'offense archaeology' possible.

Digging deeply, Guido Fawkes is really going to town on the newly appointed editor of BBC Radio Wales and Sport, Carolyn Hitt.

She's clearly one of life's perpetual Twitterers. 

In recent years, she's keenly declared her dislike of Brexit and Tories, and declared that, though a life-long Labour voter, she'd voted Plaid Cymru as that was the party that 'reflects unambiguously about how I feel about Brexit'.

She's also - within the last five or so years - written articles slamming the Welsh for voting for Brexit, backed Welsh independence, expressed admiration for Jeremy Corbyn and slammed The Sun, The Daily Mail and the Daily Express as “far-right rags”.

So her views are clear.

I've just done five minutes of digging myself on Twitter using the terms 'UKIP' and 'Farage' - which are so fruitful because they tap into how certain people reacted to the rise of UKIP, Nigel Farage and Brexit and, ultimately, the 2019 collapse of the Red Wall. So here are some further tweets from Ms Hitt:

• I will never ever understand the appeal of Ukip in Wales.
• UKIP 2nd in RCT. 1901 Rhondda census listed greatest number of people born elsewhere living there in all UK. Immigration built communities.
• Nothing depresses me more than Welsh support for UKIP.
• Just when I thought I couldn't feel more disillusioned UKIP trumps Plaid. 
• I find the level of coverage they get absolutely ridiculous. Farage on #bbcqt 15 times without a single MP.
• Oh bloody hell Nigel Farage on telly AGAIN. Time for bed #bbctw

She's landed quite a bold claim there in saying that she'll 'never understand' the appeal of wide swathes of Welsh opinion. Hopefully, that's not true, given that she's now in charge of the BBC's Welsh radio output and is Charter-bound to understand all shades of public opinion, whatever she thinks of them, and then to treat them fairly. 

And the last two there are particularly interesting in the context of BBC impartiality. The partisan Ms Hitt was slapping the BBC for inviting on Nigel Farage. 

The question, of course, is whether she'll be able to hang her leftist, anti-Brexit, pro-Welsh independence coat up at the door now she's been appointed to a senior editorship at the BBC. 

BBC Distrust

Recently - including when defending itself against claims of bias - the BBC has prayed in aid certain polling data which 'proves' that the public still broadly trusts it.

The BBC has, of course, been highly selective in the data it cites.

So the corporation won't be pleased - to put it mildly - that the latest Reuters Institute Digital News Report shows that trust in BBC News has fallen 20 percentage points in the last five years.

That a massive drop.

As Guido Fawkes points out, “According to the Reuters Institute distrust of the BBC has more than doubled in the last 4 years”, and “the majority of those who distrust the BBC [53%] are Conservative.” 

And as one of Guido's Twitter commenters put it, “If anyone involved in running the BBC does not understand the devastating implications of that, the organisation is truly lost.”

What will make the BBC squirm most here is that this is from Reuters, so they can't just dismiss it.

And it gets worse...

One curious thing about the findings is that the 'overview' from Reuters tries to put a brave face on the BBC findings, despite showing them to be devastating. 

What caught my eye was seeing the name of the main man who wrote it, and headed the report: Nic Newman. 

I immediately recalled a BBC reporter called Nic Newman. 

And, lo and behold, on looking into it with a quick search, the Nic Newman behind this Reuters report is indeed the very same Nic Newman who used to work for the BBC as a strategist/journalist. 

[We Beebwatchers have long memories]. 

So, to pile on the agony for the BBC, it's a former 'one of their own' who has shown such a huge fall in public trust in the BBC. 

And the result is?

You will doubtless recall the furore over the Panorama edition titled 'Has The Government Failed The NHS?'. 

Guido Fawkes led the charge against the BBC for featuring six left-wingers, most with links to the Corbyn end of the Labour Party, three of whom directly criticised the Government for its handling of Covid-19. 

Newspapers took up the charge too. 

Well, large numbers of complaints went in and the BBC's Executive Complaints Unit (ECU) gave its ruling this week. 

Now it has to be said that hhe Daily Mail headline yesterday, BBC admits Panorama DID breach its editorial standards by failing to reveal doctor who attacked government over PPE was long-time Labour member, promised more than it delivered.

Yes, the BBC's Executive Complaints Unit (ECU) ruled that "the nature and extent" of former Labour election candidate Dr Sonia Adesara's political affiliation "was such that it might have been relevant to the audience's evaluation of her contribution insofar as it was critical of the Government, and that it was a breach of the BBC's editorial standards not to have given viewers appropriate information about it", but it caveated that by saying, "her criticism of the Government was in keeping with what might be expected from a doctor with experience of inadequate PPE provision, and that information about her political affiliations would not have called the validity of her concerns into doubt in the minds of viewers." 

And the rest of the ruling clears the programme of all the other charges, pronouncing it innocent over the presentation of and the participation of all the other five people featured in it - including Brian Eno's daughter and Professor John Ashton. 

So in the scheme of things it's the merest crumb of an 'admission' and unlikely to satisfy the programme's many critics, but at least, as the Mail says, the ECU ruled that the programme did breach BBC editorial standards, and that's something I suppose.

Do you know what you're talking about?

I know this clip is already on the GF site, but it’s so cool I wanted it here too. 

Everything Ian Murray says can equally be applied to many of the BBC’s semi-ignorant pronouncements and mantras. A typical example is when the BBC regurgitates half-understood gossip sourced from pro-Palestinian propaganda concerning Israel’s plans to ‘annex the occupied West Bank’. 

‘She would say that,’ you may be thinking; but when I looked into it I too thought we’d have more luck relying on Jeremy Bowen to educate us on the finer points of epidemiology (or indeed Uganda’s opposition party) than to clarify the term ‘annexation’ in the context of ‘Israel, Territory and International Law’ in any manner at all, let alone an impartial and erudite one.

Lazy and glib?

Now that there’s Guido, the Daily Mail and many more, does ITBB have a right to exist?  I don’t watch the Beeb very much these days and neither does Craig. Where’s that furlough scheme when you need it?.

Still, fancy Panorama featuring the daughter of obsessive BDS dogmatist Brian Eno without identifying her as such. I misread her name as ‘Trial’ (and error) 

“Irial Eno, was a ‘doctor working with Covid patients’ who has ‘decided to speak out’. She said ‘I feel really angry at the Government’.”

Smoulder away, Dr Trial but public opinion is gradually shifting away from the left and almost imperceptibly creeping towards, I don’t know - let’s call it ‘reason’.  The BBC’s buttresses are crumbling without much help from the likes of us. 

But then, just because you feature the opinions of leftist dogmatists it doesn’t mean you ARE one. Maybe the BBC was just testing? To see if anyone was watching?

Oliver Dowden is on the case. A bit late in the day, but: Coronavirus: Minister Oliver Dowden warns BBC about ‘bias’ after Panorama story

“In his letter Mr Dowden said that he was sure Lord Hall “will agree that at a time of heightened risk of misinformation and disinformation, it is more important than ever that the BBC upholds the values and standards we all expect”.

The BBC has its story prepared. Oven ready.

“Monday night’s Panorama was a rigorous, properly sourced investigation into the procurement and supply of PPE, which posed serious questions for the Government. It also included contributions from health professionals about their frontline experience. 

“The programme spoke to a range of interviewees, including public health policy experts, and those involved in the supply of PPE. Where it was relevant, we indicated that they had been vocally critical of the Government. 

“Some of those interviewed are members of a political party and some are not. We believe that if the doctors featured in Panorama feel their lives are at risk due to lack of proper PPE it is valid, and indeed in the public interest, for them to reflect on that experience, regardless of the political views they may or may not hold.”

This looks like the classic defence that goes: “Never mind the source because we all know this is the kind of thing that goes on.” 

I’ve heard that one before and it’s not really good enough. It’s lazy and glib. ’Posing serious questions’ is not very difficult. Any lazy hack could do that, but listening to, examining, and if necessary debunking the answers (or excuses) is where investigative journalism starts. 

I will level with you. I didn’t watch the programme, so do tell me; when the programme spoke to ‘those involved in the supply of PPE’ did they follow up? 

Guido talks (about the BBC)

Lewis to the rescue

Let's have a conversation about the news:

Guido Fawkes: Every single interviewee on Panorama last night was a pro-Labour activist before the pandemic. Every single one. It was a party political broadcast on behalf of the Labour Party.

Iain Dale: I was about to watch this on iPlayer. I don't think I'll bother now. Nothing wrong with being a Labour activist but for a serious current affairs programme to interview them to the exclusion of anyone else is, well, an interesting editorial decision.

Christian May: This does seem a bit odd, to put it mildly.

Claire Fox: A shame. Whole tone of programme far too melodramatic and sensational IMO, but some good investigative work that it's important to reveal.  Dosing it with emotive, personal stories from front line workers who are all activists, may now discredit more useful journalism.

Alastair Stewart: The oddest thing about last night's BBC Panorama is that they clearly had a powerful story of ill-preparedness by the DHSC and the NHS and NHS Providers. They had suggestions of the turning of political blind-eyes. They even had the post-Cygnus data. My point was is that, given what BBC Panorama appeared to have, the programme didn't need to be 'filled' with 'activists' of any persuasion.

Let's not have  a conversation about the news:

Lewis Goodall (BBC Newsnight): Sure we could have a conversation about the news. Or we could have a conversation about carers struggling to get tests. NHS workers struggling to get masks. Care homes struggling with excess deaths. It’s our job to report on people who don’t have the luxury of being “positive”. So let’s not have a conversation about the news. It’s the one conversation which is least useful to anyone right now, except perhaps to some in power, who curiously enough seem very keen to have it. It’s a cliche of journalism but an accurate one to say that we should be here to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Too many on here seem to think it should be the other way around.

Cocked Hat

You’ll probably have already watched this fascinating video from Unherd (featured on Guido Fawkes.) It's Freddie Sayers’s interview of Swedish expert Prof. Johan Giesecke

Fawkes’s bullet-pointed extrapolations from the film hold good, but I would take away a few extra ones as well. 

The Swedish strategy turns out to be much less dissimilar to the UK’s than meets the eye, and Freddie Sayers’s questioning is pertinent and of a kind that the BBC repeatedly fails to put “on our behalf.”  His questions are ones that viewers themselves would actually wish to put, should they have the opportunity to do so.

For example, I spy a political underbelly here. For me, the clue lies in the professor’s fear that a strict Lockdown strategy is an inevitable route to totalitarianism and dictatorship. A very Swedish attitude.

Sayers asks if Prof. Giesecke is taking “A slightly cold-hearted approach” (and that was something that immediately struck me.)

Again, one of the most significant remarks that stood out for me (It would, wouldn’t it?) was:

“Let’s discuss this a year from now”.

If you’ve been following previous threads on this blog you’ll know what I mean.

The proliferation of this kind of direct reporting, (think also of Steven Egerton of The Sun) consistently knocks the BBC's efforts into a cocked hat.

Big Question

Who is (was) on Question Time tonight? (Last night)

The fact is, (as they say on W1A) who cares? I have to level with you - I didn’t watch it. Did anyone?
In the era of Lockdown, Q.T. is incontrovertibly dire. ‘Direr’ than usual. There’s not even a whooping and hooting audience to complain about. But that panel even surpasses itself in terms of irrelevance and dullness; the antidote to click-bait.

Let Q.T. join HIGNFY as another casualty of coronavirus. But (in the absence of a suitable test) did it die OF coronavirus, or WITH?

Mixed Bag

At least in my head, I like to think of this site as being something of a 'blog of record' as far as certain BBC-related matters go, so having missed most of the last two weeks I'm feeling the need to fill a few gaps.

Your comments are proving very helpful in helping to plug them, so thank you.

******* I *******

First, there's that anonymous 'whistleblowing' Guardian piece by a BBC insider.

I saw mixed reviews for it here on the Open Thread.

It took me a while to figure out exactly where the piece was 'coming from', but the fact that the writer twice uses the word "reactionary" - once about Danny Lockwood, the other time (literally) about 'people like us' - and then proceeds to call the leavers of the ERG "far-right" left no room for doubt that the writer is a BBC left-winger. And although it puzzled me initially that the BBC Anon sounded queasy on the question of Brexit and was against both Mark Francois and Anna Soubry, reading the longer, unedited version of the piece at The Fence (where Tom Watson and Chuka Umunna came in for snippy criticism), I think it's safe to confidently assume that the writer is a disgruntled BBC Corbyn admirer instinctively defensive of Jeremy Corbyn's fence-sitting over Brexit. (Or am I wrong?)

Still, there was some fascinating stuff in the piece, including all the bits about the grid used by producers on all BBC political shows to ensure 'diversity':

A whiteboard would be marked up with a clumsy grid system. The grid would revolve around a set of key identities such as “woman”, “northern” or “poc” (person of colour). These would then be cross-categorised with political stances such as “Brexiteer”, “Tory” or “progressive”. Our task [as BBC producers] would then be to ensure that any proposed panel contained a complete balance of all these attributes.

If 100% accurate, how 'very BBC' and patronising is that?

I don't doubt for one moment the counting bit of the grid, especially the “woman”, “northern” or “poc” (person of colour) bit. The BBC, despite rejecting the 'number-crunching' of News-watch (and my massive 2009-10 interruptions survey), are total hypocrites in this respect. They put The Count from Sesame Street to shame when it comes to counting things like "women, Northerners and pocs".

Plus, if 100% accurate, it would mean that the BBC uses the labels "Brexiteer", "Tory" and "progressive" in production meetings - and, if the BBC really does label people that way, that would speak loud volumes about the "progressive" outlook of BBC producers.

The writer also writes about the "boozy familiarity" between BBC journalists and "a handful of MPs, deeply entrenched in London’s literary and intellectual circles, [who] treat the BBC like a university common room". These MPs are "slick and power-hungry" Remainers:

Off-camera, a highly influential Westminster social circle revolves around trips to various holiday homes in continental Europe, where various MPs and the journalists who are supposed to report on them have long been playing just as hard as they work.

It's hardly proper whistleblowing though, is it, if the BBC Anon doesn't name names?

******* II *******

The grid may be repellent to opponents of identity politics, but there's no doubt that some people gain from it.

Yesterday's The Times included an interview with regular BBC Politics guest Helen Lewis (formerly of The New Statesman, now at The Atlantic).

She singles out blog favourite Rob Burley, Editor of Live Political Programmes for the BBC, as being responsible for "a seismic change in the inclusion of women in line-ups".

I don't doubt it.

Rob, however, is forever busy in having to fend off people on Twitter comparing his carefully counted and tick-boxed programmes to Loose Women.

Having counted himself, Rob says it works out, over time, at about 50/50 as far as the balance between men and women goes.

(Question: What is it for pocs and us Northerners?)

Male-female-wise, the BBC is just like Is the BBC biased?, the most woke BBC bias blog in the world, only beaten by The Conservative Woman.

******* III *******

It's been an interesting week for Rob.

I do like him, and I understand why he's severely drawn back from being the BBC's chief musketeer on Twitter: I'm assuming too many unreasonable Corbynistas, venom-spouting spider-sporting FBPE types, and Carole Catwalladr cultists - fringe fanatics, all of them, who speak for barely a minor fraction of the public.

Even a rare, admirable, charming (if choosy) BBC engager-with-the-public like Rob must get worn down by totally irrational complaints about BBC bias from 'the other side', despite temptations to continually shoot half-witted fish in tweet-sized barrels.

('Our side', of course, is perfectly reasonable in our complaints, so 'complaints from both sides' can go and take a running jump!)

On which subject, BBC Two's Politics Live came under fire from Guido Fawkes for seeming to accept without question, or any basic journalistic probing whatsoever, what an Extinction Rebellion girl said.

There's no 'seeming' about it though. As this YouTube clip shows, Jo Coburn, seeing protestors wearing miner's hats made of cardboard, simply took it on trust that the protestors surrounding the XR girl were miners and ex-miners, despite them protesting against 'their mines' and livelihoods being extended and wearing cardboard miners hats.

Apparently, they weren't either miners or ex-miners, just climate activists pretending.

Free-range egg on the BBC's face it seems, alongside fried fake news sandwiches.

To rhyme in cliché: 'So/think/before you blink/Jo'.

******* IV *******

Meanwhile (if a bit late in the following day) here's an intriguing nugget from Andrew Billen's Times interview yesterday with David Cameron's deputy chief of staff, Kate Fall:

I was also surprised to learn that Nick Robinson, the BBC’s political editor at the time, recommended the editor of BBC News at Ten, Craig Oliver, to succeed Coulson as director of communications. “Look, the head of comms at No 10 has nearly always been an ex-journalist, from a paper or from broadcast. I don’t think that is a huge issue.” And Robinson recommended him? “Yes, apparently.”

Who knew Nick Robinson was such a man of influence?

*******V*******

A blog well-wisher really didn't enjoy Tuesday's Newsnight complaining that they had an item about Cyril Smith and David Steel and had Harvey Proctor on to comment. "Never mind that his story had nothing to do with it. And Maitlis kept pushing him towards her POV about the police. And I noticed that the ex-policeman was a cuddly 'John' and the ex-politician was a formal 'Harvey Proctor'". That's our Em!

Still, it might earn the programme another award. Newsnight won 'Daily News Programme of the Year' at the Royal Television Society TV Journalism Awards last week.

I love this photo of the triumphant team, firstly because of Emily Maitlis's theatrical pose and, secondly, because of the total lack of diversity on display. What would Geeta Guru-Murthy say about such "a white crowd"?

*******VI*******

Talking of triumphant people, Samira Ahmed - fresh from her equal pay victory over the BBC - is definitely smiling a lot more on Newswatch. Good!

This week's BBC editor on 'we got it about right' duties was Richard Burgess, UK News Editor for BBC News. He was defending the BBC over that perennial Newswatch complaint about BBC reporters getting blown about and soaked while reporting in the middle of a storm, preferably getting drenched in sea-spray. I think Mr Burgess put up a good defence and, here at least, the BBC did get it about right.

*******VII********

Never mind coronavirus, nothing was going to stop Mishal Husain from going to Paris to interview Asia Bibi for Today. What would Greta say?

"So BBC"

Guido Fawkes is coming close to copying my 'Very BBC'  catchphrase here 😄:

James Harding, former Director of BBC News, self-confessed BBC fan-boy is on the BBC talking about how great is the BBC. So BBC. #r4today

— Media Guido (@MediaGuido) January 21, 2020

Ash dieback

It's a question we've discussed before and now Guido Fawkes is raising the issue too:

Media Guido: In the post-mortems the effect of the platforming of far-left types just because they were extremely active on Twitter on current affairs shows should be reflected on. It normalised people who would in the past have only been only selling Trotskyite papers outside train stations.

So, what's the right balance between encouraging the broadest diversity of opinion and making a star of Ash Sarkar? 

Unfolding in the past few minutes on Twitter....

Guido Fawkes 26m: EXCLUSIVE Tory Activist Attacked with Acid in Barnet.

Dan Hodges 12m: Given what happened yesterday, people need to be careful of reports coming from Barnet until all the facts are established.

Dan Hodges 8m: Tory sources saying not yet clear what substance was involved in Barnet incident, but it wasn't acid.

Dan Hodges 1m: Appears the substance involved was perfume.

Update: And then came this:

Dan Hodges 9m: Appears the substance involved was perfume.

Isaac 4m: You got your info from this Shit blog, didnt you? (linking to Guido Fawkes).

Dan Hodges 3m: My info on what?

Isaac 2m: The so called Acid Attack.

Dan Hodges 1m: I didn't say there had been an acid attack. I said there hadn't been an acid attack. Could you please go back to the WhatsApp group and get your lines straight please.

(You may not be surprised to learn that Isaac is a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn).

Another update: And then came this:

UPDATE: Clarity over Barnet Incidenthttps://t.co/caW9vEdXo9 pic.twitter.com/nd1XilBgP3

— Guido Fawkes (@GuidoFawkes) December 11, 2019

All of which, I think, calls for a cry of 'Good grief!'.

Emily Maitlis enters into a terf war

In other news, Wednesday's Newsnight featured former Conservative MP turned-Lib Dem Dr Sarah Wollaston talking about the Lib Dems' plans to reform the Gender Recognition Act, including adding a 'X' gender option to passports. 

“The idea these people [transgender people] are a threat to other women is an assumption we should challenge", said not-now-Conservative Dr Sarah along the way.

Newsnight's main presenter Emily Mailtis had a view on this, and (naturally) tweeted it:

We discussed gender self identification last night on Newsnight. It’s not “ these people “. It’s the fact a blanket law would allow any predatory man to self identify as female to gain access to women. That’s the danger.

Well said, Emily!

As you might guess (if you're on Twitter), Emily's tweet went down like a cisgender lead balloon with the hyper-sensitive, hyper-aggressive transgender army on social media, for example:

• Are BBC presenters allowed to spread terf nonsense on Twitter?
• It is absolutely disgusting that a journalist would uncritically repeat this false talking point without any investigation.
• This is a transphobic trope that has no grounding in reality.

Enter a mischievous Tom Harwood (from Guido Fawkes):

So Emily Maitlis is a terf...

(For those not up on such things, 'terf' is a term of abuse used by transgender militants to describe 'second-wave' feminists - of the Dame Jenni Murray variety - who aren't keen on having transgender women (i.e. men) beating cisgender women (i.e. women) at sport, or using their toilets, or sharing their prison cells, etc ---- a concern that lots of non-feminist women doubtless share).

But Tom's mischief has a point: 

Are BBC employees allowed to opine about who is or isn't a valid person / spread transphobic conspiracy theories? 

Seems to stretch the definition of impartiality....

Doesn't it just! (even though it's common sense).

So, will Emily be punished for breaking cover and stating the truth on a highly controversial area? 

And which agenda (feminist or transgender) will win out at the BBC? 

Audacity

Guido Fawkes supplies a missing measure for the Andrew Marr-Boris Johnson interview - 43% of the words spoken during 'the interview' were by Andrew Marr himself:

The BBC is finding it tricky to pin down Boris for an Andrew Neil interview, so when the PM agreed to go on Andrew Marr, the veteran broadcaster had to try out his best Paxman impression to make sure the interview rivalled Corbyn’s disastrous Neil grilling. Unfortunately, it just ended in a lot of shouting and the public none the wiser…

Guido’s now had time to crunch the numbers and worked out that of the 6,068 words spoken in the interview, only 3,465 were from Boris; meaning 43% of the 30-minute interview was taken up by Marr’s incomprehensible ranting – including one moment where he felt it necessary to remind viewers a staggering 8 times in just over a minute that the Tories have been in power for 10 years. (Factcheck – the Tories have been in office for 9 years). He even had the audacity to accuse Boris of wasting time chuntering…

Things that are predictable

When it was found out that one of the 'members of the public' in the Question Time leaders debate audience was a Corbynite actress closely linked to Mr Corbyn's favourite film director Ken Loach, I wrote:

I bet Kate was far from being the only activist there tonight. In fact. I'm wondering who wasn't an activist.

So it's no surprise (h/t Peter) that Guido Fawkes has now exposed another audience member - the one who wrongly claimed that Harold Wilson remained neutral during the 1975 referendum - as being a Social Media and Communications Officer for the Labour Party. 

I still suspect that several more of the audience members who spoke last night will have been party activists of one stripe or another. It's just the way of Question Time audiences. 

So, if it ought to be stopped, how can it be stopped?

Not another one!

Pun-inspiring Labour candidate for South Cambridge Dan Greef got the Guido Fawkes treatment yesterday after Mr Staines & Co. did some archaeological digging on Twitter and found the usual 'offensive' anti-Israel tweets which almost inevitably appear to litter Corbyn Era Labour feeds these days. Now, I think his May 2010 tweet about voting for the BNP was obviously meant as a joke and some of his tweets referencing Israel and UK parliamentary 'Friends of Israel' groups are ambiguous, and the standout one saying 'Had a great day at a concentration camp' lacks enough context to make it properly damning (if such things matter these days - as they do to me)...but there's nothing particularly ambiguous about him saying "Bloody Israel. I sometimes want to rip it all up!" or his support for then-Lib Dem MP David Ward ("Good man!") after Mr Ward marked the Holocaust by comparing the Nazi treatment of the Jews to Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, or his re-tweeting of someone calling David Cameron "the finest PM Israel can buy". So is just another anti-Israel obsessive, or worse? So far there's nothing on the BBC News website about this or, according to TV Eyes, even on BBC local news (TV or radio).