Dame Jenni Murray on Amol Rajan

   

Dame Jenni Murray, writing in in The Daily Mail, finds herself troubled by “the BBC’s new golden boy Amol Rajan”, who she says “has already broken the number one rule for journalists: ‘Don’t become the story’” over his controversial The Princes And The Press.

And she troubled by the behaviour of BBC bosses too, asking “Where is the impartiality in a journalist who is a self-confessed republican being asked to make programmes about the Royal Family’s nightmare of recent years?” 

She obviously feels hard done by, and that a double standard is operating on how the BBC applies its guidelines on impartiality. After all, she says, the BBC banned her from doing anything related to transgender matters after she made some cautious comments on the matter from a traditional feminist standpoint away from the BBC, and they also took her off Woman's Hour for six whole weeks in the run-up to the 2019 general election after she made some pro-EU membership remarks in the wake of the vote for Brexit, again away from the BBC.

As for Amol, her piece begins: 

A year ago, many people would have struggled to place Amol Rajan. As the BBC’s media editor, he was a solid middle-ranker rather than broadcasting A-List.  

Now it’s hard to miss him.

You can say that again!

Dame Jenni Murray on Emma Barnett's salary

 

Hell hath no fury like a Woman's Hour presenter scorned, as Dame Jenni Murray is proving.

 

She has been interviewed by the Sunday Telegraph's Louise Burke today and vents her spleen in fine fashion, coming close to sounding like a DEFUND THE BBC campaigner:

How does she feel about earning less than her replacement? ‘Well that really pisses me off,’ she says. ‘I was talking to an old colleague the other night and she was saying how horrified she is at what’s being paid now. We worked so hard and had high profiles, but we didn’t earn anything like [that]. It’s more than irritating. It’s infuriating actually. I don’t think, no matter how good they are, they are worth all that money. It’s a public broadcasting service. I’ll be hacked off when I still have to pay my licence in four years [after turning 75].’ She starts laughing.

Not that she's bitter of course, perish the thought:

So, dare I ask, does she still listen to the show? ‘I have long had a habit of getting up in the morning and putting the radio on and it’s always Radio 4,’ she humours me. ‘But I deliberately switch off just before 10 o’clock.’

It's not mentioned in the interview but I'm guessing Dame Jenni's secretary rang at that point saying, 'Sorry to interrupt, Dame Jenni, but there are several cats on the line wanting their meows back'. 

The Sunday Papers

 

The Crook O'Lune (near Morecambe)

The Sunday papers have arrived on my laptop, so here's a selection of today's top stories:

1. Charles Moore isn't going to be the next BBC chairman

The Sunday Times reports that Charles Moore has ruled himself out of running for BBC chairman on "personal" grounds. He's not even applying. Unfortunately. Incidentally, John Simpson isn't impressed with the way the paper has covered this:

Last week's Sunday Times reported that Boris Johnson wanted Charles Moore to be the chairman of the BBC. Today, in a much less prominent story, it says Moore has ruled himself out, on personal grounds.'

The Sunday Times is behaving like the BBC there. 

2. BBC journalist Martin Bashir "misled" Diana’s brother to secure bombshell interview

So claims The Sunday Times. The paper alleges that Martin Bashir, now the BBC's religious affairs correspondent, "obtained the scoop under a false pretext and by using fake bank statements". It says the allegations "will raise difficult questions for the BBC" as the Corporation conducted its own internal investigation at the time and cleared itself. The BBC says Mr Bashir is "unwell and unable to respond" but has issued a statement reiterating its defence of his behaviour. 

3. Camilla Long on BBC Four's Black Classical Music

In her Sunday Times review column, Camilla Long notes that the presenters (Sir Lenny Henry and Suzie Klein) had "to keep reminding us what dreadful victims these talented people were":

At the end of nearly every scene, there would be a ceremonial confronting of the material, in which they demanded to know from various guests, and I paraphrase, “Why isn’t he more famous? Who were the racists who suppressed his cantatas? You began to think, why don’t they just let the music speak for itself? But as it went on you realised, it wasn’t about the music at all.

True.

4. The BBC tells off Dame Jenni Murray one last time

After her swift, post-BBC attack on the BBC in yesterday's Daily Mail, the Sunday Telegraph quotes the BBC's official response. It's a final dig at the opinionated former Woman's Hour presenter:

We wish Jenni well in her new career as a columnist but the public will understand the importance of impartiality whilst working at the BBC.

5. Michael Gove on Frankie Boyle's New World Order

The Mail on Sunday has an interview with Michael Gove. Here's what he says about Frankie Boyle's New World Order:

You have a group of comedians who engage in a 30-minute seminar informed by Marxist ideas and they think jokes about 'killing whitey' are worth the licence fee, then you have to ask a question. And the question is, why should it be the case that people in Middlesbrough and Mansfield should pay out of their salaries so that Oxbridge graduates can trash their values in that way?

A good question.

Another Bow

 

Another interesting part of Dame Jenni Murray's Daily Mail piece is where she talks about her £100K salary:

I was astonished to receive such an enormous sum. I was a working-class girl from Barnsley [and used to live in a brown paper bag in a septic tank] and my father could never have dreamt of earning such a vast amount [because he used to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before he went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work]. Nevertheless, I found that the daily rate I had been awarded per programme was still less than those for men who had carried out similar work in earlier years.

The Dame then goes on to talk of those at the BBC who earn less, "working phenomenally long hours for relatively little financial reward". Their pay range is from £36,000 to £64,000, which still makes them all above the national average wage (£29,600). Luxury!

The Dame's Last Bow

Dame Jenni Murray has become the latest in an ever-lengthening line of BBC leavers to immediately follow their departure from the Corporation by launching an attack on it. 

Writing for the Daily Mail today, Dame Jenni makes it plain that her main reason for leaving the BBC was her resentment at being "cancelled" by her bosses over her views on (a) transgender and (b) Brexit. 

She feels they were unjustly censoring her, firstly, by banning her from conducting any interviews about transgender issues on Woman's Hour since she wrote an article in The Sunday Times from 2017 saying transwomen aren't "real women" and, secondly, by banning her from covering the 2019 general election after she wrote a pro-EU essay, also in 2017 (only months after her first rebuke over the Sunday Times article), in which she describes herself crying as the EU referendum result came in. 

She argues in the Daily Mail piece that it doesn't go against BBC impartiality for BBC journalists to have strong views and express them elsewhere just as long as they remain strictly impartial on air - which she says she always did. In other words, she says she hung her views up with her coat at the studio door.

This is fascinating. I'd assumed that the trans issue and the hostility surrounding her Sunday Times article played some role. There's always been a long strain of activism at Woman's Hour, with Dame Jenni at the forefront of it. This campaigning attitude, therefore, long pre-dates the present-day campaigning mood among younger 'woke' journalists at the BBC, so it strikes me as ironic that she found herself out-campaigned by the new crowd. But it's her BBC bosses, who rebuked her and stopped her interviewing on the subject for the last three years of her Woman's Hour career, who clearly irked her most. 

And I'd either forgotten or never spotted that she got into trouble for that pro-EU essay and wasn't allowed to cover the last election for the BBC. Like a blinkered campaigner, she still feels she did nothing wrong there.

What's so striking here is that the BBC did what they are surely supposed to do if a journalist publicly identifies themselves with a controversial position - not just reprimand them for breaching their impartiality rules but take appropriate, decisive action. 

Banning her from covering trans matters and the 2019 general election is unusually decisive action from the BBC. Over trans matters you could put it down to the BBC's terror of the often ferocious, extreme trans mob but the decision to stop her covering the general election because of her public views on Brexit is something different - and, to me, totally unexpected. 

Given that some many other BBC journalists could have been taken off the 2019 general election too for expressing similar views in the past (e.g. Mark Mardell) it does beg the question as to why she was singled out? 

The problem is that - contrary to what Dame Jenni seems to believe - BBC's guidelines have actually been pretty clear that expressing strong views elsewhere on matters of controversy is something BBC journalists should steer clear of - or, at least, tread very, very carefully. She fell foul of those guidelines and was punished. 

Incidentally, Jenni Murray undermined her clinching line that she was always strictly impartial on air, thus showing her total commitment to BBC impartiality, by signing off on her final edition of Woman's Hour with a little feminist speech and a song about what 'a woman' is, which most people interpreted as a two-fingered salute to her trans critics. I doubt she sees any irony in that.

And more irony to end...

Dame Jenni "defies anyone" to know her politics, but I think we can guess something of the views held by the team behind Woman's Hour at least because of the four guests invited to celebrate her BBC career on her final edition - Baroness Helena Kennedy, Harriet Harman MP, Jude Kelly and poet Jackie Kay. All are left-wing, two are Labour Party parliamentarians. That speaks volumes, doesn't it?

Anyhow, good luck to her in her retirement. If she is retiring.

Out with the old?

After 33 years, Dame Jenni Murray is now peering over her permanently-lowered glasses towards the exit door of the Woman's Hour studio. Her final programme will on October 1. 

Apparently it's her own choice, though, as an admiring Amanda Platell speculates in today's Daily Mail, maybe the whole trans controversy found herself embroiled in back in 2017 made her feel less at home at an increasingly 'woke' BBC. 

Her former Radio 4 colleague Libby Purves, writing in the Daily Telegraph, pays her handsome tribute, describing her as "a feminist, campaigner, humanist, confessionalist and sometimes a bit of a controversialist, but always above all a forensic, listening journalist: curious and self-possessed". 

The 'feminist campaigner' bit is the one that's always troubled me about her, and Woman's Hour more generally. I'm not sure that a campaigning feminist programme sits entirely comfortably within the BBC's concept of impartiality, but then I suppose it must do or it wouldn't have lasted so long. 

Incidentally, reading both pieces, it appears that neither Amanda nor Libby feel overly sisterly towards Dame Jenni's co-presenter Jane Garvey. Amanda says that Jane has "perfected the grating tone of the dentist’s drill", while Libby describes her as "excitably gabbling" and says she "seems to tell every interviewee that she is thrilled to meet them". Ouch!

Anyhow, so who will be the BBC's choice to replace Dame Jenni Murray? 

Are they rumours, or more than rumours, that the programme is heading inevitably for a 'diverse' choice? 

I'm presuming probably not a man - something that would be a hugely 'diverse' choice in terms of WH surely? - and I'm also guessing that Laura Perrins or Kathy Gyngell at The Conservative Woman aren't exactly what the BBC will be looking for. 

I assume it will be someone much younger than Dame Jenni, possibly BAME. 

Given the trouble the Dame found herself when she made old-fashioned feminist statements on transgender matters, would they go so far as to deliberately select a trans woman, or even a trans man? Who would entirely bet against it? 

On these kinds of occasions I usually trot out the name 'Samira Ahmed', so I'd better do so again. One day I might even be right.

There is Nothin' Like a (Transgender) Dame

BBC Woman's Hour presenter Dame Jenni Murray - an impartial BBC feminist if ever there was one - has, for the past couple of years or so, been the target of furious (maybe testosterone-fuelled?) 'outrage' from transgender activists. 

Their latest no-platforming campaign against the famed feminist BBC dame has been to try and stop her speaking at the Leeds Literature Festival, where she intended to promote her latest (impartial) feminist book. 

The Leeds Literature Festival refused to ban her whilst being as grovelling as possible to the censorious trans activists as possible in their statement defending their decision. 

Meanwhile, here's a hot-off-the-presses Twitter photo of the mass protest against Dame Jenni of Woman's Hour today:

It's enough to make you start peering over the top of your glasses

So, Dame Jenni Murray has pulled out of a talk at Oxford University after three student groups called for her to be no-platformed because of her 'transphobic' views. She was intending to talk about 'Powerful British Women in History' (unsurprisingly), but some students wanted her 'publicly condemned' and 'if possible' for the event to be 'cancelled'. What a remarkable state of affairs - one of the most politically correct BBC presenters isn't politically correct enough for some Oxford University students and, thus, other Oxford University students won't get to hear her! 

Experiment

I thought I'd carry out a little experiment and listen to Woman's Hour's midterm election coverage this morning to see how balanced it was. The hypothesis I was testing was that it wouldn't be balanced. 

The results include the imbalance of guests. It wasn't, as you might have expected, one pro-Republican versus one pro-Democrat but one pro-Republican versus two pro-Democrats. 

And, secondly, guess which of the three was the only one to be on the receiving end of an interruption? Yes, the lone pro-Republican guest, who Dame Jenni Murray interrupted to repeat her aghast-sounding question about racism in the Republican campaign. 

So the conclusions of my experiment are that Woman's Hour had an anti-Republican bias. 

I'm now off into a nearby wood to monitor some bears. I'm researching claims that they go to the toilet in such tree-filled locations.

Further Reading

Other BBC-related reading, if you've got the time:

Mike Dowd: Chiles is one to watch – with suspicion 

Kathy Gyngell: The feminists’ Project Fear

Mail on Sunday: Woman's Hour presenter Dame Jenni Murray heading for a tax tribunal showdown as officials ask her for a 'very significant' sum of money

Oh, and:

The Guardian: John Simpson says ex-BBC boss was pushing him out for being old

The last item features this, which made me laugh (especially the last paragraph quoted):

Simpson was so bruised that his novel became all about the “foul BBC” and its machinations and he was looking forward to causing trouble. 

Then he heard Harding was leaving and being replaced by a “blessed friend … a wonderful, wonderful” woman who saved him. 

The appointment of Fran Unsworth led to some rewriting. “It doesn’t take place at the BBC, it takes place more or less at Sky News.”

Nice!

There's nothing like a dame (Jenni Murray)

The big 'BBC bias' controversy I missed this week was Dame Jenni Murray of Woman's Hour getting a ticking-off from the BBC for a Sunday Times piece, where she'd written that transgender women aren't "real women".

Of course, Dame Jenni's Sunday Times piece was full of PC caveats but that still didn't stop the specific target of her criticism, India Willoughby, from (outrageously) calling for her to be sacked for expressing her opinions. 

Nor did it stop the Four Gender-Fluid Horseriders of the Twitter Apocalypse from descending upon her. 

Or the BBC from 'reminding' her about her duties regarding BBC impartiality. 

The BBC said: 

Jenni Murray is a freelance journalist and these were her own views, however we have reminded her that presenters should remain impartial on controversial topics covered by their BBC programmes.

The whole debate over this raises many, many questions, but I'll just stick to the BBC impartiality questions (as is my way). 

Several things struck me about this affair, but most of them can be grouped under one issue: the ever-controversial question of what 'freelance journalists' at the BBC can and cannot say. 

The first thing to say is that it's staggering how many of the top names associated with the BBC are freelance. (Mr Hammond, are you taking note?)

Who knew Dame Jenni Murray, veteran of Woman's Hour, was freelance rather than BBC? You may have done, but I didn't - though I certainly should have known. Wherever you took 'top talent' at the BBC turns out to be freelance. 

The second thing to say is that the BBC response makes it clear that 'freelance' BBC talent is meant to "remain impartial on controversial topics". 

So, from that, I draw the conclusion that everyone - from Andrew Neil to Andrew Marr to Samira Ahmed - is meant to be "impartial on controversial topics", even while doing something for a non-BBC media outlet. 

And I'm assuming that the old Twitter impartiality guidelines apply to freelancers too.

(And what about Gary Lineker?)

The third thing to say is that it's very interesting what got Dame Jenni Murray pulled up. She's expressed controversial opinions before and not got told off by the BBC for it - despite the 'right-wing tabloids' giving her stick over it. 

A famous example is her call for pornography to be taught in schools in a piece for the Guardian late last year - a subject she'd discussed with a supporter and a non-opponent (a fair way of characterising her guests I think) on Woman's Hour as well. 

Why didn't she get pulled up for that? 

My answer to that would be that she didn't get pulled up over pornography in the classroom because the BBC has a pronounced social liberal bias. 

Many people at the BBC would see nothing outrageous about a call for pornography to be taught in classrooms for feminist reasons. They would, however, feel deeply uncomfortable with the Woman's Hour dame breaking one of the very latest cardinal rules of social liberalism, by saying that transgender woman aren't 'real women'. 

The BBC has been leading the way in trying to make transgender identities normal and accepted in the past couple of years. Dame Jenni Murray - as an old-fashioned BBC feminist - is clearly very much out-of-step with current BBC thinking on the issue. Hence her unprecedented 'reminder'. 

The fourth thing to say (and, probably, the most controversial for some reason) is that, as Dame Jenni says in her Sunday Times piece, she is a feminist, and feminism is the driving force behind Radio 4's Woman's Hour. 

The programmes feminist underpinnings aren't disguised. They are openly stated...and this despite the fact that, according to the feminist Fawcett Society, only about 7% of women in the UK call themselves 'feminists'. It's an ideologically-charged programme, and doesn't make any bones about that being the case, or see any problem with that being the case. 

In other words, Woman's Hour is not impartial. It's biased in favour of feminism. And the BBC is intensely relaxed about that being the case. No-one at the BBC, evidently, sees that as being, in any way, hard to reconcile with the BBC being an impartial broadcaster. Why is that the case? 

Why is it wrong for Dame Jenni Murray to express a view many people share about transgender people but right for Dame Jenni Murray to front an openly pro-feminist daily Radio 4 programme? 

I had other things to say about this earlier in the week but can't remember them now. Radio 4's The Media Show did, however, discuss the issue (very interestingly) this week. (A transcription is unnecessary as it will be available to listen again to for a year). It's well worth a listen - especially for the Sunday Times Magazine editor's parting shot about BBC bias over Brexit. 

“Trump, Bannon and the alt-right manosphere”

There's a fine piece by Kathy Gyngell at The Conservative Woman under the headline, The BBC seems to think it is running for election against Trump, gathering together some of the 'highlights' of the BBC's reporting week and putting it into the context of what she describes as a "campaign, to incite ‘fear' and 'hate' of the 'alt-right' (with lots of people being dragged into that 'alt-right' label).

Woman’s Hour has already adopted the meme. Yesterday they invited me to take part in a discussion about “Trump, Bannon and the alt-right manosphere”. [Craig - Very Woman's Hour that!!]. I feared a set up and offered up my feistier co-editor Laura, instead. Surprise, surprise, after talking to her on the phone they decided not to go with it after all....

....These, I suspect, are but temporary setbacks in the BBC’s mission. Hate is actually what the BBC is now carefully cultivating. Against whites, against men, against Christians. Their device, however, is to turn the man himself and anyone who supports him into the hater (that was my role on Woman’s Hour, I presume).

Mark Steyn’s insight is pertinent here. Once cast as haters, he says, “you de-legitimise their votes. And, if you de-legitimise their votes, you de-legitimise the very idea of representative government”.

This is what they tried this week with Steve Bannon. They failed. But I fear it is just a setback in what will go down as one of the most shameful periods in the BBC’s once proud history.

A possible foretaste of what Kathy or Laura might have faced had Woman’s Hour pursued their invitation came on Wednesday's Woman's Hour where Jenni Murray discussed the legacy of Michelle Obama with Margo Miller, ex-Chair of Democrats Abroad and Malise Sundstrom, Chair of Republicans Overseas UK.

At one point Dame Jenni asked the Trump-supporting Mrs Sundstrom what she "made" of a woman on Facebook calling Mrs Obama "an ape in heels" and that being "endorsed by a female mayor in West Virginia". Mrs Sundstrom could not have been clearer in denouncing such behaviour as "horrifying" and "absolutely unacceptable behaviour". Dame Jenni wasn't letting it go though, interrupting and, in a particularly dramatic tone of a voice, saying "But a mayor endorsed it!" Malise Sundstrom repeated that she doesn't support that kind of language. The Woman's Hour presenter then gave up as Mrs Sundstrom still couldn't have been clearer.

Woman's Hour spins a line

The Woman's Hour website for today's edition reads:

As the UK Independence Party prepares to announce a new leader, with Diane James the front runner to take over from Nigel Farage - what difference could she make to a Party that's failed to attract female voters.

But is it really true that UKIP has "failed to attract female voters"? 

Well, according to Ipsos MORI's analysis of the 2015 general election, the answer to that is a pretty emphatic 'no'. 

UKIP (which won 13% of the 2015 general election vote share overall) attracted 12% of female voters - a couple of percentage points less than male voters but still a sizeable slice of the female vote overall, amounting to the combined vote share of the Greens (4% of women) and the Liberal Democrats (8% of women). 

So quite where Woman's Hour got the idea that UKIP has "failed to attract female voters", God alone knows!

(And even if he does know He's probably far too scared of Jenni Murray and Jane Garvey to say).

Incidentally, that Ipsos MORI analysis does show a gap in support of 6% between older men (19%) and older women (13%) but also, very intriguingly, shows the difference going the other way among young voters with more young women voting UKIP (10%) than young men (7%). Would Woman's Hour discuss that? (Spoilers! No).

Jenni Murray (naturally) discussed UKIP with a left-leaning Guardian writer, Gaby Hinsliff. (This is Woman's Hour after all). Their discussion ran much as you'd expect but, to give you a flavour of it (if you aren't overly eager to hear it for yourself), here's Dame Jenni:

Now, as you may have heard in the news, UKIP begins its conference today in Bournemouth. And this afternoon the name of the new leader of the party will be announced. There are rumours that a certain contingent has been begging Nigel Farage to return. He's apparently said that will only happen if the government fails to deliver the withdrawal from Europe. So how likely is the party, not known for its feminist credentials to have by the end of today its first female leader? ....

Gaby, how likely is it that UKIP will get its first female leader today?

How much of a problem has the blokish image been for UKIP, like calling women who don't clean behind the fridge 'sluts'?

Now, three of the five candidates, as I said, are women. What sort of policies have they campaigned on for their leadership bid?

If a woman is chosen what impact will be have on UKIP's heartland, the predominantly male support? I'll hesitate to call them 'grumpy old men', which is what you said.

So what are the main threats to UKIP's future then? Is it simply that the Conservative Party are doing what they've asked for?

Dame Jenni asks a question

Do you remember the controversy when Woman's Hour tried to ignore the mass assaults in Cologne (and elsewhere) on New Years Eve, despite being a feminist programme?

Well...

Woman's Hour had two Labour MPs on yesterday to discuss the EU referendum in the light of women's rights: Harriet Harman (Remain) and Gisela Stuart (Leave). Dame Jenni Murray carried out both interviews, and put this question to Ms. Stuart: 

We've talked about the men who are at the front of your campaign - and, equally, at the front of the other side. One interesting thing that came out was your Vote Leave campaign director, Dominic Cummings, tweeted...After those New Year attacks in Cologne that so much was made of he tweeted, "There's nothing to stop sex attackers flying to the UK when they get EU citizenship. Vote Leave = a safer choice". How do you respond to that kind of inflammatory and, arguably, racist comment?

How typical of BBC people like Dame Jenni Murray to consider that tweet "inflammatory and, arguably, racist"! And how typical that she's still so dismissive of what happened in Cologne (and elsewhere) at the start of the year!

Not worth the wait after all

So Woman's Hour finally got round to covering the attacks on women in Germany and Sweden this morning, devoting the first 18 minutes of the programme to the subject.

It was, however, much as might have been expected - a group of people sharing the same similar, narrow, left-liberal, feminist outlook agreeing with each other and uniting in condemnation of 'right-wing' people who don't think like them, put centre stage and stage-managed by the BBC.

The guests consisted of two left-leaning journalists, Joan Smith of The Independent and Imke Henkel of Die Zeit (last heard on Sunday's Broadcasting House), plus Egyptian journalist and activist Sarah El-Rashidi and Dr Andrea Den Boer of Kent University (last heard on Saturday's Today).

Here's how Dame Jenni Murray framed the discussion:

Given the reports that the attacks in both Sweden and Germany are said to have been carried out in crowds and by men of mostly North African backgrounds, how should the Women's Movement be reacting? How do you make a complaint about behaviour that may well have a racial source without being racist and causing the kind of backlash against migrants that's already being reported in Germany?

Her own left-liberal angst was soon matched by the rest of the participants.

Imke Henkel began by characterising the debate in Germany and saying that feminists and the Women's Movement didn't want to hush it up, as "conservatives" claim, but were saying 'we need to talk about it as violence against women, whether by foreigners or Germans'.

Joan Smith said the initial reluctance to talk was "understandable". The way the news leaked out meant that many didn't want to "rush to judgement". It is "very difficult for feminists" though. Yes, to defending women's right obviously, she continued, but "we don't want to play into the hands of people who are simply anti-immigrant". Now a non-racist analysis is emerging, she went on: The refugee entrance system in Europe is discriminating against women.

Sarah El-Rashidi compared events in Tahrir Square and Cologne. She was describing "taharrush" without using the word. (She sounded as if she might be sensible, but later events proved otherwise).

Andrea Den Boer then repeated her theories about marginalised men and population bulges and "hesitated" to say this is a migrant issue. The phenomenon of "crowd gathering and sexual assaults" isn't confined to one culture or religion, she said. It even happens around Canada Day, apparently. 

Jenni Murray then moved onto the backlash, making a startlingly hyperbolic analogy: 

Imke, there have been newspaper reports this morning making the right-wing response look I have to say rather like Kristallnacht - you know [a chorus of 'yeses' from the other guests], shop windows smashed, very frightening images, posters with 'Rape refugees not welcome'. How much has this fuelled a dangerous backlash?

Imke replied "I think it has fuelled a dangerous backlash", though she distanced herself slightly from the Kristallnacht analogy. ("These events are not as bad"). It is "frightening" though, she said. "I agree with everything that's been said before", she continued, saying that the feminist angle is important. The Right are trying to hush up feminists but feminists should talk about the issue, she went on. We should also distinguish between Algerian men and Syrians. Algerian men has a record of this kind of thing; Syrians are "unlikely" to do that sort of thing. [That's not what the recent rapes of a 14 and 15 year old girl in Southern Germany by Syrians necessarily suggest though].

Dame Jenni's next question was: 

So Sarah, what we've heard from Andrea is this can happen anywhere where there are a lot of young men without purpose who are in a crowd. How possible would you say it is to talk about a particular form of misogyny and emphasize the relevance of the North African backgrounds of these men? Or that not really relevant?

Egyptian journalist Sarah didn't directly answer that, saying instead that she was "in total agreement" with Andrea about the 'crowd gathering' point before going on to 'do a Hugh Sykes':

Now I think that we shouldn't totally disregard...me being the conspiracy theorist I might be accused of being...We should disregard the point that there is a possibility this could also be linked to a political agenda from the right party...from the national party leader.....Now I think there's a possibility of that. I think we should also look at these sort of issues.

Astonishingly, no one - and certainly not Jenni Murray - even batted an eyelid at that. The conversation went straight on.

Jenni did mention Rochdale, Rotherham and Oxford though. Joan Smith criticised the Right for saying that "white women" were attacked there [girls actually]. ("I think that's completely wrong"). It's about "all women" being attacked. The opportunity now is to teach universal rights to migrants and refugees "if we can ignore all this kind of right-wing clamour", she went on.

Imke said the liberal immigration policies of Mrs Merkel and Sweden "are not to blame at all". Such policies are "absolutely right". She then agreed with Joan that refugees and migrants need to be taught Western human rights and that it's an "opportunity" that should be taken, repeating that point several times.

And there you have it - the much-delayed Woman's Hour discussion on the NYE attacks.

It would be a very unbalanced listener who found that a 'balanced' discussion.

It's this sort of thing that ought to give the BBC a very bad name.

The other 'm-word' at the BBC

Just to supplement your Sunday afternoon reading, there are two more fine pieces about BBC bias at Conservative Woman.

The first is David Keighley's post The BBC’s ‘religion’ is the promotion of equality not Christianity, which notes senior BBC editor Christine Morgan's remarks on this week's Feedback about the purpose of the BBC's coverage of religion - "Part of it is explaining this fantastic multi-faith, multi-cultural society that we have back to Britain". David says:

Put another way, in BBC-land, religious output is not any more primarily focused on thinking about Christianity and religion itself or faith; it’s a medium through which the multi-cultural agenda can be pursued and amplified.

He then relates that to Roger Bolton's own criticisms of the BBC's coverage of religion (that too many BBC editors are ignorant of religion and have a 'liberal elite' outlook, that Christianity is uniquely singled out for mockery at the BBC, and social conservatives are often seen as mad) - which, incidentally, formed the subject of this very blog's first main post.

(That post was written on 28 October 2012, so the BBC clearly didn't pay much attention to Roger Bolton at the time, given the continuation of much of the same kinds of thing ever since).

The second Conservative Woman piece I'd like to recommend is Laura Perrins's PC Jenni Murray bans the word ‘mother’. Perhaps, she should now take charge of Calais, in which Laura recounts her colleague Belinda Brown's experiences of appearing on Woman's Hour. 

It seems - and it's back to 'every week is Language Awareness Week now!' territory - that Dame Jenni didn't like Belinda's use of a particular word:

....the mere mention of the word 'mother' was just too much for Jenni; she had to sit down. No hang on she was already sitting down so instead she attempted to censor, censor, her guest. Please could we use the word 'parent' instead, she asked, as sometimes fathers do this role. 

Yes, sometimes father do take on the caring role but it is mostly mothers, Belinda pointed out. 

Hugh Sykes v Dame Jenni Murray

Dame Jenni Murray got into a bit of a Twitter spat today with veteran BBC colleague Hugh Sykes.

After her appearance on this morning's Broadcasting House (reviewing the papers with Nigel Farage and Terry Wogan), she took to Twitter, peering over her glasses no doubt (as ever), only to find that various left-wing twitterers were roundly slagging her off.

Why? Because, they said, she'd refused to slag off UKIP over the ex-UKIP 'negroes' lady, pleading that she was too "independent BBC" to comment.

Oh they weren't happy with her, they really weren't. And 'The True Voice of the BBC' (as I like to think of him), Hugh Sykes, wasn't happy either.

He shared their disapproval of Dame Jenni's failure to bash UKIP, and joined in the attack on her on Twitter, re-tweeting their criticisms and making it clear that - unlike Dame Jenni - he has no truck whatsoever with racism:

@ramblecamp @DaveSThompson @whjm I once said on air, "We've had lots of racist mail. I put it in the bin" Complaints! Editor defended me.

— HughSykes (@HughSykes) February 22, 2015

Twitter, however, is (to put it mildly) not always reliable. Hugh, as we know, isn't always reliable either. And Dame Jenni took to Twitter again this afternoon to say that her critics (including Hugh) had it all wrong:

@HughSykes just to clear comment not on racism but Farage conservative defectors to UKIP assertion.

— Jenni Murray (@whjm) February 22, 2015

And when you listen to BH you can see that Dame Jenni's comments could be taken either way but that she probably was saying that she wouldn't comment on the party political aspect of the story (which had just been discussed) rather than refusing to comment on racism. But I can understand why UKIP-hating people (like Hugh & Co.), who were hoping she'd denounce UKIP, could hear her comment as a refusal to denounce "UKIP's racism" and, thus, leap into Twitter action in the hope of generating a Twitterstorm. 

*****

If there's one thing you can safely say about Hugh on Twitter is that he's hardly "independent BBC". His dislike of UKIP (on Twitter) is undisguised. You will doubtless recall, however:

HughSykes ‏@HughSykes  26 Jan 2013@4d2b Yes, Big If. But I am scrupulously objective when reporting - unlike some of my Tweets! I obey: "Hang up your opinions with your coat"

His reporting, however, has always seemed to me to belie that claim (as I've said several times before). His BH report today was plugging the need for government spending in Italy, mirroring his anti-austerity Twitter comments, and he largely critiqued the Blairite Italian PM Matteo Renzi from the left (as is his way with most things on Twitter). 

Like many a true Brit (as we were saying the other day), Hugh overestimates his knowledge about things. Today he was coming across as a great expert on Italy and Italian politics, despite having only popped over for a visit. 

And in a typical piece of Hugh Sykes' sleight-of-hand, he referred (for the sake of his argument) to Forza Italia as a "far-right" party - even though Wikipedia, and everyone else I can find who isn't "far-left", maintains that the relaunched Forza Italia of Silvio Berlusconi remains "centre-right" - and has recently rejoined the mainstream EPP grouping in the European parliament to prove it.

Now, by Hugh's standards Forza Italia probably is "far-right" (like UKIP) and Mr Renzi "Thatcherite", but that probably says much, much more about Hugh that it does about them.

Peering over rose-tinted glasses

Talking about anti-Semitism, and clicking on what looked like an interesting discussion on Woman's Hour....

There was a Woman's Hour discussion this week between journalist Angela Epstein (worried about anti-Semitism in the UK) and Dr Jonathan Boyd of Reading University (nowhere near as worried, and rather more worried for other minorities, apparently - and I think we can guess who he means).

I thought it might be interesting, in the interests of disinterested blogging, to quote all of presenter Dame Jenni Murray's questions here, following her sceptical-sounding introduction (where she sounded, as ever, like a professorial version of Jo Brand).

The sceptical question (posed in the light of the CAA report) was: "But how justified are Jews in the UK for fearing for their safety and that of their children?"

(For those who confuse Dame Jenni Murray with her champagne-guzzling non-dame partner-in-feminist-crime Jane Garvey, Dame Jenni's the one who always appears to be peering over her glasses in every photo, forever prompting the thought (in me): So why, in the name of the Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon Him), is she wearing glasses in the first place?)

Given Sanchia Berg's report on this morning's Today, casting doubt on the CAA report, and David's recollection of Gavin Esler, on the News Channel, talking to someone from the Jewish Chronicle who was also dismissing the same study, I was interested to see if the good (BBC) Dame tried to do the same here?

Please see what you think:

(1) - (to AE) Angela, what sort of concerns for your children do you have?
(2) - (to AE) Is it a Jewish school and does he wear a kippah?
(3) - (to JB) Jonathan, if I can bring you in here. Last year the Anti-Defamation League described the UK as one of the least anti-Semitic countries in the world. How do you account for the latest poll?
(4) - (to JB) How would you compare this country with others, from your own experience of living here?
(5) - (to AE) But to what extent, Angela...I mean, all right, we accept that what happened in Paris last week was horrific and was frightening, but to what extent have you been just an anxious mum worrying about her children going to school on their own, just like any other mother? We all worry about our children.
(6) - (to JB) Jonathan, you're also a parent. What concerns do you have for your children?
(7) - (to AE) Angela, what about friends and relatives? I mean, we have seen a lot of French people are leaving France for Israel. What about here?
(8) - (to AE, interrupting) Dinner party parlance, or serious stuff?

My view: The discussion was a valuable one and both guests had interesting points to make, sometimes agreeing, sometimes disagreeing, but, on balance, I'd said that Jenni Murray's questions were clearly biased towards the sceptical side. (I'd cite questions 3,5 and 8 in evidence.)

It seems as if the BBC's given its staff another hymn-sheet and many of them are already singing from it. 

"WORST SYCOPHANTS IN THE WORLD"

Simon Heffer huffs in today's Mail:

On Radio 4 this week, Dame Jenni Murray casually described Hillary Clinton as ‘the most famous woman in the world’. Oh really? What about our beloved Queen? Or William Hague’s big crush, Angelina Jolie? Or, for that matter, the singer Beyonce (and if I’ve heard of her, she must be distressingly famous)?

I am sure Dame Jenni was not party to such a shoddy arrangement, but it is widely believed that the Lefties who run the BBC are lining up Mrs Clinton as their ‘approved’ candidate for the next U.S. presidential election and are keen to promote her cause. Mrs Clinton hasn’t even declared her candidacy yet, so prepare yourselves for disgustingly sycophantic saturation BBC coverage when she does.

This section of his article is entitled, "WORST SYCOPHANTS IN THE WORLD".

I didn't hear that Woman's Hour interview with the sainted Hillary but I did see this tweet from Dame Jenni's Woman's Hour colleague, 'Champagne' Jane Garvey:

Three of my @bbcwomanshour colleagues with a @HillaryClinton selfie. NOT JEALOUS pic.twitter.com/RjhMrRF89G
— Jane Garvey (@janegarvey1) July 4, 2014