A nest of singing birds

 

The Atticus column in The Sunday Times brings news of a revealing (if unsurprising) email:

PM and Beeb coo in harmony

Much has been said about Boris Johnson’s war on the BBC, with threats to decriminalise non-payment of the licence fee and appoint critics to prominent positions. But its current leadership appears to think relations are just fine.

Atticus has obtained an email from Tim Davie, the Beeb’s director-general, to David Clementi, then chairman, shortly after the former met the PM in the Commons last September.

His verdict: “It was friendly,” he cooed. “We landed a few points on the importance of the BBC in Covid etc. They outlined some of their thoughts on key messages.”

Davie, 53, added: “At the end, the PM volunteered that we should meet again soon to catch up more generally on the BBC.” A nest of singing birds, then.

Sir David Clementi's Last Stand

Nebuchadnezzar (Blake)

The outgoing BBC chairman Sir David Clementi has risked ridicule by using a very small-scale internal BBC study of 70 households carried out 6 years ago - before Netflix, Amazon and other streaming services had become fixtures in so many British homes - to allege that most people "cannot cope" without the BBC, whatever people he calls "professional detractors" and "right-wing thinkers" may say. 

After just 9 days of BBC deprivation two-thirds of the BBC licence fee sceptics in the study underwent a 180° change of heart, saying they couldn't live without the wonderful BBC and expressing the belief that the licence fee is worth every last penny. 

H'm. 

I wonder how that ever-growing number of people who have rejected the wonders of the BBC and cancelled their licence fees are faring. 

Are they all at their wit's end and eating grass? I very much doubt it. 

"We are one of the very few British institutions to be seen as world class"

 

The outgoing BBC chairman, Sir David Clementi, says of the Corporation:

We are one of the very few British institutions to be seen as world class... it would be a colossal act of national self-harm if regulators or governments were to take steps which diminished the role of the BBC.

I don't know about you, but that struck me as a 'very BBC' statement, in that "we are one of the very few British institutions to be seen as world class" is such a typically negative thing to say about our country. It seems to embody the BBC's whole outlook.

We have many of the world's top-ranking universities, many world-beating scientific laboratories and medical research centres, many of the world's greatest museums and galleries and theatre companies, sports tournaments (the Premiership, Wimbledon) not to mention the Royal Family, our armed services, our Parliament, etc, etc.

And, Sir David, look at this list of UK Nobel Prize winners in the past decade alone:

• Sir John Bertrand Gurdon (2012, physiology/medicine) - discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent
• Michael Levitt (2013, chemistry) - development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems
• Peter Higgs (2013, physics) - theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to the understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles
• John O'Keefe (2014, physiology/medicine) - discoveries of cells that constitute a positioning system in the brain
• Angus S. Deaton (2015, economics) - analysis of consumption, poverty, and welfare
• J. Fraser Stoddart (2016, chemistry) - design and synthesis of molecular machines
• Oliver Hart (2016, economics) - contributions to contract theory
• David Thouless (2016, physics) - theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter
• Duncan Haldane (2016, physics) - theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter
• Michael Kosterlitz (2016, physics) - theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter
• Richard Henderson (2017, chemistry) - development of cryo-electron microscopy for the high-resolution structure determination of biomolecules in solution
• Kazuo Ishiguro (2017, literature) 
• Gregory P. winter (2018, chemistry) - work using the phage display method for the directed evolution of antibodies
• M. Stanley Whittingham (2019, chemistry) - development of lithium-ion batteries
• Peter J. Ratcliffe (2020, physiology/medicine) - discoveries of how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability

Does the rest of the world really see us as negatively as the BBC sees us?

The BBC turns down a 'Times' FOI request

 

More BBC-related Freedom of Information (FoI) news tonight, courtesy of Matthew Moore of The Times...

The Times has had an FoI request rejected by the BBC - personally, by the outgoing BBC chairman no less: 

Sir David Clementi has blocked the release of the BBC’s licence fee collection strategy in one of his final acts as chairman. 

The document, understood to set out plans for maximising revenues from the compulsory levy, was approved by the BBC board last year. In response to a freedom of information request from The Times, the broadcaster confirmed that it held the paper. However, it declined to disclose it on the ground that publication would “prejudice the conduct of public affairs” and “inhibit the free and frank exchange of views”.

The BBC, despite being "free and frank", turns down an awful lot of FoI requests.

Well, everyone else has had their say, so...

Top talent

The BBC 'top talent' salary thing has provoked a right old rumpus. Everywhere I look people have been writing about it.

I haven't had the time to look into it very deeply myself, so I probably shouldn't say anything about it (and don't have much to say anyhow) - but, as this is a blog, that's not going to stop me!

So what's the scandal?

Is it the gender disparity thing?

Or is it that the salaries of men and women at the empire-building BBC are over-high, with overall pay rates 40% above commercial-sector pay for equivalent jobs?

Or maybe the real scandal is the fact that BBC salaries are funded by an over-coercive BBC licence fee - a situation which, astonishingly, found 184,595 people across the UK charged with non-payment of the TV Licence last year - 140,000 of whom were taken to court? And of those (Dame Jenni and Jane, please take note), 101,000 women were found guilty - around three-quarters of the total.

Notoriously, for many a year it's been reported that one in ten of all criminal prosecutions in magistrate courts in the UK concern alleged non-payment of the BBC licence fee. The lack of huge public outrage over that fact remains somewhat bewildering. As far of those prosecutions are concerned, there's obviously something deeply rotten in the state of the BBC.

(Maybe Panorama should investigate. Or John Sweeney on Newsnight.)

*******

Meanwhile (h/t David Keighley at News-watch), a voice curiously missing from the debate has been that of Sir David Clementi, who seems to have become 'The Invisible Man', despite previously having defending BBC stars' high pay. And even more curiously, I can't find anyone in the media (or elsewhere) who's even given him a single thought over the past few days. And he's the BBC Chairman. Quite remarkable.

Ah, but the Evening Standard reported that someone has thought about him after all. MPs are going to grill him and Lord Hall about BBC pay. So he's going to have to say something on the subject. And, it's to be hoped, about BBC bias too. Has he 'gone native' yet?

*******

Hmm. The BBC is advertising for a new managerial role - a Problem Manager. Seriously.

*******

More top talent

The Sunday Telegraph's main headline today is about revolting BBC women:

An open letter calling on the corporation to tackle gender disparity in BBC pay has been signed by the following:

Katya Adler, Samira Ahmed, Anita Anand, Wendy Austin, Zeinab Badawi, Clare Balding, Sue Barker, Emma Barnett, Fiona Bruce, Rachel Burden, Annabel Croft, Martine Croxal, Victoria Derbyshire, Katie Derham, Lyse Doucet, Jane Garvey, Karin Giannone, Fi Glover, Joanna Gosling, Carrie Gracie, Orla Guerin, Geeta Guru-Murthy, Lucy Hockings, Mishal Husain, Alex Jones, Katty Kay, Martha Kearney, Kirsty Lang, Gabby Logan, Annita McVeigh, Kasia Madera, Emily Maitlis, Louise Minchin, Aasmah Mir, Sarah Montague, Sally Nugent, Elaine Paige, Carolyn Quinn, Angela Rippon, Ritula Shah, Kate Silverton, Charlotte Smith, Sarah Smith, Kirsty Wark

Not everyone is sympathetic:

And here's Rod Liddle on the matter:

The appliance of science

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sir David Clementi may have his work cut out. 

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

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