On BBC self-congratulation

Also on this week's Radio 4 Media Show, Roger Mosey talked of the need for “a broader accountability” and how the BBC needs to prove it, rather than just asserting it and simply patting itself on the back:

Of course, Tim Davie has said there is problem, so the BBC does believe there is a problem. And I think when you refer back to Brexit and the BBC making statements saying it's all jolly good, I'd just like the accountability about that. I'd like some examination of it. And all we see in the BBC annual report is 'the Brexit coverage was rather marvellous, and so's the 2019 general election coverage'. And my question is: Was it? If you believe public service really matters, as I do, you have to make it better. And the BBC's supposed to be, not just where the market is, it's supposed to be better than the market.

And Ofcom's Kevin Bakhurst - the BBC's regulator - agreed, saying:

I don't think it's always really helpful that the knee jerk is 'we're already doing a brilliant job'. I think it's better sometimes to look at the evidence, which is what we do as an independent regulator, and see where you could make improvements.

Into the Labyrinth again

Just checking through our archive for our use of the word 'labyrinthine' - plus 'labyrinth' - to describe the BBC's tortuous complaints process, I find I've used it in five posts over the years - in 2013, 2014, 2017 and 2019.

So it's gratifying to find that a former BBC head of news, Roger Mosey, and Ofcom's Kevin Bakhurst, both used exactly the same term to describe the BBC complaints process on this week's The Media Show on BBC Radio 4.

It feels like vindication.

Roger Mosey described the BBC as being “rather bad at accountability”:

Roger Mosey: And now I'm outside the BBC you see that accountability is really important, and it's very crucial for the BBC that it is accountable. I think it's rather bad at accountability really. The complaints process is very complicated. I've only ever...Since I've been outside I've made one complaint in eight and a half years. And I know the system. And you just got stuck in this labyrinth of not being able to work out how it was that you got anyone to acknowledge that there was a genuine issue there. 

And former BBC high-up now their regulator Kevin Bakhurst said that people get lost in the process and don't like the tone of the BBC's responses and “give up the ghost” - and also rather deliciously skewers a BBC 'defence' here:

Ros Atkins, BBC: But help me dig into the detail here. And, Kevin, you're the one making the request. So let me ask you, if I Google now 'BBC Complaints' I'm quite easily gonna end up on a page which says 'What would you like to say to us?', so the problem is presumably not that. The problem for you is what happens after that? 

Kevin Bakhurst: I mean, our research shows audiences can Google it and find their way in really, really easily and quickly, and they approve of that. And, by the way, in general they approve of BBC First as the right way to deal with complaints. However, once they get into that system, they get lost. And, as Roger says, it is really labyrinthine for audiences. That's what our research shows. They are not quite sure where they are in the process, they don't like the tone of language they get in responses from the BBC, many of them...when we were discussing this with the BBC, the BBC said, well, you know, it's a measure of our success that people don't come through to Ofcom that much at the end. Our research shows people don't come through to Ofcom because they've given up the ghost going through the BBC complaints process, and don't really understand where they are or how to advance them.

 As we've long said.

The Media Show

I've belatedly caught up with this week's The Media Show where Ros Atkins talked to Ofcom's Kevin Bakhurst; Owen Meredith of the News Media Association; former BBC head of news Roger Mosey; and Alice Enders of Enders Analysis.

Various thoughts flitted across my mind while listening to it, e.g. I tutted when Ros said:

But on the broader issue of complaints. Here's a statement today from the BBC - and, by the way, we did invite the BBC onto the programme, but they've sent us a statement.

It's always a little daft when the BBC declines to speak to itself.

This led into my next thought, concerning Ros's role in the programme. One admirable quirk of the BBC, especially during John Humphrys or Eddie Mair's interviews with BBC people during times of crisis for the BBC, was that BBC interviewers can go in surprisingly hard on the BBC. One DG, George Entwistle, had to go after a particularly high-temperature John Humphrys roasting. Maybe it was because the BBC weren't there to stick up for themselves that Ros played the part of BBC defender so strongly - i.e. for professional reasons, and reasons of fairness and balance - but he did seem to take certain things personally and put considerable energy - and what sounded like conviction - into sticking up for the BBC.

Anyhow, there were some interesting exchanges during the programme...which will follow in the next few posts...

The Battle of the Beeb

Yogita Limaye

If you subscribe to it, you may well have read former Head of BBC Television News Roger Mosey's interesting piece in The Sunday Times last week where he claimed that there's a "battle" going on at the BBC between older hands who want to stay true to the Corporation's long commitment to fairness and impartiality and newer, younger recruits who want to make it "more of a campaigning organisation in which journalists shape the agenda to harmonise with their personal views". 

Well, this past week suggested that the newer, younger recruits - the activist reporters - are starting to win. 

Now, of course, blogs like this have existed for a couple of decades now, and that's because some of those older BBC hands weren't entirely clean on the 'fairness and impartiality' front themselves, and some BBC journalists have been shading into campaigning and shaping the agenda to harmonise with their personal views for quite a while now (Mark Easton anyone?), but at least they usually tried to put on a proper show of fairness and impartiality, and knew they had to do so.

Both last Monday's Today programme and last Monday's BBC One News at Ten featured reports by BBC journalist Yogita Limaye, and she clearly felt no obligation whatsoever to show fairness and impartiality. 

Her pieces were nothing more than concerted efforts to brand Winston Churchill a racist and hold him responsible for the 1943 Bengal Famine. 

Writing in this week's The Sunday Times Tom Mangold, a BBC older hand if ever there was one, called her New at Ten report "biased, partial, unbalanced and filled with the spite and venom of the worst of toxic woke culture now pulsing through the heart of the Corporation" and added that "viewers were left in no doubt that the reporter agreed with her own preferential report". 

If you've also been reading about the goings-on (and goings-off) at The New York Times, where younger, more groupthink-driven, openly activist reporters have gained ascendance and are abandoning all pretence of impartiality whilst displaying ever greater unwillingness to tolerate fellow citizens (and colleagues) who don't think or feel like them, then it's very possible that we can already see where the BBC is now inexorably heading, and Ms Limaye's report is an early swallow.

Mr Mosey blames 'Twitter culture' for the rise of openly campaigning journalism and the difficulty people who think like him and who are still at the BBC are now having trying to get such journalists to represent both sides of a story, and obviously there's some truth in that. Without the spell cast on her by Twitter and the lure of applause from the Twitterati, would Emily Maitlis, for example, have ever thought of, never mind dared to deliver, that infamous impartiality-busting monologue of hers? I doubt it. She didn't used to behave so brazenly. And the arrival of newer, younger recruits like Lewis Goodall - people who live the majority of their journalistic lives on Twitter and give every impression of 'shaping the agenda to harmonise with their personal views' while deliberately speaking to their own narrow echo chambers both when they tweet and when they broadcast - has had a noticeable, radicalising impact on programmes such as Newsnight. 

But it take two to tango. Let's remember that Yogita Limaye's reports were broadcast on two of the BBC's flagship news programmes, both edited by BBC editors who evidently felt it acceptable to put it all out. If anyone, they should be held responsible for making that decision. 

Did they put them out without serious qualms though? Surely they must have known how controversial, indeed inflammatory, they were. In other words, are they on the losing, surrendering side of the battle and putting such reports out with heavy hearts, or (like Newsnight's Esme Wren) are they now actively aiding and abetting the winning, campaigning side? 

I fear the BBC is going to get much, much worse before it gets better.

Always on Twitter

Twitter-happy Lewis

The Sunday Times quotes a number of former BBC figures today on the subject of the Maitlis affair, of which the most damning comes from an old-school BBC legend:

Sir John Tusa, founding Newsnight presenter: "No editor of Newsnight that I worked with would have allowed that to go through. No presenter would have written anything like that. It is self-indulgence and it does no service to viewers. You can either choose to be a celebrity or you can choose to be a journalist. You can’t be both." 

The paper summarises that into a striking headline:

Emily Maitlis was chasing fame, not the story, says BBC veteran

Other blasts-from-the-past focus on a particular problem with Newsnight, though one that was  ultimately first set in train by BBC management:

Roger Mosey, former editorial director of the BBC: “The BBC’s traditional restraint has been swept away in the age of social media. On-air staff have been actively encouraged to engage with their audiences and to show their personality.”

Peter Barron, former Newsnight editor: “People at the BBC are concerned that journalists are more interested in breaking stories on Twitter than their own platforms. The nature of Twitter is driving broadcasters to be more eye-catching and that is leading into problematic territory.” 

The Sunday Times also includes a column by Matthew Syed. This is the paragraph that particularly stood out for me from it:

Matthew Syed, The Sunday Times: “This is why the corrosion of the BBC’s reputation for impartiality is of unusually grave importance. I happen often to agree with the editorial stance of Newsnight, but even I can see how its bias is wrecking the credibility of the entire institution. This isn’t about the coverage of Dominic Cummings per se, but a slow-motion car crash that has been unfolding for months, its journalists making the tragic (but common) mistake of conflating the virality of its social media posts with the credibility of its analysis. This could yet destroy the BBC itself, turning a great organisation into a facet of polarisation rather than a bulwark against it.” 

That "slow-motion car crash" looks set to continue unless senior management at the BBC get a grip on it. Some Newsnight journalists are still posting on Twitter, heavily, seven days a week - which, it must be said I passing, surely can't be good for their mental well-being. The programme's policy editor Lewis Goodall even put in a Saturday night appearance this week to have his say on Dominic Cummings again - and only on Dominic Cummings. (I don't think he's had a day off for weeks).

"The BBC will have the backing of the people only if the people are sure their voices are being heard"

Also, as per David...

Former Head of News at the BBC Roger Mosey, now master of Selwyn College, Cambridge, has been sharply critical of the BBC's election coverage.

"I do believe it has a mostly liberal and metropolitan world view revolving around the chattering classes and the districts of London they inhabit", he writes. "If you add to that the Westminster bubble made up of the politicians and journalists who cover politics, there is a major gulf with life as it is lived in Burnley or Redcar."

Now, the BBC and its fellow broadcasters face questions about the way they covered the 2019 campaign, and how well they reflected the mood of the country outside London. Because the portrayal of the majority of British people and their concerns was frequently off-beam. 

We were told the Election would be very close. It was not. 

The broadcasters reported that both Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn were big turn-offs for voters, yet Johnson won something close to a landslide. 

In the short space of time since taking over, the Prime Minister had brought about a remarkable change to the Conservative Party, increasing its share of the vote from 8.8 per cent in the European elections under Theresa May seven months ago to a steady rating of 40 per cent or more throughout this campaign. 

He was obviously getting something right. It was in plain sight. 

Yet none of the broadcasters chose to consider properly what this might mean. 

As polling day approached, millions of working-class people outside the capital were preparing to do the unthinkable and overturn years of tribal allegiance to vote Conservative. 

The broadcast media, meanwhile, spent 24 hours focusing on Boris Johnson's response to an ITV reporter brandishing a disturbing photograph of a four-year-old boy on the floor of Leeds General Infirmary.

******* 

We have had more of this metropolitan viewpoint in the past few weeks. It is true that there has been a great deal of reporting from outside London in the course of the Election campaign, but it didn't reveal enough of what was actually going on. 

People were interviewed grumbling, but this was translated as criticism of politicians in general. 

There was no comprehension that what the reporters witnessed might have been game-changing anger. There wasn't enough exploration of the possibility that the Labour vote in working-class communities could collapse. 

I suspect the editorial view would have been different had the decision-makers been based in Doncaster rather than in metropolitan, Labour-voting London.

******* 

The idea persisted that voters hadn't made up their minds between two unpopular candidates, Johnson and Corbyn – a claim which now seems implausible, to say the least. 

Too often, the broadcasters served up a diet of trivia, of politics reduced to soap opera. 

Yet the public didn't seem to care that Boris dodged being interviewed by Andrew Neil. It made no difference to them that he hid in a fridge, apparently to avoid questions from ITV's Good Morning Britain. 

Both these things were reported as major incidents. The voters seem to have decided otherwise. 

Was Boris Johnson's apparent lack of empathy towards the four-year-old boy as big an Election issue as the flagship news bulletins claimed? Apparently, it was not.

Etc.

Moving spots

Former BBC head of television news/former Today editor Roger Mosey is having his say on Twitter this morning:

Sophy Ridge has been interviewing both Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May this morning.

Wonder if Rob Burley will bite? 

Why LBC is unsettling the BBC

Former head of BBC Television News Roger Mosey is becoming required reading at The New Statesman. His latest piece explains why the "startling growth" of LBC, along with "the punchiness of its editorial proposition", is "unsettling" the BBC. He adds that "many of the most memorable moments of political radio in recent years have not happened in their customary home of the Radio 4 news programmes" but on LBC. Here's an extract:

The BBC is uneasy about what is happening at LBC. “Surprised” is one of the milder adjectives used by an executive when asked to assess how LBC can broadcast a regular show by an elected politician like [Nigel] Farage within the Ofcom impartiality framework. If you happened to tune in only at a particular time each day, you would hardly be getting a balanced picture – and LBC has exploited to its full the idea of “due impartiality”, which allows broadcasters to aim for impartiality across the totality of their output rather than within a single edition of a programme.

Among the ranks of BBC producers, there are those who find this idea more attractive than the robotic balance of “this person says yes, this person says no” that can be the corporation’s default. That’s particularly the case on 5 Live, where the figures are heading downwards. Twenty years ago, 5 Live was a reinvention of speech radio; but its audience is being nibbled away by dedicated sport and news stations – and some of its editorial rationale is lost in an age of social media. Staff there express admiration for LBC’s interaction with its audience and the strength of its personality and they muse about whether they might be able to follow suit by having, for instance, consecutive shows that represent different points of view. 

It’s one possible response to the challenge I noted here last month about some BBC presenters displaying their political colours on social media – so why not on air too?

Perhaps the appeal of LBC over Radio 4 is ever easier to explain though. As Harriet Sergeant commented in response to Roger Mosey's piece, "Political correctness makes for boring radio. That's why we’re shifting the dial from BBC Radio 4 to LBC"

On which point, Rod Liddle at The Spectator has another fine piece headlined There are too many women on Radio 4 and they’re always moaning. In it he lists the type of people the social engineers at the BBC, especially BBC Radio 4, don't create quotas for to ensure proper representation:

• People who want the UK to leave the European Union — 52 per cent (Source: that referendum we had in 2016).
• People who think Islam is not compatible with the British way of life — 56 per cent (ComRes poll, 2016).
• People who disagree with the ‘right’ of gay people to adopt children — 52 per cent (British Social Attitudes Survey 2013).
• People who think immigration levels to this country are too high — 63 per cent (YouGov poll, 2018).
• People who think immigration in general has had a negative impact in the UK — 71 per cent (Sky poll for the think tank Demos, 2018).
• Europeans who want to stop all immigration from Muslim majority countries — 55 per cent (Chatham House, 2017).
• People who believe Britain is a Christian country — 55 per cent (YouGov poll, 2014).
• People who think, rightly, that there are just two genders, male and female — 56 per cent (Fawcett Society, 2016).
• People who do not identify as ‘feminist’ — 93 per cent (Fawcett Society, 2016).

Rod continues:

Now, tell me if you think those views are proportionately represented on the BBC, and especially Radio 4? Do you think they are given equal airtime to the less popular liberal standpoints which nonetheless the BBC supports? If so, you have been listening to a very different Auntie to me over the past ten years. In almost every case quoted above, people who express those sorts of views are considered by the BBC to be antediluvian and quite beyond the pale, and the usual discussion to be had is: what can we do to make these morons change their minds? Those views quoted above are simply wrong, so far as the BBC is concerned, and there’s an end to it, even when those views are in a clear majority.

Why the BBC "secretly enjoys" Owen Jones's attacks on Andrew Neil

Roger Mosey, in BBC days gone by

Former head of BBC Television News Roger Mosey has written a piece for The New Statesman headlined Why Owen Jones’s attack on Andrew Neil secretly delighted the BBC. 

It's full of interesting points, and I suspect that you'll enjoy it.

It's his take on why BBC reporters' Twitter comments matter and how they seriously compromise 'BBC impartiality'...

...however much some people might discount such things as trivia not worth bothering about by blogs about BBC bias. After all, for many BBC reporters, it's now a key part of their reporting role and it's fully BBC-branded.

Roger singles out Laura Bicker for emoting in a dumbed-down way ("totes emosh") over the Kim-Moon "bromance", and regular anti-Trump sneerer Anthony Zurcher....

Zurcher often retweets Trump with caustic comments

(Very true!)

...and business correspondent Joe Lynam for being pro-EU ("on Twitter it’s clear he cares a lot about the EU"). 

All are absolutely fair comments from Mr Mosey - though I believe him to be seriously mistaken in thinking that their TV, radio and online reporting is "straight", impartiality-wise. It is no such thing. [Evidence from this blog of all three reporters behaving less than impartially? Well, please click here for Laura, here for Anthony and here for Joe].  

He then goes on, just as fairly, to criticise John Simpson for (despite himself) "revealing this thinking" on Brexit on Twitter.

And then he brings in Andrew Neil, long the BBC presenter those who deny that the BBC has a left-liberal bias like to cite. 

As I've said before, I agree that Andrew Neil - the fairest of all BBC interviewers - behaves as badly as these others on Twitter. He too thinks he can behave "without impunity" on social media. Unlike all of the above, however, his Twitter feed comes from 'the other side'.

And that's where Owen Jones leaps in, accusing Andrew Neil (quite correctly) of behaving in a less-than-impartial way on Twitter and, thus, "promoting right-wing causes" - hence 'proving' the BBC to be biased in 'the other direction'.

Roger Mosey says the BBC "secretly enjoys assaults like that" from Owen Jones, as it "undermines the usual claim that it is controlled by liberal lefties"

He concludes by posing a dilemma for the BBC:

All this points to a choice that broadcasters still have: to engage or not. One presenter who shuns social media told me: “I’m genuinely not persuaded that tweeting serves any useful purpose for broadcasters who must be seen as impartial. Maybe it raises the tweeter’s profile – but with whom? The people who matter are the audience and I suspect they reach their judgement on how we perform when we’re doing our jobs.” Some European public service broadcasters take the hard line of simply not allowing their presenters to vent on social media, and they don’t seem the poorer for it.

Please read it all (if you have time).

Things I've read (and can remember)

Having (it appears) become merely a weekend blogger, Friday night now seems to mean catching up with all sorts of things - and trying to remember all the other things about the BBC which have flitted across my mind in the past five days. 

(I wish the world would slow down. There's been far too much going on and my brain isn't what it used to be.)

Among the things I've read this week have been the following:


1. THE CONSERVATIVE WOMAN: Biased BBC will load the dice against Brexit and Cameron’s claim he has banished “ever closer union” is a legal fiction - both by former BBC producer David Keighley.

The first piece looks at the BBC Trust's slippery behaviour - first, in slipping out the BBC's editorial guidelines on the corporation's EU referendum coverage and, second, regarding the Trust's offhand rejection of MPs' concerns about monitoring BBC bias.

The second piece includes a striking example of pro-EU bias from the BBC News website, awarding "a win" to David Cameron for 'exempting us from ever-closer union'. Whether the PM has actually done so (legally-speaking) is disputed, so the BBC awarding him "a win" might be premature (and biased).


2. THE NEW STATESMAN: The BBC has never been a natural home for Eurosceptics – just ask the young Michael Gove - a piece by former BBC head of television news/former Today editor Roger Mosey.

Mr Mosey, as might be expected, puts a generally pro-BBC case, but admits:

(1) that he "came across vanishingly few EU withdrawalists in [his]broadcasting life". 

(2) that BBC colleagues would 'hear' "the flapping of white coats" when "Tory Euro-bashers" and UKIP's Lord Pearson denounced the EU and BBC pro-EU bias. 

(3) that he thinks the BBC is too London-centric and, thus, thinks too much like pro-EU London than the rest of the country. 

(4) that like the rest of the Westminster Bubble, the BBC tends to concentrate more on "process" than "policy" (hence, presumably, all the 'splits' stuff).

(5) that BBC staff are "much more In than Out".

3. THE SPECTATOR: Who will watch for BBC bias in the EU referendum campaign?  - by Charles Moore...

...in which Mr Moore hopes that pro-Leave campaigners will be monitoring the BBC for bias (I think his wish will come true!) and where he recalls a couple of hours of biased (pro-EU) BBC broadcasting on Today (a classic example of what I've recently been calling a 'snapshot').

An incidental moment in Charles Moore's piece recalls another Speccie piece by Rod Liddle (prior to Nick Robinson's arrival). Rod strongly suspected that John Humphrys was the rumoured "Tory" on the Today team. Charles suspects that John Humphrys might be the one non-Remain member of the Today team.

(That might explain the otherwise baffling series of features slagging him off over the past year or so on Roger Bolton's Feedback - a series of attacks that has always felt oddly personal to my ears.

Well, if the BBC can fill its airwaves with endless speculation, so can I!)


4. THE JEWISH CHRONICLE: Israel must stop making it easy for the boycotters - by John Ware.

The headline doesn't tell the full story here. The veteran BBC Panorama reporter lands a few solid punches on the strange and frequently antisemitic BDS brigade.


5. THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: The media is twisting the knife into Israel over the 'lone wolf intifada' - by Eylon Aslan-Levy.

Those notorious BBC headlines make their appearance here, and Eylon makes a strong case against the media in general. 

"It never fails to turn a bit of a rumpus into an existential crisis"

And sticking with The Sunday Times for one last post...

Stephen Robinson's review of Getting Out Alive by former BBC News boss Roger Mosey begins with a revealing story:

There is a good anecdote in Roger Mosey’s memoir of a BBC career when he and senior colleagues are gathering at Heathrow for a business-class junket to America. In a scene straight out of W1A (the BBC’s satire of its beyond-parody institutional absurdities), they spot a sinister pair lurking near the check-in, reviewing photographs of the BBC hierarchy. They assume they are Daily Mail reporters out to expose the BBC’s profligacy with licence-payers’ money. 

Once on board, the junketers hold a crisis meeting. They decide that when they land they must leave the airport separately to deprive any photographer of a shot showing the size of the freebie party. Alas, it turns out that the pair at Heathrow are not from the Mail, but London representatives of one of the companies they are visiting in America, doing basic research. 

This trivial incident illustrates the theme that emerges most strongly from Mosey’s engaging memoir Getting out Alive...The BBC is so top-heavy with redundant layers of management that it never fails to turn a bit of a rumpus into an existential crisis. 

*******

And here's Rod Liddle on the subject of BBC bias [with the odd added comment from yours truly]:

Which brings us to news and current affairs, which all the executives are agreed is one of the things the BBC does best. And there is still some truth to this assertion. Every so often, on the News at Ten there will be a package from the BBC’s China editor, Carrie Gracie, and it will tell you something you didn’t know about China. It will be intelligent, hugely well informed and beautifully presented. [Ed: I have to say that I very much agree with him about Carrie Gracie's reports from China. Every one I've heard or seen has been excellent]. And there are several similarly competent foreign affairs specialists left at the corporation — a diminishing number, especially now that the Beeb has started using indigenous journalists, who are often not quite at home with the English language. 

News and current affairs has long been the powerhouse of the BBC, the thing that enables it to argue a certain uniqueness, the breadth and depth of its coverage. But the obvious political bias becomes more apparent with every year that passes and there is not the slightest inclination among BBC execs that this is a problem or something they should address. It simply does not exist, end of story. 

They are given succour in this delusion by leftist journalists such as Charlotte Higgins (of The Guardian, natch), who, in her new book on the corporation, suggests, idiotically, that the BBC is biased to the right. It does not matter how many former DGs or departed executives — such as the excellent Roger Mosey — hold up their hands and say, yep, we got immigration wrong, or we were wide of the mark on Euroscepticism and Thatcher and welfare reform, for the BBC it is always a case that there may have been bias in the past, but it is gone now, definitely, no need to worry any more. [Ed: Yep, that's exactly what they say. That was then, this is now, and everything's OK again].

The bias matters partly because it is egregious and increasing rather than diminishing. And also because the BBC is now up against its traditional enemy — a Conservative party with a parliamentary majority and a right-wing culture secretary in John Whittingdale. [Ed: Hmm? Well, we'll see about that!]

The BBC is biased!

A couple more pieces in the press about Roger Mosey’s  book.

Damian Thompson has written in the Daily Mail and Rod Liddle in the Spectator.

Damian and Rod both singled out the story about the Newsroom’s fear of racists and bigots airing their nasty views on the BBC.

Damian:

 'One night on the Ten O'Clock News we broadcast a package from a racially diverse part of Britain, where ethnic minorities had become a majority of the local population,' writes Mosey.'People there were interviewed about how they felt about the immigration that had led to the ethnic mix. Only one white man was featured, and he said he was perfectly happy with the way his neighbourhood had developed.'
It’s a good story, which neatly sets out the problem we’ve all been trying to prove. 

****

Rod:

He recounted a story of the Ten O’Clock News broadcasting a package from an ‘ethnically diverse’ (i.e. monoculturally Muslim) part of Britain in which all the comments but one from the indigenous white folk were edited out because they were deemed ‘racist’: the one comment that remained expressed great satisfaction that these colourful and interesting people had so enriched all of our lives. It was not hugely representative of the real feelings in the community. It was, instead, a travesty.

****

Both journalists have been known to complain about the BBC’s bias before, and Roger Mosey has given everyone a good excuse to go on about it some more. The evidence seems incontrovertible.

Goodness knows what good it will do.

Getting out alive

The Daily Mail is screaming!

Liberal BBC out of touch on migration, says its ex-director: Former head of TV news believes corporation is not reflecting views of its audience

• Ex-BBC executive says broadcaster has ‘dysfunctional’ government
• Roger Mosey accuse BBC of ignoring white communities’ grievances
• Mosey say the BBC has succumbed to a ‘liberal group-think’ attitude

“In his memoirs, serialised in The Times, Mr Mosey claims that the BBC "sanitised" a report about an area with high immigration by choosing not to include "hard" interviews with certain members of the white community.He also took a swipe at a leaflet sent to local BBC radio stations suggesting that target listeners were a middle-aged couple called Dave or Sue, who socialised with people of different backgrounds and were open to adopting aspects of other cultures."It must have been something of a shock to the writers of this leaflet when many real-life Daves and Sues went off and joined Ukip," he said.

As Dave-Craig-and-Sue, (not a middle-aged couple) who habitually socialise with people of different cultural backgrounds and are open to adopting aspects of other cultures (apart from ‘conservative’ religiously motivated cultures that hate us) and who didn’t go off and join UKIP, I would like to say a few words about Roger Mosey who, apparently   Has. A. Book. Coming. Out.

“Getting Out Alive” There you are. A plug for a book right here on “Is the BBC Biased?” 

Perceptive, revealing and honest, Getting Out Alive reveals what makes the BBC tick. It’s funny, too. A delight.

(Above quote from John Humphrys!)

The name was familiar to me. Roger Mosey. Yup. Heard it before. Where? Ah yes. On the BBC, in credit announcements and the like.

So what’s this, another of those ex-BBC high-ups dishing the dirt? Another of those “I used to be one, but now I’m not” retrospective whistle-blowers who like to make belated confessions and publicise the new book into the bargain? 

The most substantial article, (and serialised excerpts) is in the Times (£)   Titled: “Editors were too prone to group think”

 I suppose I’ll have to transcribe some excerpts for those of you who don’t subscribe. Drat. 

“The BBC suffers from liberal “group think” and dysfunctional governance” one of its most senior figures of the past two decades has said.”

As amply demonstrated in the recent ‘true to life’ (tm Tony Hall) docu-drama W1A.

Failed to reflect the concerns of its audience over asylum and immigration and had adopted a “liberal-defensive” position on these issues.’

No! 

“Mr Mosey, now Master of Selwyn College, Cambridge, reveals how:Salary inflation at the corporation led BBC Trust figures to consider offering to pay a director-general a £1 million salary, seven times as much as the Prime Minister earns.” 

Ooh missus!  You are awful

Roger Mosey: Total remuneration: £277,800
These details were last updated in June 2012 when Roger Mosey's salary and remuneration were last adjusted.

Cut to the serialisation of Roger’s new booky wook entitled “Getting out Alive” in particular the selected portion on page 15 of the Times.(£)I’ll ignore the stuff about Savile for now, because I see it as low-hanging fruit - old news that’s already been chewed up and spat out. Here’s the bit I’m concerned with today:

“Back in the newsroom, it was the domestic issues of immigration and asylum that were proving tougher to sort out. One night on the Ten O’Clock News we broadcast a package from a racially diverse part of Britain, where ethnic minorities had become a majority of the local population. People there were interviewed about how they felt about the immigration that had led to the current ethnic mix. 

Only one white man was featured, and he said he was perfectly happy with the way his neighbourhood had developed.Curious about how representative he was, I emailed the reporter next morning; “Just wondered, did all the people you spoke to think the majority/minority racial position was good? What I wonder is whether we represent diversity well(which we should) but also whether we represent diversity of opinion as well (which w also should!)”
The reporter replied that the vox pops had been fraught with difficulty because of the “problem” of the white population, many of whom were, in his view, “fairly rabidly racist. It was a nightmare in terms of what could be used in the piece”, he said; if he had used the “hard” white voices, it might have been illegal in that it could have been construed as inflammatory. Hence the decision to use the one man who had expressed a positive view. 

I shared this with colleagues on the Newsboard, who were as appalled as I was. It started of course, from good intentions, but it ended up with an unacceptably sanitised piece of reporting.*
It was around this time that BBC local radio identified for its staff its typical target listeners imagined as a middle-aged couple called Dave and Sue. 

A leaflet for all local radio stations included a section on their hypothetical attitudes. **
“Now it’s an established every day reality that Dave and Sue work alongside and socialise with people of different ethnic backgrounds” producers were told. “They are interested in and open minded about adapting aspects of other cultures into their own lives - in entertainment, medicine, belief, food, clothes and language. Their community-minded attitudes mean they are interested in projects which advance social cohesion in this country and in international development issues. It must have been something of a shock to the writers of this leaflet when many real-life Dave and Sues joined Ukip. 

Roger and out

Roger Mosey has just left the BBC after 35 years. 

Over that time he'd been head of BBC Television News, controller of Radio 5 Live, editor of Radio 4's Today programme, director of the corporation's 2012 Olympics coverage and head of BBC Vision.

He's now written an article for The Times reflecting on the state of the BBC, which you can access - if you pay for it - here. 

For those of us too stingy to pay for the privilege, many quotes from the article can be found strewn around the rest of the media (though not on the BBC News website).

Here are a selection, culled from the Guardian and the Telegraph:

"On the BBC’s own admission, in recent years, it did not, with the virtue of hindsight, give enough space to anti-immigration views or to EU-withdrawalists; and though he may have exaggerated, the former Director-General Mark Thompson spoke of a “massive bias to the left” in the BBC he joined more than 30 years ago.”

“There was more internal political diversity in recent times, but that isn’t enough unless it’s evident in a wider range of editorial views on air.”

“Co-ordination can therefore lead to homogeneity; and that can be intensified by regulation that sees there being “right” and “wrong” answers."

“The BBC Trust speaks the language of diversity but in its edicts it promotes conformity, whether it’s about an agreed approach to the science of climate change, “correct” terminology in the Middle East or the way of documentary about benefits should be constructed."

“This has obvious risks.”

"None of this is an argument for taking a wrecking ball to the BBC. Its strengths remain manifest. But it does suggest there should be a debate about how the next licence fee settlement helps pluralism and diversity."

“The hard question for the corporation is why in a digital age it should have the whole pie to itself forever – when doing something different might be better for the public good.”

"For instance, Channel 4 tried a few years ago to launch a suite of radio services to rival the BBC. If that couldn't work as a commercial enterprise, might it enrich the nation if similar bids were open to funding by the BBC? "The debate about 'top slicing' as it is unromantically known, played out to no particular conclusion a few years ago. It's obvious that there are dangers, but there may be some big wins to be had too."

Update: Thanks to DB at Biased BBC, Mr Mosey's piece in full can be read here - as posted by Mr Mosey himself.