Eilidh Barbour will need smelling salts

Wonder if Eilidh Barbour and her BBC team were watching the World Athletics on BBC One this afternoon? This winning Dominican Republic team was 100% non-diverse:

And the presenting/commentating team in the BBC studio was also 100% non-diverse:

It's almost as if black people are too good at running fast and beating everyone else. And too good at presenting and commentating on athletics.

Over to Eilidh: “All members of the winning Dominican Republican team and all the people presenting and commentating for the BBC were black, and that does point towards a lack of diversity both in athletics in the Dominican Republic and in BBC presenting/commentating on athletics programmes. What is to be done? Over to Alex Belfield for a report.”

Of one mind

As discussed on the Open Thread, the controversial BBC risked rousing racial tensions on BBC Two the other day, during the women's football:

I'm sorry, what? There's a problem with the England women's team in the #WEUROS2022 being too "white"? Which players should be dropped because they have the wrong skin colour?

Just extraordinary that a BBC presenter can say this and still be in her job!
pic.twitter.com/PBpOC8tMhs

— Julia Hartley-Brewer (@JuliaHB1) July 14, 2022

“All starting 11 players and five substitutes who came onto the pitch were white, and that does point towards a lack of diversity in the women’s game in England,” said the BBC's Eilidh Barbour.

In fairness to Eilidh, she was introducing a report from BBC star pundit Alex Scott on the subject - a subject doubtless chosen by someone higher up the BBC food chain. Plus, given that she was seemingly reading from a script, she may not actually have written those words herself. So Julia might have been better saying, “Just extraordinary that someone at the BBC - whether it be the presenter herself or someone else - can write this and still be in his or her job!” 

Alex Scott's report, and the discussion that followed, worked from the assumption that all 16 players being white is serious problem. Not one person dissented from that position. It was a very BBC segment, from its introduction, through the report to the closing chat. 

Back to the 1640s at the Beeb

Who are the Roundheads and who are the Cavaliers in the latest BBC civil war over former England cricket captain Michael Vaughan, after he was invited back to commentate for the BBC on the third Test against New Zealand at Headingley?

Last year, if you recall, Michael Vaughan was accused of racism over an alleged comment in 2009 and immediately dropped by the BBC. The Muslim man accusing him had made antisemitic comments but was quickly forgiven by all.

But Michael's now back at the Beeb and what The Guardian calls “an in-house diversity group at the BBC” aren't happy.

To put it mildly.

This diversity group of impartial BBC types have a name, namely The BBC Sport BAME Advisory Group & 5 Live Diversity Group [I kid ye not], and they've impartially written to their BBC colleagues talking of “Azeem Rafiq’s gut wrenching and triggering testimony”...

[...and I kid ye not again, these BBC people really did use the ultimate woke word 'triggering' seriously there!...]

...and they've demanded that Michael Vaughan be removed because, although they “appreciate that there are elements of detail that can’t be shared about his reinstatement and that he is innocent until proven guilty”, it's “damaging, embarrassing and unsettling...to many colleagues across BBC Sport, BBC Radio 5 Live, and the wider BBC as a whole”.

Time, perhaps, to call to the witness stand the famous former Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie with a tweet in response to this:

The BBC's diversity group sent an email to ALL staff complaining at the "excruciating and unbearable" decision to continue using Michael Vaughan on TMS. Vaughan denies a racism charge by Azeem Rafiq. Who gave permission to the BAME group to send out the email? Just bullying.

Nevertheless, The Times says that MV's position at the BBC is “under review” as a result.

The top comments below the Times piece aren't in the BBC diversity agitators' favour though:

• Seems they believe in the guilty until proven innocent cancel culture?
• The BBC "in-house diversity group" - All diversity is welcome, apart from diversity of thinking.
• He has been found guilty on two counts, of being a) white and b) a man.

I hear you're a racist now, Mr Coyle

The suspension of Labour MP Neil Coyle yesterday is receiving the kind of low-key BBC reporting we'd expect. 

The story appeared on BBC One's News at One and News at Six but not on BBC One's News at Ten. On both News at One and News at Six it was treated as a minor story, getting just 18 seconds on each bulletin.

 

The News at One version lacked detail:

The Labour MP Neil Coyle has had the party whip suspended, following allegations that he made racist comments to a journalist on the Parliamentary estate. Mr Coyle said he was "very sorry" for his "insensitive comments", which politics reporter Henry Dyer said made him feel uncomfortable in his place of work.

And the News at Six barely added much more:

The Labour MP Neil Coyle has been suspended from the party following allegations he made racially insensitive remark in a bar in the House of Commons. Mr Coyle says he's very sorry for his insensitive comments, which were reported in a formal complaint by a journalist who's of British-Chinese heritage. 

This morning's BBC Breakfast has been giving it 24 seconds:

The MP Neil Coyle has been suspended by the Labour Party after allegations he made racist comments in a House of Commons bar. The member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark has apologised for what he called his "insensitive behaviour" when talking to a political journalist of British-Chinese heritage. Mr Coyle said he wants to "re-prove" his Labour values and be readmitted to the party in due course.

Another interesting aspect of the reporting of this story is how the BBC has sensitively avoided mentioning, or even hinting at, the "racial stereotype" Mr Coyle is said to have used - Sax Romer's Chinese supervillain Dr. Fu Manchu. Other broadcasters mentioned it. 

And the BBC's online report went through 6½ hours and seven edits before finally getting the name of Mr Dyer's employer correct. 

For trivia fans, here's Wikipedia's list of who's play Fu Manchu in film. It's an intriguing list:

Harry Agar Lyons, Warner Oland, Boris Karloff, Lou Marcelle, Henry Brandon, John Carradine, Glen Gordon, Christopher Lee, Peter Sellers and Nicolas Cage.

Is Fiona Bruce a racist?

There was an uncomfortable moment for Fiona Bruce on last night's Question Time when she asked the Muslim former Chief Crown Prosecutor for NW England Nazir Afzal to answer a particular question first and he scored a point about racism off her at her expense:

Fiona Bruce: Let's take another question. From Julian. Julian Lee.

Julian Lee: With the revelations from cricket's Azeem Rafiq and footballers still taking the knee, what does this say about racism as a continuing undercurrent in present-day Britain?

Fiona Bruce: Nazir?

Nazir Afzal: The brown person will answer first. [AUDIENCE LAUGHTER].

Fiona Bruce: Nazir, so do you think that was wrong of me to come to you first?

Nazir Afzal: I think so. I think...

Fiona Bruce: Well, let's not do it then. Jordan? I don't mean...I'm not being sarcastic at all. I mean, if that is how you feel, I respect that. Let's go to Jordan.

Nazir Afzal: I do...[indecipherable]

Fiona Bruce: Well, that's a fair point, I will come to Jordan.

Not Cricket.

Ever since their post-holocaust interest in self-preservation, the Jews (Israelis) have been accused of “bringing it on themselves” (that is, by their so-called  “treatment of” or “behaviour towards” the “Palestinians”)  How easy it is to disregard their zealous commitment to the destruction of Israel.

This may seem slightly off-topic, but I felt I had to say it because today’s parliamentary inquiry over racism made me think about the parallels between that and my ambivalent response to Azeem Rafiq’s testimony about institutional racism in cricket.

Well, never mind cricket!! There’s institutional racism in the whole wide world. (Duh!)

When I hear gratuitous or defamatory insinuations about the Jewish 'character' - their greed, avarice, supremacist attitude, and so on - I can truly sympathise/empathise with Rafiq’s hurty feelings about being called the peeword. 

However, my instinct tells me that feelings of fear and loathing concerning Islam and the geographical codeword for it that begins with P, does indeed comprise a (justifiable)  element of ‘they brought it on themselves'.

The inquiry that’s going on as I speak has a whiff of sanctimony and woke hypocrisy about it coming from people who just don’t get it. 

 

Update.

I probably should update this post.

Samira's Adventures in Wonderland

The main question on this week's Newswatch was: "What language is unacceptably racist for BBC News?".

Here we went down the rabbit hole and leaped through the looking-glass again. 

In this week's (BBC) news: 

(a) An Ulster Unionist peer had misspoken about Kamala Harris and "caused some outrage" by calling her "the Indian" [ed - maybe confusing her with Elizabeth Warren?]

and 

(b) The Chairman of the Football Association, Greg Clarke, had to resign after using "an offensive and outdated term" to describe black players. 

[ITBB Trigger warning: Please brace yourselves, and look away now if you can't face the word. The offensive word Mr Clarke used was "coloured". 

Reminder: "Of color/Of colour" is acceptable and should be used at all times, but "coloured" is offensive and should never be used on any occasion. 

I'm not sure about "colourful", as in "a colourful personality", but - so far - it seems OK]. 

And, as Samira mentioned, criticism of the BBC's reporting of both of these stories comes in the wake of this year's earlier furore after a well-meaning BBC reporter used the n-word in her report.

The context, not mentioned, was that the BBC report in question focused on a racist attack against a black man during which the n-word was used by his racist attacker and the white reporter used it in her report, with trigger warnings in advance, because the family of the black victim had wanted her to...

...yet a huge row blew up nonetheless, and a black BBC radio DJ resigned in protest because the n-word should never, never, never be used, regardless of context. 

The BBC originally, rightly, defended its reporter but then caved in and grovelingly apologised - doubtless because the woke 'outrage' coincided with the height of the BLM wave in the middle of the year and the BBC (under the outgoing Lord Hall) was absolutely terrified of being seen as being on 'the wrong side' of those protests. 

So the BBC (under the outgoing Lord Hall) threw their well-meaning reporter under a bus to appease 'the outraged' mob - especially the mob frothing away on Twitter.

That isn't how Samira and Kamal Ahmed recalled what happened - as you'll see...

Nevertheless, there's a rabbit hole to go down and a looking-glass to leap through, so here's the transcript:

*******

Samira Ahmed: Well, to discuss all this, let's speak to Kamal Ahmed, the Editorial Director for BBC News. Kamal, let's start with the two cases this week. The first one, with the peer referring to the US Vice President-elect as "The Indian". Now, the BBC described that as a "racist" tweet, with the word racist in quotation marks. Why? 

Kamal Ahmed: Because they were quotes from parliamentarians and others about Lord Kilclooney's comments, and so we put them in quotes to show that they were attributed to other people who were criticising him. And also, in no way would they suggest that the BBC was passing any form of judgement on what was said, so we simply used the quotes to show that there is attribution and that those were criticisms of what Lord Kilclooney said. 

Samira Ahmed: So, critics of him were describing the tweet as racist, and that's why the word racist was in quotes? 

Kamal Ahmed: Yes. 

Samira Ahmed: Then there's Greg Clarke, the chairman of the FA, who resigned after remarks BBC News reported there. They focused on this particular word he used to describe black players. We're not going to repeat it. We heard him saying it there. BBC described it as offensive language. Why use that word to describe it? 

Kamal Ahmed: Many people consider the use of the word as offensive. And, clearly, he resigned after saying that the word was offensive and there was widespread agreement that the word that he used was offensive, so we were able to use that as a description of the word. And given that he resigned, he clearly realised that he had used the word inappropriately. 

Samira Ahmed: Kamal, you and I are old enough to remember a time when that particular word was used quite widely in mainstream British society. It's offensive now. And one wonders, should the BBC be repeating it at all? 

Kamal Ahmed: We obviously were allowed to use it once there, when he said it himself. So, we have quite in-depth discussions about these issues before we broadcast. And you have to get the correct balance between audience understanding of the story and also not causing gratuitous offence to audiences, and so it would have been difficult, we believe, for the audience to understand the story if we simply didn't use the clip of Greg Clarke saying the word at all. But also, you don't want to compound any offence by repeating the word over and over again in scripts or in cues before any packages are seen, so we agreed, after a wide discussion amongst editorial heads here, that we would use the clip once - to give context to the audience, what the word was - but we wouldn't overuse it and risk doubling the offence that could be caused. 

Samira Ahmed: I suspect there are people watching right now who would be saying they don't find that word offensive. What would you say to them? 

Kamal Ahmed: Well, the judgement we take is whether it is offensive to audiences. And there would be many audiences who would find that word offensive and we have to take care if that is the case. It doesn't mean that everyone needs to find it offensive before we make those judgements. And also, as I say, Greg Clarke resigned, so clearly there was an agreement that what he had said was inappropriate and offensive. 

Samira Ahmed: This all comes after the summer in which the BBC broadcast the n-word in a news report about a racist attack, defended it for quite some time, but then apologised after a huge public outcry - which included a Radio 1 DJ resigning over the matter. Did the BBC give in to public pressure or did it get it wrong? 

Kamal Ahmed: No, we agreed that we hadn't made the right decision at the outset, we apologised for that. There were in-depth discussions about the coverage of that story. It was a very, very important story about an horrific, racially aggravated assault, and it was reported in the way it was reported. We realised that that was a misstep and we apologised for it. 

Samira Ahmed: You implied there'd been discussions, so has there been a rewriting to some extent of BBC editorial policy since then over how news deals with racially offensive language? 

Kamal Ahmed: Yes. So, after that, as you suggest, we had discussions about how we can ensure that our guidelines were robust on these issues, and now we do have new guidelines in place on the most racially offensive slurs, and they are now automatically referred to the director of the division - in our case, the director of News, Fran Unsworth - and that means that we have robust systems in place to ensure that we don't misstep in that way again. There can be disputes around what was the intent of the use of certain words, and that's perfectly reasonable, and it's important that the BBC doesn't pass judgement on the motivations of people using words but making it clear that words are offensive. 

Samira Ahmed: Kamal Ahmed, thank you.

"Recognising the pain of the past and the lingering ambient racism we don’t get to feel"

 

Ellie Harrison

A decade ago I remember a lively chat in the comments at Biased BBC about Countryfile's Ellie Harrison after she appeared on The One Show sporting an impartiality-busting CND T-shirt. 

Some complained about BBC bias, but others said they'd forgive her anything and claimed they hadn't even noticed the political T-shirt covering her bust. 

Of course, that's truly appalling #everydaysexism, guaranteed to make all of us self-respecting feminists (female or male or whatever) lunge for our handkerchiefs and our smelling salts. 

Anyhow, Ellie - endlessly leg-flashing and ultra-conspicuously blonde - thrived and prospered at the BBC whilst simultaneously flagging up her fulsome commitment to feminism in media interview after media interview.

And now she's approaching that perilous age where many a brave woman before her has been controversially, and lawsuit-inducingly, dumped into the Countryfile thresher for becoming middle-aged, and has clearly gone ostentatiously out of her way to hit the headlines by talking divisive, BBC-friendly, 'woke' drivel about racism and the countryside. 

(My sexist friends tell me she still looks great, so I'm sure she'll be safe for a few years yet. And, in response to the criticism about them dropping women for reaching middle age, the programme disinterred Radio 4's Charlotte Smith - one of those they'd culled in 2009 to bring in young, pretty Ellie).

Here's a flavour of what she said:

I spooled through the comments [to the report], which broadly came in three flavours: ‘I’m not racist so there is no racism in the countryside’; ‘I’m black and I’ve never experienced racism in the countryside’; and importantly, ‘I have experienced racism in the countryside’. 

So there’s work to do. Even a single racist event means there is work to do. In asking whether the countryside is racist, then yes it is; but asking if it’s more racist than anywhere else — maybe, maybe not.

Until this point [the Black Lives Matter campaign], I believed ignorantly that me being not racist was enough. I believed that I should keep quiet and listen to black people. That’s because I read and loved every Alice Walker book as a teenager, have watched Oprah every day since I was a youngster . . . it wasn’t my problem.

There is a big and crucial difference between being not racist and being anti-racist. At times in the past I have given measured and polite replies to people — sometimes close to me — who had said racist things. But being anti-racist means being much clearer that it isn’t acceptable.

It’s our individual work to wrap our heads around history. The work also includes recognising the pain of the past and the lingering ambient racism we don’t get to feel. It means acknowledging that we have benefited from the past, the behaviours of many generations ago.

My favourite bit there was where she said, in signalling her virtue about racism whilst simultaneously signalling her virtuous recognition that as a white women she still needs to signal much more, "That’s because I read and loved every Alice Walker book as a teenager, have watched Oprah every day since I was a youngster". 

That's still making me chuckle. It's the kind of line a truly great satirist would write. 

Except, of course, it's not satire.

Though it may disappoint a certain, male segment of the Countryfile audience, I'm sure Ellie will realise what she has to do: check her white privilege, leave Countryfile and make way for someone better suited to tick BBC boxes.

The programme has been giving black and ethnic minority presenters a big push in recent years, but exponentially more still needs doing. 

Hopefully, on their Christmas special this year, a newly-roasted John Craven will be served up for the endlessly diverse newcomers with stuffing and parsnips and horse chestnuts and a festive gravy made from a freshly-composted Tom Heap - something that would make a great cover for the 2021 Countryfile calendar.

BBC Comedy Strikes Again (The 'Kill Whitey' Edition)

Sophie 'Kill Whitey' Duker

 

If you missed what Andrew Lawrence was referring to there, it was this week's Frankie Boyle's New World Order. 

This rib-ticking section, where comedian Sophie Duker talked a load of jargon-filled, sub-Marxist, factually-false drivel and everyone else nodded along like nodding dogs with necks made out of spring, has provoked a mass of adverse criticism: 

Frankie Boyle: Do you ever read James Baldwin, Sophie? 

Sophie Duker: I have read some James Baldwin and what I find striking every time that I sort of interact with that idea of white power and black power is that those myths you were talking about, those capitalist myths, are so prevalent today, they're so real today, like the myths we have about black power, like black power, there is still a world where Africa was never colonised, was never pillaged for its resources, like white power is Trump Tower, like these things are put against each other, but when we say we want to kill Whitey, we don't really mean we can to kill Whitey really...We do...[laughter]...but when we say we want to kill Whitey it's a capitalist...

Jamali Maddix: Not today! 

Sophie Duker: Not today! 

Jamali Maddix: We've got to finish the show.

Sophie Duker: But when people react to people saying well white privilege, whiteness is a capitalist structure, it benefits itself...

Dane Baptiste: Absolutely!

Sarah Pascoe: (nodding in apparent agreement) Hmm.

Sophie Duker: It hurts white people, it hurts non-black people, it hurts black people, but still this kind of fear of a black alternative and its these sort of rhetorics battled against each other, these extreme capitalist rhetorics of supremacy. 

Ah, BBC comedy! 

Here's a very small flavour of the reaction:

• The absolute state of BBC comedy.
• This is from BBC Comedy's New World Order. I’m not sure how this is ‘comedy’. I’m not sure why our cash is paying for it. I’m not sure why the BBC isn’t challenging those determined to do all that they can to divide us with this hateful wordsoup of divisive dross.
• This is horrible. It's not just unfunny, it's incoherent nonsensical Marxist gobbledegook. The white contributors nodding along supportively as this woman jokes about killing people who look like them is just plain sick.
• Go tell your jokes about killing whitey to the young mother and her partner who had her jaw shot off guarding a transit station in Compton a few days ago. The BBC must have a no tolerance policy on ALL forms of racism.
• The BBC is obliged by the terms of its Charter to encourage social cohesion. Instead they use licence fee payers’ money to make this.

Oddbodophobia

Another day, another example of identity politics lunacy treated as 'a real thing' by the BBC:

The tweeting public aren't convinced though. The helpful responses to Alex's question include: Potatoheads, Ferengi (from Star Trek), folk from Bolton, Linekers, Bert & Ernie from Sesame Street, blow-up dolls, Essex girls and a race of Prince Charles/Mick Jagger hybrids. I myself think the racism is directed against one of the most vulnerable minority groups in our society, the Oddbods from Carry on Screaming. 

"It seemed very white"

'Ay me!' she cries, and twenty times 'Woe, woe!'

And twenty echoes twenty times cry so.

I hear a howl of protest from Adel Darwish on Twitter this afternoon:

Again BBC (#wato this afternoon & @BBCr4today this morning) hectoring and lecturing about lack of diversity in film awards. Wtf does it mean? Stop this Orwellian change of our lives and stick to reporting facts instead of imposing your groupthink PC view of the world.

So I thought I'd echo his howl.

Here, then, is Jon Sopel questioning BAFTA's Amanda Berry on Today this morning:

Jon Sopel: There's been a lot of criticism over the past few years, which I know BAFTA has been trying to address, about the, sort of, diversity of award nominees and winners. Would you say that this is a more diverse list?
Amanda Berry: Erm...actually, if I'm being totally honest, no...
Jon Sopel: (interrupting) I mean, I was just looking through it...
Amanda Berry: I was disappointed...
Jon Sopel: Yeah, I was just looking through the names of, kind of, all the different, you know, categories and it doesn't seem very...It seemed very white.
Amanda Berry: Yes, I'm not going to disagree with you, Jon. I'm goint to totally agree with you.

And on The World At One, Sarah Montague pursued the same angle with two guests - one of whom shared the same concerns, and the other of whom also shared the same concerns, saying "I have to echo that".

So, in the end, it looks as if everyone on BBC Radio 4 today agrees with Jon Sopel...which is nice for him.

Echo, echo, echo...

Katanga my tick box companions!

One of the Sunday Times's quotes of the week comes from Sir Lenny Henry:

“They would rather have a dog do Doctor Who than a black person” 

The actor Sir Lenny Henry is not optimistic that BBC bosses would consider an application from him to play the Doctor.

I doubt that Sir Lenny is right about that. I suspect that the famously 'woke'-friendly BBC would love to have a black person as Doctor Who - and, after the first female Doctor departs, I'm betting they appoint one. And, further, I suspect their reasons for turning down Sir Lenny's application would have nothing to do with race. 

The Story of a Label

Of course, Nick Bryant wasn't the only BBC bod to brand President Trump's "go back...then come back" tweets as "racist". 

Here's Gary O'Donoghue on BBC One's News at Six on Friday:

But of course, Boris Johnson criticised those racist tweets earlier in the week...

And here's Mark Urban on Thursday's Newsnight:

After racist tweets suggesting four American congresswomen go home - three of them were born in the US - the President set his sights at a rally last night on the one who wasn't, Somali-born Ilhan Omar.  

And here's Ros Atkins on Thursday's Outside Source:

...57% of Republicans agreed with the sentiment in those racist tweets at the weekend that the Congresswomen should go back to the countries "from which they came".

 And here's David Willis on the BBC News Channel on Thursday: 

...there were chants at times of "send her back", which is an echo of those remarks, those racist remarks Donald Trump made on Twitter, and that is, of course, disconcerting.

And here's the newsreader on Thursday's The Briefing:

Some Democrats had been hoping to capitalise on the growing criticism of Mr Trump for his racist comments about four ethnic minority Congresswomen. 

And here's the newsreader on the BBC News Channel's overnight BBC World programme:

Mr Trump also returned to the four Congresswomen - the subject of his racist tweets earlier this week.

 And here's Katty Kay on Wednesday's Beyond 100 Days:

You're watching Beyond 100 Days. Democrats are about to vote on whether to impeach Donald Trump because of his racist tweets. 

Wednesday's Business Briefing saw Sally Bundock (of Tim Martin of Wetherspoons fame) reading the following headline (which appeared in the same terms on all the BBC's overnight news bulletins, several times each hour):

In Washington, the House of Representatives has voted to condemn President Trump's racist tweets. 

Ros was back in action on Tuesday's Outside Source:

Meanwhile, the House of Representatives is preparing to condemn his earlier racist tweets.

And here's Christian Fraser on Tuesday's Beyond 100 Days:

President Trump lashes out again at minority lawmakers as the House prepares to condemn his racist tweets. 

Sally was also on Tuesday's Business Briefing reading this (again echoing BBC newsreaders throughout that night on the BBC):

This is The Briefing, I'm Sally Bundock. Our top story: President Trump refuses to back down from his racist tweets attacking four American congresswomen of colour. 

The first instance I heard, as we're going back chronologically, was Emily Maitlis on Monday's Newsnight:

Someone's demob happy. And today, Theresa May called out Donald Trump's racist tweet as completely unacceptable. 

But Ros Atkins on Outside Source was doing it already earlier that evening:

President Trump is pushing back over criticisms of his racist remarks about Democrats. 

And Katty and Christian on Monday's Beyond 100 Days were leading the way:

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, one of President Donald Trump's strongest allies on Capitol Hill, declined to condemn the President over his racist tweets.

And, of course, that evening's BBC One News at Six saw Nick Bryant kick it all off:

Donald Trump was at a 'Made in the USA' business event at the White House today, showcasing the kind of economic nationalism that has become a hallmark of his America First presidency. But it's his white nationalism that's caused the latest political storm, a racist Twitter attack aimed at four women of colour, three of whom were born in the USA. 

As far as I can see, that was the first instance of it. 

So, sometime on Monday evening, four BBC TV programmes - BBC News at Six, Beyond 100 Days, Outside Source and Newsnight - chose to nail their colours to the mast and brand Donald Trump's tweets "racist". 

Coincidence? A senior editorial decision? BBC Groupthink?

Whatever, the BBC is well and truly off the leash now, 'impartiality'-wise.

Nick Bryant calls Donald Trump "racist" (again and again)

Having been out of action for most of the past couple of weeks, I've got a lot of catching up to do. I did, however, see the original trio of Donald Trump tweets about 'The Squad' (14th July)... 

(1) So interesting to see “Progressive” Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly... 

(2)...and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how... 

(3)...it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!

...and, though having only come across BBC programmes very occasionally, I did hear a couple of reports by Nick Bryant that focused on the "go back" bit but 'forgot' to mention the "come back" bit and said to my family, 'No wonder Trump accuses the media of 'fake news''.

And, on trying to catch up, it seems as if vast swathes of the world and the media also 'forgot' the "come back" bit too in their urge to denounce the US president as "racist".

Even if Donald Trump's tweets were racist in intent or content, merely reporting him as saying "go back" and not telling people that he continued (within the same tweet) to say "then come back" is surely not honest reporting? Is it?

If a racist tells someone to 'go back where they came from', then that's unequivocal. But do racists usually tell their victims to "then come back"? I bet not. 

I suspect a lot of people have already made this blindingly obvious point, but I'm still catching up and can't be sure that they have. 

Whether the pro-Trump crowd chanting "Send her back!" about the antisemitic Somali-born congresswoman Ilhan Omar was being racist or not, or just registering their dislike of a highly controversial figure who they feel has been ungrateful to the country that took her in, Donald Trump was doubtless right to distance himself from them slightly. After all, he wanted her to then come back. 

Anyhow, back to Nick Bryant of the impartial BBC...

The BBC's high-ups obviously had no problem whatsoever with him repeatedly stating that the President's tweets were racist - no ifs, no buts. 

This is seriously-off-the-scale stuff - angry journalism making a point, relentless opinion-pushing on a matter of controversy.

Seriously, in what way is this impartial reporting?:

15 July BBC News at Six 18:13

Donald Trump was at a 'Made in the USA' business event at the White House today, showcasing the kind of economic nationalism that has become a hallmark of his America First presidency. But it's his white nationalism that's caused the latest political storm, a racist Twitter attack aimed at four women of colour, three of whom were born in the USA. 

16 July BBC News at Six 18:13

Last night, the four non-white Congresswomen who were the target of the President's racist Twitter onslaught stood in shoulder to shoulder solidarity on Capitol Hill.

16 July BBC News at Ten 22:17

Last night, the four non-white Congresswomen who were the target of the President's racist Twitter onslaught stood in shoulder to shoulder in a tableau of American diversity.

17 July BBC News at Six 18:20

On Capitol Hill, fierce words of condemnation for the President's racist tweets. 

17 July BBC News at Ten 22:06

The White House put out this video today - easy-listening patriotism in a week when Donald Trump's brand of nationalism has been more strident and at times racist. 

18 July BBC News at Six 18:24

This is a rally that will be talked about for decades to come. After the racism of Donald Trump's original attacks on the four Congresswomen of colour came the kind of racial demagoguery we've not heard or seen from a modern-day American President.

Not Brexit part 1

This is another belated point I wanted to make back along, away from Brexit - (I wonder how many Tourettes sufferers have “Brexit” as a tic?) (If I had a tic, that would definitely be it.)

Stephen Daisley is a controversial writer. They say he’s a bit of a lefty, but since I gravitate selectively towards his Middle East pieces I have little to say about that. However, though he has produced some outstanding articles on I / P over the years, the one I read a couple of weeks ago seemed to me to be a bit of a curate’s egg. The real Racism Against the Palestinians.

                     

“I’ve always railed against liberal blindness and hypocrisy on Palestinian extremism as a product of anti-Israel bias. I’m not so sure anymore. I’m starting to wonder if the real bias is against the Palestinians.”  

I wonder if Daisley just means the racism of low expectations. The racism of treating the Palestinians, or Palestinian society, as inferior; a biased value-judgement that assumes merely ‘being Palestinian’  inherently entails intellectual inferiority (to our own superiority.)

“Yes, Palestinian culture has a lot of work to do to catch up on democracy, human rights, minority rights, and much else besides. But none of this is inherent to being Palestinian; these are political and social values and they, and the cultures that espouse them, can change. This, however, is at odds with the underlying assumptions of Western policy on the Middle East in which Israeli misdeeds are aberrations to be condemned and corrected while Palestinian misdeeds are shrugged off, excused or justified. This is just who they are.”

That’s all well and good, but “the cultures that espouse them can change? Can they though? The missing piece of the jigsaw in this hypothesis is, obviously, Islam. That’s the spanner in the rather optimistic forecast that “things can change.” Islam isn’t going to change any time soon. It’s part of Islam's integral Mobius strip that says it can’t and won’t. 

“The sentiment is sympathy but the logic is pure bigotry. We are not friends of the Palestinians. We are not lending them solidarity by indulging their outrages. We are treating them like a savage tribe from an Edgar Wallace adventure, benighted but noble in their own way, wide-eyed grateful to the white man for understanding their backwards customs. There is your racism.”

It’s not exactly racism though, is it? It boils down to what some people might brand “Islamophobia”. In other words, we are indulging their outrages. Islam-shaped outrages - and we're on the way to indulging the Islam-shaped outrages everywhere else, to boot.

Along the way, Daisley cites two significant examples of the way in which Israeli and Palestinian societies differ. 

1) The murderer of British student Hannah Bladon was given a lenient sentence by the Israeli court because he was seriously mentally ill. 

2) The Palestinian court, however, also gave a lenient sentence to a Palestinian who was convicted of the heinous crime “attempting to sell land to a Jew”. He was sentenced to a lifetime of hard labour - apparently only avoiding the customary death sentence for that offence as he also holds US citizenship, and the state department is reportedly working to extradite him.

“If you get your news from the BBC, you might have missed this story, what with it not appearing to merit a single word on the corporation’s website. Happily, there was space on the Middle East page for a puff piece on Kholoud Nassar, ‘a Palestinian Instagrammer in the Gaza Strip [who] wants to show us a different side of life there’.” 

Stephen Daisley knows perfectly well what’s behind it but he doesn’t say so explicitly. To do so would be judged inflammatory and Islamophobic.

Anyway, “Brexit !!!”

Inflaming the situation

Inflaming the situation is a hot issue at the moment. 

In a comment today Pugnazious at Biased BBC recalls a previous example of the BBC doing just that - and, in the process, reminds me of how stories often become much clearer after the mainstream media bandwagon moves on...

Do you recall the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014? He was a black man shot by a white police officer, Darren Wilson. Riots ensued, and BBC journalists (along with much of the media) went into overdrive, heavily pushing the racism angle. 

But go to the Wikipedia page on the Shooting of Michael Brown and you'll see that, four years on, the view is now that Officer Wilson killed Mr Brown in self-defence. Forensic evidence and credible witnesses backed his story. Unreliable witnesses had spread false rumours. It wasn't a racist police killing. 

And now look back, as Pugnazious has done, at Clive Myrie's BBC reporting of the story at the time and just marvel at its dangerous wrongheadedness:

The BBC and Left-wing media tried to stir up a race war, and were partially successful, by falsely claiming white police officers were killing unarmed black men because they were ‘black’….here’s the BBC’s Clive Myrie [black] adding to the angry rhetoric...

‘Well, slavery may have long gone, but apprehending someone because they could be up to no good, simply because they’re black is still police policy in much of the land….'

Myrie sites ‘Ferguson’ as proof that Blacks are being targeted… 

‘It is through the prism of racism that many black Americans see the deaths of countless black men at the hands of white police officers, and a look at the facts suggests this might be appropriate. 

Ferguson, in St Louis in Missouri, is the place where an unarmed black teenager called Michael Brown was shot dead by a white police officer. 

In the midst of the Obama era, oh, what a rude awakening the events of Ferguson have been.’ 

Except that’s just not true…the police officer was being attacked, he was punched, the man tried to take his weapon and then ran at the officer the result of which he was then shot. 

Many of the shootings so dramatically and sensationally hyped by the BBC as race killings have in fact been by non-white officers…so race is not an issue…and studies have shown that it is Whites who are more likely to be shot whilst Blacks are more likely to be stopped. 

The result of all this was that Blacks then launched lethal attacks on police officers killing many due to the perception, driven by the Media, that police were targeting Blacks. 

Police officers died because of reporting from the likes of the BBC’s Clive Myrie….and yet it is Trump and his criticism of that feral Media who is to blame for the angry, violent divisions in America?

Re-reading Clive Myrie's report in late 2018 it's hard not to use the term 'fake news' in connection with it. 

It was doubtless very heartfelt and he surely thought it was true that the death of Michael Brown was connected to racism, despite official denials, but he allowed himself to take sides and fell foul of the actual truth of the situation. 

That he was very far from alone in doing this doesn't really excuse him.

Pendlegate

The Sunday Morning politics shows were dominated by one particular theme. Can you imagine Seumas Milne and the gang devising their post-local-election strategy? Brainstorming, you might say. “Let’s go with Pendlegate! That should stop people whining about antisemitism.” 

So we had John McDonnell and Barry Gardiner acting as if they had been gravely affronted, with a similar amount of outrage from Andrew Marr, Robert Peston, and Sarah Smith.

The offending tweet was too, too awful to describe, horribly racist, unrepeatable and pass the smelling salts, Mildred.  Not terrible enough to be redacted or permanently banished to room 101 though. You could see it in its full glory on Guido. 

Several precious moments of air-time were devoted to the implications of this despicable tweet, which everyone found too obnoxious to describe but insisted that the nature of it totally discredits the Conservatives who are now (thankfully) just as toxic as Labour. 

The level of this discourse typifies the superficiality we’re supposed to accept as journalistic scrutiny.

The racist joke is no longer just a racist joke. Now, according to the pundits, it represents the “views” of the lady who was dumb enough to tweet the joke rather than simply recounting it while pissed, in the pub. People come back from pubs with ten-a-penny jokes like that all the time, (so I hear) and despite being (or maybe because) they’re racist, they’re deemed worth repeating because they are funny, in an absurdist way. 

Let’s look at the joke. (It was a JOKE).

The dog fits the supposed criteria for dole, and for that 'unarguable' reason, he’s given it. There you have a racist and absurdist joke. I'm not justifying the tweet, the joke or the lady, by the way. Just pointing out the way it has been, to use a fashionable term, 'weaponised'.

The undeniably racist element of the joke is that brown people, (impliedly immigrants) are workshy, unwilling to learn the language and smelly, and the perception is that “they” are unworthy of the hand-outs they’re supposedly being given, willy-nilly; the theme is society’s underlying resentment thereof.

However, the way the joke is constructed, the humour is principally absurdist, which is why it is amusing. 

The antisemitism in Labour doesn’t even have the saving grace of being in the form of a joke. It’s straightforward, unadulterated Jew hate, and it’s not even mildly funny. 

Racism at the BBC

What Paul says:

Football and Racism on the BBC

Did anyone watch the Storyville episode titled “Forever Pure: Football and Racism in Jerusalem”.

I don’t know if it attracted a huge amount of viewers, but I watched it and so did Sam Wollaston of the Guardian. His review provides a reasonably succinct summary of the story, so I don’t have to. 

The question is, who made this film and why?  No, not only that. What we will also be wondering is, what will the Israel-bashers make of this film? Will they use it as ammunition? Will they take it as confirmation that Jewish ‘racism’ is as bad as ‘Arab’ racism, if not worse? Will it be cited as evidence that Jews and Muslims are effectuating a straightforward tit-for-tat scenario? 

Interestingly, there’s a warning at the end of the Guardian’s review which says ominously “This article will be opened for comments later this morning.”

Well, it’s 12:32 and I’m wondering if they chickened out altogether. (In case it encourages even more racism, heaven forfend)

Okay, so there were a bunch of footballers, some officials, an unpleasant Russian-Israeli oligarch owner and a mob of fanatical fans. I’m not a football fan by the way so I really didn't know that the fans played such a crucial role in a team’s success. 

So what did we learn?

That the fans of this particular club were virulently anti-Arab. They were so anti-Arab in fact, that they called Muslims from Chechnyna “Arabs”.  Indeed they were so racist that when two “Arab” players (Muslims from Chechnya) were parachuted in to play for the team, apparently for the amusement of the oligarch, the fans deserted the club in droves. Empty seats etc. Eventually the club, in its original form, imploded.

The last line of the review says: ”One nil to the mob, and their rule. “Here we are, the most racist team in the country,” they sing, proudly. Boooooo …”

The obvious response to this strange film could be classed as ‘whataboutery’.  It would be something like: Now let’s see a Storyville episode about racism (antisemitism) amongst the “Arabs”. 

Anyway, I’m sure an argument could be made that the Israelis’ hatred of “Arabs” is reactive, whereas the “Arabs’” hatred of Jews is actually at the root of the entire Israeli / Palestinian conflict.

At the root of it, I said.