A promotion for Jonathan Munro

   

BBC’s new head of news is journalist who sang the praises of Martin Bashir runs the headline in the Daily Telegraph. 

Yes, Jonathan Munro has been appointed on an interim basis as the new director of BBC News and current affairs, replacing Fran Unsworth.

Time to re-post something from Is the BBC biased? from 2 October 2021 concerning Mr Munro:

You may remember him for:

[a] His role in the Cliff Richard affair, where the judge described him as “overly guarded” in his defence of the BBC. And the judge further accused him of “almost wilfully failing to acknowledge inconsistencies” and of “refusing to acknowledge the plain effect of some of the emails in the case”. 

[b] His role in the re-hiring of Martin Bashir in 2016, when he said he was attracted to the reporter’s “track record in enterprising journalism” and respect within the industry.

[c] His statement that “We don’t want all our editorial meetings to be dominated by what white people think”. 

[d] His sarcastic tweet about things going badly for Nigel Farage and UKIP...in 2015, a year before the UK voted for Brexit. 

[e] His branding of certain ex-BBC senior editors [Roger Mosey and Mark Damazer] in an internal BBC email as “male, pale and stale” sexists after they dared to criticise the BBC, despite him being male, pale and possibly stale himself. 

[f] His previous defences of the BBC on Newswatch where he's been disingenuous and/or factually wrong, or both, and never particularly fleet-footed.  

On Jonathan Munro, the petrol pump panic and Carolyn's sister-in-law

 

This week's 'I think we got it about right' BBC editor on Newswatch was Jonathan Munro, the BBC's Deputy Director of News.

Mr Munro is apparently a serious contender to replace Fran Unsworth in the the BBC's top news job.

You may remember him for:

[a] His role in the Cliff Richard affair, where the judge described him as “overly guarded” in his defence of the BBC. And the judge further accused him of “almost wilfully failing to acknowledge inconsistencies” and of “refusing to acknowledge the plain effect of some of the emails in the case”. 

[b] His role in the re-hiring of Martin Bashir in 2016, when he said he was attracted to the reporter’s “track record in enterprising journalism” and respect within the industry.

[c] His statement that “We don’t want all our editorial meetings to be dominated by what white people think”. 

[d] His sarcastic tweet about things going badly for Nigel Farage and UKIP...in 2015, a year before the UK voted for Brexit. 

[e] His branding of certain ex-BBC senior editors [Roger Mosey and Mark Damazer] in an internal BBC email as “male, pale and stale” sexists after they dared to criticise the BBC, despite him being male, pale and possibly stale himself. 

[f] His previous defences of the BBC on Newswatch where he's been disingenuous and/or factually wrong, or both, and never particularly fleet-footed.  

------------------

His appearance on this weekend's Newswatch was typically flat-footed. The judge in the Cliff Richard case would surely have made similar comments about his appearance here had he watched it and was asked for his opinion again. 

And Carolyn and Anna, the two viewers pitted against him, really showed him up, cutting through his flannel like hot knives through pre-melted margarine.  

And he was typically disingenuous again from his very first words, twisting Carolyn's claim about it being a 'non-story' at the very beginning [the Thursday of the week before last before the panic-buying began] into a straw-man suggestion that she was claiming the whole thing [from that Thursday to now] has been a 'non-story'. 

That's a slippery politician's way of sliding away from a difficult charge. 

He did it again at the start of his final answer.

The most striking bit comes though when Carolyn picks up on Jonathan Munro's inadvertent admission that the petrol/diesel pump story was high up in the news running order that Thursday partly because it was a slow news day. She rather nailed him there. 

This man is said to be the frontrunner to replace Fran Unsworth.

Here's a transcript:

Samira Ahmed: Hello, and welcome to watch with me Samira Ahmed. Did the BBC fuel a sense of panic at the petrol pumps this week? It was Thursday of last week when the BBC first put on air a story which was to dominate news output over the following few days. It appeared in the headlines on the News at Six:

Headlines: A shortage of lorry drivers forces BP and Esso to close some of their petrol stations. Downing Street says people should buy fuel as normal. 

Samira Ahmed: By Friday lunchtime, a sense of crisis was developing: 

Headlines: The government urges people not to panic buy fuel after some petrol stations had to close because there aren't enough tanker delivery drivers. But this afternoon there are long queues of motorists in some parts of the country trying to fill up. Petrol station owners insist there is no need to panic. 

Samira Ahmed: But that 'don't panic' message seemed to have the reverse effect as the queues lengthened and anger grew among some motorists: 

Vox pop motorist 1: The petrol is on zero. I'm not going to make it! People have half a tank and they are going in there to fill up. 

Vox pop motorist 2: Three hours is just ridiculous. You pass these two petrol stations, you cross the road and it's the same again. 

Samira Ahmed: The problem was clear, the cause of it less so. The Government insisted there was no lack of fuel, just a shortage of drivers. But hundreds of Newswatch viewers told us they put the blame squarely on the media and specifically the BBC. Two of those viewers join me now, Anna Grayson and Carolyn Issitt, as does Jonathan Munro, who is the BBC's Deputy Director of News. Carolyn, can I start with you? What did you object to about the news coverage you saw of this issue?

Carolyn Issitt: Basically, I felt that it was a bit of a non-story that was built up to the point which people started saying, 'don't panic', and if we've learned anything from Covid and the lockdown, if you say don't panic, people panic. People including my own sister-in-law rushed out to fill their cars with petrol, and that's what caused the problem. 

Samira Ahmed: Jonathan, this is a specific point. Did the BBC hype the story early on when it was only a few petrol stations? 

Jonathan Munro: I don't think so. I don't think it was a non-story. I think a lot of people were affected by, whether it's supply issues, but at the pump it was a lack of ability to get your car filled up because so many petrol stations were running out. So the question for us in dealing with stories like this is how do you solve the dilemma, which clearly exists, between reporting the story on the one hand because it's a legitimate story that lots of people are interested in, and as Carolyn says, being in danger of actually making it a self-fulfilling prophecy, that you report it and you cause people  like Carolyn's sister-in-law to change her behaviour. 

Samira Ahmed: Just so people know, it was the second headline on Thursday evening's Six and then it was the lead on the Friday morning on the news channel. Once it's that prominent, you can see why people think you are giving out a message. 

Jonathan Munro: There is a prominence debate, for sure, about all stories of this sort. But at that time I think I'm right in saying that about three quarters of petrol stations in England were having some sort of problems with deliveries and therefore supply to the consumer. And there are all sorts of layers on the story. It is a consumer behaviour story, as we just discussed in the context of Carolyn's sister-in-law,  but it was also a story about government preparedness and about resilience and about the just-in-time supply chains and the supplies to supermarkets and other retail outlets. So quite a lot of layers of complexity to go into. 

Samira Ahmed: Anna Grayson, you're a driving instructor yourself. How were you affected by the way this story and this problem developed over the days? 

Anna Grayson:  It was huge. It was instant. I had no problems with receiving, filling my car up until last Friday morning when this news story broke, and literally I had to stop work that Friday and I haven't been able to go back since because I cannot get fuel in my local area. 

Samira Ahmed: So, again, Friday morning is when the problem really kicked off which is after it had been given a lot of prominence on BBC News. Anna has given one example, but a lot of people have been really badly affected, cancelled medical and social care appointments and operations. Do you think the BBC thought enough about the consequences of the prominence it got on the Thursday evening and the Friday morning?

Jonathan Munro: We did think a lot about it, and we featured a lot of...not a driving instructor as I remember...but other workers whose livelihoods were affected, including those who were delivering essential services like nurses who visit patients in the community for example. Those sorts of people are clearly not panic-buying. It is part of their essential tools to go to work. And in the case of nurses and care deliverers that has a real knock-on to people who are vulnerable. So they are not in any sense panic-buying. And reporting the effects on businesses was part of what we tried to do. On the prominence point, whether we lead on a story or it runs lower down the running order does slightly depend on what else is happening in the world. This week, for example, we've done a lot more on Afghanistan, we've lot a lot more about the terrible events around the Sarah Everard murder. we've done the Labour Party conference, which was a big political story. Back end of last week was a little bit quieter elsewhere in the world and it did achieve a prominence in our bulletins and elsewhere which was a result of both the importance of the story and, as always, what else is happening that gets running time in our programmes. 

Samira Ahmed: Carolyn, you heard Jonathan...I can see  you're shaking your head. What is your response to the explanation he's given? 

Carolyn Issitt: It kind of bears out my thoughts which is, 'as it's a slow new day, let's make this one a bit bigger'. Quite honestly, from Friday, through to even yesterday, the BBC was still showing a variety of people on forecourts talking about not being able to get fuel. Just continuing to add to the problem. My BBC East Midlands show started its show at 6:35 yesterday with a photoshop of lots of empty pumps. Honestly. That's just irresponsible journalism in my view. You need to recognise when you're causing a problem and actually try to do something about it, not simply fuel the fire because it's something to make news. 

Samira Ahmed: Anna, you are really upset as well because this has affected your livelihood. What would you like the BBC to learn from the way this story has been covered and the fact that so many viewers have complained? 

Anna Grayson: We're not the only profession that has been hugely affected by this but we were just getting on our feet from lockdowns before. And I think the BBC need to be held to account in the way that they're funded. You have a social responsibility to report the truth. And what annoys me about this story is that you had other fuel providers, not just BP, who were jumping onto the media saying 'we are fine, absolutely fine, stop panic-buying fuel, we don't have a problem with the delivery of fuel'. So where did this story come from? To me, it was just pure and utter scaremongering and sensationalism with the purpose of gaining viewer numbers.

Samira Ahmed: You've heard what the viewers say. What lessons do you think the BBC is learning from this? 

Jonathan Munro: I think it is not our job to change the news, it's our job to report the news, and... 

Samira Ahmed: [interrupting] But they're arguing that the BBC played a role in turning it into a bigger story and there was a momentum. 

Jonathan Munro: Yes, but I think that the case that Carolyn mentioned, for example, about shots of the forecourts with no petrol available at series of pumps, that actually happened. It wasn't...we didn't make it up. And we have to balance that with the responsibility that Anna quite rightly says about the BBC's voice in the debate publicly and where we make sure that we are acting responsibly, and I completely agree with her that our responsibility is to report the whole picture. So, for example, to say, as we did several times on most of our bulletins, that there were parts of the country that weren't particularly badly affected. So rural areas were less badly affected, on the whole, than urban areas. Northern Ireland wasn't affected at all. And one of the things we did regularly was go round the country to our correspondents to make sure that we were getting an accurate picture of what was happening in their part of the UK.

Poison blades in shoes and BBC gossip

 

Thank you for your comments on the Open Thread. You've covered - and nailed - so much of the ground I would have covered, including the departure of BBC lifer Fran Unsworth.

Today's Sunday Times - featuring that photo of Ms Unsworth which always draws Rosa Klebb comparisons in comments fields - includes lots of BBC insider gossip, including claims that Tim Davie is glad to see her go because she's “stuck in her ways” and part of the “malaise” at the corporation.

Friends of Tim also give us some juicy quotes, including saying that he's engaged in “constant fire-fighting” and that “he feels he opens Pandora’s box every day, and only the bad stuff ever comes out”. 

As far as the general exodus of BBC lifers go, any BBC source quips “More people are leaving the BBC than Afghanistan.”

And who's going to replace Francesca as Director of News and Current Affairs at SPECTRE the BBC? 

The piece names four people: present Deputy director of news Jonathan Munro, Senior controller of news output and commissioning Jamie Angus, Digital director of BBC News Naja Nielsen, and Commissioning editor for factual and arts at Channel 4 Shaminder Nahal. 

Mr Munro has 'issues' involving the debacles over Cliff Richard and Martin Bashir while Mr Angus is considered “lightweight”. Cue two more insider gossip quotes:

On Jamie Angus: “He’s a dilettante. When he was at the World Service, and your job is to know this stuff, I remember him saying he hadn’t heard of Waziristan, which was where bin Laden was hiding at the time.”

On Jamie Angus and Jonathan Munro: “Angus is a man who has risen without trace and Munro is a man who should have sunk without trace”.

Ms Nielsen is a recent arrival from Danish broadcasting, and “relatively unknown.” while Ms Nahal has all the baggage of being associated with left-wing Channel 4 and was jointly responsible for Black to Front, the channel's recent racist day when only black people appeared on the channel. “We were tired of taking small steps, say Vivienne Molokwu and Shaminder Nahal”, Broadcast reported her saying two days ago.

Especially as she previously worked for Newsnight, I'd place my money on Ms Nahal.

The Papers

 

Good morning. Here is the news. Beginning with Jeremy Paxman in The Daily Telegraph:

For so long a world leader, the BBC has grown fat and metropolitan, increasingly scorning the views of the parochial people who are forced to pay for it. When given its head, the BBC can still produce brilliant shows like Strictly Come Dancing but, at an institutional level, it behaves more and more like an embarrassing relative deciding to dance with the kids at a wedding. It’s hard to resist the impression of smug people who think they know better than the rest of us. The consoling glory is that none of us has to tune in any more. 

And here's Simon Heffer, also in The Daily Telegraph: 

No-one over the age of 55 who tries to watch BBC television or listen to its radio services will be surprised to learn, from Ofcom’s latest report on the Corporation, that people in their demographic are gradually giving up on it. As one in that age group, my own consumption of what the BBC offers is largely restricted to Radio 3, which shines like the proverbial good deed in a naughty world. 

Elsewhere, Radio 4 appears to have become Victim Radio, with an endless stream of programmes featuring people, usually from minorities, complaining about some injustice, usually inflicted on them by the state. This schedule of gloom is punctuated by profoundly unfunny Leftist comedians (I use that noun in its broadest, often unintentional sense). My wife likes Gardeners’ World, but that is becoming ostentatiously woke and in any case is now off for the winter. Other than that, little else appeals: the world our age group really wants to see on television is best represented on the Talking Pictures channel, whose success, believe me, is not coincidental to the BBC’s decline. 

Incidentally, in the same article, Simon Heffer laments the state of BBC drama and blames it on "the virtue-signalling of overpaid, self-righteous white executives", but BBC News is hardly immune from that. Head of Newsgathering Jonathan Munro, for example, recently said, "We don’t want all our editorial meetings to be dominated by what white people think" - despite some 85% of the UK population being white. He also complained that when he joined the BBC in 2014, every person on his team was a Caucasian male - including him. Their predecessors he'd previously blamed for creating “male, pale and stale” output. As others have pointed out, it's staggering how people like Mr Munro can say this kind of thing yet cleave to their own jobs, as if doublethink allows them to be doubleplusgood while all the rest are part of the problem. He's been in place for six years now. Why doesn't he lead by example and resign?

Anyhow, in The Times today we hear that "an influential group of peers" - The Lords' Communications and Digital Committee - is recommending that Ofcom has its remit expanded to cover the BBC News website and that it should also have a role in monitoring the accuracy and impartiality of social media posts from journalists employed by public service broadcasters. That will keep the ex-BBC folk at Ofcom busy!

Meanwhile, as Charlie noted yesterday, the papers are reporting that TV licence evasion accounts for one in three women's criminal convictions, according to new figures, with women being convicted for non-payment of the licence ten times more than men. There were 84,000 licence fee offences by women, representing 74% of 2019 convictions for this type of offence. One for Newsnight and Woman's Hour?

Proud to have moved things on

Jonathan Munro (again)

Jonathan Munro, the BBC's Head of Newsgathering, may not have completely delighted me this morning but he certainly made Big John Simpson's day yesterday:

Delighted that the BBC’s Jonathan Munro has strongly defended it from querulous attacks by former BBC bosses. Failure to stand up for yourself when unfairly criticised looks like real timidity — & is just asking for more of the same. 

Contrary to what former BBC boss Roger Mosey seems to think, BBC TV News viewing figures have held up remarkably well, & the quality gets better & better,  especially in the area of foreign reporting. But the Beeb seems perennially reluctant to stand up for itself.

No one could ever accuse John Simpson of complacency, could they?

So what did Jonathan Munro say (in an internal email to BBC staff)? 

Well, he attacked ex-BBC "armchair generals" like Roger Mosey and Mark Damazer not only for being critical of the BBC but for apparently singling out two female BBC journalists (Laura Bicker and Emma Vardy). 

He basically accuses his former colleagues of being sexist. 

Oh, and yes, he even uses the phrase "male, stale and pale". (James Purnell will like that).

Here's an extract from Jonathan's rant:

Guess what?  Both the targets were women correspondents, doing an excellent job for us on very challenging stories. And both are being criticised by male AGs who, when they had the chance to modernise the BBC, chose instead to leave us with a legacy which became popularly known as ‘men at 10’. 

What a shame that they didn’t trust in some appointments not in their own image, to allow people to grow into their roles, to mix the cast list so it began to look and feel a bit like the audience – you know, a few women here and there. 

Five years ago, we had zero female editors in newsgathering. Yes, zero. None of our staff correspondents in Europe was a woman. Yes, none. So when they’re thinking that it was so much better when they ran the place, they’re thinking back to the days when male, pale and stale was good enough. We’re proud to have moved things on.

"Well, you know, I wasn't in Laura's thinking at the time"

Supreme BBC Newsgatherer Jonathan Munro

This week's Newswatch aired various viewer concerns about the BBC's EU election coverage and saw Samira Ahmed, with her usual professionalism, put aside her personal views about Nigel Farage and pursued the BBC's Head of Newsgathering Jonathan Munro ("marathon runner, keen cook, wine lover") armed with some decent questions. 

Here's a transcript:

Samira Ahmed: Plenty to talk about that with the BBC's Head of Newsgathering Jonathan Munro, who joins me now. Thanks for coming on Newswatch. We know Brexit really divides people, so it's no surprise that there are different complaints coming in , and the BBC, of course, can deal with each one by one. Specifically. Let's start with the graphic of pro and anti-Brexit votes aggregated. You left the Conservatives out of the pro-Brexit tally. That was wrong, wasn't it? 

Jonathan Munro: It's one of a whole range of data crunches we did on the figures and, as your member of the audience said, it was online for a while and referred to on air. At no stage was it a major part of our coverage, and I don't think anybody watching our coverage could think that we were saying anything other than that the Brexit party had done very well. But the Conservatives specifically didn't actually issue a manifesto in this election (1) so it was difficult for us to make an assumption that people voted Conservative specifically on that policy whereas for the Brexit party, Change UK and other people who advocated a so-called people's vote were campaigning specifically on that issue. (2)

Samira Ahmed: Why were you doing Leave and Remain tallies of votes anyway, because it actually wasn't a referendum? Even if the Brexit was an issue, people were voting on parties. 

Jonathan Munro: They were voting on parties and lots of our coverage broke down party by party, right down to the very small parties, and of course the bigger ones too. Any election has a range of data that you can carve in comparison to previous elections or, in this case, the Leave/Remain referendum that we had three years ago now. There's nothing wrong with giving people a snapshot of how the UK votes based on those intentions and how they compare with the last time we went to the polls, specifically on the Europe issue - which was, of course, a referendum not an election. 

Samira Ahmed: Except, of course, at it turned out, it created confusion because people are saying you didn't put the Conservatives in where you should have done and maybe if you'd just stuck to party lines there wouldn't be any of those complaints. 

Jonathan Munro: Well, the vast majority of our coverage did stick to party lines, with the Brexit Party shown clearly as the winner. And I don't really think overall, taking the coverage as the whole, anybody could be any doubt that we reported absolutely fairly, completely straightly, that the Brexit Party was the winner of this election. They were. (3)

Samira Ahmed: Well ,there were lots of complaints that the BBC gave the top headline to Nigel Farage and his Brexit Party over the success of Remain parties and that wasn't the best top headline. 

Jonathan Munro: Well, in a way, that's the opposite complaint to the other one...

Samira Ahmed: (interrupting) It is, and, as I say, we're getting complaint from both sides. But they are all specific complaints. 

Jonathan Munro: They are, and I've never been satisfied with the idea that because we are getting complaints from both sides, therefore everything is kind-of all right. That's not good enough, because it presupposes that people are not necessarily right and, of course, some complaints specifically will be right and they'll have a good case for that. (4) But it does show the polarisation of the audience which, of course, reflects the polarisation of the electorate...

Samira Ahmed: (interrupting) But on this issue then?

Jonathan Munro: But Nigel Farage headlining the programmes on a day when his party, which was only six weeks old, won the election in England and Wales, is a reasonable editorial call. (5)

Samira Ahmed: The panel in the studio was dominated by the two parties that did badly - the Conservatives and Labour. Why hadn't you got a Brexit Party person in the studio or more of the Lib Dems and the Greens?

Jonathan Munro: OK, so two points on that if I may. The first is that the clip we just saw in your introduction showed the panel at one moment in time during a five hour programme. The panel changed significantly during the night. The Liberal Democrats, for example, were on the panel. Jo Swinson was on for a significant amount of time, not in the clip you just showed. And we also interviewed Sir Ed Davey down the line - that is to say presenter in the studio, he was remote on a camera outside the studio. On the Brexit Party, most of the people we wanted to speak to were in a location because they were candidates at a count. So people like Ann Widdecombe, for example, who we heard from, and Richard Tice, they were interviewed on the programme. We heard Ann Widdecombe's acceptance speech on the programme. They were there because they were candidates, which we, of course, can't control. But wherever they are doesn't make a difference to how much prominence they get in the running order. (6) 

Samira Ahmed: Pro-leave voters regularly complain that BBC news coverage is biased against them. Many did think that it crossed a line when Laura Kuenssberg referred to Nigel Farage knowing how to appeal to "a certain kind of voter". What did she mean? 

Jonathan Munro: Well, you know, I wasn't in Laura's thinking at the time. It was a live programme. It went on for five hours. And I think you could use that phrase to apply to any loyal supporter of any party. "A certain type of voter" will vote for the Greens. "A certain type of voter" will vote for the SNP or Labour or the Conservatives. (7)  So I don't think there was anything pejorative implied by that comment at all... 

Samira Ahmed: (interrupting) Well, a lot of people thought there was. "A certain type of voter". What do you think she meant? What do you think people should think she meant?  

Jonathan Munro: I don't think they should think she meant anything. She has been covering this Brexit saga for years now, and is incredibly careful about the way she describes politicians of any colour, whether they're Leave or Remain or somewhere in between. And there was nothing meant by that comment. (8)

Samira Ahmed: Thank you very much, Jonathan Munro. 

Footnotes

(1) Nor did the Brexit Party, so his point doesn't work here.

(2) Note how he only cites The Brexit Party and Change UK here, and not the Green or the Lib Dems. Why presume that only Remain supporters voted Green or Lib Dem, or that people voted for them specifically over Brexit? 

(3) That whole section consists of Jonathan Munro avoiding the nub of the point being raised.

(4) Quite right!

(5) Agreed.

(6) Some reasonable points, but a proper tally of studio and non-studio guests would be useful, and he didn't cite any examples for the Greens. Were there any?

(7) Seriously? What on earth does, say, "a certain type of voter will vote for Labour" mean? Is it even remotely true? 

(8) It must have meant something Jonathan!


UPDATE: If you were wondering, here's a list of the guests and interviewees on the Huw Edwards-run EU Election Programme on BBC One (10 pm Sunday - 2 am Monday):

In the Studio Guests - Emily Thornberry (Labour), Suzanne Evans (pro-Brexit), Helen Whately (Conservative), Alastair Campbell (People's Vote), Mark Francois (Conservative), Jo Swinson (Lib Dem), Stephen Kinnock (Labour), Tobias Ellwood (Conservative), Jonathan Ashworth (Labour), Sian Berry (Green) and Ian Blackford (SNP).

Non Studio interviewees - Annunziata Rees-Mogg (Brexit Party), Sir Ed Davey (Lib Dem), Alyn Smith (SNP), Heidi Allen (Change UK), Richard Tice (Brexit Party), Adam Price (Plaid Cymru), Anne Widdecombe (Brexit Party), Daniel Hannan (Conservative), Layla Moran (Lib Dem) and Darren Jones (Labour)

The BBC in the witness box - a judge rules

It's not been a good day at the office for the BBC today after a High Court judge ruled that the BBC's coverage of the arrest of Sir Cliff Richard was an invasion of his privacy. Sir Cliff has been awarded £210,000 in damages. 

The BBC's response to the judgment has been widely characterised as "sorry, not sorry". They are even thinking of appealing. (At what cost to the licence fee payer?)

Here are BBC Director of News Fran Unsworth two major statements today. The first was sent to the world:

The second was sent to BBC staff:

Reading that and then reading the judge's opinion on his BBC witnesses, as laid out here, it seems to me that Ms. Unsworth's comments are rather tinged with wishful thinking - especially as far as the BBC journalist accuracy and honesty goes. (I've highlighted the most damning passages):  

That...

...and particularly the comments about BBC reporter Dan Johnson "twist(ing) matters in a way that could be described as dishonest" and about him "letting his enthusiasm...get the better of his complete regard for the truth on occasions"...

...pulls the rug from under Fran Unsworth's claim that "the judge...was clear that what we broadcast was accurate". 

The judge, in fact, appears to have been "clear" that what the BBC broadcast was far from being wholly accurate.

As for the senior BBC editors involved, Fran Unsworth herself came out best. The judge evidently liked her and found her to be honest, thoughtful and conscientious. But his comments that, during the trial, she'd engaged in "wishful thinking" and "ex post facto convenient rationalisation" still sounds pretty damning. 

Gary Smith - now BBC Scotland's Head of News and Current Affairs - comes off worst. The judge found him to be an unreliable witness at times. 

And Jonathan Munro, the BBC's Head of Newsgathering - a familiar 'we got it about right' BBC defender on the likes of Newswatch and Feedback -  appears to have found that his 'we got it about right' spiel fails to wash with High Court judges. Though Mr Justice Mann liked his thoughtful manner, he found him "overly guarded" (Welcome to our world Mr Justice Mann!) and said he was "almost wilfully failing to acknowledge inconsistencies and refusing to acknowledge the plain effect of some of the emails in the case". (Again, welcome to our world Mr Justice Mann!).

There's an expectation floating around that, in true BBC style, assistant heads will roll over this. 

Update: In a fine example of that internet law (Muprhy's? Skitt's?) which states that any post criticising someone else's inaccuracy of another will contain an inaccuracy itself, I don't think I was entirely factually accurate in this post.

Looking at it again (with a little prompting!), it was the section on Dan Johnson which I read as being critical of the accuracy of the reporting itself. All the other criticism of the BBC here relates to their testimony only. 

Reading that section again and then reading on, the bit about Mr Johnson "twisting" things "in a way that could be described as dishonest" relates to his behaviour in getting the report - specifically twice giving "false impressions" to South Yorkshire Police - rather than the actual content of his report. Indeed, the judgment later goes on to say:

The veracity of the published information in this case is not in issue. What the BBC published was accurate. What is more questionable is the method of obtaining the information.

So Fran Unsworth's carefully worded statement is correct when she says "the judge...was clear that what we broadcast was accurate". 

"We've not caved in to pressure"

For those who object to Samira Ahmed repeated online campaigning for the BBC to pay less attention to UKIP (a party she objects to), this week's edition of Newswatch may not have proved particularly reassuring impartiality-wise, especially given that one of the chosen topics was UKIP's airtime as compared to that of the Green Party. 

Still, despite the denials from the BBC's Head of Newsgathering Jonathan Munro, it does look as if complaining to the BBC can pay off - at least if you're Green Party supporters.

Here's a transcript of the final part of the interview:

Samira Ahmed: The BBC is going to run these special Question Time format programmes, with individual party leaders and a studio audience. At the start of this week, the BBC said the Greens wouldn't be part of this. A lot of viewers complained to Newswatch. Why?  

Jonathan Munro: And they complained to us, too, and I've heard the comments your viewers have made about the Greens. Let me explain the formula we use, not in too much detail. We are obliged by our regulations to take into account the electoral support over two election cycles. That means two general elections, in other words back to 2010, and all the elections that happened in the meantime. So lots of local elections in that time, obviously, and some European elections. If you take all those figures, the UKIP support over that period is significantly greater than the Greens. The Greens have been stable, but very low. UKIP have been up and down and we saw, as you know, a week or so ago, that they didn't do so well in the local elections. But over the seven-year period we are obliged to count, there is a big, big difference. But when you apply that formula to the schedule, the programmes we are actually going to make, we do think in retrospect, actually, that the gap between what UKIP is getting and what the Greens are getting is too great, so we're going to make a change and we've invited the Green party in the last 24 hours to take part in an extra programme on the Election Questions format in the last weekend of the campaign, on June the 4th. They've accepted that and we're really pleased to have that extra programme going into the BBC One schedule.  

Samira Ahmed: So you've either caved in to pressure or you got it wrong. Which is it?  

Jonathan Munro: We've not caved in to pressure. We're not going to cave in to pressure from political parties. We looked at the schedule in retrospect, what we'd lined up, and the differences between the parties. There were two differences, effectively, that the Greens were not included in. One was the Question Time Election Questions programmes, which go out on the last weekend. The other was the series of Andrew Neil interviews, which are going out the week after next on BBC One. So what we've done is we've said to the Green party, we think the gap's too great at the moment, but you can't have equivalence to the other parties because of that electoral support issue. So we've given them, we hope, a really good compromise and an offer that I'm really pleased to say they've accepted.  

Samira Ahmed: Jonathan Munro, thank you. 

BBC ban

Relations between the Trump administration and certain media organisation have hit a new low. 

The BBC - along with several other media outlets - was refused access to the latest White House briefing by Sean 'Spicy' Spicer and is now seeking 'clarification':

The BBC's Head of Newsgathering, Jonathan Munro, tweets:

In other news, Jon Sopel tweeted the following yesterday:

The responses he received included the following:

• It *is* the Russian flag......
• Similar? Do you know what a Russian flag looks like @BBCJonSopel?
• That must be a setup, no?
• Handed out by Huff Post journo I hear. No wonder Trump doesn't want @BBCNews in his press briefings.

The story behind it is reported here. Russian flags were handed out to the crowd by "a political prankster". The organisers of the conference then confiscated the flags.

Did Mark Easton make a beeline today towards Leave voters who come across as uneducated and/or racist?

The first post-Brexit edition of the BBC's Newswatch (1 July) featured a complaint that BBC reporters, post-vote, had been "making a beeline" to film Leave voters "who come across as uneducated and/or racist". The complainant called that "unhelpful".

The BBC's Head of Newsgathering, Jonathan Munro, dismissed this charge and implied that it was in fact the complainant who was actually engaging in unhelpful stereotyping:

On the 'uneducated' point, we need to talk to the whole of our audience, whatever their level of education might be, and the gentleman who made that point there is making a judgement about them that we're not making.

Exhibit A in the case against the BBC was an Ed Thomas report for BBC One's News at Ten which focused on the fears of Eastern European migrants in Leeds juxtaposed with the views of various anti-immigration voters, including a self-declared fascist with 'England' tattooed on his neck and a swastika tattooed on his eagerly-displayed biceps. The latter provoked most controversy with Newswatch viewers, but Jonathan Munro protested the BBC's innocence over it and implicitly criticised Newswatch for even raising it:

In the clip you showed at the beginning of the compilation you showed one interview with a gentleman with a swastika tattoo. That was filmed in Canvey Island for an edition of the Ten O'Clock News a couple of nights ago. We ran two reports on that programme talking to ordinary people in ordinary walks of life - one from the north-east of England and the other from Canvey. I think in those reports we must have interviewed 10, 11, 12 different people. One of them was a tattoo...You chose to show that. I don't think that was a representative sample at all of what we did, and if you look back at the programme the vast majority of people in those two reports were would you might call, to be honest, normal, everyday, ordinary people with perfectly valid and honourable intentions, whichever way they voted.

Mr Munro was so confident-sounding that I initially missed the fact that he was factually incorrect.

Yes, there was a report from Canvey Island that night but "the gentleman with a swastika tattoo" didn't appear in it. He was in the other report - the one from Leeds.

And watching that report again suggests that Mr Munro was being somewhat disingenuous.

Besides Swastika-Guy, the two other "everyday, ordinary people" who voted Leave and were selected as 'vox pops' in that Leeds report were (a) "a second-generation immigrant...frustrated at Europeans arriving in a place he calls 'home'", and (b) a chap called Wayne who wants migrants to "go home....as soon as possible" and who was led by Ed's leading questions and narrative build-up into sounding like a racist empowered "by the Brexit vote".

(Click on the link above to see for yourselves). 

*******

I remembered this Newswatch exchange after watching tonight's News at Six.

It was Mark Easton's strikingly biased report on the risks posed by a post-Brexit reduction in EU immigration that brought it back to mind.

Mark 'reported' that agriculture, the hospitality sector, the care sector, construction and the NHS faced serious risks from a post-Brexit reduction in EU immigration. "Shortages" and "collapse" could result, said Mark. (It was a typical Mark Easton report).

He then stopped off in Leave-voting Rochester to canvass the views of three 'vox pops'. 

Did Mark Easton "make a beeline" to film Leave voters "who come across as uneducated and/or racist" here? 

Well, here's the first pro-Leave/anti immigration 'vox pop' in Mark Easton's report tonight: 

And here's what he said:

I think they should all go back to where they belong really, cos our country's ruined now, innit? There's no houses for us. There's no jobs.

Next came a lady who said:

I'd like them to do what we voted for really, which is to make it much lower, much fairer, a points-based system. 

A perfectly reasonable point - though I suspect, like many a viewer, I didn't immediately catch what she'd said as I was too busy gawping at her remarkably unhealthy-looking teeth - quite the worst-looking set of teeth I've seen on TV for many a year.  

(I'm sure she's an absolutely lovely person and I feel awful for writing that, but I really don't think I would have been in the minority among News at Six viewers in thinking in such a shallow, unkind way about her teeth).

Then came a pro-immigration voter....

....who made a longer, more impassioned and much more eloquent case for mass EU migration, echoing many of the points Mark Easton himself was making earlier - though without the veneer of BBC impartiality, of course.

Watching it, I felt just like that initial complainant to Newswatch. It did seem to me as if Mark Easton had very carefully selected which three 'vox pops' he put into his report here. But I could also hear my own inner Jonathan Munro saying:

On the 'uneducated' point, we need to talk to the whole of our audience, whatever their level of education might be, and the gentleman who made that point there is making a judgement about them that we're not making.

Am I the one in the wrong here for thinking really bad things about the uneducated-sounding topless guy and the woman with the disjointed, yellow teeth (the two anti-immigration 'vox pops')?

Did no such wicked thoughts cross Mark Easton's mind, even for a single second, when he selected them for his report and then juxtaposed them with an eloquent, 'normal-looking' pro-immigration guy? 

Really?

Given Mark Easton's past record, I'm not willing to give him the benefit of the doubt about that. He can be a highly manipulative reporter, and this felt highly manipulative to me. 

*******

And, moreover, what is Emma Jane Kirby's Brexit Street series for PM if not the initial complainer to Newswatch's point writ large?

That entire series so far has been"making a beeline" towards Leave voters "who come across as uneducated and/or racist". 

Not everything has changed...

Samira Ahmed's opening questions on this week's Newswatch were: 

Has the BBC's response to the Brexit vote been unfairly dominated by 'doom and gloom' views about its possible negative consequences? And have those who voted to leave the European Union been stereotyped as as 'old, ill-educated racists'?

The featured complainants argued that the BBC has given "constant coverage" of "people who wanted to remain" and "the worries and negative spin being generated at this point"; that there's "a reluctance to speak about the positive aspects of that decision"; that there's a focus on "hand-wringing" and "what went wrong"; and that the BBC has "created divisions" by promoting negative views of Leave voters and by "making a beeline for those who appear ill-educated and/or racist".

And how did the invited BBC suit, Jonathan Munro, BBC's Head of Newsgathering, respond to these charges? 

I bet you can guess.

He didn't accept any of the criticisms. His line was: The BBC has got it about right and those complainants are simply wrong.

Twas ever so.

"Tell us your story. Tell us where have you come from. What's your name?"

Here's something you may have missed: The BBC's head of newsgathering, Jonathan Munro, on the World Service a couple of weeks back spelling out the BBC position on how the migrant crisis should be reported (and which has been carried through right across the BBC):

The language that we use is...we're perhaps not in the same place as Al Jazeera on this, though I think we are in the same sort of debate as they've been. 

I don't think there's anything wrong actually with using the word 'migrant' and the word 'refugee'. The vast majority of people that we're seeing coming through those borders, whether on land or by sea, are both migrants and refugees. 

The issue...is more about the dehumanisation of people and the way we cover it, which isn't just a language issue. 

When you're seeing 40,000 people coming through over a relatively short period of a number of weeks, what we're hearing on our radios and seeing on our screens are images and sounds that portray the volume of people and the way to dehumanise them is just to do that. 

And the way to keep them as human beings - and this is a much more important point it seems to me than the vocabulary - is to talk to them, to hear their stories as individuals, as human beings, as opposed to as part of a trend. 

So, you know, I was very pleased for example with some coverage that ran widely across the BBC where a reporter was on the island of Kos, which has just had a massive influx, as you all know, and the first thing he said as people literally got their feet wet getting off a boat was, "Tell us your story. Tell us where have you come from. What's your name?" 

And it's that humanity which is actually more important than, you know, vocabulary boundaries that some broadcasters may choose to put in place. 

We're not in the game of saying certain words aren't appropriate, as long as they're accurate and they reflect the story. The more important thing for us is to keep the human beings at the heart of it.

Oh gawd, and now the BBC's Head of Newsgathering is at it!

If there's one thing you can say about the Twitter feed of Jonathan Munro, the BBC's Head of Newsgathering, is that it's ultra-loyal to the BBC. If there's praise for the BBC or a defence of the BBC, he'll tweet about it. 

That said, he did tweet a link to an article about BBC bias that does contain some criticisms of the BBC and whose conclusions are:

So the evidence from the research is clear. The BBC tends to reproduce a Conservative, Eurosceptic, pro-business version of the world, not a left-wing, anti-business agenda.

Inevitably, Mr Munro of the BBC, links (without comment) to far-left Cardiff University academic Mike Berry's piece at The Conversation.

Hard Evidence: how biased is the BBC? http://t.co/LwDFxvIyLt via @ConversationUK

— Jonathan Munro (@jonathancmunro) May 10, 2015

It's an article countless left-wingers on Twitter (including Owen Jones and Jon Donnison) have been tweeting about and re-tweeting for nigh on two years. 

And now here's the BBC's Head of Newsgathering recommending it to the world on Twitter.

Presumably he did so in order to 'prove' that the BBC gets criticism from both sides and must, therefore, be getting it about right.

The fact that Mike Berry's piece was based (as we've pointed out before) on a debunked, BBC-funded study written by a collection of far-left wing academics and people with close links to the BBC won't stop people like him from using it to serve their own purposes. 

And because it comes from Cardiff University's huge media department and the BBC relies on the Cardiff University's media department for much of its 'independent' research, it doubtless sounds authoritative enough to be believed by people who haven't thought to stand back from it and scrutinise it. 

It's not very impressive, therefore, that Jonathan Munro is using Mike Berry's article in this way, is it?

Mr Munro's own latest tweet, if you were wondering, is this:

So UKIP's only MP says #Farage needs to take a break. All going well then.

— Jonathan Munro (@jonathancmunro) May 15, 2015

#bbcbias?