P.S.

Here's an interesting angle on the Samira Ahmed/BBC/Equal pay story...

Ben Cobley: Samira Ahmed has won a case for sex discrimination in the employment tribunal despite being paid the same as her male predecessor. This is confusing. Does it mean he could appeal discrimination too, but only if he self-identifies as a woman?

Poor Ray Snoddy ploughed the Newswatch beat prior to Samira taking over. Wonder if he'll think it's worth a punt?

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Update: Via the 40-page written decision of the Tribunal (h/t Charlie) I see that Ray Snoddy did get mentioned.

Samira's side evidently registered the point about her (male) predecessor's pay being equal to hers and argued that she should have got more than Ray because she had broadcasting experience prior to to being given the Newswatch job while he hadn't had any broadcasting experience when he was appointed to the role, and the judge agreed.

Just look at Point 113 in the ruling.  It states that Ray Snoddy, on his appointment as the host of the BBC's Newswatch in 2014, "had no experience of presenting radio or television shows".

This confuses me because I remember Ray Snoddy very well from a Newswatch-style Channel 4 programme he presented in the 1980s (my late teens). I watched it every week.

I've just looked it up now and the programme was called Hard News. It's on his LinkedIn page. He did it for two years.

Obviously, I'd rather not get into scraps with employment tribunals over something that doesn't really concern me in the slightest, but when Employment Judge Grewal rules that Ray Snoddy "had had no broadcasting experience" before being appointed to his role at Newswatch in 2014, I'm stating - with massive confidence - that Judge Grewal is wrong.

Seriously, a sweary acronym is needed here: WTF?

And that's not even to mention Ray's regular appearances presenting What The Papers Say in its glory days - which I also remember well.

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As you know, this is an unfunded, free-to-view, spare time, two-person blog, but are we really the only ones reporting this story to spot that the judgment got it wrong over Samira Ahmed's predecessor as presenter of Newswatch Raymond Snoddy, with possible repercussions for her case?

At which point I'll naturally add: Or am I missing something?

The people who hold the BBC to account have a chat

Richard Sambrook, Director of the Centre of Journalism at Cardiff University, was, as regular readers will know, previously Head of Newsgathering for the BBC. 

He now heads a media department which, as regular readers will also know, both the BBC and Ofcom rely on to analyse the BBC's output for things like bias, and which produces reports that often seem to perform somersaults and loop-the-loops in the face of reality. 

Well, here's the great man engaging in a Twitter chat today with Samira Ahmed's predecessor as host of the BBC's 'hold-us-to-account' Newswatch, Raymond Snoddy:

Dick Sambrook: The fake factcheck, dodgy video edits, false opposition websites - The Tories are taking deceiving the public and active disinformation to new lows in this campaign. At some stage they will pay a price. 

Ray Snotty: Sooner rather than later I hope. 

Dick Sambrook: Its [sic] the most cynical campaign I've seen - and we've weeks to go! 

Ray Snotty: The only thing journalists can do is to continue to call out the lies - but as with Trump this natural optimist is pessimistic that the public is listening. 

Dick Sambrook: Agree Ray. The question for those fuelling the collapse of trust and mushrooming of cynicism is - after the entire house has burned to the ground, what do you do the next day? 

Ray Snotty: That's deep the only "solution" is to continue to engage however long it takes. BBC chairman slightly started at VoL&V [the pro-BBC Voice of the Listener and Viewer] yesterday that normal "friends of the BBC" are concerned at where the current line is drawn. Enemies from the centre for first time.

The people traditionally presented by the BBC are those worthy of holding them to account aren't exactly reassuring me here about their own impartiality. 

The appliance of science

Earlier in the week the Times reported that the newly-appointed BBC chairman Sir David Clementi will be asking for "scientific" monitoring of BBC impartiality. including into the corporation's post-EU referendum coverage. 

I suspect the phrase 'scientific research' will have rung loud alarm bells with senior BBC editors. They've vigorously rejected that idea for years now, often being at pains to tell MPs or Newswatch viewers that such a thing isn't suitable for the BBC - eg. the BBC’s chief political adviser Ric Bailey:

I’m a really strong believer that you don’t achieve due impartiality by maths and by stopwatches. That’s what used to happen years ago. It’s no longer the case. It’s not the whole picture. You’ve got to achieve a consistency of approach, a similar level of scrutiny across the different parties over time of which airtime is only one small part.

A flavour of this likely negative BBC reaction can perhaps be gathered from the old presenter of BBC One's NewsWatch Raymond Snoddy, who is not at all happy about Sir David's call for 'scientific monitoring' of BBC impartiality. In this passage, you can hear clear echoes of BBC disdain, past and present, for such an idea:

Scientific research would be a fine thing indeed - if such a thing existed.

One of the gaps in Sir David's knowledge may be the history of such attempts, usually by right-wingers trying to use stop-watches to prove the BBC was hopelessly left-wing.

Then there is the science of textual analysis, never mind the philosophy of trying to work out whether impartiality is a useful concept or even whether such a thing can ever possibly exist.

We can only look forward to Sir David's first scientific report on impartiality - something that almost always depends on subjective judgement - with warm-hearted anticipation.

The sarcasm of that last sentence is typical of the piece as a whole. In the same spirit then: Yes, perish the thought that using stopwatches or counting things and discovering that there's an extreme lack of BBC impartiality should ever be encouraged again! 

Incidentally, as for where Ray Snoddy is coming from, well, here's what comes next:

The new chairman also wants a report into the Corporation's post-referendum coverage as he puts "impartiality, independence and accuracy" at the top of his agenda. Yes indeed, but at the same time, and more centrally, he might also call for a report - scientific or otherwise - into the BBC's pre-referendum coverage, which many think adhered too dogmatically to an inadequate definition of impartiality. It was the sort of impartiality which in news bulletins balanced up the considered views of dozens of Nobel prize winners with the dismissive piffle emerging from Boris Johnson.

Yes, it's the old John Simpson line that the BBC could have changed the result of the referendum (i.e. brought about a Remain win) if it had been more active in giving "clear guidance" to its viewers and listeners, and that the BBC should have given them such "clear guidance".

Sir David Clementi may have his work cut out. 

My worry about this proposed 'scientific research' into BBC impartiality, however, is that it will be farmed out, yet again, to the team at Cardiff University - a media department so full of far-left academics, former BBC bosses and others intimately connected with the BBC that its previous reports have seemed far removed from both rigour and reality (such as claiming that the BBC is anti-EU). 

If they get chosen to carry out the research for this BBC report then Sir David might as well call the whole thing off, as it will say - as sure as night follows day - that the BBC did OK but that Ray Snoddy and John Simpson are right and that the corporation's only major fault was that it should have been a lot more biased against the Brexiteers and their 'piffle'.

Teenage ideologues

According to former Newswatch presenter Ray Snoddy...

During fraught negotiations with the government over the licence fee, Lord Hall stated that the BBC would overshadow the Budget by publicly announcing the closure of BBC Two, BBC Four and local radio stations on either the day of the Budget or the day after the Budget. 

Apparently, this resulted in a partial climbdown by the government, which then agreed to that series of "mitigations", including the potential of unfreezing the licence fee in line with the consumer price index.

Ray Snoddy isn't neutral on this, of course. He tells his story from a pro-BBC standpoint - and he certainly isn't a fan of John Whittingdale:

Patten may be a former chairman of the BBC Trust but he has been a Tory Cabinet minister and Conservative grandee a long time before that. 

Whittingdale was, Lord Patten said on Radio Four - a "teenage ideologue." 

As a political put-down, it's up there with Denis Healey likening being attacked by Geoffrey Howe to being savaged by a dead sheep. 

Lord Patten is right. And anyone who thinks anything valuable is at stake here on the future of the BBC should actively oppose the views of the teenage ideologue who most unfortunately, and much to his own surprise, has become Culture Secretary and therefore in a position to mindlessly damage an important British institution.