Another Wark on the Biased Side

Unkind souls used to refer to Kirsty Wark as 'Slursty Wark'. She was certainly on fine sense-mangling form last night, ending with:

Thanks very much indeed for all of us for watching.

Earlier she'd read out the Daily Mail's headline and 'misgendered' the elderly man fatally stabbed in Ealing. :

And let's take a look at some of the front pages, beginning with the Daily Mail. 'What kind of monster kills an 87 year old woman in a scooter?'...that was the person on the mobility scooter...is the story on their front page.

That all followed an interview about the RAF diversity row where a man and a woman were interviewed. Both were strongly on-message but the man briefly said something that strayed from the true path and Kirsty came down on him like a ton of bricks. He then returned to saying 'the right thing' again, now overcompensating for the 'rightness' by being even more on-message than earlier. [If Col Richard Kemp had been on instead I'm sure he'd have held his ground].  

Those kind of one-sided challenges are par for the course, of course. What's so annoying watching Kirsty Wark interview though is how often she interrupts just so she can get her next question in. She has her 'little list' of pre-prepared questions and nothing's going to stop her ploughing through them, never mind if the flow of the discussion keeps being diverted or comes to a juddering half, as it did once last night. 

One odd thing about the programme's treatment of the story might stand out to anyone who's been hearing about it elsewhere, that the senior RAF recruitment officer who resigned in protest at an "effective pause" on offering jobs to white male recruits in favour of women and ethnic minorities [as Sky reported it] is a woman - which, in this case, is surely relevant. Newsnight was oddly coy about stating it though:

• The RAF's recruitment chief hit quits over diversity targets.
• "Impossible diversity targets" - that was was the reason, it came to light today, which was cited by the head of RAF recruitment for resigning from the service.
• But it now finds itself at the centre of a row after one of its senior officers resigned.
• Dr Sophy Antrobus, do you think the RAF chief recruiter was right to resign?

Viewers might have thought it was a moaning man until Kirsty Wark let slip a “she” very late on. 

“Neighbours, Everybody needs diverse neighbours”

Thursday's Newsnight marked the end of the sunny Australian soap Neighbours. Kirsty Walk's introduction contained this modish take, worthy of a Guardian column:

Although it became more diverse in later years, its heyday was just bland, mostly young, usually attractive heterosexual white Australians living unremarkable lives.

Lots of people loved it nonetheless. 

What 'Newsnight' was doing in late 2016

There's a video doing the rounds this weekend of Newsnight pulling a stunt and mocking a call by a Conservative MP for the BBC to play God Save the Queen every night by playing the Sex Pistols' God Save the Queen, introduced with a straight face by Kirsty Wark. 

Though the same Conservative MP [Andrew Rosindell] has repeated his call this week, that Newsnight stunt dates from November 2016, back when Ian Katz was the programme's editor. He was fond of those kind of japes. 

I'm surprised we didn't cover it back then. 

UPDATE: Whoops. Well, that video, via Alex Belfield, has been removed. 

I'm guessing, given that Alex's YouTube channel is still up-and-running, that Alex either spotted his error or had his error over the date of the Newsnight video pointed out to him and then deleted the video. 

If you're still interested in seeing the 2016 Newsnight playout though, here's a fresh link. Altogether now, 'I wanna be.../Anarchy BBC':

Skewing the story. Setting the agenda

Talking of last night's Newsnight, it certainly went in hard against Priti Patel and the PM. 

This was its introduction:

Kirsty Wark: Our Home Secretary is an unintentional bully. So if she really the best person for the job? Should Boris Boris Johnson have shown her the door? I'll be asking a former Permanent Secretary, a professor of law, and a Tory MP.... 

Good evening. Today, Boris Johnson chose to ignore, in fact reject, the verdict of his independent advisor on ministerial standards on a bullying inquiry into Priti Patel. The result? No matter that the Home Secretary was deemed to have sworn and shouted at junior civil servants, and was concluded by the report to have broken the Ministerial Code, she is still in her job, while that advisor, Sir Alex Allan, has resigned. She survived because the report says the bullying could have been "unintentional" and Priti Patel wasn't ever given feedback about her behaviour at the time. Tonight that has been flatly contradicted by Sir Philip Rutnam, her former Permanent Secretary who resigned in February claiming he was forced out because he exposed her bullying behaviour. So should the Home Secretary still be in her job? Here's our Policy Editor Lewis Goodall.

Lewis continued in the same vein: 

Lewis Goodall: The gloomy corridors of power in Westminster are groaning with irony even more than usual. It's Anti-Bullying Week, which just so happens to coincide with a controversy over one of the most senior members of the Government allegedly engaging in bullying behaviour of her own. There had long been whispers that Priti Patel could be unpleasant to her civil servants across several departments. This culminated in the resignation of her Permanent Secretary, the Home Office's top official, Sir Philip Rutnam in February, accusing her of the same. The Prime Minister's Independent Adviser on Ministerial Standards, Sir Alex Allan, was asked to look into the allegations. His conclusions have only just emerged. Allan says that Patel, in the way that she treated her civil servants, did break the Ministerial Code, the rule book for ministerial conduct - albeit, perhaps, unintentionally. "My advice is that the Home Secretary has not consistently met the high standards required by the Ministerial Code of treating her civil servants with consideration and respect. Her approach, on occasions, has amounted to behaviour that can be described as bullying in terms of the impact felt by individuals." Any breach of the Ministerial Code would typically lead to a ministerial resignation or dismissal. But Patel has been spared. 

Priti Patel: I'm sorry that my behaviour has upset people. And I've never intentionally set out to upset anyone. I work with thousands of brilliant civil servants every single day, and we work together, day in, day out, to deliver on the agenda of this government. 

This is because Boris Johnson said today that he does not agree with Sir Alex Allan's findings, that she has not engaged in bullying behaviour and, ergo, considers the matter closed. This morning, Sir Alex Allan promptly resigned in response. It is very unusual. In fact, I think this is unprecedented. Certainly it is unprecedented for the Prime Minister's Adviser on Ministerial Standards to resign. 

Catherine Haddon, Institute for Government: It is very unusual. In fact, I think this is unprecedented. It's certainly unprecedented for the Prime Minister's advisor on ministerial standards to resign. It's unprecedented for the Prime minister to say that he thinks his minister has not breached the code, when his adviser has said that, actually, he thinks there has been a breach going on here. 

It is especially embarrassing for the Prime Minister that the foreword to the Ministerial Code is written by, well, the Prime Minister himself. It says, there must be no bullying and no harassment. It is then followed a couple of pages later by point 1.2, which says that bullying will not be tolerated. But, for Patel's future, what matters is the politics and political support in the Tory Party. And there, unlike the rest of Westminster right now, she's home and dry. 

Andrew Bridgen MP: There's huge support on the Conservative backbenches for the work she's doing. She's a tough and forceful Secretary of State in a very difficult department. And she's delivering on our manifesto pledges. I think, as far as most of the backbenchers are concerned, and most of my constituents, we'd like to see more ministers like Priti Patel, not less. 

We should say that Sir Alex Allan's findings were not entirely uncritical of the civil service either. He said they were slow to respond to the Home Secretary and to do what she wanted. But for a minister to have been independently adjudged to have broken the civil service code, and for no consequences to follow from it, does mean that there are two much bigger questions now in play than that of Priti Patel's future. Firstly, what is to disincentivise a minister in the future from breaking the code? And, secondly, with Sir Alex Allan's resignation, what is left of the system to enforce it? 

Sir David Normington: We have always relied on the Ministerial Code being upheld by the Prime Minister of the day. I mean, the system does make the Prime Minister judge and jury. But in the past, prime ministers have always acted when there has been a breach of the Ministerial Code. And that's why, in a sense, this is a much more serious moment than previous ones, because the Prime Minister seems to have gone against what would have happened in the past. 

In this year, so many iron laws on politics have been broken in Westminster. One where the metal has softened most of all is the question of when ministers or political figures should resign. With the Ministerial Code's power now seemingly weakened, we are no further forward with the answer. 

In the subsequent two-against-one interview (two against Ms Patel, one for Ms Patel, with the one for Ms Patel getting interrupted a lot - the same old story!), Conservative MP Keiran Mullan observed that Lewis Goodall's report had "brushed aside" as a minor side issue something he considered "equally damning": Sir Alex Allan's criticisms of the Civil Service for its "lack of leadership" and its "lack of willingness to support Ms Patel. 

He certainly wasn't wrong about Lewis brushing it aside. I've highlighted in yellow the bit where Lewis did just that.

If you recall, Sir Alex had some remarkable things to say about the Civil Service: 

The home secretary says that she puts great store by professional, open relationships. She is action orientated and can be direct. The home secretary has also become - justifiably in many instances - frustrated by the Home Office leadership's lack of responsiveness and the lack of support she felt in the Department for International Development (Dfid) three years ago. 

The Civil Service itself needs to reflect on its role during this period. The Home Office was not as flexible as it could have been in responding to the home secretary's requests and direction. She has - legitimately - not always felt supported by the department. In addition, no feedback was given to the home secretary of the impact of her behaviour, which meant she was unaware of issues that she could otherwise have addressed. 

This conclusion needs to be seen in context. There is no evidence that she was aware of the impact of her behaviour, and no feedback was given to her at the time. The high pressure and demands of the role, in the Home Office, coupled with the need for more supportive leadership from top of the department has clearly been a contributory factor. In particular, I note the finding of different and more positive behaviour since these issues were raised with her.

This highlights how the BBC can set and shape the agenda. 

If Newsnight only wants to focus on questioning and criticising the behaviour of Priti Patel and Boris Johnson and chooses to put to one side Sir Alex's damning criticisms of the Civil Service for poor leadership, a lack of responsiveness and and unwillingness to support a senior cabinet minister - something that surely matters massively in a democracy and is a huge story in its own right - then the focus on Priti Patel and Boris Johnson's failing will be all Newsnight viewers are going to hear about and think about. 

It fatally skews the story though, doesn't it? 

An absolutely extraordinary period for Newsnight

Newsnight’s Kirsty Wark on cancel culture, equality and Paxman“Newsnight is now more about being a quiet assassin than a musketeer.” Interview by Decca Aitkenhead  (Sunday Times Magazine)

Kirsty Wark? The Kirsty whose warks are even more indistinct than her bites? The Kirsty whose diction is so adenoidal that all her consonants are slurred together into one semi-intelligible whine?

No! Stop it now! Tell me I’m not subscribing to the Guardian!  

“After watching her present Newsnight for 27 years, many of us probably feel like we’re old friends with Wark. The 65-year-old is the show’s great survivor, having outlived the gargantuan ego of Jeremy Paxman, and endured the nadir of the Evan Davis years, when viewing figures sank so low that many feared the flagship BBC Two show would be axed. In 2018 Wark applied to become the new Question Time presenter, but was beaten to the job by Fiona Bruce.

Today, however, Newsnight is once again on fire, reignited by a new all-female team led by Emily Maitlis and editor Esme Wren. Its coverage of the Covid crisis has been agenda-setting, breaking stories from PPE shortages to domestic abuse, so I wonder if Wark is rather relieved not to have got Question Time. She beams.

“Well, Newsnight’s going through an absolutely extraordinary period just now. I would have loved to have done Question Time. But I am so happy to be on Newsnight now.”

It’s unusual to be a show’s bridesmaid for 27 years and never the bride. Wark deputises for Maitlis, alongside Emma Barnett, but says the arrangement suits her fine. “Emily’s a fantastic lead presenter, but it’s very much a team programme, and we complement each other very well.” I wonder if she thinks it’s a total coincidence that Newsnight is enjoying a dazzling renaissance in the hands of an all-woman presenting team, under a female editor. She hesitates. “Erm, it probably is. But what makes me sad is the idea that it should be in any way exceptional.” She allows a mischievous grin. “Because we didn’t notice for years when all men were presenting programmes, did we?”

I’m channelling Papa Lazarou again. Or Tubbs.  “Noozenight? Renaissance? What is this Ren  — eh - sanse?” No, we’re back in Royston Vasey and Decca Aitkenhead is giving me a very aitken head indeed. 

Shared Stormzy moments

Also on the subject of last night's Newsnight:

On the question of whether we as a country had fewer "shared moments" during this past decade, Kirsty Wark suggested a couple - one of which was Stormzy. That made me smile. It's very BBC. The BBC loves Stormzy and has shared many a Stormzy moment over the past few years. Others may take the Brendan O'Neill line that Stormzy is "a Guardian editorial made flesh".

Kirsty's other suggestion, if you were wondering, was the 2012 Olympics. (I'm assuming she meant the opening ceremony rather than the sporting success of Team GB that year). 

"...even after I sent it phonetically to them"

Talking of Nihal, Kirsty Wark badly mangled his surname last night. Nihal himself later tweeted, "Yes Kirsty did kind of butcher my surname even after I sent it phonetically to them." His face was a picture though:

I think I covered the mispronunciation of my surname quite well. pic.twitter.com/Sj42Iy8gJd

— Nihal Arthanayake (@TherealNihal) December 20, 2019

Kirsty v Paul

Though Emily Maitlis continues to regularly retweet her ex-Newsnight colleague Paul Mason (as if they are still besties), there doesn't seem to be a huge amount of warmth now between the ex-Newsnight far-left extremist and another of his former Newsnight colleagues, namely Kirsty Wark - at least if tonight's Newsnight is anything to go by. This snippy exchange was even chillier in the flesh than it appears on the page:

Kirsty Wark: Joining me tonight we have Salma Shah, who was a special advisor at the Home Office until earlier this year, The Sun's political editor Tom Newton Dunn, author and Labour activist... 

Paul Mason: (interrupting): Journalist. 

Kirsty Wark: ...author, journalist and activist Paul Mason, and Westminster Correspondent for the Yorkshire Post, Geraldine Scott. 

Actually, Kirsty was right first time.

Saturday Morning Light Breakfast

I

Fresh from having its ruling against Naga Munchetty squashed by the elegant shoe of Lord Hall, the BBC's Executive Complaints Unit has contented itself with upholding two complaints on the grounds of swearing. Mrs Whitehouse would have been delighted. 

Over the past week, two rulings have been released. The first concerned the use of the f-word during BBC One's D-Day 75: A Tribute to Heroes  in June, while the second concerned Nicky Campbell's mis-speaking of Jeremy Hunt's surname as 'C***' on Radio 5 Live in June. 

They have been fully upheld on the grounds that neither programme gave a prompt apology for the use of blue language. 

Tellingly, it's taken about three months for both complaints to crawl their way through the maze of the BBC's complaints process.

*******

II

Further to Sue's post about Lord Singh's aggrieved departure from Thought For The Day after (he claims) the BBC censored him on the grounds that some of his talks "might offend Muslims", The Right Rev Dr Gavin Ashenden, former chaplain to the Queen, has written a letter to The Times arguing that it's more than a storm in an eggcup:

It is more that the BBC has surrendered to a politically correct or progressive culture that pretends to want simply to avoid causing offence. But the actual effect is a wholesale redistribution of power and influence. This culture has no problem causing offence to Christians through an erosion of Christian culture and ethics; nor, it seems to Sikhs, if we take Lord Singh at his word. Instead it prefers the victim causes of identity politics and Islam. Lord Singh’s vital and principled intervention signals the increasing restriction of freedom of speech and thought that the privileges of our culture are predicated on.

Very true.

I see. incidentally, from the Times report that both James Purnell and Lord Hall got personally involved in batting away Lord Singh's concerns.

*******

III

Talking of the Times, the paper also reports that Newsnight's Kirsty Wark recently told a literary festival audience that she got where she is today thanks to positive discrimination by the BBC:

I joined the BBC as a graduate entry when they needed more women. I became a producer young because they needed more women in senior positions. Now I’m still on television because I’m older. I’m not quite sure it would have been the same if it were ten years earlier, but I’ve been quite privileged to have the longevity of this career.

The top-rated comment below the article rather rudely says, "Positive discrimination. That explains a lot, Kirstie [sic]."

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? 

Tainted love

I’ve reached the conclusion, sadly, that one’s enemy’s enemy sometimes has to be one’s friend. One has to come to terms with that and suck it up..  

The other day I wrote about the BBC’s short-attention-span format, which seems to be aimed at producing the memorable sound bite. That is to say, if a memorable sound-bite emerges from one of those ‘sorry, we’ve run out of time’ scenarios, the BBC deems it a success. Then, lo and behold, George Galloway said the very same thing on This Week. About the paucity of the in-depth interview on the BBC and the rest of the UK’s main channels. (Obviously not Press TV)

I said that too! 

“I can’t access  Al Jazeera Eng. any longer, but although they were who they were, they allowed their debates time to flow. I think I’ve heard more uninterrupted speech from Israeli politicians and spokespersons on Al Jaz than on any of our own MSMs”

and I did reluctantly mention that “on this occasion,” GG “spoke sense” 

In a similar vein, My sympathies here lie with Benjamin, even though I don’t quite see the humour in “I don’t give a shit” (about the Holocaust)

Again, one has to concede that Peter Oborne has an authoritative persona and that he made some persuasive points about Boris this morning. However, (and it’s a huge however as well as a big but) his ridiculous obsession with the Jewish Lobby - and his so-called documentary was indeed ridiculous - renders everything he ever says and does decidedly toxic. Tainted love, if you like.

This is like the BBC itself. It does some good stuff and it does some bad stuff. At the moment, the bad outweighs the good by a country mile. 

By the way, that interview with the prancing rocker Bobby Gillespie was in the ‘bad’ camp. What was it for? Did someone in the Newsnight production team like this band?

   

“people on the right, they’re not very funky” 

If I were forced to identify as “on the right” (and I might cave if forced) I’d say “Yes we are! How very dare you! We’re as funky as funky can be. And groovy and extremely sexy to boot.” 

Euphemistically referring to his drug-addled state as “immersed,” the poor chap was evidently struggling and befuddled; he had to take a few moments to think hard before answering Kirsty’s somewhat fawning questions.  When it came to the one about “Israel’s right to exist “ his delayed response was almost unintelligible, but on replaying it I detected that it was: “Stolen Land” 

Stupid, ignorant old git.

Mixed review

Ah well, there's always Newsnight. 

Last night there was (1) John Sweeney's latest nudge, nudge, wink, winking piece about Arron Banks, followed by an interview with an anti-Banks Labour MP; (2) an interview about JimAccossedHergate with an American journalist who really, really, really disapproves of what the White House did; (3) a piece on whether Amazon is a good or bad thing from a town oop north, (4) a discussion about whether the female orgasm should be included in school sex education classes (I kid thou not!), and (5) a Mirror journalist going Inside the Papers. 

For stats fans, all five interviewees were female (if I'm allowed to say that, given what happened to Dame Jenni of Woman's Hour) - as, of course, was the interviewer (and the editor). 

I'll pay credit to Kirsty Wark for not giving the pro-Acosta journalist anything like a free ride. (I'm guessing she'd read her colleague Emily Maitlis's piece beforehand). And David Grossman's Amazon report was both fair and interesting. But Kirsty's socially liberal feminism did seep out during the female orgasm discussion where she sided somewhat (though not too much) with the socially liberal young BAME woman against the socially conservative less young non-BAME woman.

That's perhaps inevitable on a BBC current affairs programme. The BBC isn't exactly full of socially conservative people.

Voices matter

Whispering wanker

Is Barry Gardiner’s voice silv’ry, slithery or silken? This debate was raised earlier on this blog below the line, and so was the state of the English language via Dawkins on Twitter.  

Unless there is something intrinsically wrong with Barry Gardiner’s vocal chords, the muted volume effect must be there for a purpose. ‘Sinister whispering wanker’, someone on Guido called him.

The Scottish burr is normally an asset (for clarity of diction think BBC announcer Susan Rae) and your normal Scottish and Irish speaker will enunciate that  “wh” gently as if lightly puffing away a feather. However, the whoosh of Barry Gardiner’s ‘whh’ is expelled forcefully, as if to snuff out a candle, and each word is articulated with pained precision; a meaningful pause separates each one, allowing time for the profundity of his message to sink in because the audience is a bit thick.

*******

The ’t’ sound.

Of course, most Labour MPs habitually use the glottal stop as well as the silent ’t’ at the end of a word. Take Faiza Shaheen on Politics Live. Yes, do.

A bizarre perversion of the missing ’t' occurs in the accent spoken by folks that hail from the region somewhere up north, (wherever it is that Michelle Dewberry comes from) (Kingston upon Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire. )

'T' gone awry

Do you watch The Pledge?  I’m not worried about the weird vowels, but those ’t’ endings are fascinating. See how the final ’t’ has gone awry when Michelle Dewberry articulates the word “want”. It comes out as “won-ugh” (That’s ‘won’ as in ‘wonky’, and not as in wonderful.) I rather like Michelle Dewberry’s carefully enunciated delivery but that distorted  ’t’ thing is mad.

The worst voice abomination is vocal-fry aka throat-fry. It’s really really, like, annoying, but as it’s largely American (unless we follow the Kardashians) we don’t have to put up with it so much. There’s also that two-tone thing that some people have all the time, even when they’re not suffering from tonsillitis or laryngitis. There’s probably a medical name for it, but you hear it as a kind of duet as if two voices of a slightly different pitch are speaking at once; a cappella - harmonising in unison.

Here we have Christine Blasey Ford. Her extreme vocal-fry voice and what’s known as “Valley Girl” manner sabotaged her testimony. For me at least, it completely undermined her credibility. 

Some people insist that they were profoundly moved by her testimony, but not I. Not #meToo. I bet they were motivated by PC. My motivation, on the other hand, may have been a tad political, but  I really think her trauma would be a lot more credible if she had actually been raped, and not merely “laughed at”. I’m not a ‘Trump firster’ and I wasn’t overly won over by Brett Kavanaugh either.

Just imagine being ambushed in a lift by a posse of sobbing sexual assault  ‘survivors’; Senator Flake is the most aptly named character in the whole pantomime.

Pitch for new BBC drama.

Jed Mercurio has sufficient material to base a six-part series on an FBI investigation into the inebriated sexually perverted antics of Ivy League undergraduate year-book alumni dating back to the days before radical misandry began in nineteen seventy-three (Between the introduction of the Contraceptive pill and the Beatles’ last LP.)  

The general idea will be that no-one will be able to make head nor tail of the plot, the cast or the outcome unless they consult the explanatory recap on the Guardian. The privilege of being guilty is reserved for the stale, pale white guy, and the lead character, based on Dr Ford, will be played by a mixed-race transgender actor who will do a pitch-perfect, Bafta-winning  performance, recreating the vocal fry and “Valley-girl” mannerisms, which will later prove to have been mimed and covertly voiced by a white, voice-gymnast who will hire eminent QC Michael Mansfield to sue the BBC for ‘uman rights.

Jason Farrell will appear in a cameo performance as ‘himself’ interviewing a BAME suspect, introduced purely as a ‘double-bluff’ red-herring. (BAMEs are inherently innocent. Fact.)

Rob Burley and Gabriel Gatehouse will tune in for that bit, but no-one else will be watching TV by then.

Who needs elocution?

mellifluous

Well, one person has charmed us all with his rich, olden-day voice. Attorney General Geoffrey Cox. We do still value a nice voice. Mellifluous, meaning sweet-sounding, honeyed, mellow and dulcet. Having an attractive voice used to be a primary requisite for the radio, and perhaps a secondary requisite for TV. 

Now, anything goes. The more incomprehensible and unintelligible the accent and diction the better. Suffering from one of the most serious cases of fashion victimhood on the box, that and her slurred, nasal, adenoidal diction and harsh-toned voice hasn’t held Kirsty Wark back.  Voice like a bark. Woof! Ruff! A contender for next chair-person of Question Time.

where did you get that dress

Mad World

The BBC has been under attack for bias again this week.

You can probably put aside the celebratory bottles of Prosecco or (for Nigel Farage fans) magnificent English beer though.

The attacks have been without substance. (You might even call them 'fake news'.)

Nonetheless, the BBC has been preoccupied with them and heavily on the defensive against them. 

Examples? 

Well, there was Kirsty Wark on Newsnight on Friday night getting slammed by one of her guests after he'd appeared (at Newsnight's invitation) on her programme - namely Cadwalldrista Chris Wylie: 

Was just on BBC Newsnight and yet again they try to shut down an established fact: Vote Leave cheated and broke the law in the referendum. That's not an 'allegation'. That's a fact. That is the finding of the Electoral Commission and is why Vote Leave was referred to the police.

Thousands of #FBPE types, along with Carole Cadwalldr, Alastair Campbell and the other usual suspects (even Nick Cohen), then amplified this charge and it spread (like myxomatosis in the 1950s) across the interweb.

And yet it was all 'fake news'.

Christopher Wylie, Carole Cadwalldr, Alastair Campbell and all of the pandemomic legions of #FBPEs had either misheard or misunderstood (or deliberately misinterpreted) what Kirsty had said.

Even I grasped straightaway that their complaints were nonsense-on-pretentious-stilts on watching the interview after reading their complaints.

(P.S. I'm slightly stunned to be defending Kirsty Wark on a question of bias).

Kirsty Wark hadn't said what the Cadwalldristas claimed she'd said. Kirsty was talking about Chris Wylie's claims about Facebook not about Vote Leave.

As former BBC man Gavin Esler (now a fervent anti-Brexit Twitterer) accurately put it in a response to the head of the Cadwalldr community: "Carole, I am a great admirer of you work but Chris said Facebook acted illegally - that is an allegation. The FACT is that they found Vote Leave broke the law. My former colleague Kirsty Wark was being rigorous and accurate".

An entire Twitterstorm was therefore based on few thousand very vocal people (including at least two journalists at a respected Sunday newspaper, The Observer) either not understanding or not wanting to understand Kirsty Wark's questions and crying 'BBC bias!'

(Whither English Comprehension these days? Or can it all be blamed on Kirsty's habit of slurring her words slightly, as she's wont to do?).

BBC editors scrambled onto Twitter and the BBC Press Office was pressed into a rebuttal:

Naturally the #FPPE brigade didn't accept any of the BBC's rebuttals, even though the rebuttals were correct, and the storm has gone on and on, like...simile alert!...a mad rabbit hopping its way up Mount Everest without an oxygen mask. 

This stuff and nonsense is taking up a lot of the BBC's time at the moment. 

A second (related) example from this morning, with some typical and some untypical responses:

PETER JUKES: Arron Banks is believed to have donated £8.4m to the leave campaign, the largest political donation in British politics... “He failed to  satisfy us that his own donations had, in fact, come vrom (sic) sources within the UK.” Says  Damian Collins, Washington Post. This should be BREAKING news on the BBC. A cross party parliamentary select committee has concluded that Britain's biggest ever political donor could well have been funded by a foreign power. This is illegal. It's also treacherous. Silence in the face of this is complicity.
GUY LAMBERT: We won’t have a BBC in 10 years time. Endless tweets like this will kill it. Every day it’s “why isn’t the BBC doing what I want it to do in the exact way I want them to do it?” Most of them turn out to be untrue anyway. Peter Jukes will one day wake up without it and wonder why.
SCOTT MATTHEWMAN: Indeed, Damian Collins has just been on Radio 4 talking about these very issues.
GUY LAMBERT: Oh really? What show? I’d like to hear that ta.
SCOTT MATTHEWMAN: Broadcasting House. And his comments then made one of the lead items in the 9:30am news summary.
TOM JAMIESON: Was one of the lead stories on BBC news all day yesterday - interview on Today etc etc.
ROB BURLEY: Also, the DCMS Committee story is on the front page of the BBC website.
NIK MORRIS (to ROB BURLEY): Nice of you to catch up. Who forced your hand?

Ah, but to our old friend Scott's point that Damian Collins was on Broadcasting House slamming Arron Banks and Dominic Cummings (and thus debunking Peter Jukes's complaint), there's always something else for the #FBPE crowd to come back with and defeat Scott with. Here's one of their other leading Twitter voices, Tim Walker, reacting to that very same interview: 

Absurd larky isn’t-this-all-a-laugh tone to the Broadcasting House report on @BBCRadio4 on the fraudulent win of Leave in the EU Referendum.

Well, it wasn't a 'report'; it was an interview. And it was with Damian Collins, the man Carole Cadwalldr & Co. are praising today. And it was the programme's lead story. And it wasn't larky. It was just Paddy O'Connell doing what he always does in his usual manner.

So, yes, even when - as on Newsnight or Broadcasting House - such people are seeing their favourite stories get prominent and extensive BBC treatment - and, in BH's case, just seeing someone from their side of the argument being interviewed, it still isn't enough. The tone has be how they'd like it too. Paddy has to stop being Paddy just for them.

And there's more - again from this morning:

HELEN TROY: BBC News gives more prominence to possible cheating in Football World Cup award to Qatar than Leave fraud and cheating in 2016 referendum.
TIM WALKER: Every day now, the BBC allows Rupert Murdoch’s Brextremist newspapers - and the Daily Mail - to decide what is news

Of course they are, Tim, of course they are! (Nurse, nurse!)

And it goes on. The World This Weekend this weekend has been under sustained rocket attack from the same social media crowd for not going with the Arron Banks/Dominic Cummings Leave fraud story and, worse, for going instead with the possible suspension of Ian Austin from the Labour Party and making antisemitism in the Labour Party the programme's main focus.

Please gird up your loins in advance because here's a flavour of those complaints (without corrections to spelling or grammar!):

• Utterly appaling extended hatchet job on Corbyn and abour by the BBC on #wato starring critics of Corbyn including Ian Austin.
• #wato had nothing on Banks, Leave campaign after Joe Cox's murder and nothin on the threats to our democracy today. Again. Come on @BBC stop failing Britain.
• #wato talking to a Jewish Family this is sounding very rehearse and very political this isn’t a Vox Pop, But an Attack On Lab allows no new nuance allowed on #wato 25 Mins in examples of AS thin on the ground BBC Making a Martyr Of Ian Austin #really
• Serious concern re fake news, Facebook and Fascist Banks and the threat to democracy, major discussion on BBC Radio 4 lunchtime news, er no. Programme devoted to @jeremycorbyn anti-antisemitism smear campaign.
• This is only an 'ongoing controversy' because #wato and #bbcnews keep up their trolling and abuse of Jeremy Corbyn.
• 25minutes of anti Corbyn and AS... seriously our country is not being governed, we’re being warned of food shortages and this is what the bbc chooses to lead with......
• What other program would give one hand picked Jewish family from North London the right to "speak for all Jews"? #wato also Diamond just this minute substituted Ms Schindler's word "discrimination" for "persecution". This is propaganda.
• #WATO 30 mins of prime @BBCNews spent on anti semitism in Labour. Is this a legitimate way to spend licence payers money?
• Why didn't Johnny Diamond interview Michael Rosen and his family? Why is he so keen to misrepresent what Jews believe? This looks like an attempt to corrupt democracy.
• It would appear that @BBCRadio4 has decreed that the whole of #wato will be nothing but #torypropaganda on AS and Corbyn. Utterly incredible.
•  Ian Austin is charged with being abusive. Why does @bbcnews grant several minutes of prime BBC Radio 4 lunchtime news to give his side, but the other side or witnesses not heard? Balance, impartiality? 
• This is one of the worst examples of #bbcbias I have ever heard on #wato and I have heard plenty. #bbcstatepropaganda, #bbctorypropaganda

Not content with having their story of choice as the lead item on Broadcasting House such people also wanted it to be the main story on The World This Weekend.

And they must definitely don't want antisemitism in the Labour Party to be made a made topic of conversation on the BBC, even on the day when Ian Austin MP followed Margaret Hodge MP down the disciplinary route.

Yes, they want it all their own way. 

The extended feature itself was scrupulously 'balanced'. First came Ian Austin MP and then the Schindler family. They were in the anti-Corbyn camp. Then came Professor Geoffrey Bindman QC and Richard Burgon MP to represent the pro-Corbyn camp. 

However, after all of this onslaught of foolishness from 'the other side', what do you make of this framing narrative from Jonny Dymond (aka Johnny Diamond) prior to his interview with Mr Corbyn-friendly Sir Geoffrey Bindman? (The emphases underlined here are Jonny's, though the bold emphases are mine):

Cathy Schindler there referred to the ongoing controversy over Labour's adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's definition of anti-Semitism. The refusal to adopt the definition and working examples in full has caused some to doubt the party's commitment to the battle against anti-Semitism. That refusal was in part of the reason why, this week, three Jewish newspapers put on their front pages a statement of their deep concern about Labour's position on anti-Semitism. Why? They said that Jews faced an existential threat if Labour came to power. But the party has adopted the code in full and, in effect, all but one half of the examples that were issued alongside the code. The single sentence that it has not adopted from the one working example has been admitted, it says, so as to allow for legitimate criticisms of Israel. The adoption of the code has yet to be voted on and is still up for consultation.

What do the Twitter crowd (who seems to have missed) make of that?

There's the BBC's Jonny telling The World this Weekend listeners that Labour has basically adopted the IHRA in full, except for "all but" half the added examples and a "single sentence" that sounds entirely reasonable. And it's all up for discussion.

So what's the problem, eh?

And that statement was immediately followed by Jonny introduced Sir Geoffrey, who reinforced this message about the good will and good wording of the Labour re-working of the IHRA definition of antisemitism.

And how did Jonny introduce the controversial QC?

Sir Geoffrey Bindman is a senior barrister, human rights lawyer and visiting Professor of Law at University College London.

Aha, an expert (of a certain kind)!

Is this a case of me being as silly and partisan as the Corbynista/Cadwalldrista crowd? Or am I being reasonable in my criticism of the BBC while the others are being unreasonable?

You decide!

Meanwhile, I'm going back to my early teens and a favourite pop song of mine at the time. (Will it finally overpower the overpowering voice of Comrade McDonnell on this blog?...Update: Aargh, no. It looks as if we're cursed with Old McDonnnell for a view days more yet!

Transcript: Kirsty Wark and Tommy Robinson, 'Newsnight', 1st February 2018

KW: As you heard there, police have commented on the speed at which Osborne was radicalised. The court heard he had been seeking out far-right material online in the weeks before he carried out his attack. Amongst the material he read and saved were tweets from the man known as Tommy Robinson - the former leader of the English Defence League. I spoke to him a little earlier and I asked him if he accepted any responsibility for the radicalisation of Darren Osborne. 

TR: No, of course I don't. I'm actually insulted that you're asking me that. What I can't understand is the narrative from the media this week. All over every news headline is a picture of me. I didn't know this man. I've never met this man. I've never direct-messaged this man, which is a lie that has been put out this week on the media. I can't believe that you've made...

KW: Not on the BBC. 

TR: Yes, on the BBC. Today you called me 'alt-right'. That was a lie as well. But all of the media had said I sent him direct messages via Twitter. I never have. That's a lie, a complete lie told to the whole country. 

KW: (interrupting) You work for an alt-right organisation. That's the only thing that's fair to say. 

TR: No it's not fair to say. No, I don't. I work for a media company in Canada called Rebel Media. Now, the problem I have is that when we're talking about what's radicalised this man, we had 512 people injured and 22 children blown to pieces. We had 48 injured and nine people murdered. We had 49 injured and eight people murdered. We had all of this in a four-week/five-week barrier. And you'd think that what everybody is trying to do is to make it to the fact that Rebel Media sent this man an email inviting him on a silent march. The reason was...

KW: (interrupting) So what he did was, what he did was, and there was evidence that actually he'd been looking you up on the internet quite a lot, and he had looked at and copied tweets - two tweets particularly, and they were on the dashboard. So you tweeted, "Where was the day of rage after the terrorist attacks? All I saw was lighted candles." And the other one is, "Anger. When a Muslim bombed our kids we were told not to look back in anger." What was the purpose of those tweets?

TR: Seriously, can I ask you, you know the first message you've just read, are you going to put up a screen shot of that on your screen? Because you've just completely taken that out of context. What that was was: after Grenfell happened far-left organisations had a day of rage planned. They had leaflets calling for a day or rage. You've got that leaflet because it was part of that tweet. But you've purposely left the leaflet out of it and you're making it sound like I said 'Let's have a day of rage!'. What I was showing people was the hypocrisy in our country that when our children....

KW: (interrupting) ...the situation in this trial...

TR: What you've actually just done is misrepresent the truth of the tweet. That's what you've done on this show, on purpose...

KW: (interrupting) "Anger. When a Muslim bombed our kids we were told not to look back in anger." What was the purpose of that tweet, because that tweet was on the dashboard of Darren Osborne's van when he attacked?

TR: Why are you not sitting here reading...Darren Osborne wrote the reasons why he done this attack. Why are we not talking about the reasons why he done this attack? I'll tell you one of the reasons why he done this attack. What he wrote....

KW: (interrupting) He obsessively looked you up online. That's all I'm saying.

TR: OK, all I'm saying is: he wrote, 'Terrorists march through our country today.' There was an Al Quds march. And the problem I have is you're the BBC News and you did not report on that. 

KW: All I'm saying is: do you accept that there is a lot of hate speech about - and you've condemned that from other people, for example Anjem Choudary, who's now in jail. Do you take any responsibility for that being hate speech? 

TR: You think that's hate speech?

KW: I'm asking.

TR: No, do you think that's hate speech?

KW: I'm asking you if it's hate speech.

TR: No. Categorically not. It's impossible. You have Muslims in this country, in mosques across this country, calling for the death of homosexuals, calling for the takeover of our country. That's real hate speech. Me saying 'Don't look back in anger', me putting out these tweets, is not hate speech in any way. You're trying to paint me...

KW: (interrupting) Why do you think that he obsessively looked for you online? Because actually it's the case that you were presenting in a way that encouraged him to take action against people. 

TR: Absolutely unbelievable that you're saying that. 49 million people watched my videos in that four-week period. 

KW: (interrupting) After...

TR: No, excuse me...and 190 million people read my tweets. The reason why people were searching for me is because I give them the truth, unlike you. You're not giving them the truth. 

KW: (interrupting) Tommy Robinson, the fact is, after he attacked outside Finsbury Mosque, he wrote a letter and in that letter he actually quoted your tweet. All I'm asking you is...

TR: (interrupting) No he didn't quote my tweets. No, no, no...

KW: ...do you have any responsibility...He did!...

TR: Please, for your viewers....

KW: It was heard in court. 

TR: For your viewers...

KW: It was heard in court! 

TR: For your viewers, read what he said. I'll tell you what he said. He quoted Sadiq Khan. He said, "just part and parcel of living in a big city". He quoted Jeremy Corbyn...

KW: (interrupting) He quoted you.

TR: No, he didn't quote me.

KW: No, he did. He quoted you and a tweet. He quoted you in his letter. He quoted that tweet. He quoted...

TR: No, he didn't.

KW: ..."Anger. When a Muslim bombed our kids we were told not to look back in anger." 

TR: Do you know what that was? No, he said "Don't look back in anger". He didn't say those exact words. He said, "Don't look back in anger". The front page of The Sun newspaper, after the Manchester attack, was "Don't look back in anger". He didn't quote me. He quoted a national newspaper.

KW: (interrupting) Do you, do you deny that he quoted you in any way? 

TR: Yes, I completely...no, He gave reasons why he done this... 

KW: (interrupting) So he did quote you? 

TR: No, he didn't quote me. I can't believe why you're not even looking at the reasons. I can't believe you're not looking at the fact we had three massive terrorist attacks. We have 22,000...

KW: (interrupting) That is not what this is about. 

TR: No, this is the reason why he done it. He's told you what it's about...

KW: (interrupting) This is about the rise of right-wing extremists and people being radicalised very quickly online. In court, and indeed the commander of anti-terrorism in the Met....

TR: (interrupting) This is unbelievable. This is unbelievable.

KW: ...said that people are radicalised within four weeks. 

TR: I'm embarrassed for the BBC. We had three terrorist attacks in quick succession. Rather than talking about them as  a radicalising factor and why this man reacted. He told you why he reacted. You want to put it on the fact that I report the truth.

KW: (interrupting) Excuse me. Can I just say: terrorist attacks are appalling. No one is doubting that. All I'm saying is...

TR: So you don't think the terrorist attacks are anything to do with the reason why he done this? You think it is because I said "Don't look back in anger"? 

KW: I am asking, there are contributing factors and he was radicalised online, and the prosecution and the courts...

TR: (interrupting)  His wife said... 

KW: ...and the police said that he obsessively looked at your...looked for you online and quoted your tweets. That's a fact!

TR: The fact is his wife said he was radicalised after your BBC documentary...

KW: (interrupting) Do you think...what's the difference between the hate speech that you push and the hate speech that Anjem Choudary pushes?

TR:...Why don't you sit the producer of that documentary down here and ask him if he feels responsible? 

KW: One final question.

TR: No, you don't. 

KW: Is what Darren Osborne did appalling and reprehensible? 

TR: Of course it is. What sort of silly question is that? He's mowed down innocent people walking down the street. But also what the BBC is doing is irresponsible and disgusting as a media outlet. 

KW: Thank you very much indeed.