Extremely random thoughts

Nick Robinson has spoken. 

It's actually sounds like quite an interesting speech. (Other takes can be found here and here).

Of course, Nick thinks the BBC is pretty much getting it about right and that the BBC is much 'greater' and much more 'super' (one for Reggie Perrin fans) than mean, dodgy old social media, but he also cites an old Steve Hewlett programme on Channel 4 that deliberately set out to shine the spotlight on voices that go against the liberal consensus and suggests that the BBC might pursue that route. It sounded excellent.

A much greater plurality of voices is certainly desperately needed on the BBC. 

Naturally Nick doesn't point out that it is entirely typical that it was Channel 4 rather than the BBC which broadcast such a consensus-defying programme and that the BBC has (or had) no such equivalent programme to boast of, though I suspect he must have thought it as that was my first thought on reading that bit of his speech. 

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BBC staff on Twitter (reporters, editors, presenters among them) have been in full tally-ho mode today against leading alt-left sites like The Canary and Evolve Politics after the former posted a falsehood about Tory Laura Kuenssberg. 

The Canary claimed she'd agreed to make a speech at the Tory Scum party conference. 

In fact Laura K had refused the invitation to make a speech (at a centre-right think tank fringe event). 

The alt-left, being caught red-handed, then rammed the brakes on but ended up skidding all over the place because they couldn't quite bring themselves to lose face by conceding that they'd cocked up, even though it was clear from their tweets that they knew they had cocked up. They wormed and wriggled and weaselled - as (alas) we bloggers too often do when we're caught out. 

I say 'we' but I'd like to think that whenever your actual we (meaning 'us' - me and Sue) get it wrong (as occasionally happens) we at least have the decency to admit it. 

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Godwin's Law only embraces mentioning the Nazis, doesn't it? It doesn't mean that bloggers aren't allowed to make comparisons to Weimar Germany, does it?

Reading my Twitter feed over the last couple of days has made me think that there are elements in the Labour Party that would be better suited to Weimar Germany. 

As Sue wrote, why aren't the BBC going crazy about this?

For years-gone-by (at least until the party collapsed) every fruitcake utterance by even the most obscure UKIP councillor would receive bags of unfavourable coverage from the BBC but today's Labour's fruitcakes are vastly more numerous, much much fruit(cake)ier and far, far, far nastier. They are coming out with outrages almost by the hour, and yet the BBC isn't splashing their every foul utterance or misdemeanour - or any of them really. 

Why not?

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(h/t DB)

The BBC certainly keeps them coming. 

Within the past couple of days alone we've had The Muslim cosplayer who uses the hijab in her outfits and Muslim woman 'touched' by anonymous gift (the gift was of 25 hijab-wearing dolls). The BBC also promoted the first of those stories on Twitter:

• Who says Wonder Woman can’t wear a hijab? Meet the Muslim cosplayer embracing the hijab in her amazing outfits.

Oddly (as a Google search shows) there have been no such good-news stories about sari-wearing women from the BBC. 

Is the BBC guilty of hijabaphilia? (Answer: Yes). 

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Via Mice Height at Biased-BBC you can watch a fascinating interview between the famous Milo Yiannopoulos and BBC Trending guru Mike Wendling. 

At the beginning of the YouTube video Mike states that his interview with Milo will form part of a Radio 4 'special'. He wasn't any more specific than that but I'm guessing that it's going to be a Radio 4 'special' on the alt-right. 

Milo probably has a point that the violence of the far-Left and Muslims is seriously underplayed by people like BBC journalists while the much smaller threat posed by the far-Right is vastly overplayed - and, to be fair, Mike didn't exactly give Milo grounds for disbelieving that with his questions.

It will be interesting to hear that Radio 4 'special' and compare it to this YouTube interview posted (and, presumably, filmed) by Milo and his friends. 

Incidentally, Mike has a new book out in April 2018 called Alt-Right: From 4chan to the White House. Hopefully, a sequel called Alt-Left: From The Canary to BBC Trending will be out in April 2019.

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On tonight's BBC One News at Six George Aligiah posed the following question to a BBC reporter:  

Some people are going to say that the very fact Theresa May is defending the free market suggests Jeremy Corbyn has hit the spot?

The "Some people are going to say" is classic BBC of course, and it's a canny way of putting it. Call it 'degrees of separation' if you will. 

Some people doubtless will be saying that very thing (especially Corbynistas). 

George's question is an interesting choice of question though, isn't it? What do you make of it?

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Here's one for The Canary crowd. The last chairpersonage of the BBC Trust Rona Fairhead has been given a peerage and made a minister in the present Conservative government.

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Meanwhile for those getting ahead of themselves on Upstart Crow on the BBC iPlayer, there are some excellent jokes at the expense of Benedict Cumberbatch on the final episode of this excellent BBC comedy. (Their only decent BBC sitcom of recent years?)

Three points

A question from our Melanie re the ousting of BBC Trust head Rona Fairhead by Theresa May: 

Melanie was reacting to a typically sharp piece by David Keighley at The Conservative Woman headlined Failure to tackle endemic BBC bias could derail Brexit, where David considered the same question (and has some fascinating stuff on BBC trustee Richard Ayre).

A trio of comments below David's post, however, raise familiar, nagging points: 

1. Everyone knows the BBC is biased anyhow, so why bother spelling it out?
2. Spelling it out is all very well but shouldn't you be actively campaigning to getting the guilty parties (at the BBC) punished? 
3. The BBC, despite decades of pro-EU bias, completely failed to prevent a vote for Brexit, so relax! The BBC will fail here too.

To which the following three answers may be given:

1. Not everyone thinks that the BBC is biased. Lots of people still trust the BBC. 
2. We're busy people . We can only do so much. And who says we don't already (as much as we can)? Still, If you really want a no-holds-barred campaign to get biased BBC employees publicly reprimanded or sacked, why not do it yourself? (Go on! Go on! Go on!) Feel free to use our 'spelling out' to help you. (Consider it a team effort!)
3. A fair point and, hopefully, you're right. But complacency on that front would be the very worst thing here. Just because something hasn't worked out before for someone (or some organisation, like the BBC) doesn't necessary mean it won't work out for them next time, if they work hard enough. Plus who's to say that the pro-Brexit vote might not have been even more decisive without the BBC's long shadow of (pro-EU) influence? Discuss (if you want to).

Shot to smithereens

Further to a couple of earlier posts....

David Keighley at The Conservative Woman has rightly described Rona Fairhead's complacent Independent piece as a "protectionist pro-BBC polemic" which essentially proclaims "that the Corporation is damned near perfect":

The core message is that the splendiferous, fabulous, marvellous BBC knows what the public wants and is delivering it in spades. Auntie might be a tad bureaucratic and may need a slightly different form of governance,  but hey!....anyone who does not believe it is the pinnacle of national achievement is deluded, unpatriotic, and blind to the multi-layered £8 billion bonanza the Corporation brings to the country.

David highlights one quote from the article that had my jaw dropping too, and which bears repeating:

"We have set – and effectively policed – the highest editorial standards in broadcasting, putting complainants and the BBC on an entirely equal footing in the hearing of appeals". 

As he says,

Excuse me?  These scrutiny processes are set by the BBC to favour blatantly the BBC. Every aspect of the BBC complaints process is set in the BBC’s favour. The claim is risible even by Fairhead’s gone-totally-native standards. 

Well, yes. And don't most of us know it!

He also relates Rona Fairhead's "smug defence of the BBC" to Ofcom's rulings against the BBC this week (the rulings the BBC downplayed) - and the BBC's attempts to wriggle out of those criticisms. 

The details are fascinating and well worth reading, showing the BBC "using exactly the same lame defences" with Ofcom that they deploy with us (ordinary licence fee payers):

The BBC’s defence against the charge in a section about one of the TVE programmes shows how bull-headed, bigoted and closeted the Corporation’s ‘high editorial standards’ actually are... 

Ofcom most certainly did not agree. Its frustration that the BBC did not understand such elementary journalistic principles – and defended its actions in this way - is evident in every word of its damning verdicts. 

Fairhead’s claims about those ‘high editorial standards’ are shot to smithereens. So is her claim that the BBC complaints procedure is fair. The reality is that, because of how the Trustees interpret their role and issues such as balance, huge swathes of BBC output (In controversial fields such as climate change) are just as untrustworthy and biased as TVE’s programming was judged to be by Ofcom. 

Rona Fairhead: "All is for the best in the best of all possible BBC worlds (except for the cuts)"

The Independent today contains a lengthy piece by the Head of the BBC Trust, Rona Fairhead. 

It needs saying, for starters, that it easily surpasses any other recent piece by a senior BBC figure for sheer self-serving complacency. Read it and be staggered!

As it's rather a long piece, here are a selection of quotes from it which will give you a very good sense of what it says: 

The UK has built something special in the BBC. That’s what our audience surveys tell us. It is a very British institution with an enduring mission which countries around the world respect and would love to call their own. It’s certainly not perfect. But it is something of real and lasting value. It informs us. It educates us. It entertains us. It creates economic wealth through support for key industries like music and television production and plays a critical role in the UK’s position as a creative powerhouse. It brings editorially independent news into people’s homes throughout the four nations of the UK on television, radio and online. It brings people together to witness and enjoy significant events in our national life. And through the quality of its content, it encourages other broadcasters to up their game, improving standards across the board to the benefit of all viewers. 

[The] BBC ... provides programmes people love at a lower cost than would be possible for a niche broadcaster, and that brings a multitude of other benefits, like jobs, economic growth, social cohesion and enhanced international standing.

The trust’s research shows an extraordinarily high level of public support for the Reithian mission to inform, educate and entertain (although not necessarily in the order Reith originally expressed it).

Despite the incessant noise around it, the future of the BBC needs to be driven by evidence and fact, not by prejudice and not by vested interest. 

The truth is – and it’s sometimes a difficult one for governments to accept and for the BBC to live up to – there isn’t a lot in broadcasting that audiences don’t want from the BBC, and most of them are prepared to pay for it. 

The evidence shows that the UK would be a far less formidable force in world markets if the BBC did not exist.  

The problem for the BBC, of course, is not lack of aspiration to meet audience expectations, but ever more acute pressure on budgets.  

That independence has needed defending over decades, not just from governments but also from parliament, with a growing tendency in recent years for select committees to question BBC executives about detailed editorial decisions. 

You might not believe it if you rely on what some of the BBC’s harshest competitors in the press report, but actually the corporation has a good record of becoming steadily more efficient in recent years, and we know it can do more. 

We [the BBC Trust] have set – and effectively policed – the highest editorial standards in broadcasting, putting complainants and the BBC on an entirely equal footing in the hearing of appeals. 

What we do know is that people value the BBC. As its owners, they rightly have huge expectations of it; expectations that need to be met as far as possible within these ever tighter funding constraints and in the face of arguably the greatest external challenges the BBC has confronted in its lifetime.

Chris Bryant calls Rona Fairhead a "lame duck"

If you care....

According to the Guadrian, Labour's shadow culture secretary Chris Bryant has called for the head of the Head of the BBC Trust, Rona Fairhead. 

He says she's a "lame duck".

“The BBC Trust, and in particular the chairperson, needs to be robust and able to tell the government home truths. The BBC are the embodiment of the independence of the BBC … And I am mystified that nobody has chosen to resign.”

Oh dear, another politician bossing the 'independent' BBC around!

Please excuse me while I go and stock up on the popcorn...

War of the words

What did you think of the video Craig posted the other day, Educating Rona (Rona being the new chair of the BBC Trust, Rona Fairhead.)  I expect she can look forward to one or two variations on that name. 

 The most frequent complaint from those exBBC staff and critics is that the BBC has an inherently “liberal” mindset, an accusation that implies that the BBC is guilty of something objectionable. As offensive as institutional racism, maybe? The first thing that struck me was how ‘our side’ has turned the word ‘liberal’ into a pejorative.

(How would it be if the BBC had an inherently illiberal  bias?)

Before I discuss the way that particular word has been snatched from its context and used as a weapon, I’ll just remind myself of some other words that have been stolen and used as instant pejoratives. Words like Zionist, and rrrright-wing. 

We do the same thing with ‘lefty’. Then there’s that other list of genuinely pejorative words, like genocide, massacre, Islamophobia and racist, which have been misappropriated and used maliciously, for pure mischief-making. 

Oh yes, and there’s the opposite, where words like ‘democratic’ and ‘rights’ sometimes serve as a one-size-fits all defence of the despicable, as in ‘democratically elected’ and of course ‘my/your/ human rights’.

So let’s go back to ‘liberal’ with a small ‘l’, as in mindset. Don’t let’s forget that after the post-war period liberalism was a positive; a force for good in austerity Britain.

Britain undoubtedly adopted reforming, liberal or libertarian ideals in the 60s, railing against the ‘thou shalt not’ tyranny that had such a negative impact on people’s lives. I’m thinking of the days when homosexuality was a crime, when illegitimacy was shameful and had appalling consequences  - come to think of it nearly everything ‘natural’ involved some sort of stigma. Corporal punishment was the norm in schools, and it was sometimes extremely brutal. Terrible things went on in the name of religion in those days too.

However, a ‘liberal’ society is not necessarily an ‘indiscriminately permissive’ unstructured, anarchic ‘free-for-all’, with no moral boundaries.  It’s up to society to use liberalism intelligently, and if it goes off the rails, it’s society’s duty to adjust it without turning the clock back and regressing, knee-jerk fashion, into pre-enlightenment times. Sleepwalking into, I don’t know  -  whatever.

Sadly we threw the Judeo/Christian baby out with the reactionary bathwater. We seem to be hide-bound in a culture that has become indiscriminately permissive, tolerant of the intolerant and the intolerable. When I say ‘we’ I think I primarily mean the BBC. I can’t pinpoint the exact time the scales tipped over from the sublime to the ridiculous, but we’ve ended up with a BBC that considers it morally wrong to make any kind of value judgement. 

Avoiding the ‘value judgement’ has been adopted as official BBC policy; it set off as ‘good intentions’ which inevitably paved the road to a cuckoo-land destination, where false moral equivalences were the only option. 

The BBC is supposed to be objective, but news reporting is frequently corrupted with spin, omissions and superficiality. Contrived outrage dominates the headlines. Documentaries are dumbed down; programmes like Question Time and Sunday Live inhabit a parallel universe, and as many online commenters have observed a weird self-hatred runs through much of the MSM,.

This morning we heard a peculiar discussion between John Humphrys  and two gents, whose names I’m now able to look up on the newly reinstated Today programme running order, (at one stage someone must have thought it was a good idea to remove it)  Musa Okwong, poet and broadcaster and Diran Adebyo, novelist and cultural critic. They were debating whether Mike Reed’s ‘UKIP calypso’ was ‘racist’. 

I don’t know where to start. Isn’t Calypso always sung in a Jamaican accent? Isn’t it part of the Calypso genre?  Singing in an accent associated with a particular race might be racist if it’s done in a malicious, mocking way I suppose.

The definition of racist is: “a person who believes that a particular race is superior to another” 

By that definition, how is singing a calypso racist? Of course what they really wanted to say was that UKIP is racist. The jury is still out on that, but Nigel Farage insists it isn’t racist, and these accusations seem to be predicated on the principle that anything at all nationalist must be racist, and anything that even defines a race in terms of ethnicity is taboo. 

Ethnicity:

“shared cultural practices, perspectives, and distinctions that set apart one group of people from another. That is, ethnicity is a shared cultural heritage. The most common characteristics distinguishing various ethnic groups are ancestry, a sense of history, language, religion, and forms of dress.”

Oooh! Watch out! Mustn’t sing calypso in a Jamaican accent. Someone might assume you feel ethnically superior.  

Anyway, back to another point I was about to make before I was so rudely interrupted with thoughts about Mike Reed.

  

I was about to mention a topic tackled by BBC Watch on Monday  concerning a portion of the BBC’s response to a complaint, which I think illustrated how badly the BBC has been led astray by its own inability to see the wood for the trees.

“we feel it is worth noting that Hamas has both a political wing and a military wing and while its charter calls for Israel’s ‘nullification’ it is at the same time the democratically elected government in Gaza. Hamas’s strategy is certainly to end the occupation through armed resistance while its 1988 charter also calls for Israel’s destruction. It has, however, modified its position over time. Hamas also enjoys considerable popular support among Palestinians, particularly in the Gaza Strip where it is particularly strong.”
It is worth noting this is as much to do with its humanitarian wing, which provides schooling, health clinics and financial assistance, as its military wing which carries out attacks on Israelis.”

BBC Watch has analysed this statement, bit by bit, together with some clips from MEMRI clearly showing that Hamas has not altered their position one iota over time. It particularly concerns me that the BBC uses certain terms as shorthand for those ‘know what I mean’ assumptions. Terms which don’t stand up if you give them a small poke. The emphasised passages highlight the BBC’s copious use of buzz-words that save them doing any critical self examination. 

Take ‘democratically elected’. How democratic was that election? How valid is it now? These questions don’t bear close examination, so the BBC is wrong to use ‘democratically elected’ to excuse Hamas’s terrorism. 

Take ‘occupation.’ What occupation? Hamas rules Gaza, which is not under occupation - at least not by Israel. In any case, would a strategy of armed resistance ever be likely to end an occupation? 

Would the end of the ‘occupation’ also bring about the end of the armed resistance? Answers on a postcard.

  So, Hamas has not ‘modified’ its position, nor has it moderated it, if that’s what the BBC was implying. The only modification is on the part of the PA, which has hardened its position, by moving itself politically closer to Hamas.

They’re saying that Hamas has a humanitarian wing, which is a grossly misleading thing to say. If they’re defending Hamas on the tenuous grounds that  it’s a democratically elected government, what else should it do but provide schooling, health clinics and....financial assistance?  However, it’s absolutely not humanitarian. The schooling it does provide is severely political and religious, and its agenda is perpetuation of the hatred of Israel. Health clinics? Funding is mostly expropriated and diverted to .... financial assistance -  for its ‘military wing’. 

Then, finally we get to the nitty gritty:

“Our coverage follows the BBC editorial guidelines which state: “Terrorism is a difficult and emotive subject with significant political overtones and care is required in the use of language that carries value judgements. We try to avoid the use of the term “terrorist” without attribution. When we do use the term we should strive to do so with consistency in the stories we report across all our services and in a way that does not undermine our reputation for objectivity and accuracy.”
Our coverage strives to describe the nuanced nature of the organisation in an accurate and impartial manner, allowing our audience to make up their own minds.”

How can the audience make up their own minds when the nuanced nature of the BBC’s Hamas-friendly, disingenuous use of words made meaningless through over-use and mis-use give such a dishonest and unrealistic picture? The unwitting audience is bound to sympathise with Hamas as they mutter “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” and wrap their keffiyehs round their necks in solidarity with the poor Palestinians. 

“We don’t agree with your suggestion of bias and this goes some way in addressing your concerns.”

'We' don’t agree? Why would they agree? Who expected them to agree? Sorry, but this certainly goes no way at all to addressing any concerns.

What would Rona Fair head make of that? Would she agree with me, that the BBC has an inherently left-wing, illiberal bias? Or would she agree with the BBC, that Hamas has modified its position over time, that it’s not a terrorist organisation even though this country has designated it as such, and that the fact that Hamas appears to have considerable popular support among Palestinians, particularly in the Gaza Strip, must mean that it is a humanitarian, democratically elected government merely pursuing legitimate armed resistance?  

If so, how does that square with the BBC’s position over UKIP,  which the BBC appears to consider racist, despite the fact that it evidently has considerable popular support among the British public. 

All together now, in your best Jameeyacan:

 "When we take charge / And the new prime minister is Farage / We can trade with the world again / When Nigel is at number 10."

Take your pick

So Rona Fairhead is set to replace Chris Patten as chair of the BBC Trust. 

Needless to say, plenty of people who know nothing about her are already scouring her biographical details and rushing to judgement rather than waiting to see how she gets on. 

I've seen her denounced as a lefty for being associated with the 'left-wing' Financial Times, "a safe Tory" for having a husband who served as a Conservative councillor, a fully-paid-up member of the hive, "Oxbridge", a "parasite", "another bloody woman", a "sleazy" banker, "one of the most accomplished political brown-nosers of her generation", etc...

To help you think up some smears of your own here's a quick run-down of some of things we already know about her. Fire away!

- She's a former chief executive of the Financial Times

- She's a former non-executive director of the Economist Group,

- She's a non-executive director of the bank HSBC 

- She's a non-executive director of the PepsiCo

- She worked at chemicals group ICI and engineering firm Bombardier

- She went to Cambridge University

- She has a master's degree from the Harvard Business School

- She started her career with Bain & Co and Morgan Stanley

- Her husband is a director of the private equity firm Campbell Lutyens and a former Tory councillor in Kensington and Chelsea

- She is one of the coalition government’s business ambassadors 

- She also a director at the Cabinet Office, advising the civil service minister Francis Maude

- She's a mother-of-three

- She enjoys skiing, scuba diving and flying