Something's not quite right

There’s nothing currently on the Beeb about the latest Ghislaine Maxwell revelations. The last time we heard about it was on the BBC website this time last year when they reported that “Prince Andrew has settled a civil sexual assault case brought against him in the US by Virginia Giuffre.” 

And there’s no trace on the Beeb of one of this blog’s former staples, our ex-Panorama friend, ’roaring’ John Sweeney, either.

I hadn’t been aware that Sweeney has made the Maxwell /Epstein affair into a major project. A number of people have rushed to be seen to condemn the Maxwells - well, they would, wouldn’t they   - but there’s many a slip-twixt cup and Virginia Giuffre.

The Guardian:

Hunting Ghislaine, which reaches its conclusion this Thursday, has been a huge hit, so far notching up 6 million listeners. Its success clearly feels like a redemption. “I’d like to thank Tony Hall,” says Sweeney, “for ruining my life.” He blames the BBC’s former director general for his departure from the corporation after 17 years. “I had a very bad 2019,” Sweeney admits. His investigation of the English Defence League leader Tommy Robinson was shelved by the BBC after it was revealed that Lucy Brown, one of Robinson’s followers, had pulled off a sting on Sweeney. “I fell for it. I was fool. I drank too much with a source who was scheming against me.”

Now for Jeremy Kyle.

After a spell of cancellation and subsequent semi-rehabilitation, Jeremy Kyle is back - complete with characteristic obnoxiousness. He attacked lawyer Alan Dershowitz with such venom and rudeness that even the below-the-line commenters on one of its Youtube iterations appeared flabbergasted at the venomous tone of the attack, given that Kyle’s de-cancellation was allegedly based on a promise ‘to be good.’ 

Pity that Dersh was unwise enough to appear on the programme - maybe he wasn’t familiar with Kyle. Oh well. Too late now.

"How do you sleep at night when you earned money defending such a vile human being?"

Jeremy Kyle asks the question of Jeffrey Epstein's lawyer Alan Dershowitz.pic.twitter.com/85SRrC1FT5

— TalkTV (@TalkTV) January 24, 2023

 But guess who was also featured by Kyle!

Our old friend Sweeney!

"Ghislaine Maxwell was messed up as a human being long before Jeffrey Epstein."

Journalist John Sweeney compares Ghislaine Maxwell to her "psychological bully" father Robert Maxwell and says she is a "chip off the old block".@JKyleOfficial | @johnsweeneyroar | #JKLive pic.twitter.com/5MHvrV2SaZ

— Jeremy Kyle Live (@JeremyKyleLive) January 24, 2023

I have to say that there’s something not quite right about That Photo. It’s Andrew’s position. I feel that if the hand that appears around the young lady’s waist really belongs to his left arm, then his left shoulder would be turned towards the camera much more than it is. Not exactly forensic, I do concede.

I haven’t got a particular axe to grind here - I do admire Dershowitz (because of his other writings) but I don’t have much sympathy for Ghislaine, apart from the fact her punishment seems harsher than absolutely necessary. Perhaps she’s ‘taking the flack for Jeffery’ and I suppose if someone has to do it, it may as well be her.

P.S. 

Forgot to mention :

Ukrainian affairs

Peter Hitchens has the BBC squarely in his sights in his Mail on Sunday column this week. 

I'm rather proud of having helped him, ever so slightly, by using TVEyes to track down all the broadcasts of the offending Orla Guerin report for him.

I suspected he was going after her usual mawkish, award-winning purple prose. But, no, he was concerned about something more specific. 

Given how relentlessly the BBC will focus in on fringe figures/groups, neo-Nazi swastikas, Confederate flags, etc, even if they are in no way representative of the group the BBC disapproves of, if they are reporting on people they disapprove of, he wonders how the BBC last week “repeatedly broadcast an entire news item, featuring a group of undoubted, shameless neo-Nazis, actually wearing SS insignia on their clothes – and not even notice?”.  

The report “starred a sweet old great-grandma” from Ukraine - a “doughty 78-year-old” woman, being taught to use a gun against the Russians by Ukrainian soldiers sporting shoulder-flashes displaying a Nazi emblem, the ‘Wolfsangel’”, used by the Waffen SS. Many wartime massacres were perpetrated by men sporting that jagged symbol. And their Ukrainian supporters proclaim their membership of the ‘Azov Battalion’ - a ‘paramilitary unit… known for its association with neo-Nazi ideology and the use of Nazi symbolism’, lately absorbed into the Ukrainian National Guard. 

Peter Hitchens asks: 

Is it really possible that, in the BBC’s vast and costly apparatus of reporters, editors, producers, fact-checkers and bureaucrats, not one person spotted the problem? If so, we are dealing with Olympic-level incompetence.  

But it is my suspicion that something else is going on. The generation that kept the BBC relatively impartial is fast dying off. Those who remain have accepted a large number of contentious opinions as facts. 

One of these opinions is the ridiculous cartoon idea that Russia is like Mordor in Lord Of The Rings, an utterly evil country ruled by a Dark Monster. And that Ukraine, its current enemy, is by contrast a shining Utopia, pluckily defending itself against the orc-like hordes of Moscow. This explains why the BBC were so keen to use this film, in which a Brave Granny Gets Her Gun. ‘Brave Granny Gets Her Gun From Some Neo-Nazis’ is not quite the same, is it? 

He ends by arguing that “if we are going to interfere in this very complex problem, then we are going to need to tell each other the truth about it”. Including the BBC.

UPDATE - Meanwhile, an old blog favourite has roared back in this morning, smearing away:

John Sweeney: Peter Hitchens says that Ukraine has "quite a few Nazis." So does UK. But President Zelenskiy is Jewish, something he does not mention. Peter Hitchens is Putin's man. Happy to debate this, Hitchens Minor, in person. I'm in Kyiv. And you?

Peter Hitchens: John Sweeney, you are incapable of debate, as you proved during the great panic with your repeated untruths. Why am I not surprised that you have attached yourself to the latest liberal fad?

John Sweeney: Vladimir Putin has the knout, the whip, the tanks and Peter Hitchens. Ukraine is a democracy. Once again, Peter, you're welcome to come to Kyiv and we can debate in person. But don't call a nation pro-Nazi when it has a Jewish President. Unless, of course, you are Moscow's man.

Peter Hitchens: I know you won't read my replies, because your mind is shut, but others might. I have not 'called a nation pro-Nazi'. Mainly I have pointed out that the BBC has failed to report that there are neo-Nazis in Ukraine. My actual words: 'One of the roots of the Russia-Ukraine problem is, alas, the existence of some very crude and nasty factions of Ukrainian nationalism, many of them unblushing neo-Nazis. Of course there are plenty of perfectly civilised Ukrainian patriots, but bigoted racialist thugs have an influence way beyond their numbers in that country'. I am a British patriot and defend the interests of my own country, no other.

What did you make of it?

Or: Mahmoud Zahar opens up!

For the moment the Martin Bashir affair has eclipsed other aspects BBC-watching. Perhaps this too will pass. What did you make of Tim Davie on the Today programme? Justin Webb made him squirm a little, using the Mishal Husain-like air of disapproval rather than robust questioning. I suppose none of us would wish to see another John Humphrys / George Entwistle debacle in which an unintended premature toppling was followed by a bashful “Oopsy! What have I done?”) 

I don’t want to be mean, so I won’t be, but let’s just say Panorama is no stranger to underhand tactics.  John Sweeney, where are you now?

Anyway, That’s not new, and neither is the BBC’s consistent ‘tone of voice’ disapproval of Israel’s desire to prosper and flourish.  We’ve been writing about it for years and years. Decades.

What did you make of Sky? Sky (UK) and Sky (Australia) are completely different kettles of fish. Our Sky features Mark Austin and Mark Stone. (Journalism has many Marks.) 

Now, Mark Stone has been particularly biased in the pro-Palestinian department, hence the post-conflict wallowing in context-free misery. I do know that the world has an insatiable appetite for misery and pathos and some of the tragic tales from Gaza are truly heartbreaking. Hamas and Islamic Jihad have a hell of a lot to answer for, yet the constant drone of that Israel-bashing ‘tone of voice’  hovers above all his reporting. Israel. Israel. Israel.

#Hamas co-founder has told @SkyNews the current ceasefire should hold for now but said there’s no chance of peace with #Israel yet.
We tackle Mahmoud Zahar on firing missiles from civilian areas into civilian areas, on accepting a Jewish State and more.
Extended 🎥 on Sky later pic.twitter.com/GSOyaG4Usl

— Mark Stone (@Stone_SkyNews) May 23, 2021

Then, guess what? Well, you know what. He gets the coveted interview with that wart-nosed rogue  Mahmoud Zahar. “No, Israel has no right to exist” Zahar declares; no ifs no buts. No way of sweetening that one, Mr Stone! You’d have to have a heart-of-Stone not to…. you know.

The thing is, there are an increasing number of people both here and even more disturbingly, in the United States who couldn’t care less that Hamas's unequivocal intransigence is 'out in the open' because they agree with Zahar. I blame the media; apologists for Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the lot of them.

The BBC is forced to be less overt about it than Sky, but there’s still that ever-present disapproving tone-of-voice, and there’s still Jeremy Bowen, a man with a well-documented grudge against Israel, given free rein to wallow in the context-free emoting they believe the audience demands. The mainstream media keeps quiet about the Islamic elephant in the room. However massive and bloated it gets, it’s there in front of us as plain as the king’s new clothes and just as invisible.

Update:

A brilliant article by AYAAN HIRSI ALI How influencers have legitimised anti-Semitism. She doesn’t cite the BBC by name but alludes to the BBC’s now-notorious Tala Hawala embarrassment. As for ‘influencers’, well, according to Justin Webb’s very own introduction this morning,  the BBC is the top influencer in the stratosphere.

Did the BBC prevent John Sweeney from profiling Seumas Milne?

"posh, minor aristocrat Stalinist" Seamus 

I didn't know, until Sue informed me yesterday, that the famous John Sweeney now co-hosts a podcast called 'Last Call'. 

He presents it with an American journalist called Michael Weiss, and the pair of them call their double act 'Two Boozy Hacks'. (As far as John Sweeney is concerned, I think we can all guess why!) 

Their latest episode is called 'Labour Pains' and features former Labour deputy leader Tom Watson as a special guest. It last about an hour.

Unexpectedly, I must say that I enjoyed it. They all came across as rather charming.

John was on the pinot grigio, if you're wondering.

(In fairness, I did once write, "Do you know who I'd really like a night-out with? Yes, Panorama/Newsnight star reporter John Sweeney. He sounds great fun. I'd specifically like to be his all-expenses-paid-for guest", and I stand by that.)

The serious bit comes in the last quarter of an hour when they turn to Labour antisemitism. As you'd perhaps expect, having spent 18 years at the BBC, John Sweeney seems to have fully imbibed the general BBC resentment towards the State of Israel, and even has a Jeremy Bowen-like personal grievance against it, but was still distressed at the influx of the antisemites into the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn.

Also interesting was their discussion of Mr Corbyn's director of communications, Seumas Milne. This was John Sweeney's boozy ramble on the subject:

I need to share with our three listeners my class hatred here in that I was brought up...we lived in in Manchester, and then when I was ten we moved down to Hampshire and I went to a grammar school. And Seumas Milne went to Winchester College. And it is comically posh. And its also where...most of the Cambridge spies when to Winchester. And then here's this almost comically absurd Stalinist who went to Winchester College. He is the voice of the Labour Party. And the problem I had when I was a BBC journalist was 'Can I please do a profile of Seumas Milne, in the way that I was allowed when I worked at The Observer, to do profiles for the BBC about Alastair Campbell and his shenanigans with Rupert Murdoch, blah, blah, blah, blah?', and it was impossible to get through. So, although Seumas was a posh, aristocratic Stalinist, people were afraid of him and it was impossible for me at the BBC to do a proper profile of the guy. 

Now that's very interesting, isn't it? The BBC didn't want to let John Sweeney do a proper profile of the avowed Stalinist-communist director of communications for the leader of the Labour Party. Was it just because they were afraid of Seumas Milne (and the Corbynistas)? Or was it also because, for some strange reason, the man's extreme politics didn't particularly worry them?

It's especially rum, isn't it, because the BBC hasn't shown any reluctance to 'properly profile' the Conservatives' director of communications. He was on the end of a full-length, thoroughly one-sided hatchet job earlier this year, fronted by Emily Maitlis. 

(What is it about his public antipathy towards the BBC and his role in winning the EU referendum for Leave and the 2019 general election for Boris Johnson that so excites the BBC's hostility towards Mr Cummings?)

Anyhow, cheers!

Emily M liked

Hmm:

James Delingpole, for one, isn't impressed:

"I stitched someone up. Got caught out. So now I believe passionately that all the people who criticised me should be censored."

Kamal Ahmed v John Sweeney

The BBC aren't so much having an embarrassment of riches at the moment, rather a richness of embarrassments.

Having been largely out of action for the past week, I half-missed the headlong fall into the Slough of Embarrassment suffered by Kamal Ahmed, the BBC's £205,000-a-year editorial director, but it's well worth catching up with. There was an outcry after it was revealed that he took a £12,000 speaking fee for addressing an Aberdeen Standard Investments (ASI) event. He then apologised and waived his fee.

Fascinatingly, the man leading the charge against him was none other than 'Roaring' John Sweeney who christened his former colleague 'Mr Bung'.

Here's a very small sample of 'Roaring' John's output on the matter:

• While BBC colleagues are losing their jobs, Kamal Ahmed trousers £12,000 from hedge fund. He is the Editorial Director of the BBC and is paid £200,000 a year. This is wrong, a kind of soft-core corruption and he should repay the money, then resign.
• Thread: #Kamalbunggate. TV's Mr Bung reverse-trousering of £12,000 from hedge fund is not the end of the story. There is a conflict between BBC's and Mr Bung's version. On Sunday BBC told Mail that @bbckamal "had not broken any rules..." /1
• "... because he agreed to appear when in his previous role of BBC Economics Editor, where he could receive payment for outside work." Mr Bung emailed BBC bosses today: "Some months ago I accepted a paid-for event to speak at a conference entitled “Investing for the Future”... 2/
• ..hosted by Aberdeen Standard Investments. As the former Economics Editor..." The discrepancy is that The BBC said the bung was offered b4 he became Ed Director in 2018. But now Mr Bung admits the offer was made after he was BBC Ed Dir. Liar, liar, pants on fire, Mr Bung. 3/

Ouch!

Mix-up?

I couldn't make sense of this at all, but I think I might have solved it. I think Kirkup has confused Jon Caldara with our own John Sweeney.

They do look a bit alike. But not very. Talking of which, there's a weird thing going on at Facebook. Following that free speech award, apparently, if a Danish MP mentions Tommy Robinson on Facebook it's OK, but if anyone else does, their FB account is zapped.

More on John Sweeney

Those of you who have been following the John Sweeney story might be interested in a new development, courtesy of Buzzfeed.

NEW: Investigative journalist John Sweeney is claiming to be a “reluctant whistleblower” against the BBC. According to four sources, Sweeney left the BBC after a young journalist filed an official complaint over an incident at Emily Maitlis’ book launch.https://t.co/AusvFEtZPV

— Mark Di Stefano 🤙🏻 (@MarkDiStef) December 5, 2019

The report says:

BuzzFeed News can reveal Sweeney parted ways with the BBC after two incidents earlier this year. The first related to the botched BBC Panorama investigation into Tommy Robinson which saw him secretly filmed by the far-right activist while trying to cultivate a source. 

The second incident took place at the book launch of BBC Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis in April. According to multiple sources, Sweeney made an offensive comment to a BBC journalist at the London launch of Maitlis’s memoir Airhead. 

One BBC source said the journalist was “deeply offended” by Sweeney’s remark and filed an HR complaint with management. 

It’s understood both incidents were considered by BBC management and played a part in his departure.

Bite on bum?

Look what Guido Fawkes has posted this morning. Michael Crick is ‘literally’ salivating at capturing this awkward ‘open mic’  blunder, but before gloating over a relatively minor ‘gotcha’, which no doubt will be made a massive banquet out of by the left-wing media, he might ask the master of the ‘set-up’,  a certain Mr Sweeney, whether catching out a 'set-up' is something to be quite so triumphant about.
Maybe Crick should consider exactly what it was he’d unearthed, and you never know, it might eventually come back to bite him on the bum.

This is superb. https://t.co/NCj9WtMgBO

— Joel Hills (@ITVJoel) November 25, 2019

Caught in the act! Meet Lee Anderson, Conservative candidate for Ashfield, who forgets his MailPlus mic is on. Click here to see our film and his ruse to set MailPlus up with unusually friendly voter. https://t.co/0gFSdXnFLk

— Michael Crick (@MichaelLCrick) November 25, 2019

Guess who's back?

The Sunday Times has a headline today that really caught my eye:

BBC whistleblower: bosses suppressing Russia stories: 
A top investigative reporter says politically sensitive programmes are buried

How disappointing that the "BBC whistleblower" turns out to be John Sweeney!

He's still obviously bitter after his departure from the corporation and resentful that his Panorama on Tommy Robinson was dropped:

BBC bosses have been accused of pulling the plug on politically sensitive reports into the close links between leading politicians and Russia. 

John Sweeney, a BBC investigative reporter, has turned whistleblower and filed a complaint against the corporation with Ofcom, the broadcasting watchdog. He alleges investigations into Labour’s Lord Mandelson, the former Tory cabinet minister John Whittingdale, the Brexit funder Arron Banks, the oligarch Roman Abramovich and the far-right activist Tommy Robinson were all dropped. 

He claims that other potential reports into “the pro-Russian sympathies of Labour spin doctor Seumas Milne” were never even commissioned by BBC editors and raises more concerns about Boris Johnson’s links with Russian oligarchs.

Wonder if there's any substance to his claims? If not, then he isn't 'a whistleblower'.

(Question: Can you be 'a whistleblower' after you've left your job?)

Anyhow, John Sweeney has his own article in The Sunday Times under the headline:

BBC’s ‘jellyfish’ bosses sting investigative reporting to death. They must go. 

He writes:

I found film of Robinson saying “for too long the German people have lived under the guilt of Adolf Hitler” in a bierkeller in Bavaria. We hoped to let the public see Robinson as the sock-puppet for neo-Nazis that he is. But our Panorama was never broadcast. Instead, the BBC threw the book at me, “jellyfish” charge and all. 

Being attacked by a far-right cult while undefended by the BBC was maddening, literally. I felt bewildered and betrayed and, eventually, I cracked up. 

I am back to my old self but have left the BBC. However, I love it too much to just walk away in silent dismay. 

So, I have complained to Ofcom about our Panorama on Tommy Robinson: not broadcast. Our Newsnight investigation into Peter Mandelson’s undeclared money from a mob-connected Russian firm: not broadcast.

As he's still spinning that yarn about Tommy Robinson in the Bavarian bierkeller, I think we can be forgiven for approaching his other claims with some scepticism.

Impartial, free and fair?

"These are not the views of the BBC"

So what's John Sweeney up to these days, now that (like John Humphrys) he's free of the BBC? 

Well, THIS:

Tommy Robinson makes out that he's a Great British patriot. But look at what he said in Bavaria. 

Here's a one minute film entitled "Tommy Robinson and the Adolf Hitler Appreciation Society".

Watch it. https://t.co/il1UbEAvTL pic.twitter.com/qtxc44THzM
— John Sweeney (@johnsweeneyroar) October 5, 2019

In the video, "Tommy Robinson and the Adolf Hitler Appreciation Society", John Sweeney calls Tommy Robinson a "Nazi c**t" and shows him speaking to an audience in Bavaria, clipping him saying "German people have for too long lived in the guilt of Adolf Hitler" and setting that alongside chants of 'Oh, Tommy, Tommy!' and scenes of TR being violent.

So, is this Tommy Robinson praising Hitler at the Adolf Hitler Appreciation Society? 

Well, digging around, things aren't quite what the ex-BBC man is implying they are. 

(I know! Who'd have thought it?)

It turns out that Tommy Robinson isn't talking to the Adolf Hitler Appreciation Society (gosh!) but to a audience at last October's Grenzschutzkonferenz (Border Protection Conference) in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, where senior figures from various right-populist parties from across Europe gathered. 

And even from the clipped bit, it's not hard to work out that TR is probably about to go on to tell Germans to move beyond the guilt of Adolf Hitler, be proud of themselves and their culture again and look to the future.

(And, come to think of it, talking of Hitler's guilt doesn't sound very 'appreciative' of him, does it?)

So, John may unstandably be deeply bitter about Tommy Robinson...(though he evidently prefers wine to bitter)...but will his reputation - or what's left of it - survive too many more stunts like this?

Update: Pugnazious at B-BBC has much more on this bit of Sweenian fake news, citing a very interesting blogpost elsewhere from a left-wing blogger. That blogger ends his piece by writing:

On Twitter, the video has been lauded as a defiant gesture against Robinson, but I can’t say I’m impressed by the lazy buffoonery, which comes across as compensatory for Sweeney’s self-evident failure. The video gives the impression that Sweeney has unearthed the clip, when he’s done nothing of the kind, and many Twitter users have taken his “Adolf Hitler Appreciation Society” designation at face value – meaning that Sweeney, whatever his intentions, has effectively dumped misinformation onto social media that Robinson and his supporters will in all likelihood capitalise on. 

In short, Sweeney’s latest antics are actually a hindrance to subjecting Robinson and his associates to proper critical scrutiny.

Friday Night Smorgasbord

I

During last night's Newsnight, while interviewing Greg Hands MP, Kirsty Wark asked: 

Before we finish Michael Gove is reported to have said "the decision to leave the EU was on a par with the fall of the Berlin Wall and East Germany's quest for freedom". What's your response to that? 

It now turns out that by 'reported' Kirsty actually meant 'rumoured on Twitter by pro-EU partisans'.

Douglas Murray has the whole fascinating story of this Twitter-facilitated, politically-motivated fake news story over at the Spectator - and, even better, he's released a recording of the whole Michael Gove speech to prove it. 

The guilty parties are ex-BBC Labour MP Ben Bradshaw and one of the BBC's favourite experts on extremism (far-right and jihadi), Dr Peter Neumann of King's College London. 

The former had claimed that Mr Gove had been heckled at the event without informing his readers that he'd been that very heckler (!), while the latter had tweeted:

So here's Michael Gove standing next to Luftwaffe band on Day of German Unity, telling German audience that decision to leave EU on par with fall of Berlin Wall and East Germans' quest for freedom. Shouts from audience: "Nonsense".

That tweet certainly got gullible Simon Schama & Co. squawking en masse: "Obscene. EU equated with USSR! Just vile. How can he sleep?" frothed Prof. Schama while the Observer's Nick Cohen fumed, "The Cold War ended when walls were torn down. Brexit builds them up again. Michael Gove can't spot the difference." David Lammy leapt aboard the bandwagon too. (Update - Nick Cohen, as I'd have hoped he would, has backtracked saying "It seems the professor was confused, to put the kindest possible constrcution on it".)

The audio released by Douglas (and the accompanying transcript) proves that 'the quote' used by Kirsty Wark was not a quote at all. Michael Gove didn't say what Dr. Neumann said he'd said. 

At all. Not a bit of it. It was all utterly fake news.

Scary to think of it but without that pesky audio Messrs Bradshaw and Neumann might well have gotten away with it.

Now, to his credit (though to the annoyance of others), I'll just note here that the BBC's Evan Davis protested commented negatively and prominently on Dr Neumann's less-than-accurate tweet:

Amazed to see this still getting so many retweets and likes. Everybody should read the transcript and make up their own mind. But I for one saw this tweet and then read the speech and felt Peter Neumann had totally misinformed me as to what had been said.

So will there be fewer invites from the BBC for Dr Neumann now?

*******

II

Douglas Murray, following his audio-and-transcript-led exposure of George Eaton of the New Statesman's shocking misbehaviour towards Prof. Roger Scruton is becoming quite the crusader for truth. Good on him!

*******

III

Talking of exposures by released audio or video....

As noted on the Sweenexit thread and the Open Thread, it really does look as if Tommy Yaxley-Robinson has triumphed, game, set and match, in his war with the BBC's John Sweeney (a war the latter launched).

Tommy's Panodrama, whatever you might have thought of it at the time, really does appear to have (a) scruppered the BBC's intended Panorama hatchet job on him and (b) directly caused BBC star reporter John Sweeney to make his exit from the corporation (as per a not-available-online piece by Matthew Moore of The Times).

The UK media's reporting of this remarkable turn of events is fascinating in its near-absence. Silence has well and truly fallen. The Independent's Lizzie Dearden is a rare exception. Her not-entirely-factually-accurate report on the story actually manages to be quite balanced.

I do agree that it was the "bloody woofter" comment that must have got John Sweeney into particular trouble at the BBC. 

*******

IV

It's been another bad day for the BBC. 

You have to go 34 paragraphs into the BBC News website's main report on the story to reach the bit where the retired judge slams the BBC for its involvement in the Carl Beech/'VIP paedophile gang' story, but at least they didn't 'forget to mention it'.

It should surely have been mentioned (if only trailed) further up the article though, and the BBC ought to be sharply questioned over this.

(Where's John Humphrys when you need him?). 

Retired High Court judge Sir Richard Henriques is damning about the BBC's involvement, with  BBC reporter Tom Symonds receiving the lion's share of the criticism 

The judge said the BBC had "fed information" to 'Nick '(Carl Beech):

The showing of the picture of Martin Allen to ‘Nick’ by Tom Symonds of the BBC was unhelpful to the integrity of the investigation.

The photographic identification by Tom Symonds was fundamentally flawed and would not be admitted in a court.  

It's complicated stuff, but (especially in the wake of the Lord McAlpine scandal which saw a BBC director general resign) it's really quite something (again) that the BBC fell flat on its face once more over the issue of paedophilia' (following the Savile scandal)...before then partly redeeming itself via, of all programmes. Panorama, which first raised huge questions about 'Nick'. 

What will happen to Tom Symonds over this? Will he be joining John Sweeney? (Joint leaving do? JS to buy the drinks?)

*******

V

My Twitter feed today was especially aghast at a woman in the audience at an Alexandra Ocasia-Cortez meeting passionately calling for babies to be eaten as a necessary step to counteract climate change.

By all recent accounts it was a hoax (channelling Swift's A Modest Proposal), but (like in the early days of Titania McGrath) a lot of people fell for it - from both sides (including a surprising number of my favourites on Twitter, though I won't name names!).

Gosh darn it, even Sky reported it straight too.

By the looks of it, the BBC held off until they could safely brand it a "far-right" stunt - as they duly did a couple of hours ago.

What's so intriguing here is how Alexandra Ocasia-Cortez reacted to the woman in the audience's question. She seemed to take it at face value, didn't take issue with the woman and was nice to her.

That has raised eyebrows.

And my eyebrows were raised by how the BBC edited the exchange.

Watch the full exchange here (via Sky):

A woman who attended, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's town hall meeting, urges the eating of babies as a necessary step in the fight against climate change.

Watch more videos from Sky News here: https://t.co/hhDQuPJRZP pic.twitter.com/WbbEc9uTXk

— Sky News (@SkyNews) October 4, 2019

And then watch the BBC's editer version. It removes the main bits where, to  critics, AO-C looks as it she's falling for the hoax and pandering to the woman.

Of course, she might not have been doing any such thing, just diffusing the situation gently and skilfully.

But why shorten it when the whole exchange lasted less than two minutes? Was it some (agenda-driven) attempt to protect Ms Ocasia-Cortez? 

Sweenexit

And so farewell to John Sweeney, who's announced his departure from the BBC today in a string of tweets:

1. After 17 years I'm leaving the BBC. It's high time to make trouble elsewhere. First stop, Malta. With Carlo Bonini and Manuel Delia I've written Murder On The Malta Express: Who Killed Daphne Caruana Galizia, to be published on October 14 by Midsea Books. 

2. Thanks to my great pals at BBC. Together we helped free 5 cot death mums starting with Sally Clark, jailed on wrong evidence of Prof Sir Roy Meadow. Trump got challenged over his links with Russian mob, Putin over the shoot-down of MH17 and I yelled at Church of Scientology. 

3. I'm sorry our BBC Panorama on Tommy Robinson wasn't broadcast. (I paid for all the drinks, BTW.) So after 17 years I can finally say these are not the views of the BBC but he's a complete c**t. I remain an old school reporter, up for the right kind of trouble. I'll be back.

Stop there, Tommy!

(No, not that Tommy!...)

We go back 800 years (Updated)

I heard Yolande Knell’s report this morning. It sounded all wrong. Perhaps BBCWatch will give us a more sympathetic account of Israel’s position on all this in due course, but although I’ve spent far too long looking at the story online from as many angles as I can bear to unearth, all I can say is that none of the parties involved come out of it particularly well.

The left-wing press and of course, the BBC have had a field day. Of all the reports I’ve read, most seem to take the view that an injustice has been done to the current tenant of the New Imperial Hotel Jerusalem,  75-year-old Abu Walid Dajani who has been running the hotel for 800 years. (not personally, I assume)

 The villain of the piece, according to Knell and the left-wing press, is ‘right-wing Jewish group Ateret Cohanim, which has a nefarious aim. What could that be?  To “stop a Jewish take-over” or to “Judaize” East Jerusalem “which the Palestinians want as the capital of their future state”. 

 Since Ateret Cohanim are quite open about that aim, one might ask oneself whether such a take-over is so very terrible. In other words, is the Palestinians’ “want” enough to make it the Palestinians’ “right”??

The factor that makes this 14-year-old story newsworthy at this time is the Israeli court’s recent decision to uphold the validity of the sale. 

The actual legal dispute concerns the alleged corruption surrounding the sale (14 years ago) of various properties including this hotel. The former owner of the properties was the Greek Orthodox Church, who didn’t come out of it smelling of roses either. 

The dodgy individual involved in the transaction was former Church finance director Nikolas Papadimos who has since done a runner.

Predictably, Yolande Knell was openly sympathetic to Mr Dajani and she took an adversarial tone with Daniel Luria, the representative of Ateret Cohanim; again, much as expected. 

What I didn’t get was the apparently gratuitous soundbite  (audio of a woman screaming because she was being evicted by ‘settlers”) “earlier this year.”  I think I heard a gunshot in there too. Was this directly relevant to this case? Who knows. Or was it emotive ‘sound effects’, put in the report just because.

The vox-pop type quotes we heard from Mr Luria sounded disjointed, and I couldn’t help wondering if his comments about “Jewish Land” and so on had been truly representative of the whole of his testimony. Was I only hearing what I wanted to hear?

It all struck me as rather John Sweeney. There, I’ve coined a ‘thing’; to do a John Sweeney.

One detail we didn’t get from Knell was that Abu Walid Dajani hadn’t paid any rent for 14 years, but I suppose he probably had his reasons.

Update:
BBC Watch has come up with the goods

"Not only did this report repeatedly promote inaccurate information concerning the properties which are ostensibly its subject matter but Yolande Knell has clearly exclusively embraced the Greek Orthodox Church’s narrative. 

More gravely, Knell unquestioningly promoted the partisan political narrative she long since adopted with her framing of Old City houses inhabited by Jewish Israelis as ‘illegal settlements’, the inhabitants as ‘settlers’ and her uncritical amplification of the claim that the location is “Palestinian”.

Is the BBC impartial?

I’ll reserve judgment on tonight’s Panorama till it’s all over, but there is plenty of pre-emptive activity around. (The Times) (£)

In case it seems hypocritical to put one’s faith in any episode of Panorama in the light of the infamously aborted Tommy Takedown, it does seem that there is justification for doing so sometimes.  

The upcoming programme about antisemitism in the Labour Party is the creation of John Ware, who has a uniquely non-BBC outlook, while the aborted Tommy-bashing episode was concocted by John Sweeney, whose agenda is typically Beeb. 

I don’t claim that either of these men is bias-free or that their programmes could be scrupulously impartial and/or agenda-free, but at least John Ware is prepared to go against the grain.

Unlike Dominic Casciani, whose Tweets are ‘deffo’ BBC through and through. (H/T Monkey Brains in a btl comment)

Are these shoes worn by Stephen Yaxley Lennon at his court case last week a posh designer brand? Any tips gratefully received! pic.twitter.com/1dF33pZNoh

— Dominic Casciani (@BBCDomC) July 8, 2019

What started out as a stupid and weirdly snobbish remark from Casciani turned into a massive sneer-athon by a trail of Tommy-bashing sycophants - half of them accusing TR (aka SY-L) of squandering £500 (of donors’ hard-earned dosh) on a pair of Gucci loafers, while the other half sneering that they were obviously only a ‘knocked-off” version.

Deffo that shoe or a knock-off. Thanks for your help.

— Dominic Casciani (@BBCDomC) July 8, 2019

(Yobbo! Know thy place!)

More Roaring for Rory

Rory Stewart MP

First John Simpson:

Then John Sweeney:

Update: And Danny Shaw:

Plus a 'like' from Quentin Somerville:

And a 'retweet' (endorsement?) from Emily Maitlis too:

Onwards

Mike Stuchbery (far left) and John Sweeney (ultra right)

We learned this evening that the UK Government's Attorney-General (and part-time Brian Blessed impersonator) Geoffrey Yaxley-Cox wants the famous Tommy Robinson prosecuted again. 

Meanwhile, BBC Panorama's no-BBCexpenses-spared star reporter John Sweeney was 'snapped' yesterday meeting up in a park with Mike Stuchbery - someone the Guardian calls a journalist but who pro-Tommy types call a provocative far-left activist.

Apparently, their 'secret meeting' was disrupted (presumably by pro-Tommy types).

Mike Yaxley-Stuchbery made the mainstream media headlines this week after Tommy Robinson banged on his door in the middle of the night saying that he'd make public where the journalists persecuting him lived and worked after TR said his family's home had been visited by what amounted to five 'hired goons' (with Mike Yaxley-Stuchbery being closely involved in launching the action).

Tit for tat? Or TR (aka SYL) wholly in the wrong? 

Who knows where we are with this, but one thing is certainly for certain tonight: 

Yes, John Yaxley-Sweeney and BBC's Panorama are still very much after taking Tommy Yaxley-Robinson down. 

"The BBC has a strict expenses policy and the drinks bill in this video was paid for in full by John"

I'm betting you all remember this (until you've downed far too many glasses of Kir royale and drowned all memories of it)...

Well, according to the BBC:

"The BBC has a strict expenses policy and the drinks bill in this video was paid for in full by John".

So, John Sweeney was lying when he told Lucy Brown that he was "on expenses" then? Is that what the BBC's saying here?