The BBC's Reality Check issues a correction

David Jordan's admiration for the BBC's Reality Check is disappointing but hardly unexpected. 

Today, the unit went after an anti-Labour audience member on last night's Question Time. 

But the BBCs 'reality checkers' turned out to have got it somewhat wrong themselves and had to issue a correction - a correction prompted by anti-Brexit QC Jolyon Maugham of all people.

Here are the Reality Check tweets that accompanied the BBC News website piece (linked to below):

• A man on BBC Question Time said he earned more than £80,000 a year but that did not put him in the top 5% of earners. HMRC figures show £75,300 put you in the top 5% in 2016-17. If you adjust that by earnings growth it suggests you now need to be earning about £81,000.
• The member of the audience on BBC Question Time also said earning £80,000 a year didn't even put him in the top 50% of earners. Anything over about £25,500 would put you in the top 50%.
• Thanks to Jolyon Maugham. The HMRC figures do indeed exclude those not earning enough to pay income tax, which means the BBC Question Time audience member would have been well inside the top 5% of earners. You can read more about it here:
• https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/50517136.
• Correction: The HMRC figures exclude those who do not earn enough to pay income tax. If these people are included then the audience member would have been well inside the top 5% of earners. 

That poor (rich) audience member may have got dumped on from a great height by the BBC's Reality Check but I hope he spots that the BBC's Reality Check itself got dumped on from an even greater height. And there are few things higher than Jolyon Maugham QC's ego.

Hush, ladies, the male feminist is talking

This isn't BBC-related, but I thought I'd share it with you as a Saturday treat...

I suppose I could relate it to the BBC, given that Jolyon Maugham QC - the leading anti-Brexit laywer forever taking Boris Johnson's government to court - has been known to slam the BBC for failing to put him centre-stage and other such self-serving, Lord Adonis-like nonsense, but the real reason I'm posting it is that (despite how disturbing it all is) it made me laugh. 

The main plotline can be summarised as follows: A 'woke' male feminist comes unstuck and flees with his barristers robes between his legs.

The issue is whether schools should let trans girls (i.e. boys) into girls toilets:

Helen Joyce: Literally every single response is - madness. Girls in schools need single-sex toilets (and actually, in the UK it's illegal not to provide them).  

Susanna Rustin: Agree with this & wish this awful trend would stop. I support single-sex toilets alongside gender-neutral for all but it's bordering on abusive to make girls share intimate spaces when they are getting used to menstruation (which means upper primary as well as secondary). 

Jo Maugham QC: No easy answers sadly. Where does a body disphoric F2M teen who has his period go? Schools have to be sensitive, of course, but beyond that? 

Susanna Rustin: To the gender neutral loo which schools can also provide! 

Jo Maugham QC: That may well be the answer, where possible. But it isn't always going to be, is it? 

Miranda Green: Hi there Jolyon. Maybe for just a few mins you cld reflect on what women are telling you of our memories of a difficult, vulnerable stage/aspect of being a young girl, our concern for girls now, and really try to take in what we are saying. 

Janice Turner: It’s extraordinary, Jolyon how you feel entitled to rubbish the experiences of women and girls. You’re actually mansplaining periods! Take a look at yourself. Using the gender neutral cause to argue the protections ALL schoolgirls need should be abolished. 

Hadley Freeman: Hush, ladies, the male feminist is talking and he understands female issues MUCH better than us. 

Kathleen Stock: I don't get presumption that FTM couldn't happily use single sex female loo. Trans-masc teens I know are perfectly fine with that. Their non-trans friends also. It's like weird aesthetic neatness projected by people who aren't trans - for every gender presentation a different loo. 

Jo Maugham QC: I'm out, Kathleen. No offence intended to you. It's not a space where I can contribute.

Haste thee nymph, and bring with thee Jest and Legal Jollity

Jolyon Maugham QC may be a figure best known to those of us who spend far too much time on Twitter, but his various high-profile legal attacks on Brexit have hit the news and featured in many a BBC report. 

Not today though. I can't find a mention anywhere on the BBC of the Scottish courts rejecting his latest major anti-Brexit foray - a bid to use the Scottish courts to declare Boris's deal "void" and, thus, scupper it. (Can you?)

The Scottish judge, on chucking his case out, said of Jolyon, "the petitioner does not have a prima facie case. In the first place, the petition is of very doubtful competency." He also called his petition "misconceived and unjustified" and "weak". (Ouch!)

Of course, the BBC's failure to report his latest humiliation may - in the parallel universe the famous QC inhabits - be because the BBC doesn't like him and want to make him blush by completely sparing his blushes, or something.

After all, he accused the BBC of outrageous bias after a BBC cameraman focused more on Joanna Cherry of the SNP than him during their joint statement to the media after a previous anti-Brexit court case, despite the BBC broadcasting their joint statement to the media live and in full on the BBC News Channel.

I've tweeted him this evening, in a helpful spirit, and said:

It never surprises, @BBCPolitics, does it? First, they failed to feature you in every shot with Joanna Cherry a while back and now they're failing to report your abject failure in the Scottish court and the judge's ruling on your petition being of "very doubtful competency", and his calling it "misconceived and unjustified" and "weak".

Wonder if I'll get a pile-on? (If only!)

What larks!

He's not always a jolly 'un, is he, our Jolyon? 

The barrister and anti-Brexit campaigner is presently particularly annoyed at the BBC (and Rob Burley):

It never surprises, @BBCPolitics, does it? Here, editing the video footage to remove me from the joint press conference https://t.co/alZ8vW9GVI

— Jo Maugham QC (@JolyonMaugham) September 19, 2019

He went on to reply to his own tweet and say:

Even those who do not need to pretend to hold a neutral position on Brexit - such as The Sun - are happy to acknowledge the contribution I have made. But not Rob Burley's BBC Politics, which rewrites history before your very eyes. 

Yes, the BBC cameraman shifting his camera during a live broadcast to focus on the SNP's Joanna Cherry as she was speaking, leaving only the top-right flank of Jolyon Maugham QC's body in view,  and BBC Politics then only tweeting a clip of one of Joanna Cherry's many contributions and not including the wise words of our Jolyon, surely is "an abuse of power" by the BBC, and Jolyon isn't overreacting in the slightest - despite what any sensible person might think.

The non-caped crusader went on:

This is - which Rob Burl and the BBC Press Office ignore - why their dominance of news matters. It creates fiefdoms of immense power that can be abused for improper ends.

Note to Rob: 

(a) Always personally stop BBC Politics twitter feeds from issuing short clips by watching them 24 hours a day and not sleeping and only broadcasting the whole eight minutes (or eighty minutes) of such things.

(b) Always instruct BBC camerapersons to keep Jolyon in shot when he's not speaking - or, even better, edit in a halo around Jolyon's head when he does speak.

Failure to follow either of these steps will mean that Jolyon's faithful #FBPE legions will pile on in and accuse you of "censorship" and "blacklisting" and being "very spiteful" and "the weirdest person ever" (and worse).

********

Incidentally, I checked back on TV Eyes to the very moment on the BBC News Channel that this scene of BBC perfidy originally occurred (rather than the wicked later tweet).

The BBC interrupted its own broadcast to go live to Ms Cherry and Mr Maugham QC and carried the whole thing (some eight minutes of it), broadcasting their every word. 

Mr Maugham spoke first and was fully in view alongside Ms Cherry. Ms Cherry spoke next and the camera shifted to her. Then it was back to Jolyon, in full view alongside Ms Cherry. And then Ms Cherry again, in full view alongside Jolyon (with no special focus). The press, including the BBC's Ben Brown, then asked questions of both of them, mainly showing both of them, though occasionally zooming in on Ms Cherry. And then it showed them leaving, with Mr Maugham's back end blocking our view of Ms Cherry (who led the way). 

Anyhow, there's one thing that can be said with confidence here: Jolyon Maugham QC certainly adds to the gaiety (and the misery) of the nation!

Up to a point M'lud

Hmm...

A not-so jolly 'un

Meanwhile on a social media platform elsewhere (now going on), the BBC's head of live political programmes is debating with a leading anti-Brexit QC....

Rob Burley: BBC website must be on the blink: we’re leading with the People’s Vote march, yet also apparently engaged in an effort to suppress said march. What’s going on?
Jo Maugham QC: At least until anyone woke up, eh Rob? How cynical.

Matt Kilcoyne: Is your screen broken Jolyon?

Jo Maugham QC: ‏I think yours must be. Compare Rob's picture with mine.

Rob Burley: I think we reserve the right to change the headline across the day. The fact remains that the Brexit march is being covered. Because we cover the story.

Jo Maugham QC: You're not remotely embarrassed about claiming balance because of leading with the story at 5.37am?

Rob Burley: I’m not remotely embarrassed at all. We will lead with the best story, or its particular iteration, at a given time. At the moment that’s Brexit related, with the march as part of it. Later something else might happen that knocks Brexit and the march off the lead.

Jo Maugham QC: That's not what I am objecting to, as you well know. I am objecting to you claiming, that because you led with a story at a time of day when everyone was asleep, the BBC is unbiased.

Rob Burley: We’re endlessly slandered by you & others for not covering x or y and for “bias”.

I pointed out, yet again, that we were covering the very things you claim we ignore. But headlines change. Yet you build another cathedral of paranoid conspiracy around it. It’s ridiculous.

Jo Maugham QC: No. You claimed neutrality explicitly because it was your "lead". And then you dropped it because "something else happened". But nothing else happened and it was only your lead briefly at Saturday dawn. Those are the facts and your ad hominem attack on me doesn't change them.

Jo Maugham QC: [to audience] Rather than engage fairly and honestly with indisputable facts, the BBC's editor of live political programmes resorts to personal abuse.

Rob Burley: You won’t find any personal abuse. It was your conspiracy theories, illustrated this morning as you dance on the head of a pin around a headline, that I was criticising.

Jo Maugham QC: Accusing me of being paranoia (sic) - mentally ill - is not personal abuse? It certainly is and is quite possibly actionable, Rob. And you still haven't answered my question. You said something had changed to cause you to alter your lead. What changed?

Rob Burley: I am sorry if you took that as a personal attack. I was characterising the conspiracy theories as paranoid rather than the person making them. But as you are at the point of casually threatening legal action, I am no longer engaging with you.

Jo Maugham QC: I'm not casually threatening legal action. I have no intention of suing you. I just want you to answer the question I've posed half a dozen times and which you pointedly refuse to answer. What changed to cause you to alter your lead?

Jo Maugham QC: [to audience] He won't answer the perfectly fair question I've posed repeatedly. He's running away.
naectegale hraevn: In the wrong, so resort to threats of legal action. That's a bit like bullying, isn't it? Certainly an effective way to shut someone up if his career might be at risk. Sledgehammer to crack a nut on twitter - not a good look.
Rob Burley: That’s why I’m no longer engaging with the guy.
Jo Maugham QC: There's no threat. I've said so explicitly. You just don't have an answer and won't admit it.
Rob Burley: [to audience] So Brexit anniversary - government comments and anticipation of the march - leading BBC website currently (I don’t work on the site but I do know leads and headlines change) Guessing the march will be an even bigger part of it once it, you know, actually happens.

*******

That changed BBC main headline now looks like this. It still mentions the anti-Brexit march under the headline and uses an image of an anti-Brexit campaigner:

Brace yourselves!

Oh no, not again! 😉

How did they manage to put that communist-red top on Jane Moore?

Meanwhile, from the outgoing, going, gone acting Newsnight editor...

And Brexit-hating lawyer/activist Jolyon Maugham QC - Twitter's loudest legal voice - is upping the pressure on the BBC before jetting off on a plane and going out of communication...:

 

Rob Burley isn't having it: