Rachel Burden, Jeremy Corbyn & antisemitism

A Survation poll back in 2018 found that 85% of British Jews believed that Jeremy Corbyn is antisemitic. And as Tam Heinitz writes:

Now it might feasibly be argued that such evidence as there is does not constitute conclusive proof that Corbyn himself is antisemitic. Certainly it would be right to acknowledge that he strongly disputes such an assertion.

But given the Mural, the Wreath, his comments about Hamas and Raed Saleh, his associations with Paul Eisen, his glowing Foreword to an antisemitic book, his comments about British Zionists lacking a sense of ‘English irony… despite having lived here a long time, probably all their lives’, not to mention the Labour Party under his leadership being found guilty of harassing and discriminating against Jewish members, there is, to say the least, a feasible case for the prosecution.

And that is why the Campaign Against Antisemitism has complained to the BBC because on 12 January, Breakfast presenter Rachel Burden interviewed businessman John Caudwell, who called Mr Corbyn  “a Marxist and antisemite”.  Later, towards the end of the programme, she apologised to 5 Live listeners:

I should have challenged him on the particular allegation of antisemite [sic] because there is absolutely no evidence that the leader of the Labour Party at that time, Jeremy Corbyn, was or is antisemitic. He had to deal with allegations of that within his party but there is nothing to suggest that he himself as an individual was. So I apologise for not challenging more directly, I should have done, and I want to emphasise there is no evidence for that at all.

Au contraire, Rachel. Au contraire. 

BBC Radio 5 Live scaremongers during a pandemic

 

A tweet from Dino, the Editor of BBC News Podcasts

The danger of entrusting mainstream media outlets like the BBC with Twitter accounts is that they'll use them irresponsibly and spread scaremongering fake news during a pandemic. 

It's something the BBC's own disinformation unit ought to urgently investigate - as should the BBC Board and Ofcom. 

BBC Radio 5 Live put out a context-free, sensationalist tweet on New Year's Day:

"It was minimally affecting children in the first wave...we now have a whole ward of children here."

Laura Duffel, a matron in a London Hospital, tells Adrian Chiles about the Covid situation in hospitals.

It 'went viral', apparently reaching millions.

It also understandably provoked fury for risking scaring the bejesus out of the public with the idea of whole wards of children falling prey to Covid.

Many clinicians objected, saying it wasn't true and reassuring us that masses of children aren't falling victim en masse to the pandemic.

The Royal College of Paediatricians waded in, objecting too, and the BBC - doubtless panicked - put out a placatory piece on their news website dismissing the scare (without blaming their BBC colleagues). 

Radio 5 Live, however, with more brass neck than a giant statue of a member of the Kim Dynasty in Pyongyang - and without deleting their original viral tweet - then posted this:

Responding to media reports of increased admissions of children and young people with Covid-19, Professor Russell Viner, President of the RCPCH, has released the following statement....

Prof Viner's statement duly rubbished the scare the BBC had first set running (without mentioning the BBC). 

This BBC tweet was such a weasel-like response that whoever wrote it really ought to be made the next Chief Weasel at the next National Weasels' Congress. 

It was they themselves who reported it, indeed in the very same tweet from the very same BBC 5 Live feed that this reply was tagged onto. It was Radio 5 Live that did the damage with its shoddy, scaremongering 'journalism'. They are the guilty party here.

Talk about 'passing the buck'! 

The more I look into it the sorrier I feel for Laura Duffell though. 

I've heard the whole interview. Yes - though we had to find this out for ourselves because the BBC certainly didn't give us even the slightest hint of any of it - Laura's an activist local union leader who keeps appearing on the media and who supports Black Lives Matter and who leads strikes against the Tory Government over nurses' pay, but listening to her interview on Radio 5 I don't doubt that she meant well and told the truth as she saw it, doubtless just saying what she felt, off the cuff, under pressure, and overstating things.

No, I blame BBC Radio 5 Live for editing what she said, turning it into a sensationalist clickbait soundbite and tweeting it without concern for the truth or the public good.

It probably helped that it also fitted in with their way of thinking. 

People at BBC Radio 5 Live ought to be held to account for this. It's too serious and scandalous to be brushed aside in the usual way. It brings their journalism into disrepute.

Information

More interesting news from Bill Rogers's trading as WDR blog:

• The BBC's Group General Counsel, Sarah Jones, who lost to Samira Ahmed and Sir Cliff Richard, earns  £278k p.a.

• Friday's evening newsreader on the BBC News Channel as it reported the Samira Ahmed story was Rachel Schofield - wife of Jeremy Vine.

• The BBC's Director of Sport Barbara Slater set up a “monthly Under-35 advisory group to help focus, evolve and … brainstorm new ideas and improve our working culture”, hence (perhaps) "the cull of 50 year-old+ presenters from Radio 5 Live".

They have nothing to add

Martyn Ziegler, Chief Sports Reporter for The Times, writes that the BBC has landed itself in "an embarrassing mess" over the departure of Mark Pougatch from Radio 5 Live. He says it wasn't his decision to leave, but the BBC put out a statement declaring that he “has now decided to move on”.

Pougatch told this column: “The BBC have decided they want to go in a different direction and that’s their prerogative. They decided it, not me — I don’t know why they put that statement out saying I have decided to move on. But I am not going to fall out with Radio 5 — I have many happy memories and have had a phenomenal time. 

A BBC spokesman said: “We have nothing to add”.

Beauty before age

Here's an interesting Twitter conversation concerning the forced departure of Mark Pougatch from his presenter's role on 5 Live Sport:

Jeff Stelling (Sky): So Mark Pougatch not presenting on 5 live any more. Sad that his total professionalism will be replaced by someone who is considered to be more in touch with the youth of today, even if they know sod all about football or interviewing. He can’t say it so I will.
Ben Cobley (author) : This is the BBC in 2020. It's a disaster scene unfolding before our eyes and ears.
Alexander McCarron (freelance documentary maker): Insider observations: 1. Execs think audience are idiots, 2. They believe the young will not watch anybody/thing older than them, 3. Many are promoted through fast-track schemes, protected from failure, and 4. Social media engagement is regarded as more important than viewing figures.
Ben Cobley: A lot of it has to do with Ofcom pushing them in this direction, as I've found researching for a piece on the BBC.
Alexander McCarron: True, but all broadcasters are subject to Ofcom, yet the BBC pursue these matters so clumsily. I've had to go back and reshoot interviews, at great expense, with new contributors to make shows more diverse. Do feel free to hit me up if you need more information for you piece.
Ben Cobley: Thanks Alex, yes could come in handy. Will see.

From 'The Other Place'

And now I think we can cross over to our Radio 5 Live correspondent....

pugnazious

December 18, 2019 at 11:37 pm

Chiles once again proving he’s worth every penny of the licence fee and upholding the values and respect that embodies the BBC…I’d swear he broadcasts from down the pub with his BBC mates as he spouts sh*te that you’d only say to those who you knew had the same mindset….surely he’s not under any editorial control or supervision? All we get is a stream of cheap, low-rent comment and ‘analysis’ that are mostly anti-Tory smears and sneers.

Today he targeted Dominic Cummings…apparently ‘It’s very worrying that he has so much power’ and ‘He needs putting back in his box’.

Fortunately his guests were having none of that and put Chiles back in his box……no fans of Cummings but prepared to speak sensibly about him….reminding Chiles that Cummings didn’t care about the Westminster bubble, he was only interested in ‘real life’ and getting things done….a good thing you might have thought.

Chiles decided to attack from a different angle claiming, laughably, that Cummings didn’t do detail and that he wasn’t interested in foreign policy. Anyone who knew the slightest thing about Cummings would know he’s all about detail and that he is a prime mover on some issues relating to foreign policy, not least Brexit,…and the guests smacked Chiles down immediately saying ‘Actually he is interested in foreign policy’…Chiles muttered a quick ‘Sorry I must be mistaken’

Sheer ignorance, wilful ignorance, and prejudice from Chiles who clearly was expecting his fellow media pundits would be of the same mindset as him and would go along with his hatchet job…got a bit of a surprise when it didn’t pan out like that.

Chiles tried a similar cheap, lazy and ignorant attack on Boris last week as he claimed Boris didn’t do detail and didn’t know anything about the Middle East and thus how could he be PM!? Got smacked down there too. He just doesn’t learn…and doesn’t bother to do his homework….Chiles is the classic case of a BBC liberal who thinks that the whole world thinks like him and his worldview is the only correct and righteous one possible….Only to be horribly disabused of that delusion again and again…and yet never learning from the lessons handed out to him. Then again he is a West Brom fan…so hope lives eternal.

Of Adrian Chiles

An interesting post from pugnazious at Biased BBC yesterday:

Can you remember back to 2015, just before the Tories got their majority, when the BBC was telling us the Party system was broken, there would be no more majority governments…and that was a good thing?

LOL.

The BBC is so out of touch, its judgements are all coloured by their personal views and opinions, and even when they know something to be true they manage to block it out ala 1984 and Doublethink if it doesn’t fit the narrative….such as Pienaar telling us that the word on the doorstep was that Corbyn was not trusted and wouldn’t be getting their vote, or Mardell telling us people, Leave and Remain, were insisting that politicians ‘get Brexit done’…..both inconvenient truths ignored by the BBC during the campaign.

It would be fascinating to see a genuinely independent review of the BBC’s coverage of Brexit and this and the 2017 election. I think it would open a few eyes to just how biased and anti-Tory the BBC really is….you have to think the Tory Party doesn’t have a clue just how much anti-Tory propaganda is spewed out by the BBC…it may have an idea that the BBC is biased but no idea just how strong that bias really is, how casual it is and how readily accepted it is by others without comment on programmes and shows.

Chiles for example…definitely not a Tory boy. A guest mentioned Jews living in fear #duetoCorbyn and Chiles parried, and dismissed those fears, by saying Jews weren’t the only ones living in fear in Britain…what about those living in fear due to having to rely on foodbanks or on Universal Credit or charity?…all the fault of the dastardly Tories….thus you might not want to vote Corbyn due fear of anti-semitism but consider the fear that the Tories instill in those living in poverty stricken Britain and weigh that in the balance….jews or the poor?

On the subject of Boris Chiles just started off on a rant about Boris not knowing anything about the Middle East…thus he wasn’t fit to be PM…presumably we were being treated to a well-honed party piece that Chiles put on during his lefty dinner parties when he’d have an appreciative and uncritical audience. Just seemed a very random issue that arose out of the depths of Chiles’ brain rather than any real, substantial concern….Chiles just inventing an issue because he had to say something to criticise Boris.

Chiles also thinks Boris should get rid of his ‘toxic frontbenchers’…like Priti Patel and Jacob Rees Mogg. …a BBC-wide narrative that portrays the ERG and Brexit supporters as extremists and ultras, happy to allow the likes of Ken Clarke and Grieve to malign them as ‘far-right’. Laughed to hear the BBC welcome the big majority as it would mean Boris was no longer beholden to the extremists of the ERG and DUP…odd the BBC never characterises the Remain extremists as extremists…the BBC always calls them ‘moderates’ and is quite happy that they can hijack Parliament and hold Boris to ransom.

Chiles also claims that Boris gets away with murder….he lies and lies and lies and no-one says anything….well first does he lie? and second the BBC is continually trying to tear apart anything he says or proposes and consistently labels him a liar and untrustworthy whilst failing to note Corbyn’s lies and dissembling.

The BBC plays games with numbers and interprets them the way they want to so that Boris is cast as a liar…such as the £350m, or the 50,000 nurses, or the 40 hospitals he wants to build. Ridiculously the BBC says well, he’s not building them right now so it’s just a lie to say he’s building 40 hospitals. Is that how they interpret every party manifesto? if a policy is announced but isn’t immediately put into action, even before the election, the party is lying? Complete tosh.

Chiles finished on a doozy telling us that after the election result came in his distraught daughter texted him saying she was never going to give up a seat on a bus to an old person again….she’d make them stand there and force them to think about what they had just done. The crab apple doesn’t fall far from the tree I guess in that family. Not sure why he thought this was a suitable story to tell…puts his daughter in a bad light and illustrates, once again, the sort of hate that is whipped up against Brexit/Tory voters and old people…but is not a concern for the BBC which is so, so concerned about Boris’ hateful language…you know…’Surrender Act’…..lock him up!

Not a bad days work for Chiles…all in one programme, just a stream of casual anti-Tory, anti-Brexit comments that came all too easily and naturally to him that he didn’t even think twice about saying them or register that they were so partisan.

Just another day at the BBC.

Language Eleanor!

Courtesy of MB, here are a fine couple of examples of biased language from the BBC this morning. First, here's Radio 5 Live's Eleanor Oldroyd using the e-word about the ERG (at around 7.40am):

There seem to be some interesting clash points all over the place really, aren't there?  There are plenty of people who want to avoid a no deal, including the former Chancellor Philip Hammond. There are the extreme Brexiteers, if you like, the ERG, who are potentially coming to clash with Boris Johnson, the new Prime Minister, and his chief adviser Dominic Cummings. 

Secondly, here's William Crawley on Radio 4's Sunday using one of the i-words (no, not that one!) in connection to Boris Johnson's column defending the right of Muslim women to wear the burqa (the one with the letterbox joke):

Philip, what about Boris Johnson's relationship with faith communities? That infamous column we heard reference to earlier about the burqa and comparing it to letterboxes, just one example of that I suppose. 

Emma gets the hump

(h/t MB)

Emma Barnett, in the Radio 5 Live studio

Today's The Emma Barnett Show on BBC Radio 5 Live featured a bust-up between former Trump advisor Sebastian Gorka and the BBC's Emma Barnett. 

She "terminated" the interview after just four minutes.

It got off to a bad start for poor Emma when she asked Mr. Gorka if he was a British citizen, clearly in the belief that he was.

Evidently, she was then going to use that 'fact' to spring her pre-prepared 'gotcha' question on him.

Unfortunately for her, Sebastian isn't a British citizen.

She probably should have done some prior research. She could even just have checked Wikipedia, which records the fact that he became a US citizen in 2012. 

(Not to sound smug, because I only know this because I monitor BBC interviews and have rememberd it, but even I already knew that. And I've never guest-presented Newsnight).

Mr. Gorka then aggressively pushed back on that would-be 'gotcha' question of hers -  which she'd ploughed on with and asked anyway!

He mocked lazy BBC 'groupthink'. 

Instead of answering his criticism or making light of it, she got the hump, started sulking and behaved petulantly, deploying several varieties of passive-aggressive behaviour (including heavy irony, self-pity and 'dead airing' her guest). 

Sebastian Gorka then made some perfectly sensible points contrasting Mr Trump's and Mr Obama's attitude to the UK - complete with a totally fair parting shot at media double standards on the matter. 

Now, Mr. Gorka may or may not have then needed challenging on his claim that Mayor Khan is "a supporter of antisemites" (as they say in exam papers, 'Discuss'), but Emma had her pre-prepared "loser" question and wasn't for dealing with such weighty matters. Instead she persisted with that "loser" question (as she was clearly always going to do).

Sebastian was surely not wrong to react with derision to her claim that she hadn't heard the word "loser" since the playground. That was just plain silly from Our Emma.

By that time Emma had again seriously got the hump with her interviewee (a hump that would have made Quasimodo envious), especially after he called her "churlish". 

Not too long after she abruptly brought the interview again and sulked again, getting Tom Newston Dunn to ride to her aid (like a knight to a damsel in distress). 

I can't help but think that Andrew Neil would have handled this much better.

Anyhow, here's the transcript:

Emma Barnett: I'm joined now by Sebastian Gorka, former Deputy Assistant to President Trump, now host of a radio show America First and commentator in the US. Welcome to the programme.

Sebastian Gorka: Thank you kindly. 

Emma Barnett: You're a British citizen, is that right? 

Sebastian Gorka: I'm an American citizen, naturalised, born in the UK.

Emma Barnett: Ah, OK, fine. But in terms of your take on this, last year thousands took to the streets to protest, a YouGov poll suggests up to a million could march in protest this time (expecting the bulk of those to be tomorrow). Does that make you proud of British democracy and freedom of speech? 

Sebastian Gorka: It's funny. I was asked the last... that same question exactly the last time Trump visited. I don't know if there's a lack of imagination amongst you and your colleagues. Yes, I am happy with the UK...

Emma Barnett: (interrupting) Well, we've got off to a lovely start! Thanks for the commentary on my questions. Shall we keep going? What's the answer then? 

Sebastian Gorka: Would you allow me to continue? Do you just want to interrupt me? [Silence]. Would you like an answer or not?

Emma Barnett: Well, I was leaving silence in hope of one. Do go on! It's called 'banter' in this country, but carry on! 

Sebastian Gorka: I thought it was a radio interview, not banter. Banter is what you do down the pub. Look, yes, I'm very happy that the UK is not a dictatorship and that people are allowed to protest things. So, yes, I think that's a good thing. As the mother of democracies I welcome the fact that you're not a totalitarian regime.

Emma Barnett: Thank you. Before even arriving the President waded into...

Sebastian Gorka: (interrupting) You're very welcome.

Emma Barnett: (pausing ostentatiously)...British politics. He talked about Boris Johnson being an excellent candidate for Prime Minister. He talked about it being a mistake not to involve Nigel Farage in the negotiations for our deal leaving the European Union. And he also made comment about the fact that we should be prepared to leave without a deal. Is that right for him to be saying those things?

Sebastian Gorka: I think he has a right to do so. I think it's much better that he says positive things like that. President Obama said if you don't vote the right way and remain in the EU you'll have to get to the back of the queue. So I'd love to know what kind of criticisms and questions you had of people associated with President Obama when he weighted into British politics when he was President. But, yes, I mean, he has a right to make these comments, and the UK has a warm spot in a special place in his heart, and he likes Nigel Farage and he's sympathetic to Boris Johnson. So he made these statements because he believes them.

Emma Barnett: But he's also tweeting that the mayor of the city he's just arrived in is "a loser".

Sebastian Gorka: Well, I agree completely with that. Not only that, he's a supporter of antisemites. Sadiq Khan..

Emma Barnett: (interrupting) I thought you said banter was for the pub. What about when the President tweets that someone's "a loser"? 

Sebastian Gorka: That's actually a statement of truth. If you look at the crime rates in London; if you look at the condition of housing, public housing; if you look at the condition of public transport, it's not banter but a statement of facts. Sadiq Khan is probably the worst mayor London has ever had. That's not banter, that's a statement of fact.

Emma Barnett: He didn't say was "the worst mayor", he called him "a loser", which is actually a phrase I haven't heard since I was a playground.

Sebastian Gorka: OK, do you want to do a serious interview or do you want to be churlish? 

Emma Barnett: Well, it's serious when you like the point and it's not serious when you dislike the point. So you call me "churlish"...

Sebastian Gorka: (interrupting) It's not serious to say you haven't heard the word "loser" since the playground. That's pathetic. That's just not serious journalism.

Emma Barnett: Sebastian Gorka, thank you very much for your time. I don't think we're going to get...

Sebastian Gorka: (interrupting) You're welcome.

Emma Barnett: ...any further. I'm going to turn to a proper journalist now, someone who's actually just been with the President. If I may talk to Tom Newton Dunn. I had to terminate that. (Words indecipherable). I don't think we were getting any further. You have just been in the Oval Office...

Not biting the hand that feeds you?

Gosh, I see Lord Adonis hasn't been bad-mouthing the BBC for a few days. Indeed, he's actually tweeted a compliment (31 Jan):

Ok, time for me to be nice about the BBC. They now take 50 apprentices a year & a BBC apprentice just told me the scheme is ‘brilliant’ and ‘much better than going straight to uni.’ Well done BBC!

Call me a cynic, but might his recent abstinence from continuous Beeb-bashing have something to do with this (31 Jan)? 

I’m on Newsnight at 1030 discussing the chaos of the government’s ‘no deal’ legislation. With only 33 parliamentary days before Brexit, it simply can’t now be done in time.

Or this (29 Jan)?

Just about to go on Radio 5 live to discuss how no deal is becoming ‘no way’.

So, is there self-serving method in his BBC-baiting madness? 

"Is Emma Barnett now officially the most biased BBC broadcaster of all time?"

By special request 😊...

Emma Barnett's Radio 5 Live show a couple of days ago discussed (among other things) those calls for a second referendum and during the course of the programme she interviewed a couple of politicians - pro-People's Vote Conservative Guto Bebb and pro-Citizens' Assembly Labour MP Stella Creasy - plus businessman and pro-Brexit campaign leader Richard Tice. Mr. Bebb and Mr. Tice specifically discussed the second referendum question. Now can you guess which interviewee got interrupted the most?

Well, resurrecting my old interruption coefficients again (where the number of interruptions is divided by the length of the interview and where, by and large, the higher the number the tougher the interview, and where the average is 0.7), what resulted was the following set of figures:

Guto Bebb: 

Interview length: 5m 24s

5 interruptions

I.C.= 1.0

Richard Tice:

Interview length: 6m 24s

22 interruptions

I.C. = 3.5

Stella Creasy:

Interview length: 5m 52s

4 interruptions

I.C.= 0.7

3.5 is a rare figure. It's one of the highest I've ever recorded. The intensity of Emma Barnett's interrupting of Richard Tice was, therefore, very extreme - even by the standards of BBC interviewers like John Humphrys or Andrew Neil.

The respective interviews begin at 23.24, 28.53 and 2.14.03 on BBC Sounds. 

Incidentally, whilst listening to some of the calls on the same subject I heard Emma recalling that very interview and saying:

When I was talking to Richard Tice earlier....he said that people like him who voted to leave wouldn't even vote if that was put there, that Remain shouldn't even be an option anymore. It should be about the terms of the deal.

Well, no he didn't say that. He said that Remain should be an option. 

The question should be 'Remain, or leave on WTO terms?'.....If it was 'May's deal, or Remain?; we Leavers would boycott the whole thing.

Quality broadcasting, eh!

Is the BBC a lost cause?

As regular readers might know (or guess) I am a big fan of Harry’s Place. I only lurk, because I made it a rule not to acquire an online presence by commenting here, there and everywhere. I might do that when I give up this blog. Also, I’m too much of a wimp to create a load of sock-puppets and creative IDs and pretend they’re not me.

What I particularly like about H.P. is the palpable sense of ‘family’ below the line, which I think is pretty unique in the blogosphere. I’m not  saying I approve of the the vitriol, which can spring up all of a sudden for no obvious reason. It’s colourful I suppose, but that's the internet for you.

Lurkers like myself would probably have the impression that the general consensus on Harry’s Place is that the BBC is a bit of a lost cause. 

"Come on! Harry’s Place is a lefty blog," I hear you say. Well, it kind of isn’t these days, especially now, what with the rise of Corbynism. And, of course it’s a Zionist blog, and the commentariat are not just any old commentariat, they’re the M & S variety. 

So why am I saying all this? I nearly forgot. It’s about the BBC. However well informed, highly qualified, educated, literate and eloquent the btl H.P. family may be, they’re not all geeky about the BBC like we are. We seem to know all the presenters by name and can remember things they said years ago. (By the way, I see Jon Donnison is back reporting on hurricane Irma, as is Alan “I’m telling your story” Johnston.)  

So when Sarah AB wrote about Radio 5’s breakfast show, which tackled the BBC’s flavour of the month news item, namely the news concerning some members of the British Army belonging to the banned neo-Nazi organisation National Action, the discussion inevitably turned to Nicky Campbell. 

I know Nicky Campbell is, or used to be one of the pet hates of contributors to the Biased BBC blog.  If you search the site for ‘Nicky Campbell’ about 200 posts pop up, mostly concerning The Big Questions or Radio 5 Breakfast.

I myself wrote at least two of them, way back in 2011 or thereabouts.

"So nothing changes," I hear you say. "You’ve wasted about eight years of your life blogging about BBC bias, and had precisely zero effect." Well, that’s as may be, but in fact things do change. Have changed. For one thing The Big Questions has improved. I quite miss it when it’s off air. Is it that I myself have become more tolerant, or is it that the BBC has tried a little harder to get better quality guests? I don’t know, but when Douglas Murray agrees to appear on the show, it can’t be that bad. 

And Nicky Campbell is a good presenter. He handles the volatility much more competently than many a hardened BBC professional.  As to how much serious understanding of Islam-proper he has, who knows? He’s no scholar, nor does he claim to be, but let’s say he’s matured. Nowadays he seems less credulous when it comes to being taken in by the likes of Mo Ansar.

Here is another confession. I don’t listen to radio 5. I don’t even know how to tune in, should I suddenly decide I want to. I did follow the link on H.P. though, and I have to say the very tone of it wasn’t to my taste. I don’t want to be rude. Actually I do. It sounded dull, childish and irritating and I don’t think I’ll be visiting again. 

Many people on ‘right wing” blogs (you do realise that anyone right of Jeremy Corbyn is now considered right-wing) have mentioned the BBC’s disproportionate interest in the news about four or five members of the British armed services being investigated for belonging to a “proscribed anti-Semitic and homophobic group”. That’s it. That’s how the group is being described, as if the BBC believes that hearing about that particular duo of hatreds is all we need to know to ensure we are horrified at the very idea. Well, we are. But when identical dual prejudices are associated with Islam, as they famously are, it’s somehow deemed insignificant. I don’t get it. 

Incidentally, while we’re on the subject of BBC presenters, someone brought up Emma Barnett. She seems to be a BBC favourite at the moment, (you know how the BBC over-exposes its pet presenters till we’re sick of the sight of them) Grilling is Emma’s forte. One minute she’s demolishing Jeremy Corbyn’s  credibility, next she’s humiliating the gymnast Louis Smith for mucking about in a manner offensive to the Muslims. 

It’s indiscriminate grilling that grates. Yet we call for impartiality, and you can’t get more impartial than indiscriminately dishing out your grillings. Or can you? It may be technically impartial, but it seems unintelligent. Choose your victims wisely, is all I can say. 

Here’s Pat Condell. (H/T Daphne Anson)

I don’t think that would be popular on Harry’s Place, but it’s a damn sight more sincere than the feigned 'game' - ‘find the extremist’.

   

Another Miscellany for Advent Sunday (afternoon)

What did we learn, bias-wise, from the previous post then?

That Evan Davis may have been pushing his pro-EU bias at us on Newsnight, that Andrew Marr's show was pretty much OK, that Radio 4's Sunday was its usual liberal-biased self, and that Hugh Sykes still doesn't like UKIP (and ain't afraid to show it on Twitter)...

...in other words, biases (where found) from the usual, expected direction. 

***

It's not always like that though (and I refuse to be the sort of blogger who refuses to admit that). 

Take today's The World This Weekend with Mark Mardell, which rather surprisingly (well, it surprised me) focused on the severity of the UK's budget deficit. 

It asked election candidates from the two main parties - and their think tank counterparts (from the centre-left IPPR and centre-right CPS, both properly labelled) - to spell out their thinking on how the next government should reduce the deficit.

On a day when the big political news is that George Osborne is trying to outbid his political rivals over extra NHS spending, focusing on our national indebtedness and how drastic the steps required to tackle it are going to have to be, this isn't the sort of thing I expect from the BBC. 

The programme, incidentally, made use of the FT's deficit calculator and its editor, Nick Sutton, has asked us to give it a go too. So I have done, and all Radio 4 listeners and Is the BBC biased? readers should too.

It's eye-opening. No wonder the politicians interviewed didn't get anywhere near the target. They wouldn't dare spell out just what needs to be done. I, not needing any votes, cut everything, except defence (how right-wing of me!), and still didn't get there. (Must try harder next time).

***

George's extra (vote-buying) NHS spending pledges, incidentally, formed the main subject of last night's extended paper review on Radio 5 Live's Stephen Nolan show, hosted by (Peter Allen) Stephen Nolan and, unusually for a BBC programme, one of the guests spoke from a non-pro-NHS position. 

This programme isn't something I normally listen to but I'd read (at Biased BBC) that Biased BBC/A Tangled Web editor [and non-NHS fan] David Vance provided good value on it so thought it might be fun to listen to. [It comes in the last hour, if you've clicked on the link above].

It was fun. And he did. 

It wasn't the kind of debate you get on Radio 4. After a brief appearance from a David at the Sun on Sunday, David Vance and another David from the Daily Mirror locked horns, and Biased BBC's David came out on top - even reducing the Mirror's David to stunned silence at one stage (following by a Damascene acceptance by the Mirror man of his unquestionably fair but somehow-rarely-heard-on-the-BBC point). 

And (David No...) Stephen Nolan got his horn stuck in too from time to time, occasionally trying to gore David Vance. 

Now, I know DV and SN go back a while (Radio Ulster, and all that), but from what I've heard of their encounters before, Stephen always seems to go for him more than his left-wing opponents. SN tried a particularly sharp move here, trying to entrap his guest with suggestions of snobbishness or racism (I'm not sure which as DV deftly batted it away before he could spell it out). Far be it from me to step into their relationship, but that suggests possible left-wing bias to me on the part of the BBC host. 

I do like paper reviews, especially when the reviewers come from different perspectives. 

***

Returning to The World This Weekend...

After a depressing report (and interview) on the present situation in Afghanistan, where (pace the BBC) Islam and violence in no way go together, the Islamist Taliban has embarked on yet another intense killing spree, the programme lightened up and took us to the UK's very first Jewish Comedy Festival...

...where were found such jokes as:

I went home the other night, found my best friend in bed with my wife. I said, 'Lenny, I have to. But you?' (Saul Bernstein)

I'm a reform Jew, which means I go to synagogue twice a year: Yom Kippur and Christmas. (Josh Howie)

Another comedian, Raymond Simonson, made a couple of important points:

One of the biggest differences between the Jewish community here and in the United States is in our size. We're under half a percent of the population in the UK, 275,000 Jews. There are five and a half million of us in America. So Jewish comedy there, the Jewish community there, out, loud and confident, and  the Jewish community here have been quite quiet, kept their heads down.

I think whenever there's a time where anti-Semitism has been on the rise - and this summer there was the highest ever levels of recorded anti-Semitic incidents in the UK, so the Jewish community shrink further down - so what we're saying is, no, we're going to stick out heads further above the parapet and we're going to have people - Jewish, non-Jewish - laughing with us. That's so important.

And the best of luck to them.

And well done to The World This Weekend for broadcasting that.

And if you click on the link to the programme you'll also find two bonus jokes.

Peter Allen and former prime ministerial reputations

Hip, hip, hooray! (according to YouGov)

Here's a recent comment from Biased BBC (the blog not the broadcaster):

Will all end in tears

November 29, 2014 at 10:02 am

Have a listen to Peter Allen on Five Live (01:46.30)

The item is about whether or not an award should be withdrawn from Labour’s Tony Blair because of his involvement in the invasion of Iraq.

But note how easily Allen turns it into an anti-Thatcher piece.

All to do with Blair. Flip all to do with Thatcher. But not on the biased BBC.

Been said before, will be said many, many, many times again – there is not even an effort to disguise the bias nowadays.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04pvc6q

The discussion in question was a rather confrontational one between former Tony Blair advisor Matthew Doyle and the Stop the War Coalition's Chris Nineham. Peter Allen, perhaps seeking to calm things down, decided to reach for potential common ground. He asked Matthew Doyle this:

Something which you might agree a bit more is the way his legacy is now...you know, by and large, when you say "Tony Blair" you don't get cheers any more. Like when you say "Lady Thatcher" you used to get cheers, you certainly don't any more. What happens, Matthew? What happens between power and afterwards that we in the end...people become...I know you might say it's all about Iraq...I wonder whether it's a symptom of the years going by. We turn on those who were esteemed to be responsible for the way the world is. What goes on? 

He then asked Chris Nineham this:

Yeah, what about this....whatever happens to people's reputations, Chris?  I mean, I know you feel very strongly about Tony Blair. You probably feel equally strongly about the late Lady Thatcher, negatively as well, I guess. But do we have a tendency in this country to rubbish those who lead us?

Now, is it true that Lady Thatcher's reputation has fallen in the same way as Tony Blair's? Her reputation was always fiercely contested but I don't think it's sunk in the way Peter Allen assumes; indeed, the most recent YouGov polling (from December 2013) shows her reputation still soaring way above other recent former UK prime ministers.

48% of people consider her to have been a "great" or "good" prime minister, compared to 30% who think of her as a "poor" or "terrible" prime minister. 

Tony Blair fares far less well, with 34% believing him to have been a "great" or "good" prime minister  compared to 37% who think him a "poor" or "terrible" prime minister. 

Still, at least Tony Blair fares better than Sir John Major - only 18% believing him to have been a "great" or "good" prime minister as against 31% who think him a "poor" or "terrible" prime minister.

And Sir John fares better in turn than Gordon Brown - a mere 12% of people believing him to have been a "great" or "good" prime minister as against 59% who think him a "poor" or "terrible" prime minister.

In fact, come to think of it, when you consider the sheer scale of opprobrium felt towards Lady Thatcher throughout her years in power, and the sense of fatigue among many of her erstwhile supporters in the run-up to her downfall, it might credibly be claimed that - uniquely - she has disproved Peter Allen's point by becoming more "cheered" after losing power than she was when she was actually in power.

Here endeth the history lesson.

Helping Hamas?

The Israel-bashing Independent columnist Mira Bar-Hillel has been gloating this weekend:

...a YouGov poll this week found that only 15 per cent of Britons support Israel’s actions in Gaza. The credit for that goes to brilliant, brave reporters who have brought graphic images of the Gaza atrocities to our newspapers and television screens.

Mira forgets to mention that those those YouGov results show even less support for Hamas' rocket attacks on Israel (with 7% taking the David Ward line) and that more British people blame Hamas than Israel for the civilian casualties in the Gaza Strip.

Mira B-H, presumably, has the likes of Jeremy Bowen, Paul Adams, Yolande Knell, (etc) in mind when praising those "brilliant, brave reporters" for helping to turn the British public against Israel here.

If so, I think she's spot on. Their reporting, including their use of distressing images, must surely have had a - and, probably, the - major impact on the British public's apparent lack of support for Israel's actions, given that the British public still tends to see the news through their eyes.

On their use of graphic images and distressing stories, are they actually doing more harm than good though?

Spiked's Brendan O'Neill certainly thinks so:

The message that all this morally pornographic promotion of images and reports of Palestinian death sends to Hamas is this: victimhood works. The feverish Western marshalling of emotive imagery of Palestinian corpses to the political end of seeking sanctions against Israel or greater international protection for the Palestinian territories surely has the effect of encouraging Hamas to try to provide more of the same, more ‘telegenically dead’ Palestinians. There is a logic to Hamas’s alleged encouragement of great risk among the Gazan civilian population and certainly to its ‘parading’ of dead bodies before the press: it’s a response to the grotesque Western fashion for looking at, sharing and using as political tools images of dead Palestinians. Hamas is best seen as a kind of drug pusher to those in the West who have developed a very ugly habit of exploiting images of brutalised Palestinians both for their own needs (to advertise their emotional awareness) and for political purposes (to exert pressure on our leaders to condemn Israel).

And so does BBC Watch's Hadar Sela.

She appeared on BBC Radio 5 Live's Breakfast Show this morning (from about 1hr 51m in):  

I think one of the most significant factors has actually been what we aren't seeing. There's been dozens of Western reporters in the Gaza Strip for the last two weeks and more now, and yet we haven't seen one picture...I haven't seen one picture...of armed terrorists. I haven't seen one picture of terrorists shooting up RPGs, anti-tank missiles or mortars. 2,300 missiles fired. We haven't seen one picture of that in action in the Western media. Around 10-15% of those missiles fall short and actually land in the Gaza Strip and often, unfortunately, injure civilians there. We've seen no pictures of that. We've seen no pictures of injuries caused by shortfall missiles. There's been at least four summary executions taken place by Hamas in the Gaza Strip in the last week or two. We've seen no pictures of that. We've seen no pictures of Hamas people at all, even at the Shifa Hospital where they hide out, and yet we've seen journalists attending news conferences there, but nobody's actually talking about why these people are hiding and what's going on...

At which point the presenter, Rachel Burden, interrupted, putting the BBC/Mira Bar-Hillel point :

I suppose the story really is though the story of the 700+ people in Gaza, most of them civilians, many of them children, who've lost their lives and some of those pictures of children some people will find uncomfortable, others will find distasteful, others will say "That's very powerful and those are pictures that have to be brought to the world".

Hadar replied,

They are certainly very powerful pictures, and they're obviously very tragic and very sad pictures. I think there's a question here as well, you know...we've seen a lot of..as you say..a lot of pictures of dead people, dead children, injured people. We've seen at least one BBC crew actually filming in a morgue! Now, one of the things that struck me is, would the BBC go and film in a morgue in the UK? I'm not sure they would. Would they show pictures of blood on the floor in a morgue in the UK? I'm not sure they would, and so you have to ask yourself, why the different standard and what does that actually say about the journalism?

Now, as you quite rightly said in the beginning, at lot of these pictures are actually intended to influence world opinion, and this is a very big factor in this conflict because Hamas and terrorist organisations know they can't win this war militarily...they just can't...so they seek to win it on the public opinion field - and on what we call the 'lawfare' field - and so pictures like this obviously, beyond the fact that they are obviously a terrible documentation of what is happening, but they also serve a purpose and...

And which point Rachel Burden interrupted again and brought Hadar's short but important appearance to an abrupt halt in order to talk to a Palestinian journalist.

This is a genuine moral dilemma, isn't it, though? Do you not show such powerful images in your reports and, therefore, risk being accused of censorship (and bias), or do you show them and help a terrorist organisation like Hamas win the battle for public opinion by putting their own people in harm's way? 

Bien peasants

Former BBC Radio 4 Today editor Rod Liddle is almost invariably fun to read at the Spectator. 

His latest blog post strikes a strong chord with me, in that it reflects my own experiences of listening to, and watching, the BBC. 

Does it yours too?

Greetings from the 2013 Radio Festival, in Salford. I’m here to take part in a debate about whether or not radio reflects the opinions and concerns of a broad enough tranche of the public. It certainly does a better job of this than TV; Radio Five (especially Nicky Campbell) and some of the local stations seem to reflect the views of middle England pretty well. Still, on Radio Four, you get the bien pensant toss rammed down your throat, almost without variation, which is a shame.

There are problems enfranchising the silent majority, though: they tend to be silent. This is most obviously evident on BBC1 Question Time, for example, despite the pretty rigorous lengths they go to in order to find a sort of “representative” audience. I remember doing a series of Today programmes off-base and one in particular was presented live from Dover in front of an audience. Dover was, apparently, in ferment over the levels of immigration in the town; fights, resentment and so on. But the audience didn’t even mention it and when we brought it up replied with: ‘Oh, absolutely bloody lovely people, pleasure to have them here.’

It's a question we've tackled here at Is the BBC biased? for many a month: Why do Question Time audiences seem so wildly removed from the views of most British people (as reflected in countless opinion polls) on so many issues? 

Also: Why is Radio Four so 'bien pensant'?

Mining the Data

Alan at Biased BBC caught a rather striking example of a certain way of thinking at the BBC, as put into words by Nicky Campbell on Radio 5 Live during an interview with Labour MP Fabian Hamilton:

Would you like to do to the arms industry what people say Mrs Thatcher did to the coal mining industry, would you like to phase it out and close it down?

Alan describes this as a "schoolboy error" on Nicky Campbell's part, and presents the data to support it.

I can only add a little more data - but it's strikingly revealing data, and confirms that those "people" who Nicky Campbell mentions have only half the story (at best). The figures come from the National Coal Mining Museum in Wakefield.

Here are the number of people employed in the coal mines since the start of the 20th Century:

1900 - 780,000
1910 - 1,049,000
1920 - 1,248,000
1930 - 914,000
1944 - 710,000
1947 - 704,000
1950 - 691,000
1955 - 699,000
1960 - 602,000
1965 - 456,000
1970 - 287,000
1975 - 247,000
1980 - 230,000
1985 - 138,000
1990 - 57,000
1995 - 15,000
2000 - 8,000
2004 - 6,000

As you can see, the most dramatic drop happened between 1920 and 1930 - a fall of 334,000 (presumably something to do with the General Strike?). 

The next most most dramatic plunge came between 1960 and 1970 - a fall of 315,000.

The fall between 1980 and 1990 - a drop of 173,000 - was significantly smaller. 

The decline in coal mining jobs was well under way before Mrs Thatcher came to power, having already plummeted by over a million (an 81.6% fall) between 1920 and 1980. 

That may surprise some people, especially at the BBC perhaps.

Update: Many thanks to David for sending us the following fascinating graphs, which makes the story of the long decline of coal mining even starker.

Generating hot air

Bacon on a bike

BBC Radio 5 Live proudly announces:

A day of output dedicated to the energy debate with a studio powered by renewable energy.

The BBC Media Centre provides all the details of the day here.

The Daily Telegraph's Damian Thompson is not impressed:

If you’re a fan of BBC Radio 5 Live, you should steer clear of it on September 5. Unless you’re a raging eco-bore, in which case you’re in for a treat. To mark Energy Day, whatever that is, “Richard Bacon will be powered by the pedal as exercise bikes are set up for guests and Richard himself to 'hop-on’.” Ed Davey and Caroline Flint will debate global warming (no sceptics allowed!). A “human hamster wheel” will generate kinetic energy. Plus loads of other fatuous green stunts. The Beeb is inviting the public to turn up and watch. No thanks: it would make me feel like an 18th-century visitor to Bedlam, whiling away a Sunday afternoon by gawping at the loonies.

That said, the first Radio 5 link above features two videos - one about nuclear power, one about wind energy. Both provide us with voices for and against. 

So if the channel gives pro-nuclear and pro-fracking voices as fair a hearing as anti-nuclear and anti-fracking voices, and gives wind energy sceptics as fair a hearing as wind energy proponents maybe it won't be quite as excruciating as Damian makes it sound. 

That said (again), the tilt does seem to be towards renewables, with the station planning to generate energy for twelve hours of radio from wind, solar, biofuel, cycling and hydropower. 

BBC Radio 5 Live will have to be very careful about being seen to endorse such technologies at the expense of others and must not give the impression of siding with environmentalist campaigners.

What will be the balance between environmental activists/pro-green politicians and their critics? Will any man-made global warming sceptics invited into the BBC studios? 

Yeah but no but yeah but no but yeah but no...

I don't listen to Radio 5 Live very often these days. When I was something of a football fanatic I'd listen to any old match commentary on the station (most of which, if memory serves me right, seemed largely to consist of Alan Green slagging off various match officials). I've never listened to Nicky Campbell's breakfast show, have managed to avoid Richard Bacon's programme completely and have heard Victoria Derbyshire's show all the way through before only once (as Michelle of the Resistance might have put it). Have I been missing out? Have I been missing out on some outrageous bias?

Over many years of reading Biased BBC I've seen so many accusations of bias against the channel's presenters that I've been tempted to check them out for myself and see whether 5 Live's news coverage is as shockingly skewed as most commenters at Biased BBC say it is. However, there's never been the time to do it properly - and there still isn't. So, a conscientious skimming of one programme over a few days is all I can manage - and, given that her name crops up far more than anyone else's at Biased BBC, it's going to have to be Victoria Derbyshire's show. 

I'll start with the latest edition.

Friday 2 August

This edition was centred on whistle-blower Dr Greg Wood, who resigned from the fitness-for-work assessment firm Atos claiming he'd been pressured into changing the conclusions of ten of his assessments, to "skew" them against the claimant. Atos works on behalf of the DWP and checks whether claimants are entitled to sickness benefit. 

Why was this the programme's lead story that day? Was it topical? 

Well, it doesn't seem to have been. The story originally broke - thanks to the BBC - when Dr Wood resigned in May. The nearest thing I can see to its topicality comes from the fact that the Guardian published a full-length interview with Dr Wood two days before this programme (31 July). I would assume that the programme saw that interview in the Guardian and thought it would make a good focal point for their show. 

Who was in the dock? 

Well, Atos and the government. The DWP were, Victoria said, invited onto the programme to respond but declined the offer. 

At the beginning of the programme Victoria asked claimants who'd been through the assessment process to call in and share their experiences. Unsurprisingly, that's precisely what they did, complaining bitterly about the way they'd been treated. 

Victoria let them speak. I presume that by so doing she was letting us, her listeners, make up our own minds about them and about what they were saying. That might be a reasonable claim as I was very sceptical about some of these people's claims of victimhood - and I think that lots of other 5 Live listeners would have reached the same conclusions. That said, less charitable BBC critics would assume she was giving them a free ride to promote their grievances. 

It's a shame someone from Atos or from the DWP didn't come onto the programme to counter some of this stuff though.

Still, Victoria herself did put their side quite often - not just by reading out their statements but also by challenging Dr Wood - such as by pointing out (twice) that two of the calls from Atos to amend his assessment would have made it more likely that the claimant's bid for benefits was accepted. 

Dr Wood came across as a decent and likeable man, though he was far more nuanced than the BBC and Guardian reports I've (subsequently) read made him appear. I think Victoria Derbyshire's way of interviewing of him helped bring that out. 

As regards this part of the programme, I'd give Victoria credit for interviewing in the way I want BBC interviewers to interview. Still, the choice of subject suggests bias nonetheless: A Guardian-inspired feature inviting aggrieved benefits claimants to protest against the government.

This, of course, wasn't the only topic covered. The other big debate concerned the cost of PPI complaints. Here the banks were in the dock. 

I was really hoping for someone from the banking sector to be on hand to defend themselves here but, no, we got a customer who'd been given some compensation, a customer who'd been refused some compensation, a journalist from The Independent (Mary Dejevsky) who was highly critical of the banks and an ombudsman lady who was also critical of the banks. Other callers (in the second hour) also voiced their complaints. Not being personally involved in this story I rather struggled to get my head round this. It was interesting but it smelled of bias to me...

...except that Victoria Derbyshire kept querying the customers about their own responsibilities. Why hadn't they checked the conditions? Why indeed, I thought. 

What other stories were covered? 

The outrage in Chile over a report that found no one guilty of causing the mining disaster - the rescue from which we all remember so well - was discussed with a BBC correspondent. 

More time was spent on the arrest of a Democratic Unionist Party councillor, Ruth Patterson, over comments she'd made on Facebook imagining a fantasy massacre of Sinn Fein leaders at a republican march. Rather intriguingly, it emerged that this story - and, thus, the arrest - was prompted by the BBC itself. The BBC discovered the private comments on the famously-too-public Facebook and challenged Ruth Patterson (who had since apologised) over the matter. Is that an example of BBC Northern Irish investigative journalism at its impartial best, or is it BBC Northern Irish investigative journalism at its partisan worst? All "very embarrassing" (as the BBC reporter told Victoria) for the DUP.

Former Arsenal (and England) player Kenny Sampson was also a topic. Apparently he's been homeless and suffering from alcoholism. Two of his colleagues discussed his sorry state with Victoria.

The Zimbabwean elections were also discussed. The African Union thinks they were hunky-dory, but Muggy's rivals say they're a farce. Victoria talked to an election observer called Grace (Chirenje?) (Clearly not Grace Mugabe!) who talked of "irregularities". What she said was rather hard to follow though, given the poor quality line she was speaking down. Victoria then talked to Labour's Baroness Glenys Kinnock and to Dr Knox Chitiyo of Chatham House (who comments at the Guardian). Baroness Kinnock thinks the elections have been "a travesty" and Dr Chitiyo says the elections have been "significantly flawed". Bias - or obviously the plain truth? Baroness Kinnock and Dr Chitiyo got heated though (well, Baroness Kinnock did anyhow) over Dr Chitiyo's call for pragmatism and over the right strategy for Glenys's beloved EU.

The programme ended with the breaking news that Cuadrilla had begun drilling at Balcombe, West Sussex. The BBC's Duncan Kennedy updated Victoria on the 'fracking' story. He talked to a protester from Blackpool, who talked of earthquakes. Duncan asked him if he was also concerned about water pollution. By Jove, he was! Then Duncan talked to a local who objected to this unrepresentive "rent-a-mob" of protesters and said Cuadrilla are drilling not fracking. The two sparred and others then joined in (all on the protestors' side) and a right scrap resulted. Duncan took the protesters' side (by his only intervention against the anti-protester local), despite the anti-protester local being one-against-many. Tut tut.

Still, Victoria, back in the studio, then talked to a pro-fracking politician - Peter Lilley MP (Conservative). She began by asking, "How do you deal with the earthquake point because it is valid, Mr Lilley?" Mr Lilley disagreed with that. Victoria interrupted, "And water contamination?" He rejected that too. Mr Lilley's interview lasted less than two minutes. In fairness though, they had left him right to the very end of the programme and were running out of time.

Hmm, I can see why Biased BBC people get so hot under the collar about Victoria Derbyshire's show, if that's a typical edition. It did give me the impression, despite some of Victoria's interviewing, of being very much a Guardian/Independent kind of BBC programme - something it really shouldn't be.

Of course, one edition of a programme is nowhere near enough to judge it.


Update (5/8): Ah, Victoria is not doing her show this coming week. (Woman's Hour and Newsnight are being blessed by her presence instead).