Roger and out...time for Amol again?

The closing section of this week's Feedback on Radio 4 was a question-and-answer session directed at its sacked presenter Roger Bolton, marking his very reluctant last appearance. 

As the embittered 73-year-old BBC veteran couldn't interview himself, the programme got a faithful listener to put the questions. She turned out, bless her, to be the living embodiment of a stereotypical elderly Radio 4 listener - with views to match.

Everyone loved Roger and she loved the BBC, and at the end of this long-farewell love-in they agreed on the corporation's importance/necessity.

Roger wasn't keen on the present BBC bosses though, and repeatedly slammed them for being reluctant to come on his show. Many of his criticisms will strike a chord with 'people like us' who know how the BBC handles such 'watchdog' programmes.

Unfortunately, he has also subsequently gone on to tell The Observer that Emily Maitlis was right, especially over her criticisms of the BBC's Brexit coverage for not being anti-Brexit enough.

I see in our archives a huge pile of often very long and detailed pieces slamming Roger Bolton for being biased on that issue - and several others. 

He's not been shy about it either, openly stating his disdain for criticism of the BBC from 'people like us'. 

He's never been a wholly impartial champion of the Radio 4 listener. Though he's had his moments, he's mainly been the champion of that stereotypical Radio 4 listener, and been given free range by the BBC, until this year, however far he's strayed on Feedback into various kinds of advocacy. 

And regular readers might also recall yet more exhaustingly long posts here recording his anger at John Humphrys after JH slammed the BBC, especially over pro-EU bias - despite JH later stating that he'd voted Remain himself.

As we said at the time, Roger Bolton truly took the hump against the former Today presenter for straying from the BBC straight and narrow. It also sounded like he strongly disagreed and that he took it as a personal affront. JH became a regular Feedback target thereafter. I wrote here, several times, about it seeming something like a vendetta.

What Roger Bolton's saying now as an 'ex-BBC presenter' is exactly what we claimed he believed while being an active BBC presenter because, whilst hiding being BBC impartiality, he frequently wasn't impartial, framing discussions in certain ways and asking particular questions in differing ways and giving his own opinions.

I know he has many fans - maybe some of you - but I think the new BBC management are well shot of him - as they are of Emily, Jon and Lewis. Clear the whole lot out, and take Mark Easton and Jeremy Bowen with them off to LBC too, to join James O'Brien and our old friend Rob Burley where people don't have to pay for them!

If only those BBC bosses can now hold off from the urge to really 'troll' their underlings - and the public - and make Amol Rajan the next Feedback presenter. I'm hoping if gobby Gary L gets the Golden Boot from Match of the Day after one too many egregious tweets about women footballers and bras that Amol will get that gig too. Plus Gardeners' World and Fake or Fortune? And if, as we hear, the BBC is bringing back that old ITV Saturday night classic of bread-and-circuses British TV Gladiators, I'm hoping Amol will be the new Ulrika alongside Mishal Husain. 

I've given up my old habit of predicting Newswatch's Samira Ahmed for every job vacancy as she never gets them, especially since her pay row triumph over the BBC. She may mouth off on Twitter from time to time, and join protests, and write articles, and be very anti-Nigel Farage, but she's much better at keeping her opinions to herself while broadcasting than Roger Bolton and she reads out views she almost certainly doesn't agree with without the Boltonian distancing tone. If only she hadn't humiliated the petty, vindictive, defensive BBC, a BBC that bears grudges.

Not that I'm stirring...

Camus, the Plague, and the BBC

 

In his latest Spectator piece Rod Liddle, as is his way, sums up what many of us feel about the BBC so well that he pretty much renders further comment from us superfluous. 

And his way with words remains a thing of wonder, e.g. "The distance the BBC travels each day from the values of its core audience will soon be measurable only in astronomical units." 

(At the moment I can only dream of being at least 3.9 parsecs away from Newsnight's Lewis Goodall - a man whose unbearable smugness would embarrass Douglas Adams's Zaphod Beeblebrox).

Even Rod sounded somewhat staggered though by Radio 4's latest, 'woke' dramatisation of Albert Camus's masterpiece The  Plague. 

As he describes it, for no comprehensible reason other than 'wokeness', the main character in the novel - a man - was turned into a woman, and placed in a lesbian relationship with her "wife". The setting, however, remained late 1940s Algeria with "its Arab population" (mentioned in the broadcast) - not a time or a place exactly known for its acceptance of openly lesbian couples or same-self marriages (or - by the by - for its 160,000-strong Jewish population which, having survived Vichy France's collusion with the Nazis over the Holocaust, was then getting driven out following the formation of the state of Israel. As you probably know, there are now no Jews in Algeria).

It's not that a story about lesbian relationships in 1940s plague-stricken Algeria mightn't have made for an interesting original drama, Rod argued, but that this trivialising piggy-backing on Camus has nothing to do with Camus and is simply silly.

Rod quotes the head of BBC audio drama, Alison Hindell, sticking up for the changes on Feedback and saying that they provided "contemporary resonance". 

Rod strongly doubted that, suspecting its pointless "contemporary resonance" barely extended beyond London dinners parties hosted by and attended by BBC production teams. 

Apparently, according to Rod, Ms Hindell rejects such charges of London/metropolitan-elite-centric groupthink by saying...drum roll...that the BBC will be running A Season of Nigerian Literature soon. Therefore, a season of Nigerian literature proves that the BBC isn't part of BBC, London-based groupthink. 

QED. 

Now, I'm just reading Rod here and enjoying him and nodding my head and raising my eyebrows and pursing my lips at the appropriate moments, but I didn't hear that Alison Hindell Feedback interview myself. Did she really show herself up like that? I think I ought to do her the courtesy of at least checking first...

Well, she certainly did play the "contemporary resonance" defence: "It helped the play feel feel like it was in The Now"...

...but she also raised a "practical" advantage to changing the sex of Dr. Bernard Rieux from a man to a woman: that otherwise the cast would have been all-male and that "voice differentiation and distinguishability" helps "the ear of the audience to follow the story". 

That's reasonable. It spoils listening to radio dramas if you can't tell who's speaking because the voices are too similar, though, that said, (a) I can imagine it being far from impossible to differentiate the voices of an all-male cast and (b) I don't think it really answers the question of why it had to be the main character rather than some of the minor, more plausibly changeable characters, who got changed.  

(Feedback's Roger Bolton stuck entirely to the change of sex question, not the ahistorical-seeming same-sex in Algeria issue).

Her other defence of why it was "a perfectly legitimate choice" to change the sex of the main character was literally this: 

There are a lot of women doctors in the world today. 

Interestingly, she said that this was the first time Camus's estate has given its blessing to a radio adaptation - which certainly sounds very much like a French artistic estate doing something French artistic estates rarely do, and (if you accept Camus's estate as speaking for the long-dead Albert) somewhat undercuts the charge that the play goes entirely against the spirt of Camus.

And she argued - quite accurately - that this kind of mucking around with original texts (changing the sex of main characters, using ethnic voices - here a Jamaican voice instead of a French-Algerian voice, etc) is now commonplace on the stage and in radio adaptations, reinterpreting things to fit "the social mores and expectations of the world the we live in today". (The world she lives in, some might say). 

Still, the playwright who adapted The Plague for Radio 4, Neil Bartlett, is no novice. He's a man with a long back history, so they didn't just grab him off a far-left street protest. It was a theatrical work first, and featured a female actress as the male main character -  the same Jamaican-born actress (Sara Powell) as on Radio 4....

....ah, I'm seeing, casting-wise, light-bulb-going-on, just why Neil would probably be just the man for the BBC at the moment!

Obviously, using one radio adaptation to represent the abyss into which 'woke' BBC drama has fallen doesn't amount to a clinching argument. It's a mere swallow in the wind. But it's a telling swallow nonetheless.

On Rod's point that Ms Hindell rejected charges of London/metropolitan-elite-centric groupthink by saying...drum roll...that the BBC will be running A Season of Nigerian Literature soon...

...well, in fairness to her, that did come about because of Feedback presenter Roger Bolton - a long-time BBC left-winger - raising the 'London/metropolitan-elite-centric groupthink' by asking her, of all things, whether Radio 4 audiences are far too South East England-focused and...guess what?...yes, not what people in the North or Cornwall or in seaside resorts like Morecambe might think, but what BAME listeners might think of that. 

Listening to the Radio 4 play itself, my main disappointment was on how pedestrian it was. Camus's The Plague struck me as a profound masterpiece when I first read it thirty years ago. This just struck me as a plodding radio play with intrusive music. 'Why was it so clunking and banal?' was my main question. 

Comparing apples and pairs

"Hello, and welcome to Newswatch with me, Samira Ahmed"

I was aware that Newswatch's Samira Ahmed was pursuing an unfair pay case against the BBC but I didn't ever read what it was specifically about until this week: 

She's complaining that the very famous Jeremy Vine is paid £3,000 for each edition of Points of View while she gets 'just' £440 for each edition of Newswatch, which she considered "equivalent work". 

The BBC's first defence was to say that Newswatch is far more niche than Points of View, to which Samira's side countered that Newswatch (by being on the BBC News Channel on Friday night and BBC Breakfast the following morning actually gets higher viewing figures (though that is debatable). 

Then the BBC argued that Points of View is a long-established entertainment programme requiring (and having) a presenter with broad public appeal, while Newswatch is a news programme presented by a journalist. Plus Jeremy Vine is a household name; Samira Ahmed (despite the best efforts of this blog!) isn't. 

That's surely the BBC's best line of defence, and I think that Gary Oliver at The Conservative Woman nails it by comparing the matter to the equivalent case of two of Samira and Jeremy's respective predecessors: Raymond Snoddy of Newswatch and Terry Wogan of Points of View. Who would seriously have argued, back in the day, that Old Tel should have been paid the same as Ray Snoddy? No one sensible, I'd bet.

Incidentally, though no one seems to mention this, there's also Feedback to consider. 

The big question here, surely, is: 

What does Roger Bolton get paid per edition, and how does his pay compare to Samira Ahmed's? 

Roger's radio programme is twice as long as Samira's but Samira's TV programme runs for considerably more of the year. I'm guessing Roger will be much nearer the £440 a week mark than the £3,000 mark. (No offence, Roger!). But is that the case?

More feedback

Meanwhile...

Before going out wining and dining tonight, I transcribed the following. It's from today's Feedback and saw Roger Bolton putting various points from clearly ardent Remain-supporting Radio 4 listeners to Gavin Allen, the BBC's Head of News Output. (Very Radio 4). 

Roger Bolton: One of the key executives who has to solve this conundrum is the BBC's Head of News Output Gavin Allen, who joined me earlier to answer your questions. I began, however.with the general election coverage. Will it be different this time?
Gavin Allen: I think there are certain elements that inevitably will underpin what we do. So to be trusted, to be accurate, obviously to be duly impartial, etc, to explore policies I do think we are constantly looking at the audiences and trying to work out what is it that audiences need from us, what essentially is useful about our coverage. So I do think there will be an even more relentless focus on, when we are doing something, when we are asking a question in an interview, when we're pulling together a piece, what is of use about this to our audience and if we're doing it again that sort of Inside the Beltway way - to win an argument, to score a point - I do think that's the point we have to row back and think 'Hold on a sec. What are we doing that question for?'.

Listener 1: My name is Alan Walker. I am deeply concerned about the misleading use of vox pops in virtually all news bulletins. These vox pops are routinely presented as representative opinions but in statistical terms they represent nothing.

Roger Bolton: So do you accept Alan Walker's point that vox pops are in statistical terms...they represent nothing?

Gavin Allen: Yes, in a word, of course...

Roger Bolton: (laughing) But why do them? Why do them?
Gavin Allen: But of course they're not statistically representative, but there are indicative. And, look, I'm not going to sit here and defend every vox pop that the media does. I think almost the caricature of a vox pop of 'I'm for a general election, I'm against general election, I'm not sure what I think about the general election' is sort of useless. I totally accept that. But, equally, we don't mislead the public. I think a lot of people do get their views from hearing opinions from other people, not just from politicians or from people in authority. 

Listener 2: Lucy Deech. I feel very strongly that the BBC is perpetuating the myth of People versus Parliament and that you, the BBC, need to take responsibility for the way you are choosing to report the current national crisis. By always interviewing members of the public who voted Leave and who hold extreme views and use extreme language it is giving the impression that these people represent 'the public'.

Roger Bolton: What's your response to Lucy Deech?
Gavin Allen: We do have to take responsibility for what we do, of course, but I think we should be careful about using words like 'extreme'. Is it 'extreme' to be pro No deal? Is it extreme to want a second referendum or to just simply remain?

Roger Bolton: (interrupting) It might be extreme to express those views in terms like 'surrender', 'betrayal' and these sort of terms, which worry a wider audience. I mean, Lucy has a particular point but, more widely, there is a worry about this sort of language. Can you do anything about it?
Gavin Allen: Well, if it's being spoken by the Prime Minister, barring the idea of we just veto what he's saying it and somehow censor it, you have to put it into context. Everything is about explanation in context. And, so, even the framing of People versus Parliament, it's not the BBC that is framing it in that way. We are trying to convey that in the case of the Government they are clearly or were clearly trying to portray it as a People versus this dead Parliament in their views. So it's important that we're explaining that to the public. But there's a difference between explaining something - conveying it and giving it context and, indeed, giving it the sort of rebuttal side to that - and the BBC itself espousing that view. 

Roger Bolton: Some of our listeners are bothered that you're giving too much emphasis to the more extreme points. Often the middle is squeezed. Do you think there's a danger that has happened and continues to happen?

Gavin Allen: I think, more widely than that, I think there is a danger that the media generally does love issues that it can portray as black or white when, truth be told, almost all issues are pretty grey and there are nuances to everything. So whilst I think it is true that we can oversimplify, I don't think with the case of Brexit that hearing from people at, I think, the sort of polarities of the argument...I don't think think it's extreme again....but I don't think we've hollowed-out the middle. What's interesting is that if you talk to psephologists they will say that, actually, a lot of opinion is congregating at one end or the other. But that doesn't mean that we ignore though who aren't at those ends. You have to hear the full breadth of views.

Listener 3: My name is Peter Ward and I'm calling from West Wales. We often hear on BBC News reports of 'sources' or 'comments made off the record'. I am really impressed by your correspondents' inside knowledge, but the constant drip, drip of unattributed briefings, primarily from within the Government, which they report, is distorting the boundaries between news, speculation and carefully targeted misinformation. My question is: Will the BBC consider a policy of refusing to report unattributed gossip, speculation and manipulation?

Roger Bolton: So, Gavin Allen, will you?

Gavin Allen: Well, obviously, we're not going to report gossip, in that way, in those bold terms, but the sort of short answer, again, is probably 'No' to that commitment. I think sources, unattributed sources or anonymous sources, it is a really difficult area for journalism - much more wide than the BBC - and it is important we are as clear as we possibly can be with audiences of who is saying this - Is this a junior minister. Is this someone close to Boris Johnson? - which is terribly vague, and often means Boris Johnson himself or his senior advisor. Even terms like 'special advisor to' is probably alien to most people. But, equally, you also have to accept that people like Laura Kuenssberg are expert at what they do as the Political Editor of the BBC. She makes a judgement. She doesn't just get a comment from Person A and just parrot it blindly. She's bouncing that off against whatever other information that she's getting, where does that sit within the sort of political viewpoints that she's hearing, and makes a judgement as to how to convey that to the audience. But she's not just saying it's a fact. She is saying that Number 10 is briefing that dot, dot, dot. 

Roger Bolton: Do you believe that we should, the BBC in particular, should pay less attention to off the record briefings? Or, in a more radical sense, say "unless I can report who said this I'm not going to say it"?

Gavin Allen: I think the latter is....Look, in an ideal world, yes, of course, everyone would be on the record, everyone would give their name and we would simply report what they said or they'd say in their own words. The truth is you won't get briefings on that basis, and there are a lot of briefings that are incredibly useful for the audience to know. But the key is we are not blind to the fact that, yes, of course, people are trying to play us, people are trying to frame the debate in exactly the way they want it framed. But that is about the expertise of our journalists to see through that, to make that judgement.

Listener 4: James Fairnam. At this year's Edinburgh Festival Dorothy Byrne, head of Channel 4 News, said news organisation should "call out liars". In this general election, will the BBC stand up for the truth and "call out liars"?

Gavin Allen:  Going back to the Dorothy point, it was a brilliant speech, it was a funny speech, it made a lot of very important points but, no, I don't think it helps in... in fact, I really, firmly, don't think it helps...for the BBC to wade in to what is already a pretty toxic, at times, political discourse and public discourse and be calling people out as "liars" and imputing motives behind them. Absolutely, via Reality Check, we'll say really clearly when something is inaccurate, untrue, misleading, etc. but "liar" is such a weighted word. And it's not timidity. I just think you undermine your own impartiality, undermine actually what is useful political discourse - to hear other people's viewpoints without calling someone "a fascist" or "a liar". I so see how that serves the public or the public debate.

Roger Bolton: My thanks to Gavin Allen, Head of BBC News Output, who came in on his birthday to do that interview. Must have made his day!

Radio 4 listeners II

...And talking of 'just your average Radio 4 listener', Feedback is running a feature at the moment which aims to 'take Radio 4 listeners out of their comfort zones'.

Every week the two chosen listeners give their own 3 Desert Island Disc choices of Radio 4 programmes.

So far this series every one - male, female, young or old, posh or even posher - has included Woman's Hour in their personal Top 3s.

Even the old chap today who first named Farming Today and Just a Minute then rounded off his list with Woman's Hour.

How Radio 4 is that!

Hilariously Roger Bolton took them 'out of their comfort zone' by asking them to listen to Trending on the BBC World Service. Trending is as Radio 4-like a programme as you could ever wish to hear, frequently 'woke', regularly obsessing about race.

It may have surprised Roger but it didn't surprise me that they'd love it and didn't feel remotely 'out of their comfort zones'. (They sounded the type - no offence)! 

The subject of the programme was "Can an algorhythm be racist?" 

And Roger Bolton himself loved it. He even said so:

And, so, do you think it was a good subject? I mean, from my point of view I hadn't really thought about algorithms being racist so - and it's a terribly important issue - so I was impressed by the choice of subject.

That didn't surprise me either.

Radio 4 listeners I

The main story on tonight's Feedback was the BBC''s coverage of Extinction Rebellion. 

If the range of voices chosen by Feedback was representative then Feedback's complaint bag is bulging with pro-XR people griping that the BBC isn't covering their rebellion anywhere near enough. 

I did rather admire the listener who complained that Radio 4 had ignored the Met's clearing of the protests on Monday evening. She'd obviously monitored the stations output during Monday night and through most of Tuesday. She said The World Tonight hadn't reported it, the following morning's Today hadn't reported it, nor had The World at One. PM reported it in its headlines, and Radio 4's Six O'Clock News reported it 20 minutes in. I checked TV Eyes to see if she was faking it, but she wasn't. She was right in every respect.

Such complainants could, of course, be activists writing in as part of a campaign or just your average Radio 4 listener. We'll probably never know for sure.

Anyhow, Roger talked to an ex-BBC journalist turned academic, who was largely sympathetic to the XR-friendly listeners' complaints - as, indeed, sounded Roger himself.

It's an odd programme at times. I still think Newswatch does it better. 

"Investigating Extremism on Radio 4"

Freya from 120 db (one of the women featured)

Echo chambers don't just apply to social media - despite what you might hear on Lord Hall's mainstream media. 

As the whole Trump-Russia conspiracy stuff showed, the mainstream media can be just as bad, if not worse - especially because they are meant to be professionals and have vast reserves of money to fund their 'trusted' reporting.

Sometimes, however, the two echo chamber worlds meet. 

Radio 4's Feedback, for example, is increasingly the venting place for the left-liberal section of UK Twitter's collective spleen - at least as far as griping about the BBC and right-wingers, climate change deniers, social conservatives and John Humphrys (etc) goes.

And poor Roger Bolton increasing sounds like a ventriloquist's dummy for such people  - though once, if you recall, he actually said on air that he smelt a campaign behind one such campaign. 

This week's edition began with another collective Twitter outcry from the usual echo chambers: Why oh why was the BBC Radio 4 "giving a platform" to "neo-Nazis" and "friends of Tommy Robinson"? Doesn't the BBC risk "giving legitimacy" to (what Roger called) "such divisive figures"?

The programme in question was the "controversial" (pace Roger Bolton) Radio 4 documentary In the Right, broadcast this past week.

"Should these voices be heard on BBC radio?", asked Roger.

Who were the voices that the echo chamber wanted silenced, even before the programme went out? Well, people like YouTube campaigner Lauren Southern and 'Panodrama' star Lucy Brown (the young lady John Sweeney famously treated to a lot of drinks) - "a former associate of the far-right figure Tommy Robinson", as Roger called her.

Some Feedback commenters though, on actually hearing the programme, felt it uncovered an important, under-reported story - which was also the BBC staffers' response later. 

Again, we're entering 'mad world' territory here. The idea that a (left-liberal) BBC Radio 4 documentary hosted by someone from the (left-liberal) open-Democracy website would be giving such "reactionary" women a free and unedited platform without (left-liberal) editorialising is preposterous.

It was presenter Lara Whyte's personal view ultimately, channelled via the BBC, and she gradually made that view crystal clear.

The programme might have tried to give these 'far-right' women some justice, but that justice would never be anything other than heavily circumscribed by Lara & Co's telling of it.

Now, on the opposite end of social media (nearer to us), there have been very different opinions about this programme. 

(So it's been "controversial" for reasons other than those mentioned by Feedback!).

Though some welcomed the programme for giving the likes of Lauren and Lucy a tiny bit of BBC airtime (the very thing the other side got so cross about), it's been mostly about 'our gals' getting 'stitched up' by the BBC and a presenter - from the Soros-funded openDemocracy website - making her ultimate disapproval of these right-wing women clear.

So, are Lauren Southern and "Nazi necklace"-wearing 'Friend of Tommy' Lucy Brown genuinely far-right and dangerous? Or are they being smeared?

(Lucy, for one, thinks that Lara and the BBC smeared her). 

Such questions, of course, won't concern Roger Bolton's Feedback, because such questions would never arise in the massively-overlapping Venn diagrams that are beginning to overwhelm the programme, and the BBC as a whole. But should they concern us?

Reality checking

Feedback time.

Readers with long memories might recall various posts here about Professor Justin Lewis of Cardiff University, including the following:

The biases of Professor Justin Lewis

Small world

Why Cardiff University's claims of BBC 'right-wing' 'impartiality' are not to be believed

Have you forgotten something, Cardiff Uni?

To boldly go...into the 'Independent' comments section

To summarise: Professor Lewis has been involved in many reports about media bias over the years, including ones about the BBC. He 'found' (a) that the BBC was pro-Iraq War, (b) that the media exaggerates the threat from Islamic terrorism, (c) that the media gives Muslims a bad press...

...and (d) that the BBC is pro-Eurosceptic, and (e) pro-Conservative, and (f) pro-right wing think tanks.

Yes, really.

Despite this, he remains broadly supportive of the BBC. 

But he's anti-consumer capitalism, and believes that we must "change the way we organise media and communications" to get ourselves beyond consumer capitalism. 

Knowing all of this about Professor Lewis, you can probably imagine my surprise on hearing Roger Bolton, whilst discussing Peter Lilley & Chris Morris and the BBC's Reality Check, preface his interview by saying:  

Time for me to turn to an impartial journalistic expert. He's Justin Lewis, a Professor of Journalism. He spoke to me from his office at Cardiff University.

Astonishing!

And guess what? Professor Lewis is a fan of the BBC's Reality Check and stuck up for Chris Morris. 

Moreover, he speaks the same language that leading Remain critics of the BBC speak when it comes to the question of BBC impartiality on issues like Brexit. 

********

Here's a transcript. 

Fair does to Roger Bolton for putting some reasonable points along the way, but Professor Lewis - the "impartial expert" - didn't surprise me in anything he said, and some of it struck me as being slightly sinister:

********

Roger Bolton: I asked him whether he thought the BBC's reality check was worthwhile.

Justin Lewis: I think it's a very valuable piece of public service broadcasting. I think that most listeners find it difficult, I think, in an age when they hear politicians on either side debating an issue, and you get that tit-for-tat argument, especially around issues like Brexit or the economy. What they want to know, I think, is: what does impartial expert opinion say on this? Is there a consensual view, and what it that? So I think actually Fact Check is an extremely useful thing to do.

Roger Bolton: If there is, indeed, anything impartial. This seems to be one of those issues where impartiality is almost impossible. Both sides believe they're right. Both sides immediately condemn anybody who questions what they do as being obviously of the other side.

Justin Lewis: Absolutely. And I think it's one of those issues where objectivity and impartiality push you in different directions. If you want to be objective you have to report what you think of as the most likely or plausible version of the truth is, but if you're being impartial you don't really pay as much regard to that. You just give both sides equal say, regardless of whether one side has more evidence on it than the other. I guess we saw that around climate change. For a long time climate change was reported as a controversy, and you would get roughly equal time for sides pointing out that there might be something called climate change and those that disagreed with that. Now the BBC, I know, has moved on from that, as many broadcasters have, and acknowledged that the scientific consensus is so overwhelming on one side that there's no longer really a controversy to be discussed.

Roger Bolton: This comes to be...the difficulty, it seems to me, it's called 'a reality check'. Some would call in a 'fact check'.

Justin Lewis: Yes.

Roger Bolton:  Actually, in some ways, if you're not careful, it can be a view of a judgment. When we're talking about what will happen in the future about negotiations, what is likely to happen, it's very difficult to have a reality check about a judgment - something that would rise in future negotiations.

Justin Lewis: That's true, but I think what people like Chris Morris, and other people who do fact checking, try to do is point out what the factual basis is for making a judgment one way or another, and I think he was quite careful actually, when he was challenged, to say what he was trying to do was establish what we know.

Roger Bolton:  But it was unfortunate, wasn't it, to have a situation in which a supposed reality checker gets involved in an argument with a politician? It's not ideal. But it was an accident waiting to happen. I've noticed on other occasions, for example, when a Today presenter would interview, let's say, the Prime Minister or someone else, and afterwards you'd come to Laura Kuenssberg who was asked, basically, 'What do you make of that? And do you think she's telling the truth? What's she not saying?'. If you do an interview with someone and then immediately afterwards you have a reality checker the impression is, well, 'actually you shouldn't really trust this politician but you should trust us'.

Justin Lewis: Brexit is an issue where this was inevitably going to happen, because this is an issue where there is quite a large body of evidence and some of that evidence clearly favours one side, some might favour the other side, but I don't think one can just say, well, you've got two equal bodies of evidence here. I think it's the responsibility of a broadcaster to basically say here's where the evidence appears to lie, now you can hold this view or this view but we're going to tell you what we think the evidence says. And I think listeners want to hear more of that.I think they're a little tired of getting the kind of claim and counterclaim around issues when it's very difficult to make any kind of judgment about what is true and what isn't. So I think a good faith attempt to try and establish what the factual parameters are around an issue is absolutely something the BBC should be doing.

Roger Bolton: And do you think it's more important now in the age of what we call fake news that we need reality checks in a way almost more than ever before?

Justin Lewis: We really do. I mean, we have too much opinion now and not enough facts. And I think there is a real...a  real hunger, I think, for reporting that focuses more on a kind of sober analysis - or even not necessarily a sober analysis, any analysis - of where the factual evidence lies, and less claim and counterclaim, because we get an awful lot of tit-for-tat - this politician says that, this politician says the opposite - and it really doesn't leave us anywhere the wiser.

Roger Bolton: But the danger for broadcasters is that they get drawn into a situation where they're portrayed as the opposition. So a broadcaster in a situation of a highly contested area has got to be very careful that pointing out the reality of the facts doesn't lead them into providing the opposition to one of the sides, one or other of the sides.

Julian Lewis: I think that's true, but I think we have to ask ourselves: suppose you have two particular viewpoints and one side says something that is demonstrably untrue. Should an impartial broadcaster just sit back and make no comment, or should it say, actually, we know that is demonstrably untrue,  or here is an expert to say that it's demonstrably untrue. I think we do need to know that, If we don't do that then really anybody's view becomes as valid as anybody else's. And I think in this instance the BBC has to bite the bullet a little bit and be an adjudicator. And it's going to get really criticised for doing it, we know that, but I think it's the responsibility of a public service broadcaster .

Roger Bolton: Our thanks to Professor Justin Lewis. And if you go to the BBC's Reality Check website you can find lots more statistics to argue over.

********

Maybe next week's edition of Feedback will have Lord Lilley on to give his view of Professor Lewis!!

The back with two beasts

Below you'll find two transcripts concerning the BBC's editorial policy regarding climate change. 

I'll use this post then to shove in my tuppenceworth. 

I've said before that I find that BBC TV's Newswatch and Radio 4's Feedback are different beasts. You're more likely to hear complaints of the kind we make on Newswatch than you are on Feedback. And Newswatch tries to project a more impartial style than Feedback, with Samira Ahmed taking more care to appear even-handed than Roger Bolton. And Feedback does seem to me to be more agenda-driven than Newswatch. 

So here you'll see that Newswatch features viewers' opinions from both sides of the climate debate while Feedback features just one side. And you'll see Samira Ahmed put questions from both sides too (albeit rather half-heartedly from the 'deniers' side') while Roger Bolton is relentlessly one-sided in his questions. And Feedback has been banging this one-sided drum for a long time now, leading the charge against 'deniers' being allowed on the station for at least a couple of years. 

That said, it was Roger Bolton who really made the BBC boss squirm this week. You'll note that both James Stephenson and Richard Burgess (one of whom said much the same as the other!) were reluctant to admit that the BBC got it wrong despite the BBC itself already having said that they got it wrong, with Mr Stephenson wriggling in particularly awkward ways and Roger calling him out on his use of weasel words and then embarrassing him even further by pointing out to listeners that he didn't look comfortable answering a particular question. All credit to Roger Bolton for not being a lickspittle there. 

And credit to Feedback too for highlighting the scientific ignorance of BBC Radio 4 journalists - bulletin writers and senior presenters, including Feedback bete noire John Humphrys and Sarah Montague. (That was the thing James Stephenson got particularly uptight about). It was a serious lapse in accuracy on Radio 4's part - and if both John and Sarah were involved that didn't mean it was simply a problem with one programme. It must have been both Today and The World at One. 

To end: One thing that unites both Feedback and Newswatch is their consistent use of 'denier', without inverted commas. This old term of abuse is evidently now an acceptable description for BBC presenters and editors to use. You'll see that in both transcripts. Why is that acceptable?

Transcript: 'Feedback' 12/10/2018, James Stephenson on the BBC's climate change coverage

James Stephenson

Roger Bolton: Hello. We're back for our Autumn run. If this is Autumn. The weather is behaving very strangely - sunshine here, floods in Majorca. And is there any real doubt about the cause? 

Newsreader: Climate scientists have issued what's being described as the most comprehensive statement yet on the dangers of rising global temperatures.

The BBC admits it has got climate change coverage wrong in the past. Is it getting it right now? 

Listener: I think BBC News and in particular the generalist reporters and producers and editors are struggling and often get things wrong.

I'll be talking false equivalence with a senior BBC news executive...So let's get on with the show and we begin with a BBC mea culpa:

Climate change has been a difficult subject for the BBC and we get coverage of it wrong too often.

That's a direct quote from an editorial policy note distributed to BBC staff last month. The note goes on to say to:

To achieve impartiality you do not need to include outright 'deniers' of climate change in BBC coverage, in the same way you wouldn't have someone denying that Manchester United won 2-0 last Saturday. The referee has spoken.

BBC staff are also being encouraged to enrol on a course detailing the do's and don'ts of covering climate change. All of which is rather timely since on Monday the UN's IPCC - the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - published a stark warning that urgent action was needed to avoid a global catastrophe. Cue a steady stream of politicians and scientists filling the BBC airwaves with their take on the significance of the report and what actions need to be taken - with no deniers anywhere, on radio at least. Some listeners and green campaigners see that as a distinct change in tone from the BBC, compared with previous times when the issue has been in the news, and they welcome it.

Listener 1: My name is Rachel Platt and I'm from Winchester. I think it is a very positive development and I've noticed the change already. I thought Monday's coverage of the IPCC report was clear and decisive, I felt, in a very, very new and refreshing way.
Listener 2: Wanda Lubneck. I usually avoid BBC news but stumbled into it this morning. They're talking climate change with two people up, both saying it would be disastrous. No deniers. What's going on?
Listener 3: My name's Dr Matt Prescott. I'm a zoologist and I work as an independent environmental consultant. I think it's patchy. I think generalist reporters and producers and editors are struggling. I think it is extremely welcome that the BBC's offering climate training to journalists. There are thousands of scientists working on different facets of climate change and no journalist can be expected to understand everything, or to know it all, just like I would struggle if you ask me about opera.

I'm now joined by James Stephenson, the News Editor for BBC News and Current Affairs. So are listeners right in detecting a change of editorial policy in climate change coverage? Your position, your starting position, now is the argument is over?

James Stephenson: No, I don't think they're right in detecting a change of policy. I mean, it's obviously in the ear of the listener to determine whether they are hearing different tone or whatever, but in terms of policy we've had a policy for a long time that the science on climate change is well established, and that our output should proceed from that point of view.

Roger Bolton: Well, I mentioned there were no climate change deniers on BBC radio but on Newsnight there was Myron Ebell, who's a former environmental adviser to Donald Trump who's known for depicting global warming as a hoax. Why was he given air time?

James Stephenson: Well, I think, I'm glad you asked me that because I think that touches on a very important dimension of this. While the climate science is a settled matter - although you know there are people who dispute that, but they're to the margins of the overwhelming scientific opinion - the same can't really be said of climate change policy, and the the question of what governments around the world are going to do about it. And,obviously, America is a huge player in all of this and, you know, it's no secret that the Trump administration takes a very different view of climate change. And so we wanted to interview someone who was head of the transition team for the Trump administration in this area, so we thought it was important, the programme thought it was important, to have him on because the science only takes you so far. The question of government action, particularly by the biggest polluters, is the crucial next dimension of this, and that was an important thing to interrogate on the programme, as Evan did on on Monday night. We're not in a position where we're saying that people are out-and-out excluded from our output, and we don't think that would be the right thing to do. What we do think is important is to identify why we're speaking to people, and to make sure that is editorially justified, and if it's editorially justified to do it in a rigorous and robust and challenging manner.

Roger Bolton: Does that mean that you will never put on a climate denier when you're talking specifically about climate science?

James Stephenson: We will not have the kind of discussions that you've heard occasionally in the past, where you have someone who is outlining the scientific position on man-made climate change and someone else who says that's not the case. We've moved away from that and beyond that, on the basis that while they're entitled to their opinion, and those opinions definitely still exist, they are to the margins of the scientific consensus, and we don't want to be giving the audience the impression that it's a sort of 50/50 arm-wrestle between those two positions.

Roger Bolton: Can we move on then from the policy you've announced to the way in which you're trying to make sure that your journalists understand it? How widespread is this going to be? Is every journalist in the BBC now going to have to take. as it were, an examination on this issue?

James Stephenson: No, no. We expect all our journalists to be prepared for the work they're doing and we're offering a training course for journalistic staff in this area, so...

Roger Bolton: (interrupting) Presumably you want all your journalists to understand these issues, so you want them all to be educated in this? 

James Stephenson: We certainly want all our journalists who will be handling this editorial subject matter to be familiar with it, and overwhelmingly to be confident in doing what is and important, and likely to be an increasingly important, part of our editorial agenda. It's a complex area, it's a scientific area. Many of our staff don't have that sort of a scientific background. They need the tools to do the job, and this is just one of the ways in which we provide our staff with the tools to do the job.

Roger Bolton: And you accept, well the BBC does formally accept, that it does accept, that you got this wrong in the past? And your own director of news, I noticed, talking to staff accepts this... you got it wrong in the past?
James Stephenson: There are occasions on which we haven't got things quite right and that's...

Roger Bolton: (interrupting) Not just that. Badly wrong.

James Stephenson: Well, that's the spirit in which we're approaching this. This is a difficult area. We've got a lot of journalists and producers who we want to encourage to be confident in this area. We're trying to provide them with the tools to be confident in the future.

Roger Bolton: We have talked about producers, but some would say presenters need to be educated as well. A number of listeners picked up on the fact that John Humphrys and Sarah Montague seem to get confused between percentages and degrees centigrade. Here, for example, is Professor Martin Parry. He's a former co-chair of the IPCC. He emailed us to say this:

Well, I was listening to the BBC's reporting and stunned, on four occasions I think it was, to hear this misread by newsreaders and presenters not as a 1.5 degree increase but 1.5% increase - which is totally different.

John Humphrys: The report by the intergovernmental panel of scientists says we must stop global warming rising to more than 1.5% above pre-industrial levels...
Sarah Montague: It says if world temperatures go up by one-and-a-half percent then we are dicing with the survival of mankind.

It's not sort of nerdy and trivial this. It's pretty important, because it seems to me to represent just a complete misunderstanding and, in a way, ignorance of the issue.

Roger Bolton: Do you accept that was wrong, and are you worried that your presenters got it wrong?
James Stephenson: Well, it clearly wasn't accurate but it speaks to my point...

Roger Bolton: (interrupting) It was wrong. It was wrong. 

James Stephenson: It was wrong, and we've clarified that and corrected it and apologised for the error. It speaks to my point though that this is an area where we need people to be aware of the material that they're working with, and that's the spirit in which we've made this course available. And in both those cases, the bulletins made clear that it was one and a half degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, so I think the audiences would have recognised that it was a slip and not something...

Roger Bolton: (interrupting) A slip by two presenters? Maybe a slip by one, but two of them?
James Stephenson: Well...

Roger Bolton: You're looking not that comfortable about answering that question, I have to say.

James Stephenson: Well, I wasn't quite clear that it was a question but...

Roger Bolton: (interrupting) Well, it is a question. You know, it's one thing to get a bulletin, written presumably, perhaps by a young producer, and have two senior presenters look at it and both not spot the problem.

James Stephenson: We've apologised for the error. I not sure I can add...keep adding more to that.

Roger Bolton: Some people would say that what that illustrates is that in this extraordinary complex area, and generalist interviewers are always going to be liable, if you like, to make a mistake, and what you need is really expert ones. And Dr Matt Prescott has a suggestion. He says he thinks the BBC needs a small team of internal experts available 24/7 who have the time and the availability to help all BBC programmes, not just news. Is that something you would consider?
James Stephenson: We do have a small team of experts. We have a science editor, David Shukman, and we have a team who work in this area. So we do have that expertise, and we bring that expertise to bear on the coverage we do in this area. And that's the way we think that this is best handled.

Roger Bolton: James Stephenson, News Editor for BBC News and Current Affairs, thank you very much. 

The Alternative Factor

Last week's Observer featured a three-page piece by Miranda Sawyer headlined Trouble at the Today programme: is it losing its grip? 

I had to smile at the tone of it. It reminded me, ironically, of BBC reporting. 

Miranda presented herself as someone dispassionately, you might almost say 'impartially', attempting to get to grips with the growing criticism of Today. 

But she then proceeded to give all the programme's critics free rein, and to slip in her own partisan barbs in support of those critics, and to frame her 'balancing' challenging interview with Today editor Sarah Sands with Sarah Sands-undermining comments.

(If she wasn't very clearly being deadly earnest, I might have suspected her of brilliant satire here. As it was, she was being deadly earnest, so I'll just add that if Mark Mardell were to step aside from The World This Weekend she'd surely be his ideal replacement!)

Anyhow, all of the criticism of Today in her piece came from a certain type of person - socially liberal, pro-EU, left-wing...

...though this probably wasn't particularly surprising given that the criticisms she aired derived entirely from reading her own media & social media feeds - i.e. her own echo chambers.

When you boil it down to its essentials, her piece makes a number of points:

Firstly, these people are complaining that Today gives overly-aggressive interviews to people they like and underly-aggressive interviews to people they don't like. They'd prefer it the other way round. 

Secondly, they want the BBC to cut all pretence of balance when it comes to debates on contentious issues (including climate change and Brexit). They want primacy given to experts who agree with their point of view and want non-experts (or wrongheaded experts) who don't share their point of view to be either shunned or scolded by the BBC. 

Thirdly, they want shut of John Humphrys because he's not in tune with the #metoo spirit of the age and they think he's pro-Brexit (and shows it).

This kind of thing is like entering a hall of mirrors.

And today's Feedback on Radio 4 was a hall of mirrors within a hall of mirrors, with that Observer piece providing a launch pad, and various selected like-minded listeners piling in against John Humphrys, and with Sarah Sands facing a probing from Roger Bolton.

(Their discussion about John Humphrys, with Roger leading the charge against the Today veteran, reminded me of several ITBB posts past where I kept on wondering aloud about whether Roger Bolton had it in for John Humphrys - eg. here, here, here and here for starters).

I thought of transcribing it for you but Sarah Sands's style of speaking is too conversational to render easily without wasting hours doing so, but I'll try to distil her merrily rambling responses nonetheless:

She blames a more polarised news landscape and an increasing intolerance of views that aren't shared and - doubtless having a dig at Miranda Sawyer - says that people are building up 'evidence' based on their Facebook feeds.

She defended herself from the charge (raised by Roger Bolton) that she was siding with pro-Brexit types by being shown on images posted on social media being at a lunch party with Nigel Farage and Liam Fox by saying she was with Sadiq Khan at that same event.

(She didn't say in her defence -and Roger didn't add in her defence - that she was openly for Remain in the referendum).

And she defended John Humphrys against further charges of being out-of-touch on social issues by citing praise for him, putting his remarks in context and saying that when it comes to holding power to account there's still no one quite like John.

You'll have to listen to it for yourselves to get the full effect but - like that Observer piece - this Feedback edition, ringmastered by Roger Bolton, felt like entering an alternate universe.

Is the BBC biased against Jeremy Corbyn?

'Is the BBC biased against Jeremy Corbyn?' was the questioned asked by Roger Bolton on today's Feedback in the light of a three-part Radio 4 series called The Long March of Jeremy Corbyn.

We heard from four listeners:

• My name is Karen Lakin. I listened with interest to 'The Long March of Jeremy Corbyn' this week and I was relieved by the balanced approach of the reporting. It highlighted to me the not-so-subtle misrepresentation of Jeremy. 
• Duncan Shipley, Dalton. Hatchet job drivel dressed up as documentary show. Extremely weak.
• Nick Hyder. 'The Long March of Jeremy Corbyn' is an essential listen.
• Simon Warner. Although Steve Richards did make a worthy attempt to create a balance portrait of Jeremy Corbyn I rather felt as if the programme was light on centrist voices within the party. The usual suspects, like Owen Smith and Margaret Hodge, did stand-up and express a more negative reading of the Labour leader but the programme more generally relied on voices who were in favour of what he was doing - Len McCluskey, John McDonnell and so on.  

So plenty of praise there, including for the programme's impartiality, but also complaints of bias from both sides of the Labour divide - which cancelled each other out in true 'complaints from both sides' fashion. (Very nice for the BBC).

The overall effect (accidental? deliberate in the juxtaposition of self-cancelling voices?) was to make this programme sound as if it actually might have been impartial (as least as far as Labour's factions go). 

What followed was an interview with Steve Richards, transcribed below. It too had the effect of making it seem that The Long March of Jeremy Corbyn is a particularly fine piece of impartial BBC broadcasting (as least as far as Labour's factions go).

But what of the BBC as a whole?

Steve says the BBC failed to grasp the significance of Jeremy Corbyn to begin with. It underestimated him. Only the 2017 election changed that.

That seems true to me, though Brexit has probably had something to do with the fluctuations in the BBC's attitude to him too.

Steve also says that the BBC has been excellent at giving voice to the range of Corbyn supporters, thus changing the political debate....

....which is an interesting idea.

It's an idea that could easily (and mischievously) find itself recast to parody a familiar line of argument from the likes of Samira Ahmed & Co. about Nigel Farage and his (in)famous 31 appearances on Question Time: By so heavily platforming voices from the far-left, the BBC is guilty of normalising them.

I have to say though that I'm personally entirely comfortable with hearing the broadest range of views possible, and don't begrudge Owen, Ellie Mae, Rachel, former Newsnight Paul, Kerry-Anne & Co. their generous season tickets to appear on the BBC in the slightest. The more the merrier I say.

Roger Bolton (a man with a left-wing past) then pursued a fascinating line of argument over how the Left has been accustomed to seeing the BBC as a bulwark to balance out the right-wing press.

I think there's something in that too.

By implication, that's surely also why the further reaches of them are now so constantly angry at the BBC for not being sufficiently enthusiastic about/reverential towards oooh Jeremy Corbyn.

And that's surely why the likes of (far-left) Media Lens - very early, lonely pioneers of this kind of left-wing BBC-bashing - have always singled the BBC out, along with the Guardian and the Independent, for especially intense criticism. They seem to see them as 'traitors' - a soggy, left-liberal 'centre ground' constantly letting the Left down by not being even more biased in their direction than they already are.

(The newer crowd, however, appear more likely to unthinkingly accuse the BBC of being 'Tories' or 'right-wing', being less grounded in intellectual politics than those old-school Media Lens activist types.)

And something similar might well explain the remarkable Lord Adonis/Alastair Campbell double act and their stupendous campaign against the BBC's pro-Brexit (sic) bias.

Roger Bolton has cracked it!

Anyhow, that's more than enough of that. Here's the transcript:

ROGER BOLTON: The series has three different presenters. The first programme was presented by the political journalist Steve Richards, who two years ago was the man behind a previous series called simply The Corbyn Story. I asked him why he felt now was a good time for another programme. 

STEVE RICHARDS: I made a series of three programmes about Jeremy Corbyn at the end of his first year as Labour leader, and it seemed to me that at the end of the first year since the general election there was an equally compelling case to re-visit Jeremy Corbyn. It seems to me he is still living through the most extraordinary story in British politics since 1945 - the rise of this figure who had been on the backbenches now established as a leader after that election, which I consider to be a success for him even though he lost. And so, he is just fascinating and I wanted to follow through that curiosity for a second time. 

ROGER BOLTON: There's a lot of suspicion of though the BBC - not necessarily of you. A lot of emails to us talk about you being extraordinarily fair-minded - but that's not the BBC. I mean there are emails like, "I see the BBC has a whole series now of Corbyn-bashing", "hatchet job drivel dressed up as a documentary show", etc, etc. So there's a great suspicion. Do you think on the whole that the media have been, and the BBC has been, fair to Corbyn? 

STEVE RICHARDS: Well, it depends what you mean by 'fair'. I think at the beginning all media outlets, including the BBC, struggled to quite recognise the significance. That was up until the general election. I think he was viewed in the media through the prism of 'this is all gonna be heading for disaster'. I think since the election there has been a greater understanding of his significance. And the BBC now - and this I think is a healthy thing and one of the consequences of Corbyn - are very good actually at putting up a range of voices who are close supporters of his, and that has changed the political dialogue on the media.  Not surprisingly it did take time. 

ROGER BOLTON: But you'll never satisfy the Left in one way, will you? They look and say the media is biased against it. They look at the Daily Mail, they look at the Daily Telegraph, they look at the Sun, whatever, and, therefore, they look at the BBC, in a way, to counteract the balance. 

STEVE RICHARDS: Well, certainly those who thought my programme was biased against Jeremy Corbyn should listen to it again. I mean, the majority of contributions...Because we were trying to understand him you have to speak to those who are close to him and, therefore, the majority of the contributions were from people trying to shed light on him from a quite sympathetic perspective. But, you're right. The role of the BBC is not counter the Daily Mail. The role of the BBC is to be  balanced and, therefore, you have to include other points of view as as a matter of duty. But also it would be an inaccurate picture to present the current situation within the Labour Party as some sort of harmonious paradise. I mean, that would be wrong. So the BBC has duties of impartiality that are well known but you also got to tell the story as it is in reality. 

ROGER BOLTON: Do you prefer making these sort of documentaries to doing straight interviews, in the sense that a lot of our listeners say a lot of political interviewing has become 'bang bang', 'yes, no', 'polarised positions'? Do you prefer though gradual exposition and exploration of ideas? 

STEVE RICHARDS: I love doing considered political journalism, at a time when politics is so fast-moving, but I think the interviewing is also...I agree with some of those listeners who think it's too much of a sort of shootout at the O.K. Corral style of political interviewing. And I wish in some ways that the interviews we did for the series could be put on a website or something because the interviews themselves, I think, are quite interesting, because if you just have a conversation with these people they engage with you... 

ROGER BOLTON:  But don't you think there's an additional problem here? That those who were operating from outside what was the political consensus need more time to have their ideas expressed or exposed? 

STEVE RICHARDS: I completely agree. And they need to be tested over time. And you have to get through all the cliches about, you know, 'back in the 1970s', you know, in the context of, say, that Corbyn programme. It's much more complicated and interesting than that. And that does take time and it needs space, And, if you've got three minutes you just say to Corbyn or McDonnell, 'You know, so you want to take us back to 1970 with nationalisation?', they'll say 'No, no, we're not. We want to do this, this and this', and it's over. So, yeah. I haven't thought about it like that before but the old consensus was familiar terrain for the interview and the listener, and this is all new, and it needs space. 

ROGER BOLTON: Our thanks to Steve Richards. 

To cover a protest or not to cover a protest....

The BBC News website currently has a UK political protest as one of its lead stories:

What protests, marches and demonstrations the BBC chooses to cover is a hot issue these days. Those whose protests don't get reported can become very angry at the BBC, and the BBC is facing more and more accusations of 'BBC bias' as a result - especially when other much (like this one) are given ample coverage?

Back in March the BBC's almost non-existent coverage of a day of anti-Brexit marches provoked a social media storm (starring Lord Adonis). 

And a couple of weekends ago a pro-Scottish independence march in Glasgow (which apparently drew between 40K and 80K attendees) and a pro-freedom of speech rally in London happening on the same day (which apparently drew around 4k attendees) also received the cold shoulder from the BBC, much to the fury of those taking part and those supporting each protest.

So why is the BBC giving this TUC-led rallies of "thousands" such prominence having given those either next to no coverage or no coverage whatsoever? 

Well, here's a transcript I prepared earlier (but didn't post) from the 30 March edition of Radio 4's Feedback in which the BBC's UK News Editor Richard Burgess lays out five criteria for assessing whether (or not) the BBC will cover a protest:

• How much of a live issue is it? 
• How much of a developing issue is it? 
• Is this march likely to bring about significant change? 
• Has it been influenced by very recent events? 
• Is there a real developing new story around this march?

Obviously some protests do meet those criteria. 

The 'Enough is Enough' protest by Jewish groups and various parliamentarians in late March is one example: Antisemitism in the Labour Party was a live issue, and a developing issue; the march could have brought about significant change; it was influenced by very recent events; and there most definitely was a real developing new story around that protest.

Others, however, don't meet those criteria.