"No longer 'suitable'"

Talking about out with the old, in with the new...

The Jewish Chronicle has a new editor, with Jake Wallis Simons taking over from Stephen Pollard. 

It sounds as if both have had similar experiences of the BBC:

Jake Wallis Simons, present editor of the JC: Personally, since I joined the JC, I’ve been on TV probably twice a week on various channels, particularly Sky News. The BBC hasn’t asked me to come on once. And I have broadcast a lot for BBC in the past! Stephen Pollard had the same experience.

Stephen Pollard, previous editor of the JC: FWIW, I used to do BBC Any Questions every so often. Haven't been on once since I joined the JC 13 years ago. I was told by a senior BBC apparatchik it meant I was no longer "suitable". I should say the person who told me this profoundly disagreed with the idea - they were explaining it to me.

Update: One reply to this came from Labour Against Antisemitism's Emma Picken: 

I would say I'm shocked.... but I'm not. How often did the BBC wheel out JVL? I lost count.

Jewish Voice for Labour is a controversial Corbynite group.

 By coincidence, there's news today from Harry's Place: 

The BBC are planning on digging their antisemitism hole even deeper on Sunday morning on BBC Radio 4 where there will be a discussion about whether Anti Zionism is a protected characteristic featuring an interview with JVL's Diana Neslen.

So BBC, are people from the fringe, far-left JVL more "suitable" for you than people from the mainstream Jewish Chronicle? And if so, why?

''We need to be clear what happened here''

  

Jewish Chronicle editor Stephen Pollard tweeted this a few minutes ago:

Two vital issues are being confused in debate after David Amess killing. Discussion is needed over the tone of politics and social media etc. It is dangerous and toxic. But from what we know, that is a separate issue to what led to the killing of David Amess. Amess was, it seems, killed as a result of Islamist terror. We could have the most civil politics ever and it would not change the motivations behind Islamist terror. We need to be clear what happened here.

Someone replied that the ''confusion'' is being ''deliberately disseminated by some very high-profile 'journalists'''. 

And at the very moment I read that reply Andrew Marr began his programme, saying:

Good morning. For a long time, certainly all my lifetime, we have enjoyed a peaceful and largely consensual system of politics. We may have disagreed vehemently about many big things - peace and war, poverty, leaving the European Union. But in every row we've - mostly - left violence at the door [Craig - except, of course for the four MPs murdered by Irish republicans]. Now, following the death of Jo Cox MP, the hideous killing of another parliamentarian, Sir David Amess, going about his civic and political duty, helping ordinary constituents, not political players, makes us rethink. There are few phrases more often and glibly used than "it's an attack on democracy" but this week, that's exactly what it was. So, how can we balance the conflicting needs for MPs to freely meet their constituents and their physical safety? I'm joined live in the studio by Priti Patel, the Home Secretary - a neighbouring MP to David Amess and a close personal friend. Talking about that and the rising Covid numbers, one of Jo Cox's friends, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, Lisa Nandy. 

He continued during the paper review:

And as I said earlier on, we had at that time [of the murder of Jo Cox] lots of talk about how we must have a new attitude in politics, less hate, less abuse online and in-person, and Brendan Cox has devoted his life since then to combating hatred in politics. And yet here we are again. 

Update: The paper review remained firmly focussed on that issue, avoiding discussing Islamist terror - as did the following interviews with the acting US ambassador and Labour's Lisa Nandy. 

[Intriguingly, while focussing on the abuse against politicians and ''the heat and aggression'' within politics with Lisa Nandy, Andrew Marr opted not to raise the Angela Rayner ''Tory scum'' issue.]

And Andrew Marr even avoided discussing Islamist terrorism with Home Secretary Priti Patel - which, if you think about it, is frankly extraordinary. It was very briefly hinted at without being specifically mentioned [except once by Priti Patel in tandem with the far-right] and then skirted around. 

It's as if the programme deliberately chose to focus on the circumstances surrounding the last assassination of an MP, Jo Cox, rather than the circumstances surrounding this assassination. 

Wonder what Stephen Pollard would have made of it?

Further Update: Tied in with that peculiar refusal to focus on the circumstance of Mr Amess's murder but to shift the focus instead back to the circumstances surrounding Jo Cox's murder was the repeated focus throughout the programme on the abuse targeted at female MPs and the safety of women MPs even though the murdered MP in this attack was a man.

The alliance between the hard, secular left and political Islam.”

I've been keeping half an eye on the ups and downs of the Jewish Chronicle. The FT reported the situation while it was still unresolved - I can’t give you the date of publication because won’t let me back into the website now - but here’s the excerpt I managed to grab, explaining the way things stood back then:

“The Kessler Foundation, a charitable trust that has owned the Jewish Chronicle since 1984, submitted an offer to the proposed liquidators Begbies Traynor this week, which would have seen them acquire the assets of both publications and run them as a merged publication. 

But a rival bid from a consortium through lawyers Osborne Clarke has also been submitted, according to two people familiar with the matter. 

The rival consortium is being fronted by former Downing Street head of communications Robbie Gibb, biographer William Shawcross, former Labour MP John Woodcock,
Rabbi Jonathan Hughes of Radlett United Synagogue, and prominent broadcasters John Ware and Jonathan Sacerdoti.”

Most of whom have been featured in this blog - (funny that.) The consortium’s bid was successful and they reinstated Stephen Pollard as promised. 

Those of you who take the Spectator might have read an article by Charles Moore in the magazine.

“………a new consortium moved fast to intervene, and outbid the existing management in order to reinstate Pollard, see the staff right, pay off the debts and secure the future. Headed by Sir Robbie Gibb, a Gentile, the consortium is serious about reinforcing the Jewish Chronicle’s strength rather than shutting it down. Behind all this I detect a battle for leadership in the community. Those who are braver about confronting Islamist anti-Semitism have prevailed over the outdated establishment view that the greater threat to British Jews is from the far right and that Islamists should be appeased in the name of ‘interfaith dialogue’. 

The consortium’s victory is good news. It would have been a weird epilogue to the successful exposure of Labour’s anti-Semitism under Jeremy Corbyn if the most prestigious Jewish paper in Europe had then folded. As the general election result proved, the supposedly anti-Semitic white working class saw through Corbyn. The rising danger to Jews — as, though more surreptitiously, to Christians — comes from the alliance between the hard, secular left and political Islam.”

Ah, the last few words open a Pandora’s box of inconvenient and hard to answer questions.

The reason for this post is simply this. (And it’s even BBC related) 

Stephen Pollard says:  ”According to the BBC, antisemitism is just a political choice”. 

A particularly annoying photo of the BBC’s Fran Unsworth illustrates the piece. In it, she’s looking both startled and extremely pleased with herself all at once. 

The issue concerns a knotty problem. How much does political or personal prejudice affect one’s professional credibility? We’re talking about renowned antisemites being invited onto the Beeb to opine about supposedly unconnected matters. Notably but not exclusively, as per that Panorama.

Maybe there’s an element of  ‘intersectionality’ here? To what extent does a person’s race, class, and gender prejudice create a unique mode of discrimination dent one’s entire credibility? 

Can one’s irrationality in the form of racial hatred - viz  “the cognitively dissonant alliance between the hard, secular left and political Islam” be completely divorced from other areas of one’s personality. For example, does it affect one’s expertise in a seemingly unrelated sphere? Does that make sense?

Let’s temporarily forget Professor Ashton, whom Fran Unsworth says is “eminently well qualified to speak about this subject [public health]”. Let’s examine her reasoning, by using a more extreme example like, say, the late Stephen Hawking. 

Stephen Hawking was so highly regarded as a theoretical physicist, cosmologist and author that his reputation as such is untouchable and sealed forever. But even he fell foul of pressure from the hard, secular left and political Islam in his irrational decision to  join the academic boycott of Israel by rejecting an invitation to attend a conference there (despite relying on Israeli sourced technology  to help keep him alive.)  That was just common or garden hypocrisy, but we’re not concerned with that at the moment.

NYT has:

The conference, called “Facing Tomorrow 2013,” is billed as a meeting place for exploring the developments shaping the future of Israel, the Jewish people and the world. Its program includes former heads of state, academics, artists and business executives. Former President Bill Clinton is to receive an award from Mr. Peres.
Also listed among the speakers is Munib al-Masri, a Palestinian tycoon from the West Bank city of Nablus who has been working to promote internal Palestinian reconciliation.

If that is indeed an accurate description of the event that Hawking boycotted, doesn't the decision to boycott it look a bit stupid and ill-conceived? It does to me. 

However, as I know quite a bit more about factually and historically illiterate antisemitism than I do about theoretical or any other kind of physics, all I can possibly ask is ‘does a specific demonstration of irrationality and prejudice dent one’s whole credibility? A little bit? Not at all?  Does stupidity, prejudice and irrationality run through one like the proverbial stick of rock?

What I do know is that Stephen Hawking’s and professor John Ashworth’s reputations are seriously flawed in the eyes of this non-expert, and as far as Fran Unsworth's reputation is concerned, wheeling out the ‘Freeze Peach’ argument certainly dents the remaining dregs of it.

The issue here is that while antisemitism under the accepted definition is not actually illegal, and we don’t want to create a bespoke version of a blasphemy law to make it so, what can most effectively be done to show disgust and disapproval where anti-Jew prejudice raises its head?

For the BBC, maybe keeping known antisemites out of the limelight would go along with the spirit of the zeitgeist. However, as we’ve been saying for the last umpteen years, the BBC is not minded to keep antisemites out of the limelight. The BBC has tacitly taken the side of the antisemites and promotes the hard, secular left and political (and particularly cultural) Islam at every opportunity. It has made antisemitism a political choice and it’s not afraid to say so.

Doomsday

I’m sick of seeing Jeremy Corbyn brandishing sheaves of paper to ‘prove’ the nastiness of the Tories. A bundle from Russia-with-love to prove that Boris Johnson is about to sell off our NHS to “Trump”. The evidence appeared to consist of a wad of thick black lines, the content redacted, obliterated and unreadable. But no matter. When today is over we might not have to see it again.

A few days ago BBC News featured a Corbyn rally (in Bristol, perhaps?) Corbyn, again waving papers before an adoring mob. This time, the front page of the Mirror featuring four-year-old Jack being “treated for pneumonia on the floor because there were no beds in Boris Johnson’s hospital.” Behind the anointed one, a comedy bobble-hat rose up, very slowly from beneath the podium to reveal the wearer - a photographer. Had the prospect of a Corbyn led “gov’ment” been less catastrophic, this slow-motion ‘photo-bomb’ might have added a moment of slapstick hilarity. I wish the intruder was an absurdist performance artist, but I expect the chap just wanted a shot of the great man from an unusual angle; the back of the head.

The confusion about the four-year-old boy-on-the-floor drags on. Speculation abounds. Who took the photo? Why was it taken in the first place?  The plea not to politicise it -  from the boy’s mother and from Jeremy Corbyn, whose very insistence that he wasn’t politicising it was effectively politicising it, something of which he must have been perfectly aware.

The assertion that the boy was ‘being treated for pneumonia’ on the floor, yet the drip was plainly not in use; but was it a drip or an oxygen thingy?  Whatever had happened, it was all due to callous Tory cuts. 

The editor of the Yorkshire Post has written some dubious hyperbole in the Guardian 

 “His mother, Sarah Williment, found herself in a moment of panic: her baby needed her. Moreover, her baby needed medical care from the amazing doctors and nurses at Leeds General Infirmary (LGI) but such was the demand from patients, he had to be made as comfortable as possible – on a pile of coats on the floor – until a bed and care became available.

Is a four-year-old technically a baby? Well, I s’pose, to a parent, one’s adult offspring are still babies, at a stretch. 

Was he waiting for ‘a bed and care’ or had he already ‘had’ care? If he hadn’t been seen yet, who supplied the drip cum oxygen mask? P’raps they brought one with them from home? This is getting ridiculous now.

“With only good intentions, Williment contacted her local newspaper, the Yorkshire Evening Post. In times of trouble, people often turn to their local newspaper. In this instance, Sarah only wanted to others to see just how stretched the team at LGI was, and humanise the impacts of too few hands at the pump.

As you do when you think your child baby has pneumonia. I’m not going to go on and on, much as I could.  I must try going to my local newspaper in my time of trouble - but will the Western Morning News care that a bunch of antisemites are running the country?

Stephen Pollard is thinking what I’ve been thinking for ages. I can’t even remember if I’ve written about it before, but I’m pretty sure I have. Pollard, from his piece in the Telegraph:

"The truth is that I can now barely bring myself to contemplate what this election says about my fellow Brits' willingness to tolerate Jew-hate. Whatever share of the vote Labour ends up with, it's safe to predict that over a third of voters have no problem with the concept of installing as prime minister a man who is repeatedly labelled an anti-Semite, not least by those like Dame Margaret Hodge who have worked alongside him.
[…]
In 2017, it was possible to argue that they didn't know about all this. That's impossible now. The issue of Labour's anti-Semitism has been given a full and comprehensive airing both during and long before the campaign. 

[...]The worst of them all are the so-called moderate Labour MPs. In the four years since Mr Corbyn was elected leader many of them have tweeted and spoken a lot about solidarity with the Jewish community. But when an election was called and they had to make a choice, they chose – actively, consciously and unambiguously – to ignore the pleas of the Jewish community, and to side with the Jew haters. Their campaigning was not to stop anti-Semitism, it was to put the leading anti-Semites into power.

Momentum-inspired aggressive behaviour of the baying mob is spookily 1930s-like.

On an odder note, have you noticed, Jeremy Corbyn himself has succumbed to the fashionable Labour glottal stop. He suddenly started using the famous Labour Party pronunciation, referring to the organisation as The Labour Par’y.  

Might Angela Rayner impose the ‘silent T’  as part of Labour’s revolutionary educational policy: “Equality Rules for Dumbed-down Schools”?

'Profuse apologies'

Not BBC-related but obviously related to the previous post, I see that one of the Exaro people Newsnight used to work with - Orwell Prize-winning ex-Guardian reporter David Hencke (a precursor of the Observer's Carole Cadwalladr) - provoked The Guardian into this fulsome apology to Jewish Chronicle editor Stephen Pollard today:

Stephen Pollard, an apology. There were a number of significant errors in a report by David Hencke on page 9, yesterday, headed Chance chat over dinner led Blair to order u-turn on beds. 

The report depended substantially on the assertion that Tony Blair had had an animated conversation on the NHS beds crisis with Stephen Pollard, described as an associate editor of the Daily Express, whom he was said to have met by chance while the latter was dining in the River Cafe with his girlfriend. 

Mr Pollard is not an associate editor of the Daily Express; he is a columnist. He has never eaten in the River Cafe, let alone with Tony and Cherie Blair. While it is true that he has strong views on the NHS and the private sector, he has never discussed them "animatedly" with Tony or Cherie Blair. 

Mr Hencke did not check any of this with Mr Pollard. Profuse apologies.

Would that the BBC were more willing to offer such 'profuse apologies'!

Et tu, Hugh?

I read a tweet earlier today from the estimable Stephen Pollard, editor of the Jewish Chronicle, which said in response to another tweet:

Stephen has subsequently deleted this tweet, whilst retaining the link to show his own error - which is an admirable way to behave. Own up, don't hide what you got wrong, and take action:

Having seen this, I suspected that some of our BBC favourites would have leaped on that Mark Elliott tweet with all the relish of half-starved lions (especially post-Mueller). And, yes, one of my first ports of call, our old friend Hugh Sykes, was indeed on it like a lion up a massive lion-sized drainpipe that includes branches so the lion can climb up it and that already has a tasty deer carcass at the top of it to make all the effort worthwhile (#extendedmetaphorsaregreat):

I hope I'm wrong, but I'm guessing Hugh won't be owning up and deleting his tweet. 

Civilisations

Mary and a fine early Greek lass

Well, I've watched the first two episodes of the BBC's new 'landmark series' Civilisations - the first by Simon Schama, the second by Mary Beard - and I thoroughly enjoyed them both, in a hazy sort of way.

They passed a couple of hours of my day very pleasantly. 

Yes, they weren't anywhere near as thought-provoking or profound or original or as startling as the wonderful Kenneth Clark in his still-magnificent, beguiling and intellectually challenging Civilisation but, Hyperion to a satyr as that old BBC programme surely is to this comparatively dumbed-down new BBC programme, Simon Schama and Mary Beard are both excellent story-tellers - and, as you'd expect, the programme is an absolute treat for the eyes...

...(except for when the BBC's camerapersonages are made to do that annoying out-of-focus gimmick they've obviously been asked to do on behalf of Professor Beard). 

*******

On the BBC bias front...

...Dividing the presentation between three reliably left-wing, 'progressive' historians - all of who could be relied upon to drop in the occasional hint about the value of immigration and multiculturalism, or to talk critically about "gendered" art, or to take the odd potshot at Kenneth Clark's 'Eurocentricity' - was a very 'BBC' decision.

In fact, you might even cite it as an absolute proof of BBC bias.

And, yes, although I didn't feel as if I was being continuously hit over the head by a huge BBC-shaped haddock in these first two episodes, I did notice the programme's 'progressive' hints.

And, yes, it was indeed a divisive decision to make the presentation of the programme a purely, left-wing 'progressive' affair...

...as demonstrated by the following pair of articles (the first from the Right, the second from the Left):

Ed West: Civilisations is right-on and rather underwhelming. 

Yasmin Alibhai Brown: The BBC’s Civilisations is wonderfully multicultural – and the usual suspects are fuming.

*******

Mary and the Chinese lads

Despite enjoying what I've seen so far, no blogger worth his or her salt could ever resist trying to best a BBC historian, so I'm going to indulge myself here by using my avid reading of ancient Chinese history in order to try and discredit Mary Beard.

See how I get on below....

One thing I know about China's famous 'First Emperor' - the Mao-like monster. who began reigning supreme over the Chinese heartland in 221 BC and who was responsible for the Terracotta Army and the founder of the Qin dynasty - is that his name wasn't 'Qin' and that he wasn't the 'Emperor Qin' despite Mary Beard repeatedly calling him that!

He was born either Ying Zheng or Zhao Zheng and became - like Bruce Forsyth before him - the King of Qin (a joke that only works if you know that 'Qin' is pronounced 'Chin' - hence 'China').

He's known to history, after brutally destroying every over Chinese warring state and becoming the first emperor of China as Qin Shi Huang - a title not a name. It simply means 'First Emperor, from the Qin dynasty'.

No one, except for Mary Beard, so far as I can see, has ever called the First Emperor 'Emperor Qin' before, for the very good reason that there never was a Chinese emperor called 'Emperor Qin'.

Still, to be fair to her, at least she didn't call him 'Emperor Ming', or 'Ming the Merciless'.

Would Kenneth Clark have made such an error? And wouldn't the BBC of the 1960s, unlike the BBC of now (which seems to know a lot less), have prevented such lapses from going out even if he had?

The First Emperor of Mongo

*******

Reviews for the programme have been mixed - some enthusiastic, some tepid, some brutal.

Very oddly, one of the most brutal reviews (a mere two stars our of five) came from the BBC's own arts editor Will Gompertz on the BBC News website...

...and the BBC News website has given it a good deal of prominence. 

It's astonishingly rude. 

So rude that it positively invited rudeness in return....

As noted by MB on the Open Thread, Will's criticism is curious and very 'BBC'. Why? Because despite attacking a BBC programme, it weirdly employs PC to pile in upon another form of PC. 

Personal pique (Civilisations without Will Gompertz) might be the explanation.

UPDATE: A little Twitter exchange involving the BBC's Nick Higham:

Willard Foxton Todd: Is there anything more BBC than spending millions on an incredibly high profile series and then having your own arts editor give it a 2 star review on the front page of your website?
Nick Higham, BBC: As the BBC’s erstwhile bad-news-about-the-BBC correspondent, I defend to the hilt the right/duty of BBC reporters to make independent judgements about BBC policies/actions. Whether we should be *reviewing* stuff (programmes, plays, films etc) I’m less sure...

The Secret Life of the FCO

I watched “The secret Life of 4-year-olds” last night. God know why. Mainly because the remote was out of reach and I couldn’t be bothered to get it. It’s supposed to be at once amusing and entertaining, but with a psychological edge. Info-tainment, I think they call it.

In fact it’s voyeuristic, pseudo scientific and pretty sadistic. Two psychologists secretly observe the children's reactions to a series of cruel stunts they’ve dreamt up,  then they (the experts) make simplistic and patronising observations about, e.g., a child’s inability to deal with disappointment. The kind of disappointment that no four year old would normally face, like being on a losing team. What fun.

I’m only writing this because it reminds me of the way team “politicians” and team ”journalists” have been behaving. 

61-year-old Theresa arguably means well, but she has completely messed up. She has woven a tangled web. No-one wants to play with her. Several team members have been very naughty, and won’t do as they’re told. It’s a shambles.

Most of the journalists are from the reception class. They don’t mean well, and haven’t learned to share yet, as they are still in a world of their own. They egg each other on with malicious gossip, and their immaturity means they are sometimes cruel and tribal.

Which brings me to last night’s Newsnight and the Priti Patel / Boris experiment. Can the BBC bring down the tories? 

Nick Watt, the ‘expert’  has all but abandoned his role as psychological analyst. He has been sucked in to the action and his eyes gleam with joyful malice as he talks with Evan.

Evan Davis got quite emotional. Nadhim Zahawi had to step in quickly to remind Evan that Israel was not an enemy state before poor Evan completely blew his top, but Evan is adamant. He thinks the issue is not necessarily about ministerial protocols, but about “misleading” the public, (oh, the irony) and he’s putting the blame for this squarely on Priti Patel. 

But here’s something revelatory that Evan should read. Breaking News:

First, long before James Landale’s scoop, the editor of the Jewish Chronicle was tipped off that there would soon be an announcement of cooperation between the UK and Israel over aid in Africa - that we would divert some of our aid money to the Israelis to fund some of their aid work there.

"It is a truism that with most scandals, the real fallout comes from the cover up."

Number Ten Knew About The Meetings!         Investigate that, James Landale. 

The secret life of the FCO, anyone?  

Britain's Promise to the Holy Land

Given the climate of low expectations in which Israel-related programmes poise precariously in BBC world, Stephen Pollard’s positive review of Jane Corbin’s Balfour programme was par for the course. 

If that’s too convoluted, to put it another way, anything less than the default Israel-bashing to which we’ve become accustomed is a small mercy for which we should be truly grateful.

Still a bit obscure? 

(Last attempt) It makes a change to see a smidgeon of balance on an Israel-related programme on the BBC and, arguably, that absolves Stephen Pollard from some of the harsh criticism he’s getting for his Tweet. 

Superbly balanced and fair documentary by Jane Corbin on #Balfour100. Really recommended https://t.co/7u1FVsx61R

— Stephen Pollard (@stephenpollard) October 31, 2017

However, as some of his critics have pointed out, the programme was littered with omissions. But of course you can’t fit everything into a one-hour documentary that attempts to cover one hundred years of conflict about such a complex issue. 

What might illustrate the situation equally sharply is that the leftie press has seized upon one segment that implies that the intractable religious zealotry comes solely from the Israeli side:

“In the garden of his home in the Orthodox Jewish Israeli West Bank settlement of Tappuah, Lenny Goldberg rubbished the idea that it was us Brits who made modern Israel possible. “The only reason we have a country here,” he told Jane Corbin, “is not because of the Balfour Declaration. It’s because Jews sacrificed themselves with blood and fire and bullets.” 

Goldberg, a tough New York Jew turned tough West Bank settler, is among half a million Israelis living in 140 towns and villages that have sprung up on the ostensibly Arab West Bank in the past 30 years. When Corbin told him that these settlements were illegal according to international law, Goldberg replied that he didn’t care about mere secular laws. He was interested in the word of God as expressed in the Bible and that, according to that higher authority, there is no Palestine and so there can be no question of Arabs having a claim to live there. “This is where Abraham walked. Why should we give it up for a bunch of murderers?” he asked rhetorically.”

However, neither the Guardian nor the Indy reviews mention the part when Corbin speaks to Dr. Mahmoud al-Zahar, in which  the real and insoluble sticking point to a peaceful outcome is revealed in all its malevolence. 

"Quran tells us to drive Jews out of Palestine's entirety"

Since the programme was created to commemorate the Balfour declaration its focus was, quite rightly, on Britain’s part in the creation of the Jewish State, and Corbin didn’t shirk from recounting the cruelty of the British in imposing strict limits on Jewish immigration in what is recognised as the Jews’ darkest hour of need. This was a welcome contrast to the BBC's customary portrayal of the British military in Palestine as victims of Jewish terrorism, wherein the bombing of the King David Hotel is presented as an unprovoked atrocity against innocent civilianrs rather than a targeted attack on a British military headquarters. 

You can read about Orde Wingate here.  The Palestine Arab revolt occurred in the late 1930s, well before Israel's declaration of Independence, and  the Arabs’ hostility to the Jews is longstanding, religiously based, and demonstrably not a result of “What Israel is Doing” a commonly held belief encouraged by ill-informed broadcasting.  

A little more Soft Boycott

I want to return to the soft boycott theme because I think there’s a bit more to it.

Stephen Pollard gives a legitimate and very powerful example of the BBC ‘soft-boycotting’ Israel. To recap. The Today Programme made a suitably big deal about a “truly transformative” medical breakthrough on treatment for prostate cancer, leaving its Israeli origins conspicuously absent from the report.

This does look deliberate. One might say the BBC is suffering from prostrate cancer. (See what I did there?) The BBC won’t risk offending the sensibilities of listeners who might be offended by an unexpected early morning encounter with praise of the Zionist entity. 

I don’t want those of us who criticise the BBC’s ‘prostrate’ strategy to lay ourselves open to accusations of spin and cherry-picking, so I think we should acknowledge that it’s a boycott, Jim, but a soft one, i.e. not as hard as the boycotts we are familiar with.  So I’m preempting all that with this.

The recent flurry of interest in the BBC’s ‘soft boycott’ of Israel reminded me of something certain bloggers addressed a few years ago. 

This piece from BBCWatch circa 2012 highlights an uncharacteristic deviation from normal service. 

Yolande Knell had suddenly, with nary a warning nor explanation produced an  “Impartial” article about Israel. (Wonders have a habit of ceasing.)

It concerned one of Israel’s scientific achievements. 

At the time I commented as follows:

“ I have to say that this is not such an isolated incident. If you search for, say, “weizmann institute” on the BBC News search box any amount of stories come up.
I remember a couple of years ago coming across several positive scientific reports by a young lady from the BBC who was temporarily based in Israel. I’ve forgotten her name, but I seem to recall that she had written something on facebook about moving on. There were several reports by her around 2010/ 11.
I don’t know if these examples are actually hers, but they were similar.
(‘sniff code device’ controls wheelchair’)
and
(“Women’s tears reduce men’s sexual desire – scientists”)
They might not have been so prominently displayed on the BBC website as Knell’s piece, I can’t remember.”

Since then I have had a bit of a dig, and I came up with a name. Victoria Gill. If I’m right, she was temporarily seconded to Israel as the BBC’s science correspondent around 2010. While she was there she produced a number of positive reports about Israel’s scientific and medical breakthroughs.  A few pieces by other writers are buried there too. 

The BBC does publish reports about Israel’s medical and scientific progress. (Google Weizmann Institute) 

Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel

They rarely make the national headlines they are worthy of in the same way that certain other dramatic scientific and medical breakthroughs occasionally do, and unlike Knell’s article which appeared in “News” they seem to appear in the BBC’s Magazine format or similar.

It’s not be a case of ignoring them altogether then, but more one of categorising them as special interest subjects and tucking them away where only geeks will boldly go.

It’s still a kinda boycott, Jim but not as we know it. Maybe this is nitpicking, but sometimes nits have to be picked. 

The BBC's 'soft boycott' of Israel

Citing again the ever-vigilant Alan at Biased BBC for pointing this out...

The eminently sensible Stephen Pollard of the Jewish Chronicle published a powerful piece a few days ago about the BBC and its attitude to Israel. 

Please read it for yourselves and see what you think. I think it raises a serious question mark over the BBC's reporting. 

To summarise Stephen's case: You may have heard reports this past week of a potentially transformative treatment for prostate cancer. It was widely reported. Radio 4's Today reported it, but what Today didn't mention was that much of the research was carried out in Israel. The BBC News website reported it, but only mentioned that the treatment was developed in Israel in what Stephen Pollard, understandably, calls "a throwaway line right at the end". (Paragraph 31 out of 31).

Stephen writes:

I wish I could believe this is just an honest mistake – that, purely by chance, the Israeli origins of a medical breakthrough had been left out. But I’m afraid I don’t think that – and I don’t think you will, either. It happens too often and too regularly for it to be pure chance. It’s what I call the soft-boycott strategy.

Can you think of a good reason why as to why Today didn't mention it (as SP says they didn't) or why the BBC News website relegated the fact to the very end of its main report (as can be seen from the report itself)? 

Is the BBC engaged in a 'soft boycott' of good news about Israel?

2016/2017

I rarely tweet myself but I did actually send someone a 'Merry Christmas!' via Twitter on Christmas Eve and received a reply saying, "I think it's been a good year", to which I replied saying, "So do I. Here's to 2017!" (We were talking politics, of course). 

Stephen Pollard has a fine piece in The Times today expressing much the same sentiment, headlined "For me, it’s been an annus mirabilis". It begins:

I barely seem to have had a conversation this past week without it ending in a cheery “Let’s hope 2017 is better!” — as if it’s a statement of the blindingly obvious with which any stranger would agree that this has been a terrible year. 

Which presents me with a dilemma. Do I treat it as a pre-new-year version of “How are you?” No one in their right mind would reply to that greeting with a genuine answer. “Oh, you know: too many headaches, my back hurts and the cancer isn’t going away.”

Or do I point out that not all of us think 2016 was a disaster? For some of us — the majority, in fact — 2016 was a wonderful year.

Believe me, I’m tempted. Because it’s precisely the cosy, smug idea that “we” all think 2016 has been horrendous that led to the very developments that “we” all so deplore. By which, of course, “we” mean above all Brexit and the election of Donald Trump. 

I did hear quite a lot of Radio 4 yesterday and enjoyed much of it but, curiously, that "cosy, smug idea" that "we" all think 2016 has been "horrendous" kept cropping up in one form or another - along with other related "cosy, smug ideas" of the kind Radio 4 listeners are so often 'treated to'.

Among the things I heard, for example, was Mark Tully on Something Understood asking (re the angels promise of good will on earth to the shepherds), "Where is 'good will' in the politics of hatred unleashed this year?", and Sheila Hancock on Just a Minute's panto special saying that her 'one wish' would be "that 2016 never happened". (The audience laughed, clapped and whooped, and she then clarified that she was talking about Brexit - which they'd evidently already guessed!)

Then there was Marina Warner on From Our Home Correspondent using another panto-related piece to wax indignant about "headlines against Poles and Romanians and refugees or other stock figures of the new populism"- plus the inevitable anti-Murdoch, anti-Tory-governments jokes from Jeremy Hardy on I'm Sorry, I Haven't a Clue, and Sheila Dillon on The Food Programme's 'Wild Boar' Christmas special suggesting that wild boar "does seem to embody a kind of masculinity that seems kind of old-fashioned".

Plus there was Sunday's Christmas special from Hampton Court Palace on the state of religion in England in 1516, with Ed Stourton saying, "Listening to you describe the tide of nationalistic feeling at the time [of Henry VIII's split from Rome], I couldn't help be reminded of our own recent referendum campaign", and Mariella Frostrup beginning Open Book by announcing, "Bolstering borders has been a frequent topic of debate of late so today we've decided to abandon them altogether" and end the programme by announcing, "We're looking forward to another 12 months of transcending borders to bring you the best of books, near and far, in 2017".

Now, much of what I heard on these programmes was interesting and enjoyable but the messages sent out by them - often incidentally, often far from incidentally - were almost always of this "cosy, smug" variety. 

2016 certainly was a "terrible" year when it came to BBC bias (the worst for years, in my opinion). In that respect, yes, here's to a better 2017! Much improvement is needed. 

The Fool On The Hill

Stephen Pollard really wasn't impressed by the BBC's behaviour yesterday:

What's the difference between an English and Viennese waltz?

Stephen Pollard isn't impressed with the BBC over the Proms. The Times headline, The ‘Strictly Prom’ shows how craven the BBC has become, sums up his point. 

The BBC is proud of its role in sustaining the Proms. Yet just as the corporation’s primetime TV programming has lost almost all connection with Reithian principles of informing, educating and entertaining, so too its Proms have gone the same way. 

Take Strictly Come Dancing. It’s one thing that it dominates BBC One on a Saturday night, where one can try to justify it on the basis of popularity. But on July 21 the Royal Albert Hall will host the “Strictly Prom”. That’s the world’s leading classical music festival scavenging after cheap popularity with sequins and ballroom dancing. 

Or how about trying a prom in a Peckham car park? Maybe you’d like to try the Quincy Jones Prom, celebrating the pop producer. Or there’s the David Bowie Prom eight days later. Clearly Bowie was a huge cultural figure. But he had as much talent for classical music as I do. 

For Stephen Pollard, this is "craven, short-sighted and destructive":

If even the organisers of the Proms don’t have enough confidence in classical music to think it justifies itself, why should anyone else?

The BBC Proms website actually makes the Strictly Prom sound quite interesting though (well, to me anyhow):

Katie Derham dons her dance shoes and ball gown once more, joined by some of your favourite professionals from Strictly Come Dancing, who will whisk us from Vienna to Latin America and back in the company of the BBC Concert Orchestra and English National Ballet Music Director Gavin Sutherland. 

If you’ve ever wanted to know the difference between an English and Viennese waltz, or how classical composers have approached the Charleston and the tango, this is the Prom for you.

That last paragraph suggests those "Reithian principles of informing, educating and entertaining" might be in play after all.

It's complicated

Catching up...

Panorama has often seemed well past its sell-by date in recent years. 

Not so this week. 

The VIP Paedophile Ring: What's the Truth?, broadcast last Tuesday, send major shock waves out in several directions - from the police to the Labour Party's deputy leader Tom Watson, and from Exaro News to their occasional partners at BBC Two's Newsnight.

The issues raised by the programme, as well as sundry questions about whether the programme should ever have been broadcast, reverberated widely - and the rest of the media have lapped it up. 

I'm very firmly with Stephen Pollard on this (and, like me and Christopher Booker, he's, otherwise, a frequent critic of the BBC over issues of bias). 

He writes in the Telegraph that the BBC "should be praised" for this edition of Panorama. 

It’s not often I find myself jumping to the defence of the BBC. On this site, I have previously attacked both its liberal bias and the very basis on which it is built – the poll tax otherwise known as the licence fee. 

And yet today, I come not to bury but to praise. 

Last night’s Panorama, The VIP Paedophile Ring – What’s The Truth?, was not just a model of BBC journalism. It was a model of journalism itself – and surely one of the most important programmes the BBC has ever broadcast. 

It took a topic on which many minds are made up, which is both sensitive and important, and used cool, calm analysis to inject perspective and facts. 

I agree. It was measured and thought-provoking - and damning. 

********

I'd also like to recommend an article at the Daily Mail that comes to the defence of the BBC reporter on that particular Panorama (the mere thought of which might be enough to drive many a BBC staffer insane!)

Though I'm always a bit cautious about what I read in the Daily Mail, this piece convincingly laid out the case against Newsnight's associates at Exaro News. 

According to the Mail, Exaro attempted to "smear" Panorama reporter Daniel Foggo (above) by posting the (less than impressive) gotcha that Daniel had been brought up on the same street where deceased alleged Tory paedo Sir Peter Morrison lived. 

Well, I lived a couple of houses away from where the Yorkshire Ripper used to stay at weekends yet I've never been remotely sympathetic towards either ripping or the Ripper himself. 

I also lived on the same street as one of the leading campaigners against Noel Edmonds's Mr Blobby theme park in Morecambe. I didn't agree with her either, despite not being a fan of Mr B. [or Mr E.] myself, on the grounds that it was harmless, made children happy, and it was the kind of entrepreneurial enterprise that brought money, jobs and (notoriety) much-needed attention to beautiful, constantly sunny Morecambe.

So I'm not buying Exaro's smear of young Daniel (if the Mail is reporting what Exaro posted correctly).

********

That said, the strange thing about all of this is that - as I posted the other day - the BBC seems to have been engaging in something of a small-scale civil war itself about that Panorama broadcast...

...what with Wednesday night's Newsnight (a) sounding a rather dissenting note about the previous night's Panorama (given the Newsnight reporter fronting this piece's own role in reporting much the same kind of thing as Exaro) and (b) giving the Exaro boss a long 'right to reply' against Panorama.

I also heard an interview on Today the day after that Panorama report with the chief constable of Norfolk slamming the BBC for broadcasting that edition of Panorama.

And then came this week's Newswatch (with Samira Ahmed) which reported the complaints of what sounded like quite a lot of BBC viewers (even if 'quite a lot' in these circumstances means a few dozens, or - at best - a few hundreds out of 64 million people). 

All of them savaged the BBC for betraying the victims and prejudicing police investigations. 

And with no one from the BBC being willing to be interviewed about it (including Panorama editor Ceri Thomas), Samira ended up interviewing the chief constable of Norfolk again, who (again) slammed the BBC for broadcasting that edition of Panorama.

The BBC can be like that at times - which complicates matters for the likes of us.

Onwards and upwards

The playground bully and the Tory

Some are likening it to the rumble in the jungle, others are calling it a ‘heated exchange’ but it does seem that the incident between Tory Philip Davies and lefties Jon Snow and his sidekick Krishnan Guru-Murthy  caused quite a stir at the ITN newsroom where Channel 4 news is based. Or should that read ‘biased’. 

Anyway, Anita Singh has an article in the Telegraph about it, which is headlined “Jon Snow ‘acted like a playground bully’ says Tory MP”

 Philip Davies MP had previously expressed incredulity at Rona Fairhead’s faith in the BBC’s reputation for objectivity and impartiality,  so we can guess what he thinks of Channel 4. Well, we don’t need to guess, because he’s quite open about it. 

It seems that Mr Davies was invited to the ITN building in his capacity as a member of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, but was ‘ambushed’ by Jon Snow to whom he had just been introduced by the deputy editor of Channel 4 news. 

“she said, 'This is Jon Snow.' I said hello."He stood up out of his seat and at the top of his voice, so everyone in the newsroom could hear he said, 'You said I'm left-wing and biased - give me one example of an interview where I've been left-wing and biased.'"I said I had come to look around and hadn't come for an argy-bargy. He just kept repeating the same thing in a deliberately loud voice. It was like he was the playground bully and the newsroom was his playground. This carried on for at least five minutes.”

The exchange spiraled out of control till Mr. Guru-Murthy asked the MP to leave the building. 

During the heated exchange Jon Snow said to Philip Davies:

'You said I’m Left-wing and biased – give me one example of an interview where I’ve been Left-wing and biased.’”

Isn’t that annoying? Someone whose every word is Left-wing and biased asks for one example. You’re on the spot and there are so many to choose from you don’t know where to start. 

Stephen Pollard has an interesting piece about this in the Telegraph. As Pollard says:

“At the risk of provoking a further eruption from Mr Snow, who appears not so much to be thin-skinned as to possess a comical lack of self-awareness, I have to ask: is there any viewer of Channel 4 News who does not think Mr Snow is biased? Isn’t that the very point of him and his show?”

Pollard is arguing that he prefers his bias up-front and open, not all pretendy like the BBC. He thinks fans of Snow like it that way and they’re getting what they want, adding that the same thing could be said of Guardian readers, which I suppose is one way of looking at it.  Many people are less sanguine than Pollard about that. They are disturbed by the harmful influence of Channel 4 and the Guardian as well as the more slippery bias of the BBC. 

  It wouldn’t be so bad if  Jon Snow didn’t deliver his bias whilst wearing the cloak of authority that automatically graces the anchor of a flagship news programme.

“The BBC’s bias – or disposition, if you want a less pejorative word – isn’t conscious. But we all bring our own dispositions to the work we do, and that’s as true of BBC journalists as it is of lawyers and plumbers. The BBC’s news simply reflects the mindset of its urban, culturally liberal staff.”

Of course Jon Snow massively abused his position when he aired his appallingly biased film about Gaza. I’m sure many people must have had this in mind when they read about the dramatic ITN newsroom confrontation.  Stephen Pollard probably did too, despite making the following, rather cavalier assertion: 

 "I’m a lot less bothered by Mr Snow’s obvious, in your face, that’s-why-you’re-watching-me bias than I am by the BBC’s, which makes claims for its news as something altogether more elevated."

He ends his piece with: 

“This summer, (Jon Snow) recorded a video about Gaza that could have been straight out of the Hamas PR manual, entirely lacking in balance or context. The BBC’s deputy director of news and current affairs, Fran Unsworth, has said that no BBC presenter would have been allowed to make such a video.
Give me Jon Snow’s explicit bias any day, though, rather than the Beeb’s supposed but spurious objectivity. When it comes to Middle East coverage, at least Mr Snow’s heart is there on his sleeve for all to see. The BBC’s Middle East editor, Jeremy Bowen, is no less opinionated, but his views are couched in notional neutrality.But oh what fun it is to see the reaction of one of the great panjandrums of the liberal Left, when someone dares to utter a word of criticism. They can dish it out. But boy, they certainly can’t take it.

Update 26/10:  And here's Rod Liddle's take on this from the Sunday Times:

While being shown around the studios of Channel 4 News, the Conservative MP Philip Davies was set upon by a snarling Jon Snow, outraged that Davies had once dared suggest that the presenter was a tad biased to the left.
The row got so heated that the pair had to be separated by Snow’s unctuous homunculus, Krishnan Guru-Murthy, and Davies escorted from the building.
Snow demanded Davies show him evidence that he was biased. Phew — well, there’s a challenge, if ever there was one. But other than every single edition of Channel 4 News, is there anything else for the prosecution to work on?
Snow was once described as a “pinko liberal”. You might put that down simply as name-calling, but the person who described him thus was, er, Jon Snow. And then there was the video he made about the children of Gaza. The BBC said it would not pass its partiality test.
When a film is so pro-Palestinian even the BBC wouldn’t touch it, I think the word “bias” is not too strong.