Megha Mohan - another update

So the BBC's first global gender and identity correspondent Megha Mohan, who appeared to have deleted her Twitter account after being told off for failing to comply with BBC guidance that “staff should also not post offensive or derogatory comments or content on social media and avoid abusing their position as a BBC employee in personal interactions”, brought her account back to life on 7 December and is busy tweeting again. And Jess Brammar, head of the BBC's news channels, has been singing her praises. She's still working at the BBC. Indeed she's been covering ''the first female Samoan PM'' and the former president of the Marshall Islands who was the first female leader of a Pacific island, and reporting on climate change in places like Samoa, the Marshall Islands and Fiji. There's no stopping her. 

Update on a wayward BBC tweeter

We noted on Wednesday that the BBC's Executive Complaints Unit ruled against Megha Mohan, the BBC World Service’s first gender and identity correspondent, for a tweet on the transgender issue. They ruled against her for failing to comply with BBC guidance saying “Staff should also not post offensive or derogatory comments or content on social media and avoid abusing their position as a BBC employee in personal interactions”. And now this highly prolific BBC tweeter has deleted her Twitter account. If you click on @meghamohan now you'll get the message This account doesn’t exist. I'm wondering if she's still the BBC World Service’s gender and identity correspondent.

The BBC rules against their Gender and Identity Reporter

This is a rather cryptically-written ruling by the BBC's Executive Complaints Unit but it involves Megha Mohan, the BBC World Service Gender and Identity Reporter, and says she didn't comply with the BBC guidance that says, “Staff should also not post offensive or derogatory comments or content on social media and avoid abusing their position as a BBC employee in personal interactions”.

Obviously, the original tweet has gone but a quick scan of Twitter for Ms Wolstencroft's name shows that she was on the receiving end of an intensely aggressive Twitter pile-on by hardline trans activists. It looks as if Megha Mohan couldn't help but join in.

It's far from the first time her tweets have strayed from BBC impartiality.

 

Tweet by Megha Mohan

30 November 2021

Complaint

Megha Mohan, the BBC World Service Gender and Identity Reporter, posted a tweet sharing an online story from the BBC’s Washington Bureau about a transgender teenager, commenting on how well it had been edited but not soliciting ideas.  Edwina Wolstencroft, a former BBC Radio 3 Editor, responded with a different but related story idea, to which Ms Mohan replied in terms which implied criticism of Ms Wolstencroft’s relations with minority groups while at the BBC.  Ms Wolstencroft complained about what she considered a defamatory statement, and called attention to her award-winning record of promoting work by under-represented composers, including women and minority groups. 

---

Outcome

The ECU cannot offer a view on legal questions such as defamation, which are for the courts to decide, but is tasked with making a judgement on whether the BBC’s editorial standards and the Guidelines and Guidance which express them have been complied with.  Accordingly, it considered the complaint in the light of the Guidance on Social Media, which says: “Staff should also not post offensive or derogatory comments or content on social media and avoid abusing their position as a BBC employee in personal interactions”.  In the ECU’s judgement, the tweet’s reference to Ms Wolstencroft’s alleged record at BBC did not comply with this Guidance.  Though the tweet was deleted within five days of being posted, the ECU considered that, in the absence of a further posting to explain why the original tweet had been deleted, this did not suffice to resolve the issue of complaint.

Upheld

---

Further action

The finding was reported to the management of BBC World Service and discussed with Ms Mohan

Trouble at the BBC

As noted on the Open Thread, Julie Bindel has a fascinating article at The Critic which raises serious questions about BBC standards and BBC agenda-pushing. 

Julie - as you'll probably know - is a feminist presently at war with transgender militants, and as far as trying to strike a balance in this bitter 'war' goes, she reckons that the BBC is far more one-sided even than The Guardian. "The BBC appears not to even try", she says. 

Her immediate targets are (1) Megha Mohan, the corporation’s first “gender and identity correspondent” and (2) Ben Hunte, the BBC's first “LGBT correspondent”.

Both express strong opinions and sometimes act and sound more like activists than journalists.

(We have, of course, been following this here).

Julie Bindel says she's heard from BBC journalists that "there is some dissatisfaction in the coverage that Mohan and Hunte are responsible for", what with both of them being "young and junior journalists" and yet being appointed to cover "one of the most contentious issues of the day for one of the world's biggest media outlets". 

She says they've also ignored attempts to broaden their range of issues. 

So, it seems, the big BBC programmes like Today won't feature them. "They’re more likely to be found on the BBC website among articles about YouTube stars and Jeremy Corbyn", she says. 

More broadly, she blames BBC executives "obsessed with generating 'content' that chimes with the mores of a younger audience". 

Plus: 

Privately, some BBC suits give an explanation closer to home. Internal staff surveys show that as many as 2 per cent of all BBC staff “identify” as transgender. The corporation’s LGBT staff forum is willing and able to flex its muscles over editorial decisions that displease members. “We have to tread very carefully to avoid complaints from them,” says one of the BBC’s most senior editors. Some say tensions are growing within the BBC between an older generation of journalists and the younger breed of activists with microphones. 

Very interesting. 

So bad it's (almost) good

“The UK government is completely controlled by Israel” 

asserts Palestinian poster girl Ahed Tamimi. 

“The UK is completely controlled and occupied by Israel and is supporting Israel to kill innocent people who are demonstrating for their rights.” 

she continues.

“They [Zionists] want nothing but to kill all Palestinians so they can take all their land. They believe that all Palestinians should also be killed which shows that they're racist.”

What is it about those people who unintentionally reveal their own thoughts and wishes through this uniquely infantile type of projection? This example is such a blatant ‘reversal of the actualité’ that it’s quite comical. It’s so bad it’s (almost) good. I wonder if the oleaginous Afshin Rattansi from R T agrees with Ahed. I don’t suppose we’ll ever know.

The BBC is undeterred by the negativity surrounding this foolish little liar. (Foolish to tell such obvious lies, but smart enough to manipulate others.)  No wonder Ahed Tamimi is dazed and confused. She has been indoctrinated from birth by professional agitators, the Tamimi clan, but she’s wise enough to tailor her message to suit the audience.

The BBC is promoting Ahed and two other ‘minors’ in a nasty little propaganda film. The producer, Megha Mohan, the BBC's "gender and identity correspondent", has an openly anti-Israel agenda, and with this, the BBC is openly encouraging inflammatory propaganda and violating its remit. It’s quite appalling that it was ever approved.

Tamimi didn’t seem to have had much to complain about in prison, but Krishnan Guru-Murthy manages to prise something detrimental to Israel out of her in this interview. She’s wearing her silver pendant in the shape of ‘One State’ 

Guru-Murthy believes Israel has treated her too harshly for the crime of ‘just a slap’. Who knows whether or not he’s aware of her and her family’s record. Not that she’s responsible for her terrorist Auntie  Ahlam who’s being protected by Jordan,  but she certainly sees her as a role model.

Honest Reporting

“While the BBC shows footage of Tamimi attacking an IDF soldier, for which she spent eight months in an Israeli prison, it fails to give any real background on the Palestinian poster girl for terror. For the real tragedy is not Tamimi’s experience with the Israeli military court system (what the BBC terms a “childhood”). 

Ahed Tamimi’s entire childhood has been spent in an environment permeated with Palestinian terrorism: terror  in which her family has long played an active and prominent role.  For example,  Ahed’s aunt helped plan the horrific Sbarros Pizza restaurant bombing, and her mother posted anatomically precise tutorials on how to most effectively stab Israelis. 

Ironically, this very terrorism is the reason Israel has security measures in the first place.
Since childhood Ahed has learned from her family that all of Israel is occupied Palestinian land, including Tel Aviv, and that she must fight to gain all of it. Hardly a path to peace. And Ahed’s family have placed her personally in danger over and over, for the benefit of cameras. 

Her appearance for the BBC is just the latest in a global propaganda tour, milking her iconic status.

“The rights of children are undoubtedly extremely important. If the BBC were so concerned for the rights of Palestinian children, it would be focusing on the incitement that drives Palestinian minors to confront Israeli soldiers, carry out terror attacks or promote violent extremism. 

Instead the BBC in typical fashion attempts to portray Israel as a militaristic child abuser backed up by the claims of an iconic professional propagandist, a terrorist-affiliated NGO and its own efforts to muddy the legal waters of international law. 

UPDATE
Former IDF military prosecutor Maurice Hirsch, who featured in the BBC film has responded directly on Twitter to the BBC’s Megha Mohan, the journalist responsible. The thread of multiple tweets is a devastating take down from an expert whose insights were clearly edited out of the film in order to favor the Palestinian narrative.

Yes, if you can bear to look at the Twitter timeline of the producer of this programme you can see the agenda. There is no attempt whatsoever to conceal it. No pretence of impartiality or genuine fact-finding. She willfully misunderstands why Palestinian ‘children’ go through military rather than civilian courts.

“Israel says that this is due to an article in the Geneva Convention saying that they are an occupying force” she tweets. I understand that putting Palestinian citizens through Israel's civil courts would necessitate annexation of the West Bank. So that's why. (She probably knows that.)

Another of the children featured claims that she was made to sign a confession in Hebrew. But this is untrue. Maurice Hirsch responds:

But this is something Col Maurice Hirsch refutes. As the Israeli military's chief prosecutor in the West Bank prepared indictments against thousands of Palestinians - including hundreds of children. pic.twitter.com/b7TIPLp3Nu

— Megha Mohan (@meghamohan) August 28, 201

Sadly, you piece is just another example of biased BBC coverage. While we spoke extensively about teenage Palestinian murderers like the murderers of Daphna Meir, the Fogel Family, Ari Fuld and others, you shamefully omitted any reference to them. 1/12

— Maurice Hirsch (@MauriceHirsch4) August 29, 2019

What is a 'gender and identity correspondent' for? How does this role relate to pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel activism? Does the BBC intend to redress the balance at any point?

Update:
BBCWatch has more on this.  Do read. The fact that this film is proving so popular is very disturbing.

Where credit's due

Tim, of 'More of Less' fame, smiling and sporting a leather jacket

Over the years I've given mixed reviews to Radio 4's statistics show More or Less, especially as regards bias. 

For me though, the latest series is proving (pleasingly) to be much stronger on the pluses than the minuses.

And I'm particularly enjoying the programme's increasing focus on whistle-blowing rubbish BBC reporting.

Episode 1 used Radio 4's Today to illustrate silly "apocalyptic" media headlines and hyped-up 'nanny state' reporting about 'rising' child sugar consumption, suggesting that it was largely fake news.

It then moved on to media misreporting of the rising train fares story, ruling that, in the specific instance of BBC reporting cited, "the fault lies not with the rail industry but with the BBC, which misquoted the industry body The Rail Delivery Group".

Ouch!

Episode 2 then investigated the BBC website for a short documentary on 'intersex surgeries' for saying that that the UN believes as high at 1.7% of the world's population has 'intersex' traits, "roughly the same as people with red hair" [a comparison the programme judged deeply misguided and unhelpful].

The BBC reporter behind it was Megha Mohan, the BBC's BBC Gender & Identity Correspondent.

She cited a UN website, which guestimated that the figure could be as high as 1.7%,

But, as More or Less pointed out, "if you dig a little bit further", that website also says it could be as low as 0.05%.

That's a massive difference. It's the difference between 1 person in 60 [Mogha's version] and 1 person in 2000.

Megha Mohan, leader in global breaking news

And More or Less, on digging further, found that that 1.7% guestimate came from an ideological academic - namely the author of Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality.

More or Less also criticised Megha Mohan's piece for focusing on situations where surgeries are debated, which the programme judged "rare". And, on looking into the surgery figures, More or Less presenter Tim Harford said, "So not 1.7%, but 0.017%". So rare indeed.

Alas, Megha herself had been so proud of this documentary:

Oh dear!

Episode 3, in contrast, showed the BBC News Channel's Carrie Gracie actually doing the right thing and expressing shock at a wild statistic from the charity Refuge's Sandra Horley claiming that domestic violence costs the UK public £66 billion a year, a story the BBC had made a headline story on 21st January. The stats don't add up - as per the BBC's head of statistics - and it's pretty much nonsense..At best Refuge trebled the costs. Carrie - the BBC's most famous wage equality campaigner - clearly knows her stats, even if others in the BBC newsroom don't.

Episode 4 made BBC reporting of the '1/20 UK people are Holocaust deniers' story the starting point for its main story. More or Less cast serious doubt on this figure, for many, many, many reasons - all of which (perhaps hopefully thinking) sounded plausible to me - including a potentially deeply confusing question in the survey. It appears, the programme concluded, as if we're in the still grim but significantly less scary 1-2% territory when it comes to the actual number of Holocaust deniers.

And this week's edition, Episode 5, went a good deal further than I ever expected it too in debunking the BBC's Brexit coverage, specifically the BBC's headline claim (across many platforms) that one-third of the UK's businesses are considering moving operations abroad because of Brexit. Tim Harford described those claims as "bizarre", "not so much Project Fear as Project Wrong", and "not worth taking seriously", and duly outlined why. It's well worth listening to. 

In Praise of DB

Talking of DB (me and Sue's old blogging pal), he's on fire again at the moment, and his Twitter feed is a must - if you're into Twitter.

Please follow him if you can.

Here's a selection of his posts from the first three weeks of 2019:

I

Hmm. Maria reminds me of another pro-EU Newsnight employee with a Polish-sounding name, Maya Rostowski. Maya's apparent heavy involvement in a report slagging off her pro-EU Polish politician dad's political opponents, the conservative Law and Justice, raised eyebrows - to put it mildly.

II

Nomia's not a Rod Liddle fan, obviously. 

(In contrast, I thought this from Rod in this week's Spectator, on a related theme, was another gem from the former Today editor).

Nomia isn't new to us. She did a pro-hijab report for BBC One's news bulletins.

III

And here's that very The Young Talks video for your delectation, featuring alt-right-obsessed, left-wing, ever-so-impartial, senior BBC Trending guru Mike Wendling. Enjoy!

IV

This preceded the previous example of the BBC leaping on an anti-Trump story from a major US mainstream media source and swallowing and regurgitating it hook, line and sinker (see next-to-last post). Here the BBC, making it their top News Website story, leaped on an anti-Trump Buzzfeed story that, like an insubstantial pageant, dissolved and appears to have left not a rack behind, leaving the BBC scrambling, discreetly, to bury its tracks. 

(MB has been closely following this on the previous Open Thread). 

V

Ah yes, good old Hugh. Coat always hung up at the door of BBC impartiality. 

And that 'gotcha' so excited the BBC that Reality Check generalissimo Chris Morris was wheeled in in to deliver the coup de grace to poor, babbling Boris. 

Oddly, Chris's take (and other would-be 'reality checks' across the BBC, and elsewhere) piled on just three examples - two throwaway, somewhat ambiguous comments and one co-authored letter with Michael Gove and Gisela Stuart. 

And that was pretty much it. Where was the long, damning list of quotes?

And, to me, this actually, accidentally, showed that Boris had, in reality, made next to nothing of the Turkish EU accession question in the run-up to the EU referendum. 

But "latch on" and make "a huge gotcha moment" of it the BBC tried to do nonetheless.

VI

This one was initially prompted by StewGreen:

Well done More or Less! The BBC's BBC Global Gender and Identity Correspondent (yes, really), to give her full official BBC title, certainly did get called out by Tim & Co, there. Ha ha. 

For more on Megha from me and Sue, please click here. She's very BBC - not into Ivana Trump, a fan of Naomi Klein, someone who wants to explain explain arranged marriage "to white people", and someone who deleted a tweet damning pro-gay rights Ireland for backing Russia in the Eurovision Song Contest!

VII

And, OMG, here's something about Katty:

Yes, Katty actually just-about, in a roundabout, unspecific way, acknowledged that mainstream media types, leaped in too soon on the Buzzfeed Mueller story. but then - having, as DB noted, evidently learned nothing, was straight in their again on the Native American/MAGA-capped schoolboys media fiasco. 

Oh Katty, as we approach Burns Night, please bear this good-natured advice in mind:

O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion.

Aye to that! Cue bagpipes...

Mama

An American woman tweets a picture of herself and her two year old son.

You might think nothing of that but another woman at the Guardian regards it a malicious act (and, being a photo of a white mother and her white son, thinks it's racist too). 

Yes, seriously.

Even the Guardian's online commentariat found this very hard to swallow and have been calling the Guardian reporter out in large numbers...

...but (h/t DB) a 'Senior Reporter at BBC Stories' called Megha Mohan didn't just fail to call the Guardian writer out on that but instead chose to endorse her views by not only tweeting a link to the Guardian piece but also name-checking its writer author and quoting her too (without any distancing/balancing caveats): 

Is this the tip of a BBC iceberg?

*******

Now I see, Googling around, that the BBC has also posted an online article about this (inevitably).

I've not read it yet so I don't know which way it will go - if it goes any way.  So this is 'live blogging'...

Clicking into it the headline is US child migrants: Ivanka's mother and child photo sparks backlash, and the piece begins:

As the daughter of one of America's most divisive presidents, Ivanka Trump is no stranger to controversy. 

But on Sunday, she sparked backlash by sharing a photo of herself holding her two-year-old son, Theodore.

i.e. the daughter of the 'divisive' president 'sparks' (i.e. causes!) a backlash. 

I think I can already guess where this is going (not so much 'slut-shaming' as 'daughter-of-Trump-shaming'!)...

Reading on...

We then get two paragraphs outlining 'the prosecution case' against Ivanka followed by two paragraphs saying that Ms Trump hasn't yet responded to the criticisms and had previously said she'd not work against the administration's policies (points that also help 'the prosecution case'). 

Then comes a section headed What prompted the current outcry? and if you expect the suggested answers might include 'anti-Trump hysteria spreading into hatred against Trump's daughter' and 'media groupthink' then think again...

...because the entire section is spent reinforcing the concerns of critics of the present US government's migration policy, especially as regards child migrants - complete with a link to a BBC video report headlined The missing - consequences of Trump's immigration crackdown (which is just the kind of report you'd expect from such a headline). The entire section is also part of 'the prosecution case'. 'The defence case' doesn't get a look-in.

What's next? Well, a section headed What are social media users saying? And, guess what? Yes, 'the prosecution case' wins out again by a large margin. The BBC reporter here gives us a 4:1 ratio of tweets against Ivanka. The one pro-Ivanka tweet is introduced by saying, "However, not everyone linked the post to the debate on immigration, with some praising its beauty."

Next comes a section headed What has the government's response been? Is this going to be the 'balancing passage'? Well, no. Within two paragraphs President Trump is getting it in the neck for "incorrectly" blaming the Democrats and a "fact check" by the Associated Press is then cited 'proving' the Trump administration to be the bad guys. And then various previous government statements are outlined before the closing image bearing the caption 'Around 700 minors have reportedly been separated from their parents by US immigration authorities' with a child's hand shown grasping a metal fence. 

The BBC has thrown so much detail at us here that it's hard to cling to the fact that there are at least two ways of seeing Ivanka's tweet of her and her son: One is to see it as a harmless photo of a mother and son; the other way is to see it as a malicious political act. 

If you support the first point of view you'll invite people to view the tweet and see it as a lovely tweet. If you support the second point of view you'll make it all about what Ivanka's critics claim it was about. 

The BBC here made it all about what Ivanka's critics claim it was about. It was a partisan piece, little better than the Guardian piece much criticised by those Guardian readers.

Did Megha Mohan write this piece? 

(For more on Megha from ITBB piece click here).

P.S. Katty Kay, the face of the UK in the US, is also on Ivanka's case today:

And a BBC News website article appeared today also containing criticism of Ms Trump. 

Oddly, it also seems to debunk itself. 

Please read it for yourselves and see what you think. It reads to me like a would-be carefully-hedged smear. 

P.P.S. There was a huge, widely-discussed flurry of social media activity this weekend where various high-profile opinion-givers (including a former Obama speechwriter, a New York Times editor-in-chief, a prominent CNN journalist and prominent Muslim rights campaigner (Linda Sarsour) were caught out tweeting an image of suffering child migrants in the USA and denouncing Donald Trump for their plight. 

The image turned out to be from four years ago, when Barack Obama was president. 

Despite being 'fake news', it trended 'bigly'.

I was hoping to read something from Mike Wendling & Co. at BBC Trending about it, who usually love a 'bigly'-trending bit of fake news. But I just somehow knew that Mike Wendling & Co. at BBC Trending, however much it was trending, would not be interested in it. And they haven't been (so far).

For goodness sake, Donald Trump - whose tweets they follow - even tweeted about it, gloatingly. And they've still managed to 'miss' it!

And I think that's easily explained: It was a clear example of 'fake news' from the anti-Trump camp, and it doesn't embarrass the people they enjoy seeing embarrassed so they choose not to report it. 

As Simon the Cat says: Simples!

"It's important for people to understand the difference"

There's an article on the BBC News website that's dividing opinion:

For some this is a case of the BBC "normalising regressive cultures again"; for other's it's the BBC living up to its mission to inform and clearing up "misapprehensions" about arranged marriages. 

The BBC reporter behind the piece, Megha Mohan, does indeed have that purpose, having tweeted:

The reaction to this tweet has been split too. She's getting plenty of 'thank yous', but others are accusing her of being "patronising" and complaining that the headline is racist against white people.

And finally...

...before I go to bed...

...yet more examples of BBC reporters tweeting from the Left, courtesy of the ever-diligent DB at Biased BBC.

First, here's BBC Senior Broadcast Journalist Megha Mohan:

My aunt got me @NaomiAKlein 's book on link between capitalism & climate change for Xmas. Read it in 2 days. Buy it. pic.twitter.com/LKk7ADiKx5

— Megha Mohan (@meghamohan) December 27, 2014

And, second, here's one from one of the BBC's regional Middle East editors, Lina Sinjab (familiar from her reporting from Libya - her home country if memory serves me right):

#Cuba #Havana, for the first time ever! Glad to head there before it gets into Globalisation. More to come when I manage to find internet!
— Lina Sinjab (@LinaSinjab) December 20, 2014

Such opinions really do seem to be 'in their genes'.