John v Jane

Hard-done-by Jane Garvey

John Humphrys isn't letting go quite yet. Here he is giving Jane Garvey both barrels in his Daily Mail column today, beginning with the 'gender pay gap' business:

It still grates to hear presenters such as Garvey behave as though they are making a heroic sacrifice for humanity rather than enjoying a privileged job most people would sell their souls for. 

It's almost as annoying as hearing her on Woman's Hour this week stating as indisputable fact that men do not experience the joy of newborn babies as women do. How does she know?

This is what got John goat. It's from Monday's Woman's Hour:

But can I just go back to...I mean, this is emotive stuff...but to that compulsion to become a mother? You understand this because you enjoyed the process. There is... there's no high like it, Marilyn. You and I know that when you see your newborn child. No man will ever experience it. It's something off the scale of joy surely?

Manning the barriers

When Amol Rajan tweeted his 'scoop' about John Humphrys replacing Peter Oborne as a columnist at the Saturday Daily Mail he added, "Suspect BBC will be in his sights from time to time!" He wasn't wrong. First column, and John's straight in there!

He writes about "the tyranny of the woke" and says that the BBC should be "manning the barriers" against it.

"They have a privileged position as interpreters of the national conversation and they must ensure they are listening to it. All of it", he says. "Instead, they have let themselves be captured by the metropolitan conversation — obsessed by identity, shutting down more diverse views from other parts of the country."

He also says that the public "find the conversation in BBC circles ridiculously woke".

His "only partly tongue-in-cheek" suggestion as to how to deal with this is to move Nick Robinson from London to Manchester. 

I think it will take a heck of a lot more than that, John.

Sarah Montague wouldn't approve

(h/t Guest Who)

Some 16 hours ago the BBC's media editor tweeted the following:

Scoop: John Humphrys is joining the Daily Mail as a columnist. My very distinguished former colleague, who left @BBCr4today in September after 32yrs, starts on Saturday. Replaces Peter Oborne. Will range beyond politics. Suspect BBC will be in his sights from time to time!

He when then visited by a multitude of not-so-heavenly Corbynistas and FBPEers, so 2 hours ago he tweeted again:

If you want proof that, from a low base, Twitter has got so much worse so quickly of late, I recommend combining acclaimed BBC journalists and The Daily Mail in a single tweet. Btw on a point of information he voted Remain, and wrote a Sunday Times column for many years.

(For those wondering about the meaning of the title of this post, in his book John Humphrys revealed that his then colleague Sarah Montague "gave him a hard time" for reading The Daily Mail.)

Of jargon and John Humphrys

From Patrick Kidd's Times Diary:

Nicky Morgan, who will stay on as the culture secretary, has BBC reform at the top of her agenda. Getting rid of jargon would be a start. A commissioning editor says that he was in a meeting with one of the Beeb’s directors who used the phrase “replenisher-facing content must be platform-agnostic”. Pressed on what that actually meant, he said: “Young people prefer Netflix.” The same exec added that “the lake of content is not vertical”, meaning that people can skim or dive into the BBC, “but they also want to explore horizontal opportunities”. To which the commissioning editor replied: “I think my definition of horizontal opportunities is different to yours.”

And:

John Humphrys was looking forward to this month’s election as it would be the first since 1966 in which he had played no part. After all those years of having to pretend to be impartial, the former BBC broadcaster could finally declare a preference and no one would demand that he be sacked. “Impartiality is rubbish,” he writes in the Waitrose house magazine. “Always has been. Most people vote for the party they think will improve their lives and we hacks do the same.” Liberated at last, Humphrys then surveyed the political landscape and his heart sank. “For the first time in my life,” he says, “I wanted an option on the ballot that says ‘none of the above’.”

OMG

I nearly missed this, but here's another 'in a nutshell' revelation from John Humphrys's post-BBC book: 

Sarah Montague "gave him a hard time" for reading The Daily Mail. 

More last words on John Humphrys

The case for the prosecution continues:  

Humphrys – the BBC’s bias-monger in chief, by David Keighley 

Shameful silence of Humphrys over the Iraq dodgy dossier, by Kathy Gyngell

Plus ça Change

More from John Humphrys in today's Daily Mail showing that his friend John Simpson's attitude towards criticism of the BBC hasn't changed much over the years...

After Richard Baker was pushed out from presenting BBC One's main news bulletin at nine o'clock and the two Johns, Humphrys and Simpson, brought in to replace him, the audience wasn't happy:

The audience did not like us. In fact, they hated us — partly because we’d ousted Richard Baker.

So what happened next? Over to JH...

If we’d had email and the ludicrous Twitter mob back then, I suspect the bosses would have pulled John and me off the air immediately, crawled to Dickie to beg his forgiveness and pleaded with him to come back. 

But snail mail took longer and when the letters finally began to flood in, John came up with a brilliant strategy. 

When the BBC is criticised by the audience, its instinctive response is to say sorry. [Haha! Really???]. John took the opposite view.  

We agreed that instead of handing all our hate mail to the department responsible for complaints, we should deal with them ourselves. Every single one. 

Instead of grovelling and promising to try harder in future and be a bit more like Dickie, we would fight fire with fire.  

The more abusive the letter, the more abusive our reply. And we awarded each other scores for who could write the most creative abuse. John always won. 

I almost felt sorry for the poor viewer who wrote to tell him that he was the news-reading equivalent of an inarticulate talking dog. 

To this day, I wish that I’d been there when he opened John’s reply to find himself accused of being lower than a camel’s crotch and far more smelly. 

Our replies didn’t have to be clever, you understand, just rude. 

And here’s the extraordinary thing. We’d expected retribution to be visited upon us by our bosses who would, obviously, be overwhelmed by complaints from the recipients of our bile.  

But exactly the opposite happened. The more vicious our abuse, the more cringing their apology when viewers wrote back to us — as, invariably, they did. 

They almost always began: ‘I’m so sorry if I’ve offended you by describing you as the worst newsreader in the history of broadcasting . . .’ I’ve never been able to figure it out. 

But, eventually, the flood of letters reduced to a trickle and then pretty much dried up when the poor old audience realised they were never going to get their beloved Dickie back.

I don't think that would work quite as well these days.

My Last Words on John Humphrys (well, for today at least)

You may already have read this, but if you haven't...

Kathy at The Conservative Woman has written forcefully about John Humphrys's post-Today criticisms of the BBC. 

Don’t just blame the BBC, Mr Humphrys, blame yourself is the piece's punchy headline. 

She makes the same case some of you, our dear readers, have also made. 

Kathy's case runs as follows:

John Humphrys criticisms ring true but also hollow. He should have spoken out much earlier and not waited till two days after reaching retirement and gaining the gigantic safety net of his MASSIVE BBC pension to speak out about BBC's bias - especially its anti-Brexit bias. 

So much for his integrity!

He saw it. He must have known the utterly damning News-watch stats (especially those about Today). But he stayed in place and didn't speak out. 

So why didn't he use his bully-pulpit on Today to shame the BBC or, if that didn't work, resign in protest over it if he felt it was so wrong? 

Was it because of the tremendously large salary he got? 

And why did he front so many of Today's "daily doses of Project Fear" without openly objecting? 

And won't he now continue to front BBC TV shows (like Mastermind) and still take the biased BBC's shilling, despite everything?

"He was never brave enough to make a stand", Kathy says. "And where in this window into the world of BBC bias was his own mea culpa – his own confession of his failure to take the behemoth on?"

All of this may be harsh, but there's a good deal of truth in it and a lot for John's conscience to chew over.

Yes, as I noted yesterday, it's not entirely true that JH has been silent about such things in the past.

He's burst out twice before (both times in The Radio Times) to the displeasure of his BBC colleagues, publicly saying some of the same things about the BBC's left-liberal, pro-EU mindset.

But, backing up Kathy's case, as MB has remarked, his earlier comments were far more muted than those expressed in his post-Today (would-be-best-selling) book, as laid out by the Daily Mail.

So, a case study then of John Simpson's "institutional BBC timidity", with his friend John as its flesh-and-blood embodiment?

A thought did strike me though, having read recent pieces about him: Did he eff and blind at the BBC behind the scenes on the question of bias and try to get them to mend their ways? I'm guessing that he grumbled loudly, but little more. Whatever, there was no discernible effect as far I can see. 

Still, we are where we are, and he is where he is. 

And his remarks about the BBC contain so many damning quotes that blogs like this - and like-minded newspapers - will be using them for years against the BBC.

So many of his comments vindicate us, and are absolutely damning. 

Also, being an eternal pragmatist, as one commenter at TCW said, I wonder if by relentlessly ratcheting up the unforgiving denunciations of outlying BBC types (like him) for being timid and self-serving if they only start spilling the beans on the BBC after they leave the BBC (which, in fairness to JH, he isn't actually doing - neither leaving the BBC entirely nor denouncing the BBC for the first time), future such would-be BBC whistleblowers, now lying low and fearful inside the BBC and biding their time, might feel it's not remotely worth it after all - and, in fact, positively harmful to their wellbeing - to spill their bean-stuffed guts about the BBC after they fly Auntie's nest.

The BBC's mighty monolith might, as a result, become even less leaky than it already is.

I, personally, want more leaks. Many more leaks and revelations. The more the merrier. Even if they come after the  cowardly BBC person in question has left the BBC with rare flowers, tears made from diamonds, 24-carat-gold EU clocks and Guy Verhofstadt chocolates, a mock Eric Gill statue, and a huge sackful of gripes.

Gimme, gimme, gimme!

And, of course, however unfamiliar it may be to you, there's the other side of this story - 'complaints from both sides' - and that's that John Humphrys has become one of the top two BBC hate figures in recent years in the more fetid echo chambers of pro-EU hardliners, the 'woke' brigades, the nastier climate apocalypse outriders, and the gathering hordes of the far-Left. 

They loathe him, and can't stop foaming at the mouth about him.

And their frothing has surfaced, again and again, on Radio 4's Feedback - which (as regulars will know) I've long felt has been suspiciously helpful to the huge campaign against him. 

For such haters (despite him voting Remain, as he's now admitted), he's long been a sexist, reactionary, right-wing, 'climate-denying', pro-Brexit dinosaur. 

The one thing they've wanted more than anything else has been to get him out, preferably sacked.

The amount of bile that's poured out on Twitter on against him on his every appearance in recent years has been beyond staggering. I know that because, in the interests of this blog, I've frequently watched hashtags connected to Today (may God protect me!) and I've witnessed the scale of the abuse pouring in against him. It's been beyond tidal or torrential, more a daily tsunami of hate, every day he's appeared.

He could have called the police on thousands of people for 'hate crimes' against him, so vituperative have been far too many of the comments against him.

(Naturally, being John Humphrys, he hasn't).

And, yes, it was mainly because they thought he was anti-EU and pro-Brexit (to repeat, despite him voting Remain, as he's now admitted). 

That nice Lord Adonis, you probably won't be surprised to learn, openly rejoiced that he's gone:

I am delighted that John Humphrys is leaving the Today programme. He dragged it down to a radio version of the Daily Mail - it needs big change.

Ah but, aren't such people a small, unrepresentative minority, despite their very loud Twitter mouths?

It's complicated, isn't it? 

Of course, many people don't think it's complicated at all, which complicates things even more. 

Yes, John Humphrys was never prepared to martyr himself over his reservations about BBC bias. His protests were muted, at best. But now he's vindicated us and given us quote after quote that we can use to show, from the bolted horse's mouth, that many of the things we've been saying for years are true. 

The End.

"John Humphrys’s privilege is showing"

Ben Hunte

I see that Ben Hunte, the BBC's first LGBT Correspondent, has hit back at John Humphrys. 

The former Today man had objected to him saying after his appointment, "I'm looking forward to being the mouthpiece for some marginalised groups". JH thinks the BBC "must not act as anyone's mouthpiece" as "that's what lobbyists and public relations people do" and that "to confuse the two is to undermine the job of a journalist".

Here's Ben's response, quoted in The Sunday Times: 

John Humphrys’s privilege is showing. I am not a spokesperson for the LGBT community. However, what I can do — and I have done — is open the BBC’s platforms to some individuals who have been left out of the conversation for so long.

Hmm, if you say you're not a spokesperson maybe you shouldn't have used the word 'mouthpiece' then, Ben?

mouth·piece

 (mouth′pēs′)

n.

1. A part, as of a musical instrument or a telephone, that functions in or near
the mouth.

2. Sports A rubber or flexible plastic protective device worn over the teeth, as by boxers.

3. Informal One, such as a spokesperson, through which views are expressed.

Titbits

Here are some titbits that you may have missed from the dead tree press this weekend:

I

Charles Moore on Nick Robinson:

Someone like Nick Robinson, for example – another of the Today presenters – is just as good as Humphrys in the role of crazed dentist looking for holes in a politician’s teeth, but one feels that his motive is different. The essential Robinson message is “I know more about politics than you, so let me handle this”.

II

Camilla Tominey on Question Time:

If we view Southampton as a microcosm of Britain, last night’s episode taught us two things: firstly that Boris Johnson is not quite as unpopular as his detractors - including the BBC - care to make out and secondly, that the Liberal Democrat’s new “cancel Brexit” policy is anathema to huge swathes of the general public. 

III

Not so Fab-u-lous for another Craig:

Strictly Come Dancing judge Craig Revel-Horwood, 54, has been banned by the BBC from using his ‘Fab-u-lous’ catchphrase outside the show. He was reportedly hoping to use it as the name for a range of wines. Judges cannot exploit their on-air roles for commercial gain.

IV

Inaccessible Ben:

Yes, I am undeniably privileged, something I am enormously thankful and grateful for. Socially, my opinions on class, the economy and politics are often dismissed because I’m “privileged” and therefore also “disconnected” — or, as the BBC referred to me when I was dropped from presenting Countryfile, “inaccessible”.

V

Justin Webb on John Humphrys:

‘Oh, wearing jeans, are we?” It’s four in the morning last Thursday and John Humphrys has arrived for his final appearance on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. Actually, my trousers are pressed cotton, clean on and neater than anything he normally wears. But this is no normal day: it’s a special day and John has dressed special. In a suit. As he would have done growing up at home when something happened — a funeral or a wedding, perhaps. A working-class respect for time and place. For occasion.

VI

Rod Liddle on John Humphrys: 

One or two directors-general resented both his interviewing style and his prominence. I remember being told by a middle manager, in about 1998, that our interviewers should “go easy” on Blair’s government because it was terribly popular with the people. It was an instruction I totally ignored and certainly never passed on to Humphrys, who would have merely ratcheted up the ferocity a bit more. Later managers worried about the fact that he wasn’t quite woke, like all the rest of the BBC’s employees — forgetting that 75% of the country (that is, the licence fee-payers) aren’t woke either, and won’t be woke no matter how many alarms you set or how much our dozing bodies are prodded by the hyperbolic liberals in an attempt to make us so. 

Some things new under the sun

In fairness to John Humphrys, he hasn't been entirely silent in the past.

We've reported (with some glee) both his earlier major swipes at the BBC. 

So - in that sense - you could say that you heard it here first! (Go on, say it!)

You may recall him upsetting Feedback's Roger Bolton in 2014 by criticising the BBC in The Radio Times for underplaying concerns over immigration and the EU because of a "liberal mindset", then telling the affronted Roger that "analysis" of the BBC's coverage would give him that impression too. "There was a mindset that thought that the right approach to Europe should be supportive", he told  Roger and his Radio 4 listeners. Unfortunately, he then rather spoiled it by suggesting that the problem was rooted more in the recent past than the present. 

But, also via The Radio Times, back in 2017, in a joint interview with all four other Today presenters, he then said "there's a disconnect between the people who run the BBC and a large chunk of the population", saying the people in charge at the BBC "tend to come with a set of liberal values that permeate their thinking, and therefore the thinking of the BBC". (His colleague Nick Robinson was having none of it).

And in that interview, he also gave us a sneak-preview of the anecdote I quoted from this weekend's piece in the Daily Mail, suggesting that a pro-EU mindset was still absolutely rampant at the BBC (like we ever doubted it!). Here's what he said in 2017:

I noted on the morning of the referendum that in the BBC almost everybody who came in, above all, all the bosses, looked absolutely stunned. And I suspect if you walked into a cafe round the corner frequented by a rather wider mix of the population, there wouldn't have been that same sense of being utterly stunned. They'd have been maybe a bit surprised, but perhaps not even that. I think we sometimes do lose touch with the population.

I gave him a "Well said John!" for that. 

So some of the views he's expressing now aren't new.

He's said them before, publicly.

But others are,...

...such as his direct criticism of Ben Hunte, the BBC's LGBT Correspondent, for wanting to be an activist-journalist and Breakfast presenter Ben Thompson for wanting to censor social conservatives (as well as his missile strikes on Eddie Mair), plus his sharp and unquestionably true comments about the BBC's strong and overpowering temptation to act as social engineers aiming to reshape society in their own image (something we see all the time). 

To conclude: If I liked popcorn, I'd be getting fat on it today.

Free at last!

"For much of my career, I’ve felt rather like the junior butler trying to blag a seat at His Lordship’s dining table in Downton Abbey"

(John Humphrys, on being a working class, non-arts graduate at the BBC)

Just two short days after departing the Today programme, in mourning weeds, with tears in eyes, John Humphrys has seriously let rip at the BBC in (OMG) The Daily Mail...

Feedback will be appalled, and doubtless John's choice of publication and what he has to say there will only confirm to his many left-wing haters on Twitter that he's the right-wing fossil they've been so vociferously asserting he is over recent years. 

Many of his criticism of the BBC will be very familiar, and we've made them ourselves...over many, many years. But it's always good to get it from the horse's mouth, even if the horse felt the need to bolt from the stable first. 

It's a long piece, so I'll try to summarise it:

1. He says he's now free to speak and no longer has to "submit to the BBC Thought Police" his "subversive musings". 

2. The BBC is "a tremendous and irreplaceable force for good" and "this country is the stronger for its existence". "Our democracy needs it" and he's "convinced that it occupies a special place in the nation's heart" and that "we would be poorer without it".

3. The BBC has a "great fear... of the politically correct brigade and the most fashionable pressure groups — usually from the liberal Left, the spiritual home of most bosses and staff".

4. BBC bosses didn't even try to disguise their horror at the result of the EU referendum. It wasn't what they expected or what they wanted. They saw it as "a disaster".

The Brexit crisis had exposed a fundamental flaw in the culture of the BBC. Its bosses, almost to a man and woman, could simply not grasp how anyone could have put a cross in the Leave box on the referendum ballot paper.

Here's a lengthier extract with a telling anecdote:

We note how much time the typical boss spends in meetings — usually with other bosses — and how little in the various news rooms. It’s true that they tend to appear on the mornings after, say, General Elections — offering a few nods and smiles and the odd encouraging remark to the poor bloody infantry who have been slaving away all night. 

The morning of the EU Referendum was different. Leave had won — and this was not what the BBC had expected. Nor what it wanted. 

No nods and smiles when the big bosses appeared. No attempt to pretend that this was anything other than a disaster. 

Their expressions were as grim as the look on the face of a football supporter when his team’s star player misses the penalty that would have won them the cup.

5. The BBC has an "institutional liberal bias". The main reasons for this are (a) its recruitment process, which overwhelmingly hauls in middle-class, university-educated, often private school-educated arts graduates ("and it’s a racing certainty that there won’t be more than a handful of Tories among them") and (b) groupthink:

There is, I believe, a groupthink mentality, an implicit BBC attitude to what makes news. Decisions are influenced, if only subconsciously, by what the organisation has done in the past. So it can too often be willing to settle for the status quo, settling into the same lines of thought.

6. Because of that groupthink, immigration and euroscepticism became two important areas where the BBC "failed so badly to spot a change in the nation's mood".

7. He himself voted Remain in the EU referendum. He's voted for most political parties over the years (though not the far-Right or the far-Left) and considers himself "pitifully middle-of-the-road".

8. The BBC finds it "hard to resist" the temptation to engage in social engineering. It sometimes tries "to create society in its own image" and "places its powerful finger on one side of the scale of social justice":

Which is why I raised my eyebrows when the BBC announced it had created the new post of LGBT correspondent — and the man appointed said: ‘I’m looking forward to being the mouthpiece for some marginalised groups . . .’ It was the use of the word ‘mouthpiece’ that jarred. Obviously, the BBC must give a voice to minorities, but it must not act as anyone’s mouthpiece. That’s what lobbyists and public relations people do. To confuse the two is to undermine the job of a journalist.

9. More and more people at the BBC "conflate and, perhaps. confuse their own interests with those of the wider world...The logic seems to be that if they feel strongly about a given issue, the BBC should not only listen to them but modify its output to reflect their own world view." He cites the example of members of the BBC's LGBT group, including a business presenter, demanding on Twitter that a question on Question Time asking if it was morally inappropriate to teach five-year-olds about LGBT issues shouldn't have been allowed. It's not a good look for people at the BBC to engage in censorship.

10. The BBC's handling of the Carrie Gracie affair and his leaked off-air banter with Jon Sopel about it "made the Kremlin circa 1950 look sophisticated". He doesn't believe he did anything wrong.

I was disappointed by the BBC’s reaction. They might have made the point that my 50 years’ service at the BBC showed that to accuse me of misogyny on the basis of one bit of private banter was risible. Fat chance. Instead, they came up with the typically pompous comment: ‘This was an ill-advised off-air conversation which the presenter regrets.’ And a ‘source’ told the Guardian that ‘management are deeply unimpressed’.

And he's particularly angry at how then-PM presenter Eddie Mair - the real "boss" of PM - handled the story (or, as JH sees it, non-story), going on to complain:

Mair was not a team player. When he joined PM in 2003, it was a straightforward news-based programme. By the time he left, it had become — in my view — a vehicle for his ego.

11. Yes, he enjoys arguing and approaches people in power "with a pretty strong dose of scepticism", but he's come to realise that the "gladiator sport" style of interviewing is far from ideal. What does it actually achieve? "Too many interviewers (present company included)", he says, "are too often more concerned with making headlines than with helping the audience understand the issues at stake." He admits he got "a little heated, too heated" in the past, did "a lot of interrupting" and, to his "great shame", lost his temper at times, but "calmed down" over the years. 

12. Punchline: After 33 years on Today, he "can't deny that he's rather looking forward to tomorrow".

John Humphrys signs off

Here's the moment John Humphrys signs off after 32 years of broadcasting on the Today programme and an illustrious journalism career spanning six decades #r4today

Full sign off 👉 https://t.co/JYz6qDwUTL pic.twitter.com/vm1nBIHPHM

— BBC Radio 4 Today (@BBCr4today) 19 September 2019

Plenty of plaudits for Humph this morning during his farewell appearance on the Toady. 

A big article by Giles Fraser on Unherd, too. Who will miss John Humphrys? 

The Today Programme seems to be getting less and less listenable under Sarah Sands’s headmistress- ship. "She introduced the puzzle", someone announced, as if that was a good thing.

He sounds ok, but when you see him Humphrys has the pallor of a man who’s been living underground for years. For his sake, now that he can have a lie-in and a bit of a relax, I advise him to get some fresh air (for the vitamin D) 

Bye John, and good luck. 

Raaccissst!

At about ten past eight this morning. Today Programme. Cosy chat with John Humphrys and Chief Strategist for Barack Obama, David Axelrod.

The BBC is cherry-picking again. John Humphrys was oh so chummy with David Axelrod as they vied with each other to find the most fitting superlative to emote President Trump’s racism.

“Isn’t Trump racist?  

“Yes he certainly is, but he’s not only racist, he’s playing to his base - a bunch of racists. 

 “Yes, and the more racist he is, the more they love him.  

“Yes, and it’s hard to see how much more racist he could get.  

Yes, and to tell four Americans to go back to their own countries, well, just how more racist-er could anyone be? 

 “No, this is the ultimate racism of all racism, on stilts.  

“And he’s rewarded for it.  

“Mmmm.

Not verbatim, but that was the gist of it. Then, on the line, Brian Lanser was introduced as one of Trump’s deputy communications directors from his presidential campaign. (I couldn’t find him online - maybe he spells his name differently) 

The atmosphere froze. An argumentative, waspish tone crept into Humphrys’s questioning.

Hear me out while I cite Sir Rod of Liddle. (£) writing about something Matthew Parris (miss)-spoke about (which resonates with what happened in the Humphrys - Lanser interview)

Rod Liddle:

“A perfectly sensible observation from Matthew Parris has incurred the wrath of his colleagues on the Times. Speaking of Trump’s “racist” comments, Parris writes: 

“I don’t like his attacks but I think they will strike a chord among millions who should not be called racists. It’s just futile to suppose that arrivals from another country, and their children, immediately and automatically assume an identity as citizens that is indistinguishable from that of the population already there. They have all the same rights but will be seen, for a generation or two, as neither better nor worse but different.” 

That seems to me precisely the case. And I suspect the majority of Americans think the same, not to mention British people.”

That’s almost exactly what Brian Lanser replied when Humphrys stated confidently that the ‘majority of Americans’ were horrified at Trump’s racist Tweet. Wrong. Most Americans probably agree with Rod and Matthew.

Rod again:

“Yet you would have thought he had donned a pointy white hood to listen to the wailing from Caitlin Moran and Sathnam Sanghera who said:
‘I’m forever being told, as a second generation immigrant, that I should be “more grateful”, when I’m just doing the same job as him, being critical of aspects of Britain. That is racism.’
Followed up with:
‘I’ve left a comment on the website, Matthew often responds, so hopefully he will reflect.’ 

Me sticking up for Parris will simply confirm to people of such Manichean, absolutist beliefs, that Matthew is a raaaccissst. They are impervious to everything else. There is nothing else but racism. No nuance, no context, no truth.”

That’s it. The way the BBC has been running with this story for two days. No context, only Racism. Racism. Raaaccciismmm. Race. Ism.

Trump’s biggest error was probably including the word “back” in that dreaded Tweet. It was technically incorrect, at least in respect of three out of the four. 

The BBC and most of the MSM completely ignore the context around this storm-in-a-teacup, while amplifying the juiciest fragment of ammunition with which to attack Trump is the only thing that interests them. That’s what they all do these days. 

They speak as if the ‘squad’ are clean and unblemished, 'without sin',  confident  (because of their blind-eyed, politically correct reporting) that hardly anyone knows what these four ladies have constantly been saying. If a fraction of their ugly rhetoric had been honestly reported it would be plain to see who the actual racists are. 

John Humphrys tells us why Hamas exists

Because of the occupation.

I understand the BBC’s revamp, which includes the reputedly unpopular “Sounds” was part of a drive to get down with the kidz - God,  now I sound like that judge who was unacquainted wiv da Beatles - I’m not him. He.

They say they’re aiming to attract the youth, anyway. (Should the BBC be targeting specific demographics? BBC Asian? Women’s Hour? As an ancient, out of touch judge, am I allowed to watch BBC Three? Or is it exclusively for teenagers?)

Not so long ago one could log on, search for ‘the Today Programme’, click on “Running Order” and arrive at the proposed daily timings of the upcoming items including a detailed guest list (albeit subject to change.)

Now they’ve meddled with the website and introduced an obstacle to bloggers about BBC bias, and anyone else who wants to find out exactly what the hell they’ve just been listening to. This change ensures that we can no longer easily listen again to a particular item or identify a particular spokesperson; you now have to use Google, (other search engines are available) to identify the name of the Hamas spokesperson with the impenetrable accent and the samey-similar-sounding name (with multiple alternative  spellings) to any other Hamas spokesterrorist. And all with or without the help of your supernatural powers.

At first, I thought I should search for Islam Hamad. But no.  This was none of the Islam Hamads that came up on Google. Then I realised it was Issam, not Islam, and had another go. Of course, Issam is also spelt Essam, which is par for the course, but it doesn’t help.

You know who I miss? Ron Prosor. When he was Israel’s Ambassador here, he could charm the pants off even the most BBCish presenter. His voice was so fruity he made Geoffrey Cox sound like a Smurf. And voices are important, especially on the radio - that’s why so many women fail the ‘pleasant sounding voice’ test. Mishal Husain’s voice with its scrapey harshness and Martha Kearney’s with its soft but grating timbre. I know they can’t help it any more than Caster Semenya can help her testosterone level. There’s a harshness about this injustice - but, you know, horses for courses. 

I once watched John Humphrys trying to learn how to make a painting. His hopelessness made him appear more ‘master of none’ than Jack of all trades, but I can see that Jack of all trades is what a Today Programme presenter has to be. 

Even so, it would be reassuring to know that your BBC presenter has a basic grasp of an issue that has come up repeatedly over the years, especially if he happens to have been in the trade for almost as many decades as the issue itself has been an actual issue. 

You’ll have realised that I’m talking about the item that came up at about 2h 43s into the programme. I don’t think I know how to link to the exact moment now that “playt=“ has been excised, but if I found it, so can you. I don’t think I can be bothered to transcribe the interviews in full. I’m not in the mood. Just scroll to 2:42:52

Obviously, it was about the latest spate of violence instigated by Hamas, timed, at least in part, to disrupt the wretched Eurovision Song Contest. I suppose Hamas was afraid that the Eurovision tourists would like the Zionist Entity and lose sympathy for the Palestinian cause. (I think that’s already happening, according to one enthusiastic Tweet I saw this morning.)

In this latest battle, the death score is a little less ‘disproportionate’ than is necessary to satisfy the hostile media. That unforgettable “How many Israelis?” interview by scrapey-voiced school-mistress Mishal Husain is forever etched on our (my) memory. 

John Humphrys introduced the item, pointedly using the term “militants’ twice. (Palestinian Militants and Gaza Militants) He then announced that he would be talking to “Islam Hamad, he’s on the steering committee of what is called the Great Return March”  (He definitely used the name “Islam” this time, though he corrected it later, perhaps prompted via the headphones) and he fluffed the description of the other guest’s professional role so awkwardly and confusingly that listeners might still be wondering who Michael Oren is.  Some kind of Israeli Ambassador to the United States, you know, something like that.

At the end of his opening statement, Oren suggested that when the time is right, Israel will probably  “do more to rid Gaza of Hamas.”

Humphrys asked Issam (Essam) (from Hamas) whether he  “wants to see Gaza rid of Hamas.” 

“Aah, Hamas is a freedom fighter” he replied, “It is fighting for freedom. If we are not under occupation there would be no Hamas.” 

Everyone knows that Gaza hasn’t been under occupation since 2005. But Issam doesn’t mean that. He means “Palestine” is under occupation. That’s ‘Israel’, to you and me. He is quite explicit about this, as he refers to the effect the rocket barrage (Schools shut down, weddings and football matches cancelled etc) which Oren has just described, but he (Issam) calls it “Southern  Palestine” and compares it with his own people’s situation, (i.e., similarly incapacitated, but of course entirely as a consequence of  their own decision to instigate the rocket-firing.) 

He says that if the Palestinians achieved their “right of return” there would be peace. (But obviously no Jewish state.) Humphrys missed that. Not being alert to the fundamental problem, he goes on to make a much more simplistic argument, which roughly amounts to “War bad; why not negotiate?” 

IH

“We’ve been negotiating through Egypt. We want Israel not to shoot at the peaceful protesters who are peacefully protesting on the Great Return March. Human Rights Watch says Israel is committing war crimes” […] ” Israel wants to kick out all the Palestinians; if they don’t want to do this they wouldn’t pass the law that Israel is the Jewish State…”

JH

“And Dr Oren, many people will hear what Mr Hamad has said and will agree with him and say yes, Israel is entirely intransigent”

MO

“If they agree with him they know nothing of the facts. Hamas is an Islamist, Jihadist organisation. It’s a terrorist organisation…

JH

“And it exists because of the occupation”

Ron Proser would have eaten them both up for lunch.

The Voice

Here, I give up. I just give up. 

Just let me finish

It would be remiss of me not to mention this strange piece in the Sunday Times

Emily Maitlis and Mishal Husain interrupt interviews even more than John Humphrys

"The veteran presenter of the Today programme is outflanked on interjections by two BBC colleagues"

It took three authors, Rosamund Urwin, Shingi Mararike and Ellie McDonald to come up with this unexpected theory.

“Yet, perhaps surprisingly, Humphrys is already outflanked on interjections by two BBC colleagues — Mishal Husain and Emily Maitlis — both of whom have a reputation for being more measured.”

Reputation with whom? Misha Husain is measured? Who knew?

other presenters are available

The comments below the line are equally remarkable. Interruption coefficients? Where’s Craig?

Regarded by some

John Humphrys to Jeremy Hunt on Wednesday's Today: 

‘What MPs had seen in this Prime Minister is pretty much at every stage she had given way to a group of people regarded by some as extremists in the ERG group. She has listened to them, she has done what they wanted her to do, now she is paying the price for that turning on all the other MPs...’

Oh dear.

More questions than answers

Towards the tail end of the Today Programme (2:54:42) Clive Baldwin from the dreadfully partisan organisation known as Human Rights Watch was brought in to opine on the plight of Shamima Begum.

I wondered what he would have to say. He began thus: (Note. None of the following transcriptions is guaranteed 100% verbatim)

“As you said, John, ISIS committed very serious crimes; crimes against humanity [..] the key element is collecting all the evidence of war crimes in Syria and we should be focussing on those found to have been responsible for helping, assisting prosecuting and committing war crimes especially at the most senior level.

That sounds promising, I thought - he’s more interested in “The most senior level” than picking off the low-hanging fruit, so to speak.

The other guest, Yvonne McDermott Rees @Swansea_Law, has an unmistakably Irish accent. What can we expect from her? Well, she agreed with Clive. 

Y McD R
“It’s going to be domestic countries - Germany is going to be prosecuting for crimes like genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

(Humph to Clive)
“What about Shamima Begum?”

CB
“She has the right to enter Britain as a British citizen, if she does she should be investigated for anything she’s done to assist any crimes in Syria and Iraq and also security measures taken, taking into account that she was a girl when she went out there, um 15, and on a wider scale as well, and for the UK as a whole to know that this is a global problem; and her case has also highlighted what’s happening in Syria is also happening in Iraq as well, with the end of the war against ISIS, is you have these very large camps of internment, which are effectively open-air prisons, where lots of people are detained…previously people talk about the displaced people in Iraq, and it’s important that these camps close down as quickly as possible - again those most responsible for those crimes are prosecuted but everyone else has the right to return home.

I don’t know that “everyone else” should have the right to return home, wherever ‘home’ might be. Some of them may not have homes to return to. But it would be nice to think that these two commenters realise that this idiotic girl is but a drop in the ocean and that our fundamental problem goes deeper. 

Humph to Yvonne McDermott Rees:
 “How does one distinguish between those who carry out terrible acts and those who don’t actually wield the knife or pull the trigger, but support them, give them help?”

Y McD R
“Yes, this has always been a challenge in the prosecution of these international crimes.
We want to go after those who are most responsible. It’s not always the person who’s holding the gun, the weapon is the person who’s higher up in the chain of command the architect of these policies, to commit these crimes, so going after those most responsible is always going to be a huge challenge.
In this context we’ve got a brand new world in the sense that we have a wealth of citizen evidence,  so people have been gathering evidence on their mobile phones for example, but the challenge with using that kind of evidence in prosecutions is that if we’re going to prosecute those who are most responsible it’s still very difficult to find the evidence that links higher up to the chain of command.”

Precisely. Never mind small fry like Ms Begum - let’s go for the bigwigs. But which ones? The daddy of them all, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi? Or one of those Imams that have so much influence on their followers in the West? 

 Humph, (who hasn’t really been listening)
But the idea of citizen evidence is very attractive Clive?

CB
Indeed, and my organisation as well, HRW, has been documenting crimes in Syria and Iraq for years now. It’s just making sure that evidence can be used in court, and that’s why this mechanism in Geneva is important, for its wide exchange of information and particularly the commanders, and what we’ve seen in Iraq is that when they’ve been prosecuting in Iraq is that they’ve only gone after very low-level people and it’s important now that we go after the most senior.

These answers pose another question. We know that HRW takes a left-wing, agenda-driven approach to morality as far as war crimes are concerned, so we have to wonder, is the desire to focus “on the most senior” war criminals just an excuse to let Ms Begum off the hook on “humanitarian grounds?”  Are they saying she’s just a drop in the ocean, so let’s just go for the big guys?

Or, on the other hand, was it a belated realisation that we face a far bigger battle than can realistically be won simply by imprisoning hundreds or maybe thousands of the fanatical individuals who’ve been captured red-handed on smartphones during the act of beheading some unfortunate infidel. (To be used later in court as evidence that the accused has literally acted out the fantasy of a better world in the shape of a global Islamic caliphate)  (and not the one who has incited the whole damned business from some God-forsaken pulpit.) 

I doubt it. Personally, I don’t think they’ve realised anything of the sort. I think they really do believe that they can defeat ISIS and various yet-to-be-invented off-shoots thereof, by inadvertently creating another gigantic Guantanamo Bay, while being very careful not to appear Islamophobic. 

As they say, good luck with that.

From The Sunday Times

A little light-reading from The Sunday Times, beginning with a beautifully-written bit from Roland White:

Candidates to replace John Humphrys at the Today programme and nudie revue probably shouldn’t invest in a new alarm clock quite yet. Although he announced last week that he’d definitely be retiring this year, we’ve been here before. In 2009, Humphrys told Saga magazine that he expected to be sacked “very soon” as he was struggling with “the absurd pace” of the job. 

Yet Humphrys was still at Today in 2016, when he told The Times that retirement was imminent — possibly the following year. It was “extremely unlikely”, Humphrys insisted, that he’d be covering another election. Another election passed, and last week Humphrys was still available to interview a naked economist. 

At least this shows he’s in tune with current politics: constantly insisting he’s a leaver, but somehow managing to remain. 

Also from The Sunday Times, apparently the BBC is planning to cut the News at 10 by more than ten minutes "in an attempt to stop viewers flocking to ITV and appeal to younger audiences".

“We are slicing the flagship output at a time of huge public service duty in news,” said one source. “A vacuous gesture to reach younger audiences with zero credible evidence to back it up. 

“ITV will now provide more News at 10 in a week than we do.”

And here's something about Sinn Fein and the BBC's coverage of Gaelic Athletic Association games:

There is something distinctly Trumpian about the way Sinn Fein is stirring up a false tribal grievance against the BBC. The Ulster Council of the GAA is having to defend the station from persistent Sinn Fein claims that it is not showing enough live championship matches, after party deputy leader Michelle O’Neill unfairly accused the Beeb of having “a clear bias against Irish national games”. 

As the Ulster Council explained: “The BBC don’t have the rights to show live championship games. The rights are dealt with nationally and lie with RTE.” 

In fact, the BBC is so keen to cover GAA games that it sends camera crews to four times more than RTE will let it show, and then waits to see which it is permitted to broadcast.

And, one more... Is Peter Rabbit the next rabbit-brained celebrity to appear on BBC One's Question Time? Apparently, Sony Pictures has explored a deal to buy the television production company behind the BBC’s Question Time.

Stand By Your Men

Some more BBC complaints responses for your reading pleasure....

This Week, BBC One, 10 January 2019

Complaint

We have received complaints from people who felt Owen Jones was treated in a disrespectful manner while appearing as a guest on the programme. 

Response

Following the verbal abuse which he and others had sustained from protesters outside Parliament, Owen Jones, journalist, left wing commentator and activist, used his “Take of the Week” section to give his personal take on the current state of political discourse, the rise of the far right and, as he deemed, the reasons for this. 

This is a prominent section of the programme in which the author gives their views unchallenged.  During his video and the studio discussion which followed, Mr Jones made allegations about the Conservative Party and right wing media which some would consider contentious.  As our audience would expect, Andrew scrutinised what Mr Jones said.  Michael Portillo, who disagreed with Mr Jones, also gave his opinion. Mr Jones was given ample time to express his views and respond to points made to him. 

When Mr Jones made allegations about The Spectator magazine and Andrew’s role with the publication.  Andrew legitimately pointed out that this was nothing to do with the BBC and it wasn’t right for Mr Jones to use the programme to make personal accusations against him.

Today, BBC Radio 4, 26 January 2019

Complaint

We received a range of complaints following the interview of Helen McEntee. Some listeners felt the tone and content were not appropriate, suggesting a personal bias from the interviewer.

Response

We raised the main concerns with the programme team, who respond to the issues as follows:

“Thank you for getting in touch. We are sorry to hear you objected to John’s interview with Helen McEntee on Saturday. However we do not agree that John’s questioning was unfair. 

Our job is to put arguments to interviewees to test their opinions and to see how firmly held they are. We’ve done this with guests responsible for the UK’s role in these affairs too. We take the same firm but fair approach to each interview. 

It can be useful to approach an issue from an alternative point of view - the question about Ireland ‘throwing its lot in’ with the UK was an attempt to do just that. We think it is a legitimate question to ask, as a different way to discuss the importance of the trading relationship between the nations. 

John also queried the position of the Irish Government, as stated by Leo Varadkar at Davos. This wasn’t a challenge to Minister McEntee personally. At Davos, the Taoiseach said: “I think we’d end up in a situation whereby the EU and Ireland and the U.K. would have to come together and in order to honour our commitment to the people of Ireland that there would be no hard border, we would have to agree on full alignment on customs and regulations.” 

Perhaps at some point Ireland may choose to prioritise its desire to avoid a hard border over its obligations as an EU member. We have to ask to find out. A question like this doesn’t reflect a presenter’s own personal view. Part of their job is putting other people's views forward. Presenters have to be impartial and it is their job to play devil’s advocate.John put it to Ms McEntee that even though the UK voted to leave the EU, and thereby its rules and regulations, the Taoiseach’s position suggested that the UK was expected to abide by those rules after all. His remark, ‘and it sounds a bit arrogant to a lot of people on this side of the Irish Sea’, reflected the argument that the Irish and the EU are not acknowledging this.  

Minister McEntee made the point that the Irish want to avoid a hard border with Northern Ireland, that the UK’s red lines include leaving the Single Market and the Customs Union and that the backstop is there to protect the peace process after two years of negotiations. 

Today is required by the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines to be duly impartial and accurate, and we believe we achieved that here. We think this kind of robust questioning is well within the bounds of what our listeners expect."