So, according to the Mail, Michael Vaughan was forced out of his BBC cricket commentating role by six disgruntled members of staff who work on the BBC's football and digital outputs. They sent their email anonymously and didn't seek a meeting with him. Charming!
The three top-rated comments below the article are:
BBC are 'WOKE' and employ 'Woke' staff. General public do not agree with their views! They are not neutral.
Hopefully the BBC lose the cricket commentary contact as this sets a dangerous precedent.
Oh look the minority dictating to the majority again......the new normal.
Meanwhile, it was inevitable that culture secretary Nadine Dorries getting rugby league and rugby union confused would be headline news on the BBC News home page. Some people's every 'gaffe' gets the full BBC treatment. Others can 'gaffe' away to their hearts content and the BBC will cover for them by not reporting it. It seems very selective who gets each kind of treatment.
And, as discussed on the outgoing open thread, the BBC is giving an uncritical ear to Lewis Hamilton's call to stop giving 'older voices' a platform. The BBC News website piece by Andrew Benson, the BBC's chief F1 writer, is full of language that backs up Lewis. That said, would Mr Benson dare do anything other at at the BBC these days?
Nadine Dorries has been interviewed by Charlotte Ivers of The Sunday Times. Here are her latest comments on the BBC from that interview:
There is a problem with groupthink within the BBC, and I don’t think those people think they are left or they are right. I think they just believe they are absolutely right about everything. And they have a world view and a view of the UK, which is, I think, sometimes very wrong.
Our responsibility is to save the BBC from itself, because it is that polar bear on a shrinking ice cap. It’s a global British brand, which must be protected. If you could make sure you get that line in, Charlotte. That branding must be protected.
I’m afraid the BBC in its present format, in its present funding model, will not exist into the future. Whether I’m here or not, it will hit the buffers as more people refuse to pay the licence fee. You have to open your eyes and see what’s coming.
Shippers & Co. at The Sunday Timestell us that Boris is trying to "save his tottering premiership" through "a series of populist announcements", including:
•Freeze the BBC licence fee for two years to help the cost of living.
And this morning Nadine Dorries has indeed announced a two-year freeze on the licence fee that the Mail on Sunday says, "with anticipated inflation rises, means the BBC will need to find savings of circa £2billion". And the Culture Secretary has just tweeted:
This licence fee announcement will be the last. The days of the elderly being threatened with prison sentences and bailiffs knocking on doors are over. Time now to discuss and debate new ways of funding, supporting and selling great British content.
Part of “operation red meat” - distract from partygate by effectively cutting BBC funding again. This will mean services will have to be cut, staff in news and elsewhere will be lost, more mistakes will be made. Short-sighted doesn’t cover it.
Also in the Times today, I post to pre-empt the defunders who will pointlessly clog up my timeline. Just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean the public don’t support the BBC.
And in response to Nadine's tweet, Rob simply wrote:
Oh great.
Things are moving. Pro-BBC Twitter is already up in arms.
The Daily Telegraphhas 'seen' a letter from Nadine Dorries to Tim Davie concerning the BBC's coverage of the antisemitic incident on Oxford Street.
The Culture Secretary wants to know what actions the BBC has taken so far and how the corporation intends to resolve the issue “in a suitably timely manner”.
Don't we all!
The BBC spokesman quoted in the report strikes a more emollient tone than earlier BBC spokesmen on the issue, some of which reminded me of Corbyn era Labour Party official responses to charges of antisemitism against their party and leader, even down to the 'we oppose all forms of racism' language. This time, however, the BBC spokesman said:
Anti-Semitism is abhorrent. We strive to serve the Jewish community, and all communities across our country, fairly. As we have stated previously, our story was a factual report that overwhelmingly focused on the individuals the police want to identify; those who directed abuse at the bus.
We know that there are some strong views about this report. We take complaints very seriously and they are being taken through our complaints process. Tim Davie has instructed that this process is accelerated to the Executive Complaints Unit which is editorially independent from news and will ensure complaints are fully responded to as swiftly as possible.
It's over five years since News-watch first rang alarm bells at the fact that of the 13 members of Ofcom's Content Board at the time 10 had close BBC links.
Ofcom is, of course, the BBC's regulator.
That was in 2016. Now, as we start 2022, The Mail on Sunday's deputy political editor Anna Mikhailova reports that this figure now stands at 10 out of 14, as there's been another member added to the Content Board.
Anna writes that:
Nadine Dorries is planning to review Ofcom's structure following concerns over bias towards the BBC, The Mail on Sunday understands.
The Culture Secretary is expected to examine the regulator's role as part of an upcoming review into the Corporation's complaints process.
Officials have raised concerns that out of the 14 members of Ofcom's Content Board, ten are ex-BBC employees. The regulator is the ultimate authority to which complaints can be escalated.
The next two paragraphs show why it's important that something is done:
Over the past two years, only one complaint about the Corporation was investigated by Ofcom, out of 418 referred to it by the BBC.
This is a fraction of the 830,632 viewer complaints made in total to the Corporation over the same period.
Isn't that extraordinary?
The piece continues:
A Government source said: 'Fundamentally this needs to be looked at.'
It's very much to be hoped that Nadine Dorries isn't just talking about it but going to do something about it. There's been rather too much talk.
Here are some quotes, with my reactions in parentheses, to Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries's appearance at the Conservatory Party Conference, in an event with the Torygraph's Christopher Chopper:
In an organisation like the BBC - which I think is a beacon, for the world actually, not just the UK, but in all that it does, in its drama, in its news reporting, in everything that it does[ed - the BBC will love that] - they have focused on...They have a kind of groupthink and their groupthink excludes working class backgrounds.[ed - She's focusing heavily on class.]
North-West, North-East, Yorkshire. If you've got a regional accent in the BBC it doesn't go down particularly well. They talk about lots to do with diversity but they don't talk about kids from working-class backgrounds. And that's got to change. I want to see from organisations like the BBC what they're going to do to change. It's not about quotas. It's just about having a more fair approach and a less elitist and a less snobbish approach as to who works for you.[ed - She's still focusing heavily on class. She has a point, but just recruiting more working class people who think like the BBC and don't think like the bulk of the working class public - as the BBC has been doing - doesn't really help.]
I've seen that written a lot in the newspapers, and I don't want to go to war with anybody. I really don't want to go to war. But where it's quoted is with my relationship with the BBC, that I'm going to go to war with the BBC and have a culture war with the BBC. And that's not the case. I'm not going to go to war. But what I want to do is to have constructive dialogue with the BBC. How are you going to change? I don't want to go to war with you. Come and tell me how are you going to change.
We're having a discussion about how the BBC can become more representative of the people. It's the BRITISH Broadcasting Corporation. How it can be more representative of the people who pay the licence fee, and how it can be more accessible to people from all backgrounds, not just from people whose mum and dad worked there, and how it can become once again that beacon for everybody.[ ed - She's still focusing heavily on class. Is she doing it because it's part of her 'brand'? To be 'about' the working class?]. It's about impartiality, and it's about access, and it's about groupthink. And those things need to change. [ed - I'm wanting to hear much more about the groupthink. She's not spelling out how the groupthink manifests itself. It's the publicly-funded groupthink that's the problem].
I think even the BBC have admitted themselves that they've got an impartiality problem. [ed - though, on the rare occasions they've admitted it, they've almost always placed it firmly in the past].
Well, people say Jess Brammar's 'head of news'. She's actually quite a way down the chain.[ed- That will be music to Tim Davie and Richard Sharpe's ears as that's precisely what they said to the Commons Culture committee recently].
I keep using the words 'groupthink'. It's like this...It just is. It's just the way...I suppose when people have come up through the BBC, they all come from a similar background, they all are of a certain political biofield [ed - hard to decipher], they all think the same and talk the same, and that's what's got to be changed.[ed - She's still focusing heavily on class. The problem is that many of the working class voices being added hold the same views that the elite sons and daughters of Mummy and Daddy at the BBC hold.]
[ed- while initially dodging the question of whether she'd pay the licence fee if it was voluntary.] I'm trying to remember when I last watched a BBC programme. I've got young adults in my house who now watch Netflix and Amazon Prime, and the BBC is also now in a very much more competitive environment, so how it operates and who it broadcasts to has changed. And so, if not for any other reason, the BBC needs to change because the environment it's working in is changing rapidly. So I'm trying to think when was the last time we watched a main news channel in our house, and it was actually Strictly on Saturday night. So it's just come to me. And I love a bit of Corrie. So, you know, ITV.But I'm trying to think when do...so, I watched the BBC on Saturday night, so I would yeah[ed - i.e. pay the licence fee if it was voluntary. Chopper asked her then if she'd pay the licence fee for Strictly and she replied 'Yeah'. So she's one of those people who'd gladly pay the licence fee 'because of Strictly'. This will delight the BBC. It will be tango music to their ears.]
And asked to choose between the BBC and ITV she begged not to be asked to chose, but when asked to choose between GB News and GBBO [Great British Bake Off] she unflinchingly chose GBBO over GB News.
And she praised Tim Davie and Richard Sharpe's behaviour.
I think the BBC can rest easy.
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Update: It was a little joke of mine above to call the Telegraph's Christopher Hope 'Christopher Chopper', give that his nickname is 'Chopper'.
The under-researching BBC journalist behind that piece seems to have confused journalist Christopher Hope with veteran Christchurch MP Sir Christopher Chope.
It's what you pay your licence fee for.
--------------------
Further Update: And it's interesting that Nadine Dorries is referred to throughout that BBC News website piece as 'Dorries', as if she's a convicted criminal - even after all the nice things she said about them.
In fact, being curious and checking other recent BBC reports about the present Labour leader, the very next on I clicked on by BBC political correspondent Justin Parkinson also called Sir Keir 'Sir Keir' - as did another BBC political correspondent Jonathan Blake in his inserted 'Analysis'.
So the Labour leader is 'Sir Keir' but the Tory Culture Secretary is 'Dorries'.
I'm getting intrigued now, and thought I'd try how one of the senior Labour figures Nadine Dorries - 'Dorries' to the BBC - was described last week, namely Ms Angela Rayner. And, yes, on instant sampling, Ms Rayner wasn't called 'Rayner' but 'Ms Rayner' by the BBC scum.
SCUM
'Scum' is not offensive, apparently. As Angela says, it's a term we Northerners use affectionately all the time.
I remember a huge argument at a drunken barbeque in Morecambe 25 years ago - my first ever BBQ. It happened on a balmy late summer afternoon just beyond the shadow of our wonderful Iron Age barrow in Torrisholme, and two tribes of local middle-class Labour lefties went to war on whether you should or shouldn't label people 'scum' while I [the working class, right-wing exception] sat happily drinking overly-strong cider, which I wasn't at all used to, in the benign Morecambe sun.
It wasn't about Tories back then, but about benefit scroungers. A Blairite wing, being suddenly tough on scrounging and the causes of scrounging after some 'scrote' had very aggressively tried to scrounge from one of them on the streets of Morecambe, got into conflict with some posher, far more hardcore leftists who felt that 'scum' was a word that should never, ever be used and that anyone using the word 'scum' was using right-wing language and absolutely beyond the pale.
It went on for hours. When we adjourned to a Lancaster pub, it still went on, getting angrier and angrier. I don't think they ever spoke to each other ever again after that.
I sat it all out, getting ever more drunk, uncomfortably enjoying it all and hoping we could all get along, and saying absolutely nothing.
According to The Mail on Sunday, Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries will use her conference speech to 'throw down the gauntlet to the BBC'. A source has told them:
The plan is to put the BBC on notice that its days as the voice of the Islington Left are numbered.
Nadine appreciates that it has a global reputation for the quality of many of its programmes, but the woke-infested news output needs addressing.
We'll see. Anyhow, there's a good quote from Nadine in The Sun:
I could almost hear the almond latte cups hitting the floor at the BBC when I got this job.
II
Former BBC controller of daily news programmes Gavin Allen, ousted from the BBC board in February this year, has moved on. He's now working as 'executive editor in chief' for the highly controversial Chinese tech giant Huawei. From seeing him on Newswatch many times, always sticking up for the BBC, I suspect it won't be long before he's saying that Huawei is getting everything about right. The top comment at The Mail on Sunday reads, 'No honour, no integrity. These are the sort of people that run the BBC.'
It was the BBC that fuelled his career and gave him a nationwide, peak-time platform. And despite all the allegations, it was still protecting and projecting his “saintly eccentric” image when he died, less than ten years ago. For such a tainted organisation to be thinking about using the name of Savile once again — after all that has been revealed — to boost its ratings and generate publicity for its TV drama output beggars belief.
I’m surprised that Coogan, a thoughtful man, has accepted this role. I’m astounded that Tim Davie, the BBC’s director-general, has approved the project, especially with all the other battles he needs to fight to safeguard the BBC’s future. He should think again.
IV
This week answered the question on everyone's lips: Whatever happened to the 'face of the BBC' in the US, Katty Kay? Well, she left the BBC to work for Ozy - a left-wing digital media outfit that sees itself as "a catalyst for change and inspiration" and which launched the #ResetAmerica campaign to amplify racial and social injustice issues and "forge a path forward". After its chief operating officer was accused of pretending to be a YouTube executive on a conference call during talks about a £30m investment from Goldman Sachs, Katty Kay quit. So the question on everyone's lips is now: Whatever will happen to the 'face of the BBC' in the US, Katty Kay, now that she's left Ozy?
