'BBC Betrayal'

'The Thunderer' thunders:

The Times view on Tiggy Legge-Bourke and Panorama: BBC Betrayal

The corporation treated Princes William and Harry’s former nanny disgracefully

That the former nanny to Princes William and Harry should have been defamed by a false rumour that she had become pregnant by Prince Charles is scandalous. That this rumour should have emanated from the BBC is appalling. And that in order to extract an apology from the corporation she has had to wait a quarter of a century and take it to court is beyond belief.

Tiggy Legge-Bourke, as she was called when she worked for the royal family, was a victim of a scheme cooked up by Martin Bashir, a BBC reporter, in 1995 to persuade Princess Diana that those around her were in league with her husband and conspiring against her. Bashir hoped this would persuade the princess to grant an interview to the BBC’s Panorama programme.

The plan involved spreading a false rumour that Ms Legge-Bourke, now known as Alexandra Pettifer, had had an abortion as a result of an affair with Prince Charles. According to a joint statement by Pettifer and the BBC, released as part of a court settlement, Princess Diana believed this rumour; not even the sharing of private medical information would persuade her it was untrue. Ms Pettifer says that her life was scarred by it. Ms Pettifer was one of many harmed by Bashir’s wicked scheme, most notably the princess and her family. Prince William said last year, when Lord Dyson’s report into the deceit and cover-up was published, “it brings indescribable sadness to know that the BBC’s failures contributed significantly to [my mother’s] fear, paranoia and isolation that I remember from those final years with her”.

Other victims included those brave enough to question Bashir’s methods. Matt Wiessler, a graphic designer who became suspicious about how his work was being used by the reporter, was never allowed to work for the BBC again. Mark Killick, a Panorama producer, was fired 24 hours after raising concerns about how Bashir had got that interview, and was subsequently defamed.

The financial cost to the BBC is considerable. It is to pay Ms Pettifer £200,000 in damages; it has paid Commander Patrick Jephson, Princess Diana’s former private secretary, £100,000, and Mr Killick £50,000; last year it agreed a settlement with Mr Wiessler worth potentially £750,000. Lord Dyson’s review cost £1.4 million, and the BBC has paid £1.5 million to a charity chosen by the royal family.

The cost to the corporation’s reputation is incalculable. At a time when the rise of streaming platforms is undermining the BBC’s economic raison d’être, one of the main justifications for its continued financing through the licence fee is a moral one. The BBC should represent, at home and to the rest of the world, the highest standards in broadcasting. In the lies told and the pain caused in the making of this programme, it has fallen far from that aspiration.

Tim Davie, the BBC’s director-general, took the opportunity of the settlement with Ms Pettifer to apologise to her, to the Prince of Wales and to William and Harry. The Panorama programme, he said, would never be screened again, in Britain or elsewhere. After many years of near-silence from the corporation’s leaders, Davie’s profuse apology is welcome, but it is not enough. The BBC has yet to come clean about who was to blame for the cover-up of Bashir’s duplicity. If it is to regain the moral authority that a public-service broadcaster should enjoy, it needs to do so now.

Sack and smear

The BBC sacked Mark Killick, a senior journalist and reporter on Panorama, for raising concerns about Martin Bashir's interview with Princess Diana, and then smeared him. Now, 25 or so years later, they are paying compensation to him, doubtless out of the licence fee.

What Mr Killick says bears quoting in full:

The BBC's attempt to try and destroy my reputation rather than investigate my concerns shows just how desperate the BBC was to hide what had happened.

It was an extraordinary attempt to cover up wrongdoing and the climate of fear it created may well have stopped other BBC whistleblowers from speaking out for a generation.

I still find it staggering that the BBC was so determined to conceal the truth that it launched a smear campaign against me to protect its tainted scoop.

I am grateful to Tim Davie and his team for finally setting the record straight. But the damage to the BBC's reputation is immense and you can understand if BBC employees no longer have the courage to speak truth to power.

Redacted distracted

Catching up with what's been happening this week, I see that investigative journalist Andy Webb is still doggedly pursuing the BBC over Bashirgate, using FoI requests against the tight-lipped broadcaster. He wrote in The Times this week about how “even now the BBC is fighting tooth and nail to prevent the exposure of documents which suggest a much more recent attempt to obscure aspects of the scandal.”

To sum up the present state of play between him and the BBC, the Information Commissioner’s Office ruled that the BBC had breached the Freedom of Information Act and threatened the corporation with contempt of court proceedings. So the BBC released lots of already publicly available news clippings and a handful of “almost entirely redacted” emails between senior BBC executives from late last year!

Nonetheless, one detail did emerge which piqued his interest:

In an email of October 31, 2020, Bashir replies to questions posed by his boss, the executive editor Richard Burgess, concerning the “Diana note”. On November 13 Burgess emails a group of BBC bigwigs, including the company secretary, Phil Harrold, for which we have just the intriguing title: “Here are the notes from my conversation with Martin Bashir today . . .” Yet on November 7 Harrold had briefed the BBC board in an email: “. . . we are unable to discuss any of this with Martin Bashir, as he remains seriously unwell”. The board may have cause to wonder whether there’s something they missed?

Andy Webb has appealed against “the BBC’s heavy censorship of the disclosed documents” and has a second FoI request awaiting a ruling by the ICO. He says:

It is a painstaking process, winkling documents from the BBC in this way, yet it was a single document released to me in October 2020 that ignited the fury of Diana’s brother Earl Spencer and ultimately led to the setting up of the Dyson inquiry. I suspect there is more to come and that there are tough questions which the BBC has yet to face on how current bosses attempted to manage the scandal only 12 months ago.

I wish him luck. 

Another twist in the Martin Bashir scandal

In another extraordinary twist, Martin Bashir has u-turned and written an apologetic letter to the mother of murdered nine-year-old school girl Karen Hadaway admitting that he lost her daughter's clothes. 

He's spent 17 years claiming he couldn't remember doing so and even in May this year was still saying, ‘I may have lost it but I don’t remember.’ 

Ms Hadaway called his apology ‘utter nonsense’ and ‘too little, too late’, adding: 

When I met him, my husband had just had a breakdown and been in hospital for seven weeks – completely broken because he couldn’t do anything about his little girl’s killer. The BBC was our last hope. We’d been let down by everyone. Bashir spent hours with me, we met twice – how could he have forgotten me? When he pretended he never met me, I felt more powerless than ever. My husband died not long after of a heart attack. His heart was broken, literally.

The Mail on Sunday reports that Ms Hadaway is now taking legal advice and is considering pursuing the BBC for compensation.

BBC News

I

It's good that Matt Wiessler, the designer scapegoated by the BBC in the Martin Bashir/Princess Diana Panorama scandal, has finally received compensation [some £750,000 apparently] 'from the BBC', though it appears as if every penny of it will actually be paid by the licence fee payer. 

The licence fee payer has already forked out £1.5 million for the Dyson review into the scandal, and paid out about £1.5 million to a charity chosen by the Royal Family because of the Bashir scandal, and looks set to compensate former royal nanny Tiggy Legge-Bourke over smears spread about her by Mr Bashir.

II

Meanwhile, BBC DG Tim Davie has been talking again, this time telling a leadership conference that he feels 'exhausted' by the 'pathetic' flapping of some who 'surround' him, and he doesn't want them around him. [Are they among those who have recently departed, or will be soon departing?]

Daily, we are on the front pages of the papers. You have to judge where something is serious, and it’s not necessarily what’s the biggest press headline. I might get an email now that’s genuinely a problem that hasn’t got any press. 

You don’t want to surround yourself with people who flap and generate all this, ‘Oh it’s really serious.’ It’s not. I’m exhausted by all of that and I find it slightly pathetic. Sorry if that sounds nasty. 

In public-eye jobs we’re in the middle of the so-called culture wars and navigating that in my life is huge, in terms of what’s progressive versus what’s woke. We’re constantly being dragged around on this.

I feel some sad violin music is needed for poor Tim, whilst we wonder what he means by 'navigating' in terms of 'what's progressive versus what's woke'.

 

III

Talking of which, according to The Daily Mail the BBC is running its own in-house training about 'unconscious bias', warning against 'micro-incivilities', and that kind of rubbish. 

What struck me here is that the Mail says it has been pursuing the BBC over this through FOI requests and the BBC has refused to answer them twice before being forced to reveal the information by the Information Commissioner's Office. 

Woke or otherwise, that's very BBC.

''BBC Hit By New Bashir Shame''

“The BBC has a really grim bit of reading in The Mail on Sunday. This is another Martin Bashir-related story. Goes on for pages and pages and it is tough stuff for BBC people to read”, said Andrew Marr this morning. 

He didn't elaborate, or mention the story again. 

This morning's BBC News Channel paper review also merely mentioned it, with Victoria Derbyshire laying heavy emphasis on her own words, “it claims”.

The Mail on Sunday's remarkable investigation into how Martin Bashir took the Babes In The Wood victim's bloodied clothes from her mother, and then lost them, focuses on how that was followed by “derisory” efforts to find them by the BBC. 

The loss, the Mail reports, was only found out when the mother asked for them back to help police review the evidence and help convict the chief suspect.

As with the Princess Diana scandal, it's the allegations of a cover-up by the BBC that are particularly telling:

At the time, a BBC spokesman announced 'extensive inquiries' had been made to find them. 

But we can reveal today that the Corporation failed to even carry out the most basic checks, including speaking directly to Bashir. 

Key journalists who worked alongside him on the Babes In The Wood documentary also said they were never contacted. 

Nor were the families of Karen and fellow victim Nicola Fellows, nor a forensic scientist named by the programme's editor as an expert who could analyse scene-of-crime material. 

The acting director-general of the BBC at the time, Mark Byford, has also admitted no 'formal investigation' was held into the missing clothes.

Well might Julian Knight MP say in reaction, “These allegations, if proven, would amount to one of the most shameful episodes in the history of the BBC. This could be the BBC's Milly Dowler phone hacking moment.” 

His Commons Culture select committee will be interviewing Tim Davie on Tuesday. 

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

Update - The story was discussed during this morning's Broadcasting House paper review. Only one guest commented on it, namely  former Conservative MP for North Devon Peter Heaton-Jones, who also previously worked for...guess who?...yes, the BBC:

Paddy O'Connell: What is the front page of the Mail on Sunday, Peter?

Peter Heaton-Jones: Well, yes I thought I should dip into the world of journalism from my previous life Paddy, and so...the Mail on Sunday is obsessed with the BBC, has been for some time, shows no signs of waning. So you can read about the BBC and the Mail's view of it on pages 1, 2, 6, 7, 8 and 26, should you be so disposed. I love the BBC. I worked here for 20 years and I think that the licence fee is the right way to fund the BBC. Let me get that out of the way first. But the Mail says one thing in its editorial which I think has some substance to it, and it's this: They...quote, “The BBC's closed and haughty elite with its insistence on being judge and jury in any case where it comes under criticism, ploughs on regardless”. And I just think if there's one lesson for the BBC to learn, it's you can get it wrong sometimes, don't always defend yourself to the hilt if someone accuses you of getting something wrong. 

Paddy O'Connell: And this front page is another scandal involving the disgraced journalist Martin Bashir.

Peter Heaton-Jones: Yes, “BBC hit by new Bashir shame”, they say on page 1 - and about 18 other pages. It's not a good story, which I don't think I want to go into detail about Paddy, but it's another example of how I think the Mail and certain other newspapers will try to find any chink in the BBC's armour. They are there, but they find them very actively.

---------------- 

Further update [Sunday evening] -  The BBC has radically undermined BBC apologist Peter Heaton-Jones tonight. 

He said it wasn't a good story, but the BBC obviously disagrees. They've taken onboard the Mail on Sunday's investigation.

As a result, the BBC has now issued an apology, saying they're “extremely sorry” over the loss of the murdered schoolgirl's clothes. 

This is important, and needs exploring further, though the BBC website report - true to form - spins the 'cover-up' claim as wrong, to the BBC's advantage.

Maybe time will tell, or maybe it won't.

Whatever, well done to the Mail on Sunday, however many pages they took over it.

Personal Feelings Matter.

What an idiot I am; and an absolute fool for wasting all those precious hours-I’ll-never-get-back trying to be forensic and scrupulous and providing evidence in links that no one can ever be bothered to click on. 

Why on earth did I mistake diligence for persuasiveness? I was mad, probably visualising justice, like in the good old black and white days when truth prevailed, and all 12 angry men came round in the end against all the odds even though they were impatient, tired, and dying to get home to snap at the wife and kids.

I’m prone to over-thinking and quite slow on the uptake but thankfully I’ve seen the light praise be!  I now realise that no one cares about facts. Sorry, “facts”.

I accidentally watched part of a special parliamentary inquiry into MartinBashirGate on T V.  The one where a select committee of MPs sit in a socially distanced horseshoe in order to humiliate certain hand-picked individuals and make them squirm. It reminded me of a cross between a severe dressing down by a committee of headmasters, and an interrogation by the European Court of Human Righteousness.

To be fair It was shown on the actual BBC. Tony Hall, Alistair Burt, and the current D.G. Tim Something-or-other came in for a grilling. 

“Nowt to do with us, gov” 

they declared, one by one. 

“It was that rogue Bashir. How could we have known? None of us had ever even heard of him”. 

(Funny dat. I’d heard of him and I’m not even a Director General of a major broadcasting organisation) 

“and anyway” 

they continued, 

“Bashir’s errant Panorama was a one-off, because believe me (us) Brand Panorama represents gold standard BBC.”

 But what about a certain Mr. Savile, asked no-one whatsoever, and a certain John Sweeney? Weren’t they Panoramas too? Or Panodramas as per a recent, witty jest.

You may well think that all Panoramas Matter, but poor little Martin Bashir was thrown under the bus and hung out to dry; don’t feel too sorry for him though because he’s still on full pay! Not that I can be arsed to check that out as a fact, what really matters is it’s how. I. feel.

 

From today's papers...

Though regarding BBC Radio 4's afternoon plays as "vital" for our national culture, especially in a time of lockdown, that doyenne of radio critics Gillian Reynolds, writing in The Sunday Times today, admits that "plays that don't preach, accuse or induce guilt" are "hard to find" some days. 

"Radio 4's afternoon drama often sounds as if it's coming from a pulpit", she writes. "Race, class, gender: You will find lectures on them all here."

*******

The Mail on Sunday reports that Jeremy Clarkson has turned down new DG's Tim Davie appeal for him to return to the BBC, accusing the BBC of no longer being interested in broadcasting a variety of views, and freezing out presenters who failed to be politically correct:

Jeremy Clarkson: He [Tim Davie] was saying the other day, 'Oh, come home'. But the truth is, you'd struggle on the BBC now. It's so unbelievably right on. You just couldn't say anything which I make my living from saying.

How intriguing that Tim Davie tried to bring Jeremy Clarkson back to the BBC though! At least someone at the BBC doesn't want to freeze him out.

*******

The Martin Bashir affair is getting a lot of coverage in the papers this weekend. Accusations of a cover-up by the BBC over how Mr Bashir obtained his interview with Princess Diana are deepening. Lords Hall and Birt have been now dragged into it. It's still a remarkable thing that Martin Bashir was brought back in from the cold again by the BBC in 2016 and made, of all things, the corporation's Religion editor. 

The Sunday Papers

 

The Crook O'Lune (near Morecambe)

The Sunday papers have arrived on my laptop, so here's a selection of today's top stories:

1. Charles Moore isn't going to be the next BBC chairman

The Sunday Times reports that Charles Moore has ruled himself out of running for BBC chairman on "personal" grounds. He's not even applying. Unfortunately. Incidentally, John Simpson isn't impressed with the way the paper has covered this:

Last week's Sunday Times reported that Boris Johnson wanted Charles Moore to be the chairman of the BBC. Today, in a much less prominent story, it says Moore has ruled himself out, on personal grounds.'

The Sunday Times is behaving like the BBC there. 

2. BBC journalist Martin Bashir "misled" Diana’s brother to secure bombshell interview

So claims The Sunday Times. The paper alleges that Martin Bashir, now the BBC's religious affairs correspondent, "obtained the scoop under a false pretext and by using fake bank statements". It says the allegations "will raise difficult questions for the BBC" as the Corporation conducted its own internal investigation at the time and cleared itself. The BBC says Mr Bashir is "unwell and unable to respond" but has issued a statement reiterating its defence of his behaviour. 

3. Camilla Long on BBC Four's Black Classical Music

In her Sunday Times review column, Camilla Long notes that the presenters (Sir Lenny Henry and Suzie Klein) had "to keep reminding us what dreadful victims these talented people were":

At the end of nearly every scene, there would be a ceremonial confronting of the material, in which they demanded to know from various guests, and I paraphrase, “Why isn’t he more famous? Who were the racists who suppressed his cantatas? You began to think, why don’t they just let the music speak for itself? But as it went on you realised, it wasn’t about the music at all.

True.

4. The BBC tells off Dame Jenni Murray one last time

After her swift, post-BBC attack on the BBC in yesterday's Daily Mail, the Sunday Telegraph quotes the BBC's official response. It's a final dig at the opinionated former Woman's Hour presenter:

We wish Jenni well in her new career as a columnist but the public will understand the importance of impartiality whilst working at the BBC.

5. Michael Gove on Frankie Boyle's New World Order

The Mail on Sunday has an interview with Michael Gove. Here's what he says about Frankie Boyle's New World Order:

You have a group of comedians who engage in a 30-minute seminar informed by Marxist ideas and they think jokes about 'killing whitey' are worth the licence fee, then you have to ask a question. And the question is, why should it be the case that people in Middlesbrough and Mansfield should pay out of their salaries so that Oxbridge graduates can trash their values in that way?

A good question.

In contrast

The interview that followed Edward Stourton's interview with Mona Siddiqui could hardly have been more different. It was a Martin Bashir interview with a Trump-supporting evangelist, Franklin Graham (son of Billy Graham).

Edward Stourton's introduction had a mocking tone and then came the c-word - "controversy".

The "controversy" arises because of his beliefs and because various campaigners in the UK want to stop his visit to Blackpool later this year.

Martin Bashir interrogated Mr. Graham in the manner of a prosecution barrister, constantly invoking the "offence" Mr. Graham's words have caused (to Muslims and LGBT people).

Franklin Graham still believes things that all Christians used to believe. He believes in God, and that God is involved with the world, that the way to eternal life is through Jesus Christ, that Islam is a false religion, and that homosexual sex acts are sinful.

He's definitely not a 'BBC Christian'.

Martin Bashir is, and gave Franklin Graham a very chilly grilling. 

Focusing the blame

One of the BBC's hallowed Christmas Eve traditions is their now yearly piece from Bethlehem about how hard-done-by those poor Palestinian shepherds abiding in the fields (or in concrete buildings) are thanks to those horrible Herod-like Israelis.

This year, however, there was an added twist: Caesar Donaldus was also to blame. 

Take the BBC's very own Christmas fairy Yolande Knell.

She was on Radio 4's Sunday on Christmas Eve, and here's how Edward Stourton introduced her piece:

Later this morning the head of the Latin Catholic Church in Jerusalem will, in accordance with tradition set off on a journey to Bethlehem where he'll celebrate Midnight Mass tonight. But these days the route means he'll have to go through Israel's West Bank separation barrier - a reminder that even at Christmas the politics of the place aren't far away.

The problem this year, according to Yolande, wasn't just Israel and its separation barrier and its "military watchtower built into the high wall at the edge of Bethlehem". No, it was Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital that is scaring off the tourists, leaving the streets of Bethlehem mostly empty. People there aren't happy bunnies.

And Yolande wasn't the only one at it. Martin Bashir was all across the BBC on Christmas Day, reporting from Bethlehem. Here's just one example (from BBC Breakfast):

And, at the very beginning of the Christmas narrative, here in Bethlehem, in a land defined by walls of separation, a renewed call for reconciliation. Here in Manger Square, a midnight service has been held that the Church of them as nativity, where the Archbishop of Jerusalem said that, while Jesus was born in a town under Roman occupation, he was identified as the Prince of peace.

For him too though, it was mainly about Big Bad Donald Trump.

For much more on this please read a couple of posts from BBC Watch:

The BBC’s Christmas message: Trump ruined it – part one

The BBC’s Christmas message: Trump ruined it – part two

Didn't the Palestinians with their reputation for violently rioting, especially after their leaders calls for (days of quiet prayer) 'days of rage', also have something to do with the fall-off in tourists? Didn't Palestinian leaders calling for - and enacting - the cancellation of non-religious festivities in Bethlehem also have something to do with it? 

If it did, the BBC wasn't saying. Easier to blame Trump and the Israelis. 

Who to believe again?

Well, the Tower Hamlets story has got a whole lot more complicated and the question 'Who to believe?' has become even murkier. 

Andrew Norfolk, the Times journalist who bravely exposed the Rotherham grooming scandal and who first broke the Tower Hamlets story on Monday morning, is coming under severe fire and facing accusations of 'sensationalism' and 'misreporting' from various quarters, especially the left-leaning media and Muslim organisations. 

His latest update does suggest that the story is a good deal less simple than it first appeared.

The 'white Christian girl' comes from a troubled family background, involving drugs. It appears that she comes from a family with a non-practising Muslim background - though the Muslim heritage of parts of the family is (curiously) disputed. The grandmother into whose care the poor girl is now being entrusted doesn't speak perfect English either (apparently) and may take her out of the country.

Reading the court order itself doesn't resolve the question of whether the judge praised or damned (or damned with faint praise) the Times's reporting. The court order itself contains no such praise. The praise (directly) quoted in the Times itself must have been made in court or in a communication between the court and the the Times (unless we assume that Mr. Norfolk was making it up). 

Reading Martin Bashir and Callum May's BBC rebuttal of the Times's reporting last night (and then thinking about it overnight), it struck me that that they had got it wrong by mixing up the judge with the court-appointed guardian. I went to bed confused by that.

They asserted in their opening paragraph:

There were no concerns about the welfare of a Christian girl said to have been fostered by a Muslim family, a family court judge has ruled.

but several paragraphs later they wrote:

The court-appointed guardian visited the foster family and reported no problems and that the child had been well cared for.

That didn't make sense to me, and reading the court order tonight confirms that I was right to smell a rat.

It makes it clear that the family court judge herself did not rule that "there were no concerns". She had nothing whatsoever to say on that point. It was the 'court-appointed guardian' who had no concerns on that front, not the judge.

The BBC reporters (Mr. Bashir and Mr. May) obviously confused the views of the 'court-appointed guardian' with that of the 'family court judge'. 

Given that their report was full of criticism of other media outlets' reporting, this was a woeful slip on their part.

(And even the Independent offshoot iNews says the BBC got this wrong).

Andrew Norfolk

That said, Andrew Norfolk does need to answer some serious questions. 

I watched last night's Newsnight, and from the very start Newsnight took the line that the reporting of the story (by the Times and others) had been 'disappointing' (as one of its talking heads put it) and that there was 'nothing to see here'. That was much as would expect from Newsnight. It was what I'd seen on the BBC website too. The BBC was 'of one voice' on this. 

But one of Evan Davis's guests was Andrew Norfolk himself. Newsnight, however, firmly placed him in the dock.

He was asked about why he had failed to mention that "the appointed guardian had found no problems" and about whether the Times's headline and strapline were "appropriate" in suggesting that "the judge had responded to the media coverage". 

Well, we're getting ever deeper and deeper into minutiae but, re-reading all of Andrew Norfolk's reports, I agree with his defence that if anyone read the article he published yesterday they'd find that he did indeed quote the judge as saying that the media coverage was no factor in her decision. 

That said, Evan was asking about this headline and strapline:

Well, I think Mr. Norfolk's defence still holds up there. The headline didn't say what Evan implied it said. The implications of the strapline have been discussed above (in paragraph 5 of this post) and it doesn't reinforce what Evan was implying either. 

However, when Andrew Norfolk responded to Evan Davis's charge that he'd failed to mention that "the appointed guardian had found no problems" and said that he "did" reflect the child's guardian had no concerns, my careful re-reading of all of his reports found that he actually didn't reflect that in any of them. Evan, evidently taken aback, replied, " If you said the guardian had no concerns, I'm sorry. I didn't see it. I looked at the piece". Well, I have to say that I'm with Evan here. I've looked at the piece - and all the other pieces - and, as I say, I can't find any mention of that in any of them. (Can you?)

The strong whiff of deep unease I have about this is that the elephant in the room in all of the BBC's coverage of this story that I've seen - including Newsnight's coverage - has been the very elephant that provoked so much shock when the story was first reported - i.e. the fact that a Christian girl was placed by Tower Hamlets council in the care of two Muslim families where, according to the Times, the women wear niqabs or burkas, and remove Christian crosses from necklaces, and didn't let the child eat bacon, and insulted Western women's morals and Western culture.

The BBC seems to have exorcised any suggestions of Muslim extremism from their reporting (suggestions the Times took from an official Tower Hamlets report).

The whole thing has felt like a concerted effort at deflection from the BBC.

Any thoughts you might have on this would be gratefully received (as ever).

Who to believe?

Andrew Norfolk's continuing coverage in The Times of the case of the five-year-old Christian girl placed into the care of Muslims families by Tower Hamlets Council is now being strongly countered by the BBC News website. 

Since the story's initial reporting, the BBC website has posted a video headlined 'My Muslim family fostered kids from different faiths' and featured a full-length article headlined 'My Muslim family and our foster kids' - both based on the same family and both promoting a positive view of Muslim fostering of non-Muslim children. The BBC's purpose in vigorously pushing such a story isn't hard to guess.

Three new articles have been published today following yesterday's ruling that the girl should be removed from the Muslim family now caring for her and placed with her maternal grandmother instead (as reported in this morning's Times): Ruling over 'Muslim foster case' girl; Muslim foster case: The rules and the reality; and 'No concerns' with mixed faith foster case. 

The last of those articles - by Martin Bashir and Callum May - is the most remarkable in that it abruptly dismisses The Times's take on the story in its opening paragraph - a statement which to anyone who has read about the story elsewhere might sound uncannily like a 'nothing to see here' kind of statement:

There were no concerns about the welfare of a Christian girl said to have been fostered by a Muslim family, a family court judge has ruled.

And that's that as far as the ruling itself is concerned, despite it seeming to be a very limited take on the judge's ruling compared to other reports - and very different to that of Andrew Norfolk today. 

The Bashir/May article - just as the main BBC report this morning did -  then spends much of the rest of its time giving the Council's defence while focusing repeatedly of criticism of the newspaper reporting of the story. 

It reads like a rebuttal. 

According to Mr. Norfolk, however, the judge specifically praised the Times in her ruling (saying it "acted responsibly in raising 'very concerning' matters of 'legitimate public interest'), and, contrary to the BBC report, suggested that the judge did have concerns given that she said that councils should seek "culturally-matched placements" for vulnerable children:

None of those direct quotes appears in those BBC's reports.

The full court order is apparently going to be published. This is absolutely vital here as the BBC's take on what Khatun Sapnara ruled and the Times's take on what she ruled are so wildly different that one media organisation must be grossly misreporting the story, and could even end up being seriously discredited over this.

P.S. Newssniffer shows that the Bashir/May report has been edited, possibly to tone down the impression of editorialising. The first version read:

Contrary to some media reports, the family was English-speaking.

The revised version reads:

Contrary to some media reports the council claimed the foster family was English-speaking.

Martin Bashir makes a point

The go-ahead Bishop of St. Albans

Radio 4's Sunday featured the following exchange this morning:

Justin Welby: I'm really quite bowled over by the genuine level to which Uganda has accepted a volume of refugees which, proportionate to their population, is the equivalent of us taking, I don't know, two-and-a half to three million. And this is in a poor country that's led by the president who says, "We don't use the word 'refugees'. These are fellow human beings, fellow Africans". And what a challenge it is to our own politics!
Martin Bashir: Do you mean by that that it's a contrast with some of the rhetoric that we've heard perhaps since the referendum?
Justin Welby: I think it's a very powerful contrast, but some of the political rhetoric is so much in contrast to the rhetoric we heard today, which we saw lived out in communities that are by any European standards poor beyond our imagining. 

Martin Bashir's question there showed him taking the opportunity to make a point. 

The programme also ended with a discussion about Brexit, framed in the following fashion: 

Good morning. On this week's Sunday a Church of England bishop goes head to head with the Farming Minister over  his fears that mishandling Brexit could bring about a food crisis in the United Kingdom.

It has to be said though that the The Bishop of St Albans, the Rt Rev Dr Alan Smith, considerably toned down his language during the actual discussion with George Eustice, which was handled fairly by William Crawley. 

A question

This morning's Sunday featured a discussion between the BBC's Martin Bashir and The Tablet's Christopher Lamb about Catholic-Islamic relations under Pope Francis. This is part of their exchange:

Martin Bashir: Is this not also Pope Francis and the way he's applying the Christian gospel? So just as the world turns away from migrants desperately crossing perilous waters, many losing their lives in the process, and there's Pope Francis, he goes to the island of Lampedusa, welcomes and prays with them. And as the resurgence of right-wing populism expresses itself in anti-Islamic rhetoric, now we have Pope Francis deciding to visit nations like Egypt and Bangladesh. 

Christopher Lamb: The Pope has, throughout his papacy, been keen to de-link Islam from Islamic terrorism, or the the faith of Islam from terrorist acts in the name of God, and I think he'll be keen to again stress that message, whilst also calling on Islamic leaders, by building bridges with them, to also condemn those act of terrorism.

Martin Bashir's question was rather loaded, wasn't it?

Echo chamber

This morning's Sunday began with an intra-BBC discussion of the Trump executive order between the BBC's new religious affairs correspondent Martin Bashir and the BBC's chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet.

Of course, they didn't give anything approaching a disinterested, hands-off, neutral, impartial take on the story. 

They both made their disapproval very plain indeed, and piled on argument after argument against the presidential move. 

Mr Bashir, in particular, appears not to have entirely broken free from his old 'MSNBC opinionated host' practices. ("Lyse, the seven nations chosen by Trump appear to be less than carefully selected"),

And I had to smile (grimly) at Lyse, without batting an eyelid, citing the internet to fuel damaging conspiracy theories about Mr Trump's motivations. 

Again, the whole thing is worth transcribing for posterity:

Martin Bashir: At a signing ceremony in the White House on Friday President Donald Trump's signed an executive order temporarily suspending immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries and blocking all refugees from entering the United States for 120 days. Mr Trump said the ban was necessary to protect the United States from terrorists. Yesterday, civil rights organisations issued lawsuits to release several individuals being held at US airports and last night a federal judge issued an emergency ruling to prevent the deportation of any travellers from those seven Muslim-majority countries who'd already entered the United States. Around the world allies and critics have voiced concern about what the new American policy could mean. Mr Trump told reporters yesterday that the policy was "working out very nicely". Just before coming on air I asked the BBC's Chief International Correspondent Lyse Doucet what reaction there'd been from Islamic Nations.

Lyse Doucet: I'm in Saudi Arabia where that the leaders are the custodians of the holiest shrines - the two holy shrines in Islam - Mecca and Medina, and talking to people here some say, well, that the right of the United States but other are very, very critical. They say it's racist, it's illegal and it's a huge black mark on the United States. So, and I think, as more and more stories continue to come out of people stopped at the airport, people whose lives will be torn apart. The stories you're hearing now are heartbreaking. People have waited years and years for their green card or to be accepted as refugees now literally been turned back.

Martin Bashir: Iran's Ministry of Foreign Affairs called the executive order, and I'm quoting a statement, "a clear insult to the Islamic world and a great gift to extremists and their supporters."

Lyse Doucet: Many said that, those who study groups like this so called Islamic state and Al Qaeda, who have long seen their mission to make the West to turn against Islam, so that this would provide fodder for recruitment, it would give more fuel to the fire - and, literally, they are fires in the Middle East caused by the so-called Islamic State fighters and this proves their point. So it is a very, very dangerous, a very potent weapon, in the hands of a so-called Islamic state. And I think the distinction has to be that former president Clinton, former President Barack Obama, Western leaders, have talked about about the need to fight against those elements who used Islam, the religion of Islam, for violence, for political reasons, But it is not the same thing as condemning a whole religion on the basis of religion. But we've seen now, not just in the United States but across Europe as well, far-right leaders, populist leaders, using this as a political weapon to tarnish an entire religion because of actions carried out by those...and those who know the faith well say that it is a distortion of of the religion.

Martin Bashir: Lyse, the seven nations chosen by Trump appear to be less than carefully selected, given that many of the 9/11 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, not on the list, and Pakistan, which is known to have been the location for the training of hundreds of terrorists and also housed Bin Laden for ten years, also not on the list.

Lyse Doucet: And Afghanistan. I've been speaking to Afghans since this order was issued and they're surprised and relieved that they're not on the list, because some of the attacks that have been carried out in the United States have been carried out by people with links to Afghanistan - second generation immigrants to the country. And, of course, Pakistan - the tribal areas of Pakistan -  are said to be Al Qaeda Central. And I'm in Saudi Arabia. 15 of the 19 hijackers in 9/11 came from Saudi Arabia, which had led the cynics to say - and you can find now on the internet the maps which show the countries which had been banned and the ones which haven't, and some other countries like Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Turkey, are places where Donald Trump does business. I visit places like Syria and Iraq. We see what groups like so-called Islamic State has done. But the reaction is not to ban everyone on the basis of their religion, to condemn an entire religion, because the United States and other countries have to work with Muslim leaders worldwide to try to counter this extremist threat

Martin Bashir: Lyse Doucet.

When the controversial remark hits the fan

A recent tweet from DB

There's so much going on at the moment that it's hard to keep up. So for the record...

The BBC replaced the excellent Caroline Wyatt as its Religious Affairs Correspondent last month. Ms Wyatt has, sadly, been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

Her replacement is a committed Christian, Martin Bashir. 

Mr Bashir is best known for his interviews with Princess Diana and Michael Jackson. 

The BBC report (last month) announcing his appointment puts the controversial side of Mr Bashir's past in the following delicate fashion:

He resigned from MSNBC in 2013 after making controversial remarks about former US vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

You can see him making those remarks here. He talks of Mrs Palin being "America's resident dunce", accuses her of "scraping the barrel of her long-deceased mind", talks of "her well-established reputation as a world-class idiot", and then - referring to a notorious slave owner and the punishment known as 'Derby's dose' (which involved defecating into the slave's mouth) - suggests, "If anyone truly qualifies for a dose of discipline from Thomas Thistlewood then she would be the outstanding candidate".

It's to be hoped that he'll tone it down a bit when reporting on the Church of England's next synod.