Gender politics and BBC Sport

The Spectator has a piece this afternoon on the BBC's promotion of women's football and how it's gender politics rather than the sport that 'energises' the BBC. 

Its author, Philip Patrick, asks:

But does the BBC know its place anymore? Its purpose is surely to report the news, which means covering sport (a form of news) on the basis of the level of interest in it, not using it as a vehicle to drive societal change.

Well, we're already well into extra time on that one, Patrick. The BBC might as well update its mission statement to “inform, educate, entertain and drive societal change”.

He also argues that the BBC's coverage of women's football harms women's football by “overhyping” it and that it's  “patronising” too, in that its commentators don't do what commentators on men's football do and speak their minds and say someone played badly if they played badly. It's more a case of a continual “upbeat” patting on the head by BBC commentators on women's football matches.

Audiences will watch it, as has been shown previously. So the BBC would be better letting it speak for itself and winning what audience it wins without being so endlessly 'BBC' about it. But they won't, will they?

On which theme, it's time to quote author of The Tribe Ben Cobley again:

Nice that we're going to have some football to watch this summer: the Women's Euros kicks off on Wednesday, it's being played in England and it's all live on the BBC. 

A shame that BBC Sport's fixture list doesn't show the venues where the games are being played. 

In details like this I think you can see the decline of the Beeb: a certain slackness and lack of rigour; not doing the basics. 

They're trying to change the world instead.

Pride comes before a fall

  

3 of the 22

Did you know there are currently 22 stories about Pride featured on the CBBC Newsround homepage?

I just learned that from reading a piece at The Spectator by their regular anonymous BBC whistleblower headlined How the BBC was captured by trans ideology. The Corporation has forgotten about its duty to be impartial.

It's a long piece, and this is how it begins:

During Pride month this year a banner has been emblazoned across the BBC’s internal staff website used by every single employee. It features the following text: ‘BBC Pride 2022: Bringing together LGBTQ+ people of all genders, sexualities and identities at the BBC. 

Most people who work at the BBC aren’t concerned about this. But the slogan really should ring alarm bells, because behind its seemingly benign message of inclusivity is a latent political message about trans rights that is undermining the corporation’s impartiality.

As a BBC employee I am proud and delighted that the corporation is striving to be a welcoming employer for people from all walks of life, whatever their colour, creed or whoever they choose to sleep with. But the problem is that ‘Pride’ is no longer a movement that is simply fighting for the rights and liberties of people who have faced prejudice and discrimination because they don’t happen to be straight. It has morphed into something altogether more controversial and political – it is promoting a trans agenda that undermines longstanding concepts of sex and gender. Rather than treading carefully, however, the BBC is once again becoming an unthinking conduit for the dominant ‘progressive’ theology bouncing around the social media echo chambers of its Guardian reading bosses.

Is Ofcom biased?

On the dreaded trans issue...

According to James Kirkup in The Spectator, Ofcom, the BBC's regulator, has written “a report about impartiality that is not itself impartial” - which he describes as “quite an achievement”. 

He argues that Ofcom's lopsided methodology is at fault, relying on 6 hours-worth of interviews with trans people, and that by listening to only one side of the trans debate Ofcom thereby distorted and skewed its own findings. 

He says the report “not only fails entirely to mention women’s legitimate and legally-protected concerns, but effectively tells the corporation that its coverage doesn’t lean far enough towards one side of that contested issue” and worries this will tilt the BBC towards an even more biased position. 

Methodology certainly counts. If you conduct focus groups and interviews and significantly overrepresent one side with “loud voices” and don't even talk to the other side then, yes, you are going to get a biased report.

On the background to this, I think this pair of tweets puts it in a nutshell:

Emily Kate: Not surprised by this. Ofcom only left Stonewall a year ago. But I think organisations employ Stonewall to entrench existing views anyway. So leaving the scheme isn't going to change much, ideologically speaking. It won't make the organisation fairer or more balanced, necessarily. 

The beautiful symmetry of the national broadcaster being investigated for bias by a regulator who agrees that Position Normal is the one taken by the broadcaster! It's perfect.

“Why is the BBC saying Boris’s Savile claims are false?”

“Why is the BBC saying Boris’s Savile claims are false?” asked The Spectator this week:

Is Boris Johnson’s claim that Keir Starmer failed to prosecute Jimmy Savile ‘false’? The BBC certainly thinks so. During the Radio 6 bulletins last night, a BBC newsreader stated: “The Commons Speaker has rebuked Boris Johnson over his false claim that Sir Keir Starmer failed to prosecute Jimmy Savile after the Labour leader was targetted by protesters.”

The Spectator argues that though the BBC is correct to sat there's ‘no evidence that Sir Keir was involved at any point in the decision not to charge Savile’ that's not the point - the point concerns where responsibility should lie. Can Sir Keir be held responsible as DPP for the failures of his subordinates? This, the magazine argues, is a moral question more than a factual one.

“The dispute isn't nearly as clear cut as the BBC is making out”, says The Spectator, before describing the BBC's decision to brand the claim as ‘false’ “a technique often used by American broadcasters when covering Donald Trump” - which is a fair point. 

The BBC is morphing into CNN in that respect.

The point though, The Spectator concludes, is how the BBC chooses to present that distinction between personal and organisational responsibility:

When the Corporation reports that the statement is ‘false’, it implicitly makes a value judgement on where responsibility lies. For all its talk of objectivity, the BBC has made that moral judgement for you.

What struck me on digging into this via TV Eyes, is just how relentlessly the BBC used the term false claim or false accusation in connection to Boris's statements about Sir Keir and Sir Jimmy. 

Some senior editor/editors at the BBC must have told their journalists to shove it in every item about the story every hour, across all BBC news platforms. 

Every news presenter/reporter who appeared used the term.

There's a notorious modernist piece of classical music by Stockhausen called Klavierstück IX, which begins with the same chord repeated 139 times. Even that isn't as unrelenting as the BBC in full cry. 

Such behaviour raises questions...some of which were raised, rather admirably, by this week's Newswatch:

Samira Ahmed: Hello and welcome to Newswatch. I'm Samira Ahmed. Has BBC News reported accurately on what the Prime Minister said about Keir Starmer's time as Director of Public Prosecutions? The temperature in Westminster has been high for a while now, and so it remains. One argument in particular has gained further traction over the past few days. Ignited by an incident on Monday involving the Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer. 

Laura Kuenssberg: This is not normal rough-and-tumble. But the abuse and untrue accusations being hurled at the leader of the Opposition. One false claim that he protected the paedophile Jimmy Savile. Keir Starmer bundled to a police car. Two arrests were made. It happened outside Parliament where seven days ago the Prime Minister made a false link between the two. 

But was that link made by the PM last week incorrect? Not according to Brian Gare, who told us on Tuesday: 

Brian Gare: This small group of protestors have been outside Westminster for about a year and have harangued politicians and journalists alike. Yesterday's protest was in thee main about Julian Assange and the vaccination programme. There was only one woman who shouted out about Savile. But to listen to the BBC broadcasts, it was all about Savile.

Then there's the issue of that claim made by the Prime Minister, later clarified but not retracted that Keir Starmer had spent his time as head of the Crown Prosecution Service prosecuting journalists and failing to prosecute Jimmy Savile. That's been unambiguously described as false, not just as we heard there in Laura Kuenssberg's report, but across BBC News. 

Huw Edwards: Tonight at 10pm: Boris Johnson is called upon once again to withdraw a false accusation he made against Keir Starmer. 

Chris Mason: Keir Starmer used to be Director of Public Prosecutions, but there is no evidence of the Prime Minister's original allegation that Sir Keir had failed to prosecute Savile. 

Ben Brown: Downing Street has no intention of apologising for the Prime Minister's false claim that Sir Keir Starmer failed to prosecute Jimmy Savile for sex offences. 

Francis Morton was pleased to hear such clarity on truth and falsehood writing:

Francis Morton: I have been highly critical of BBC News, but now I wish to applaud you: “The Prime Minister has refused to apologise for false claims made against Sir Keir Starmer.” Factual, accurate.

But Paul Binge had a concern about the  coverage, despite the repetition that the claim was false:

Paul Binge: By continually linking Keir Starmer and those the CPS failed to prosecute, BBC News is doing the PM's grubby work. The BBC has an obligation to ensure that our politicians are supported and not slurred. 

Others thought the status of Boris Johnson's claim was not as black and white as the BBC had portrayed it, arguing that as head of the Crown Prosecution Service at the time that it failed to prosecute Jimmy Savile, Kier Starmer had some responsibility for that failure. So was the Prime Minister's claim actually false then? David Jones thought not:

David Jones: We have been hearing repeatedly from BBC News about the 'false claims' made by the PM concerning Keir Starmer and Jimmy Savile. Will BBC News please tell us which of the following statements are 'false': a) Keir Starmer was DPP and head of the CPS from 2008 to 2013; b) The CPS failed to prosecute Jimmy Savile.

We wanted to discuss all of this with someone from BBC News, but no-one was available. Instead, we were given this statement:

BBC statement: The BBC has reported on all aspects of this story - including the reaction of Boris Johnson to the treatment of Sir Keir Starmer by protesters, and criticism from some Conservative MPs and others linking what happened to remarks made by the Prime Minister in the House of Commons.

If 'I think we got it about right' is the Newswatch BBC interviewee's catchphrase, then surely 'But no-one was available. Instead, we were given this statement' is Samira's catchphrase. 

The whistleblower returns

The Spectator's pseudonymous BBC whistleblower is back again.

This time he criticises his employer for “hypocrisy” over Partygate, arguing that the looming elephant in its coverage was that the rules themselves were the problem causing ordinary people so much grief during the darkest days of lockdown and that the BBC played a deeply helpful role: 

Hearing of parties at No. 10 undoubtedly rubbed salt in people’s wounds but these wounds were not caused by ‘partygate’. This wasn’t acknowledged by a single BBC presenter. How could it be? Throughout the pandemic, the BBC has used its platforms to proselytise about every Covid rule and restriction, inducing the public to see unquestioning compliance as a virtue and dissent as sociopathic selfishness.

When it comes to the coverage of ‘partygate’, I find myself wincing at the level of hypocrisy shown, not just by Boris — but by the BBC. It’s pretty clear the PM didn’t want to go down the route of lockdown rules and restrictions. He sowed the seeds of his own destruction and the misery of millions when he bowed to pressure from panic-stricken advisers who had convinced themselves that the repressive example of Communist China must be followed. Once this route had been taken, BBC correspondents pressured the government to go further and further, obsessing over the details of how to correctly follow every rule to the letter, irrespective of the impact on transmission...But the BBC can’t admit this because by doing so it would have to concede that by throwing its full weight behind the lockdown approach, it too should bear responsibility for the harms it caused.

None of that is really whistleblowing. This, however, gives a proper glimpse behind the scenes: 

And this slanted stance continues, evidenced by the BBC’s recent coverage of Novak Djokovic’s ordeal at the hands of the Australian authorities. Djokovic was characterised as the villain rather than a victim. And while much was said of the tennis player’s eccentric attitudes towards vaccinations, reporters displayed a marked reluctance to question the ethics of Canberra’s Covid zealotry or the longer-term implications for international sport, travel and bodily autonomy in general. Talking to colleagues about the tennis player’s plight gave an insight into the Covid groupthink endemic in BBC offices. One called him ‘an idiot’ for declining a coronavirus jab. Another showed barely contained contempt for the unvaccinated, making clear they would welcome any measures that excluded those who decline jabs from wider society.

Déjà vu

I'm getting a slight sense of déjà vu on reading Steerpike's latest piece at The Spectator - especially the last pair of paragraphs [and the last paragraph in particular]. 

It's mostly what you heard here at ITBB 24 hours ago, but with added juicy detail from the Speccie.

If Mr S. is partly copying us I'd happily invite him to continue to 'borrow' as much as he likes. Share and share alike in a good cause after all. Nothing here is copyrighted. 

It could, of course, just be a highly likely coincidence of people reacting the same way. 

Anyhow, Mr Steerpike turns out to be even meaner to the BBC than we were yesterday because he forgets Mayor Khan's involvement and blames it all on the BBC. Mayor Khan deserves some of the blame too: 

Watch: BBC’s cringe New Year monologue 

Some accuse Britain of being a mawkishly sentimental nation. So what better rejoinder could be offered to that than the BBC's New Year's Eve fireworks display, when an army of drones spelled out the letters 'NHS' in the sky. As Big Ben struck midnight yesterday, actor Giles Terera recited a poem more twee than a tea commercial, eulogising the country's supposed 'achievements' in 2021. For nothing screams progress like a Hamilton actor performing a YouTube star's piece about COP26 on the Millennium Bridge.

Emphasising every word as if it were crafted by Shakespeare himself, Terera did his best with a structure that managed to rhyme 'vaccination' with 'nation' and Tom Daley's 'cardie' with 'camaraderie.' All the usual nods were there: Marcus Rashford's free school meals. Drink. Our NHS heroes. Drink. The Glasgow climate change conference. Drink. All we needed was a stammering Hugh Grant and an Oasis backing track to round off the Brit-Popping vibe, given the strong echoes of the London Olympics.

Forget 2022: it appears that half the cultural elite want to turn the clock back to 2012.

A BBC whistleblower speaks

The Spectator has a scoop - a detailed critique of the BBC written by a BBC whistleblower, headlined How the BBC lost its way on Covid I’ve seen from the inside how the corporation has failed in its reporting on the pandemic. 

It's written under a pseudonym. The author - who has taken no fee - is described as a ''BBC News employee who has worked at the Corporation for several years''.

It's a fascinating read that won't go down well at the BBC.

The author criticises the lack of balanced discussion and the heavy-handed treatment of people with concerns about lockdowns and vaccines and sees the BBC as acting as a supporter and promoter and enforcer of further restrictions. He describes the corporation's record as ''a dismal failure'' and argues that the demands of the 24-hour news cycle have ''exacerbated'' the crisis because the BBC panicked and is still panicking.

The atmosphere in these BBC offices in the early days of the pandemic became comically oppressive. Absurd in-house ‘safety measures’ were introduced, including baffling one-way arrow stickers on floors which routinely pointed the wrong way, making navigating staircases the stuff of an Oscar Reutersvärd fever dream. Ludicrous lift capacity limits were also imposed: only one person at a time would be allowed to travel in an elevator capable of holding a small crowd – but only up, not down. Then, in a move that could have come straight from the sitcom W1A, ‘proximity monitoring devices’ were issued to staff to enforce social distancing. These re-purposed pagers issued a quacking noise whenever one colleague came ‘dangerously’ close to another.

This had an effect on the editorial stance of the BBC, he says, and soon saw respected colleagues ''succumb'' to ''the whole gamut of coronavirus measures'' as ''the only viable route out of the crisis'' and ''dismiss'' alternative strategies ''as dangerous or the work of cranks without any effort being made to properly examine their ideas''. And ''in a further deterioration of journalistic standards'', the author says the BBC conflated and confused the effects of lockdown with those of Covid-19, always blaming Covid-19, and changed how they reported the daily death figures and removed context. 

Licence fee payers might have expected the BBC’s well-remunerated senior correspondents to step up to the plate and interrogate the long-term impacts of the lockdown strategy. Covid restrictions may have saved the lives of mainly older people in the short term but what of their impact on the lives and livelihoods of younger generations in the longer run? Anyone who held such hopes was to be seriously disappointed. 

He notes, as we've noted, that BBC political correspondents ''lined up to pile pressure on ministers to take ever more draconian steps to tackle the coronavirus''. And he slams the BBC's Health Cluster news department for failing to scrutinise No. 10’s medical advisers ''but instead amplifying them, becoming, in effect, the government’s Covid propaganda wing'' and says that, ''blinded by liberal sensibilities and hamstrung by an unhealthy departmental culture'' its reporters ''went out their way to characterise the suggestion that Covid-19 might have leaked from a Chinese lab as a conspiracy theory promoted by Donald Trump. 

On a BBC News webpage (which remains online), one BBC health hack said the World Health Organisation had ‘closed the lid’ on the lab leak theory after visiting Wuhan in February. 

He says he thought things might have been getting better as ‘Freedom Day’ beckoned in July, but ''noble cause corruption'' is kicking in again.

The national broadcaster should surely feature both sides of the debate and not just relentlessly make the case for further restrictions while ignoring the toll they have on our society. The BBC insists that it has ‘covered the pandemic with great care and in detail’ but there are signs that the corporation is once again failing in this critical function. 

He foresees this happening again and again. 

This is a heavily abridged version, so please read the whole thing and see what you think of it.

BBC 98 Women 2021

It's that time of the year again - the BBC's annual showcase for women they admire: 

BBC 100 Women 2021: Who is on the list this year?

Well, one way of answering that is to say that there are two men on it for starters. 

And I was just going to post that when I saw a Spectator tweet saying:

By including transwomen in that 100 Women list, the BBC is siding with those who argue that “transwomen are women”.

It leads to a new piece by James Kirkup headlined Gender is contentious. The BBC is pretending it isn’t.

Another trick

Talking of The Spectator, Ross Clark has a piece there headlined ‘Climategate’ still matters – but not how the BBC thinks it does. In the piece he says that the story of 'Climategate' “won’t go away”, not least because the BBC has just put out two programmes on the subject: a TV drama called The Trick, and a Radio 4 documentary called The Hack That Changed the World”, continuing: 

Both try to establish the same narrative: that the scientists whose emails were leaked were victims of a crime — a massive data theft — and that these brilliant, honest people were then unfairly dragged through the mire as their integrity was questioned, when the world should really have been asking: who are the evil hackers and why are they trying to discredit climate science? 

Why it still matters, he argues, is “because in treating Climategate as pure data theft story, you bury what it revealed about the practices of some climate scientists” and while “it is true that some sceptics over-egged the scandal”, that “doesn’t detract from serious questions over the science which was revealed by leak”, including reasonable “objections” to what the scientists did. Among other things, he continues, “sceptics are right to be sceptical”, including about the scientists' use of graphs.

 

He concludes: 

That is not to question, of course, that global temperatures – as measured from thermometers – have risen over the past century. No, Climategate didn’t ‘disprove’ global warming or show that it was a scam. What is did confirm is that climate scientists are using highly questionable methods to construct a record of historic temperatures. Moreover, it showed the lengths to which some climate scientists would go to try to silence colleagues with whom they disagreed – in one case threatening to try to remove an editor from an academic journal. Theft or no theft, Climategate revealed important matters of public interest – especially given the extent to which we are now being asked to adjust our lifestyles to reduce carbon emissions – and the BBC is quite wrong to try to dismiss the public interest side and present it merely as some dark and dastardly crime.

Views his own, beyond the BBC door

It's fascinating that Andrew Marr continues to write occasional diary pieces for the Spectator.

Some can be charming, but his latest is too self-justifying. 

And I'm guessing that he either never reads the online comments or doesn't care about that kind of criticism, for - so far - it's 20-0 against him below his latest piece there - The true enemy of political interviews.

Here's what in old school exam papers they'd call a 'precis' of his piece:

My conference interviews with 'Sir Keir' and 'Johnson'/'Mr Johnson' were rightly tough. My team and I worked hard on them. Both leaders' aides felt aggrieved, so - therefore - we got it about right. As as for Nadine Dorries saying she doesn't think I'm impartial, well, we at the BBC 'do our level best' to leave our views at the door, but we've all got opinions and they make us better interviewers. Plus BBC-bashing is 'the safest sport in the country fairground' and the BBC is too timid in responding to it. Meanwhile I've been watching Jeremy Clarkson and, by being a 'big, pink, fallible wazzock' and not minding been seen as such, he's 'a lesson in self-importance to the rest of us'.

Some comments even outdid the 'big, pink' bit there in describing Andrew's own appearance [without bringing in the 'skin colour' question], but this selection sums up the main response so far:

• Evidence if it was needed that BBC people are simply not like us normal people. The breathtaking lack of self awareness is extraordinary.
• "Jeremy Clarkson is....a lesson against self-importance for the rest of us." A lesson you have no intention of learning.
• "Cognitive dissonance: inconsistency between what people believe and how they behave motivates people to engage in actions that help minimize feelings of discomfort", which explains why this article is so dishonest.
• The true enemy of any interview is Andrew Marr, the Joe Biden of the prepared script and the search for the "Gotcha" moment.

Long may social media, whatever its faults, continue to allow people to share their dissenting views about the mainstream media - and everything else besides!

Charles Moore v the BBC (Part 182)

 

Charles Moore is probably off John Simpson's Christmas card list. 

His latest Spectator column has the online headline The BBC has given up properly reporting on China. In it Mr Moore castigates the Corporation for having failed to replace Carrie Gracie as BBC China editor, for only having one correspondent there, and for preferring to safely report on Trump rather than report on China. 

The BBC is not happy. 

Here's the BBCs Robin Brant (intriguingly copying in Andrew Neil too): 

This Spectator piece is inaccurate, wrong and a misrepresentation. BBC News has THREE correspondents in China, not one. I am one of them, my brilliant and committed colleagues  John Sudworth and  Stephen McDonell  are the others. Fraser Nelson, Andrew Neil, please correct. 

And here's the aforementioned John Simpson (not copying in Andrew Neil): 

Charles Moore claims in the Spectator that the BBC has timidly 'given up anything like full reporting of China'.  Absolute rubbish. We have 3 full-time correspondents there, & the BBC has led the way in reporting the treatment of the Uighurs. Fraser Nelson: an apology, please.

The Spectator has added an update in response: 

Update: The BBC has been in touch to say that it has a grand total of three reporters in this country of 1.3 billion. But still, more than two years after Gracie’s departure, no China Editor. 

It would be interesting to know exactly how many reporters the BBC has in the US at the moment. 

*******

Update: John Simpson isn't giving up:

The Spectator has now ‘updated’ Charles Moore’s piece on the BBC in China.  Not enough, but it’s a bit less of an insult now to the team who revealed to the world what was being done to the Uighurs.  Let’s hope the Speccie checks its facts next time it attacks the BBC.

******* 

Much later update: John's still harping on about it, but is (charmingly) softening:

I confess I've got a soft spot for Charles Moore.  In 1989 I returned from Kabul with a strong story.  The Independent & the Guardian wouldn't run it: an Indie exec explained to me that in his experience TV people couldn't write. Charles printed it in the Speccie & was charming.

Now, that's an interesting anecdote it its own right. 

(How typical that he went to to Independent and the Guardian first! Very John Simpson!). 

Wonder what the story was and why left-leaning newspapers were reluctant to run it? I'm doubting even the internet will solve that mystery from 1989, but you never know....

Yet another update: And within seconds of |Googling, the answer popped straight up as the main answer to a search for 'john simpson 1989 spectator'. 

It's an impeccably BBC piece, even down to calling the strongest US critics of the Soviet Union's actions in Afghanistan "far-right".

So what went wrong for John Simpson with the left-leaning papers back in 1989? 

Well, he half-criticised a liberal US media icon Dan Rather, and even that was evidently too much for the faint-hearted Independent and the Guardian, even back then.

That Charles Moore published JS's article - even though it's what we might now call a 'left-liberal piece' to the letter, and went after Mr Rather's (right-wing) critics with no sympathy whatsoever for either them or their views - truly is a testimony to Charles Moore's and the Spectator's enduring willingness to grant a platform to people who aren't the kind of people Spectator readers usually agree with, or probably even want to hear from. 

And I'll keep on subscribing to it with added enthusiasm as a result.

Alarming news

I haven’t watched the BBC for a few days, but the radio alarm (literally) woke me up with the *alarming* news about Dominic Cummings. 

Having read the piece in the Spectator (£) written by the spouses of some of their regular columnists (I have to confess that I never knew he was Mary Wakefield’s other half) it seems that Dom isn’t the kind of unemotional automaton that the Boris-bashing press would have us believe; rather he seems (almost) a human being. 

I now suspect that he hadn’t behaved quite so outrageously and criminally as the BBC (and the press) obviously wishes he had, and that their determination to have him horse-whipped is politically motivated. Who’d've thunk it? 

I don’t remember the press ever going in such relentless pursuit of the arch manipulator and brain behind Jeremy Corbyn - that antisemitic Machiavellian rogue Seumas Milne. He seems to have got off lightly. Where is he now? I don’t know. Talking of ‘where are they now’, Rod Liddle has had an entertaining go at Shami Chakrabarti, which I mention solely so I can use the lovely photo to decorate this post.  

Keep calm and carry on

The mini-drama that’s being acted out in the Spectator has a parallel relevance to this blog (my position here) 

Stephen Daisley is a divisive figure in the Spectator. The Marmite kind of divisive.

Here we have a comparatively niche article about the fortunes and misfortunes of two English language Jewish newspapers, The Jewish Chronicle and Jewish News. They’ve both gone into liquidation, but some kind of rescue plan seems to be in the offing.

The below-the-line discussion ignores the content of the piece and coagulates instead around the justification for publishing such a ‘minority interest’ issue in the Spectator. And, predictably, it has brought a few unpleasant realities out of the woodwork. 

Personally, I find the journalism in the Jewish News (in our sidebar) a little bland. Also, rather error-prone, but it sometimes comes up with some valuable insights.

The ‘best’ comment (according to Disqus’s “Best” league table) is from ‘ugly-fish’  - ugly by name - ugly by nature, maybe.

 Here it is:

“It's obviously a subject very close to the writer's heart, but why is he banging on about this in The Spectator? I and, I suspect, many other Speccie readers don't give a f*ck about The JC.”

That’s the first of several, to the effect that 

 'Jewy stuff like that has no business in the Spectator. No-one cares.'

So, should I conclude that the Spectator readership is mildly antisemitic? At the time of writing, out of the 13 comments,  seven support ugly fish,  three are against, and the rest seem indifferent or halfway between.

I’m not suggesting that Jewish issues deserve Special Status. I can easily imagine similar, or much more virulent responses if, say, the Spectator featured an article about some Muslim related media organ going out of business. 

It’s merely that in the current climate - rampant antisemitism everywhere - it hits a sore spot.

So,  with regard to this blog. 

I realise that antisemitism on the BBC - often in the guise of anti-Israel reporting, but not exclusively - coupled with its aggressively pro-Islam angle - is a far more serious problem than a few negative responses to articles by Stephen Daisley. 

The BBC has a wider reach and a much bigger influence on public opinion, which ultimately affects government foreign policy, so my focus on antisemitism and anti-Zionism has a rightful place on a blog about BBC bias.

I won’t pretend that it’s not dispiriting to be met with comparative indifference to my ‘Israel” posts, but as long as this blog exists, I’ll do what I do, and I hope Stephen Daisley keeps doing what he does too. 

Don’t let’s compare apples and pears

This particular article in the Spectator (which we still haven’t managed to restore to the sidebar) best reflects my own view of the current situation, which is that no-one can yet tell whether Lockdown is the most or the least effective strategy for dealing with the pandemic. The best or the worst. The wisest or the stupidest.  I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again - the jury’s still out. 

We cannot yet know whether the economic fallout from Lockdown will turn out to be a bigger calamity than the imminent prospect of a few million more premature deaths from Covid, and no amount of logic and reasoning can provide a definitive answer till the fat lady sings; and not even then. In the absence of a reliable, robust, retrospective tally, our polarised attitudes and prescriptions can only be ’visceral’, instinctive and speculative, and I daresay, dependent, at least in part, upon whether we’ve got vulnerable and very precious loved-ones to worry about. 

It seems to me that in a no-win scenario like this, any strategy is risky; but since we voted for the present government, and Lockdown is the strategy they’re betting the farm on, it’s wiser to cooperate than to dissent, because the chosen strategy is heavily dependent on our cooperation.  

If Brendan O’Neill thinks it’s the wrong strategy and Peter Hitchens says dissent is our moral duty, it’s not so much that I disagree with their arguments - they may well be right - but at the moment it’s extremely premature to be certain of anything, and in my opinion, it’s unwise to insist you can be.

No outcome I can think of is likely to give us a definitive answer anytimesoon. Perhaps if the pandemic rapidly dies out and the economy bounces back double-tout-suite, we can pretend we knew it all along.  Not very likely though, is it? Even with the benefit of hindsight, we’ll probably still be left with a bunch of ‘what ifs’ that we can argue over forever and a day.

I just think this piece by Professor Michael Baum details the uncertainties that make me quite sure that we can’t be sure. There’s even a reference to TV journalists in there, so no-one can accuse me of going completely off-topic.

“We now have a rich and varied amount of data on coronavirus that is global and increasing by the day. As you would expect, in the face of uncertainty, opinions in the scientific community are diverse. Now is not the time for point-scoring and facile comparisons, but for global collaboration. 

Ultimately this lockdown period will come to an end, we will develop herd immunity, produce antibody tests that work and vaccines to protect the vulnerable. We will win against this virus and our children will ask, ‘What did you do in the great corona war of 2020?’. 

The best answers will come from those currently caring for the sick or who work in our science and mathematical laboratories. But if you are a whinging TV journalist demanding, ‘Something must be done’, or an armchair epidemiologist who has no doubt that ‘rhubarb’ is the answer to our problems, you may have to keep quiet and change the subject.

Please disagree in an orderly fashion. It’s our blog and we. can. exterminate.

In it together

Firstly, something has gone wrong with the Spectator link on our sidebar.

Having unsuccessfully attempted a series of fixes, neither Craig nor Sue have managed to reinstate it. So, for the time being, I’ll just have to link to Rod Liddle’s piece here, (£) and hope you’ll bear with me while I refer to it now.

I usually enjoy Rod’s stuff even when I don’t agree with all of it, but I was sorry to see him begin with what looked like a long list of tedious complaints about plod. The same stuff that Hugo Rifkind dragged out the other day, you know, drones filming antisocial ramblers in the Peak District and the abominable black Lagoon.

Times subscribers pointed out below the line that the black lagoon affair was merely the police’s way of deterring people from immersing themselves in the existing toxic swamp. I suppose if you did, you’d be irradiated AND (assuming you weren’t one already) simultaneously turned into a Person of Colour.

That, and the curtain-twitching snitches that were salivating at the prospect of seeing their neighbours acquiring criminal records for going outside on non-essential errands.

However, I was relieved to discover, halfway through, that Rod wasn’t having another gratuitous go at plod and Boris after all. In fact, he was quite supportive of the government’s ‘human’ if slightly wobbly navigation through the storm. 

“The truth is we do not know. We don’t know and the experts don’t know. The epidemiologists are captured by their own paradigms and see only one small margin of what is a very large picture. Further, they change their tune with every day that passes. Fair enough — that is how science works. It is not pristine — it is practised by fallible humans, however admirable its methodologies. And science is never, ever, certain — something new always comes along, so we should always have our doubts.

However, Rod does dent his ‘no-one knows’ thesis a little when he vehemently dismisses Jonathan Sumption’s  proposition that the ‘cure’ for this pandemic may be worse than the disease by describing it as “the pompous meanderings of a glorified lawyer.”

But then back on track:  

“the epidemiologists see only a small sliver of the bigger picture, Sumption — and I for that matter — can see only the occasional pixel.
To my mind the government seems to be navigating reasonably well between the imperative demanded by the scientists — who have skin in the game — and the rest of us, who also have skin in the game.”

We don’t know what’s going on, and it seems almost reckless and deluded to act as though we do. I haven’t watched much BBC, as others in the household keep switching to Sky, ITV, Channel 4 and even al-Jazeera, but I sense that the BBC has reined in its continuous carping at Boris just a bit. Or has it? At least, someone somewhere said they thought Laura Kuenssberg was holding back.

Let’s remember, Jeremy Corbyn might have been PM and thank the Lord for small mercies.

Don't look at the comments!

Just before Craig and I can lay down our keyboards and say “Our work here is done!” I have to draw your attention to the thing poor Andrew Marr has written on the Spectator. 

Am I to blame for Boris’s war on the BBC?

In fact, I’m surprised Craig hasn’t mentioned it already because it’s been up since at least yesterday or was it the day before.. Remember this? 

 Of course you do!

But it seems that Andrew Marr has been traumatised by the outcry that erupted pretty soon after the marathon interruptathon hit the fan.

Who can blame him? Well, I may as well answer my own question. In fact, anyone/everyone who has a mind to can blame him, and accordingly, anyone has. Now poor Andrew has dug himself into a deeper hole than ever. He’s behaving like a Jeremy Corbyn. A limpet who won't let go despite a rejection on a scale that he and his cronies truly didn’t see coming (and can neither understand nor accept) who has just been smacked in the face by a wet Star of David symbol alongside the numbers “9 11” 

Just as Jeremy Corbyn refuses to believe he might bear some responsibility for the rise in antisemitic incidents, Andrew Marr fears he might be blamed for contributing to the public’s loathing of the BBC. Well, don't worry, Andrew, if you believe you’re innocent, that’s all that matters. Just don’t look at the comments! 

Andrew Marr on social media, that Boris interview and Cuddly Uncle John

The Christmas edition of The Spectator also features a Broadcaster's Notebook by Andrew Marr in which he admits that he didn't see the scale of Boris's majority coming and that he was "over-influenced by social media".

Now, it's all very well pointing the finger of blame at Twitter and Facebook but people choose who they follow on Twitter  and Facebook, and usually do so by following their own biases and inclinations. So if their social media feed turns out to be an unrepresentative echo chamber which then gives back a false, misleading picture of public opinion as a whole then, frankly, such people (including Andrew) only have themselves to blame.

Anyhow, I believe that Andrew was more "over-influenced" by media closer to home - i.e. the broadcast media, especially his own BBC bubble. When he mocks "addicted Twitterati" for obsessing about election froth (such as Boris grabbing a reporter's phone or hiding in a fridge or refusing to be interviewed by Andrew Neil) and assuming that the nation is also transfixed by such 'game-changers', he ought to also be mocking the BBC, Sky, Channel 4, etc, as they went just as overboard on those stories. 

*******

Andrew Marr also uses his Spectator column to comment on Boris 'coming after' the BBC and, possibly, decriminalising non-payment of the licence fee goes. "I hope he doesn't", says Andrew. Hmm.

He then speculates on Boris's motives and says, "I hope it’s not because I frequently interrupted him the last time he was interviewed on my show". He then goes on to defend that interview, blaming its lack of elegance on Boris. 

And he also praises John McDonnell: 

But I take as I find. And I have always found him attentive, polite and prepared to answer hard questions in clear language. 

We have, of course, commented several times before on Andrew Marr's oddly good-natured interviews with the faux-cuddly shadow chancellor, including the strange fact that Mr Marr often takes his dishonest words at face value. Now we know why: because he respects him. (Unlike Boris).

The BBC and the earlier parts of the past week

Charles Moore's fine column in The Spectator this week also dwelt on "mainstream media triumphalism which equates its own interests with those of the general population," though he focused specifically on  the BBC's coverage of the final days of the election campaign.

As it chimed with my impressions, I hope it's OK to quote this at length from (Sir) Charles:

The following morning, on the BBC Today programme, Nick Robinson — who seems almost obsessively opposed to Boris Johnson, perhaps because of something or other in Oxford days (a failure to gain election to the Bullingdon Club?) — was riding the highest of horses. When an ITV journalist had shown the Prime Minister the photograph of young Jack on his phone, Nick complained, Boris had declined to comment and put the journalist’s phone in his pocket without looking at it. Psychoanalyst Dr Laura Kuenssberg later diagnosed this as an amazing ‘lack of empathy’. In a further act of lèse-majesté, which Nick reported in shocked tones, the Johnson entourage had somehow misled ‘some very high-profile journalists’ over an obscure related issue. Nick did not mention that, in the interview, Boris had expressed his sympathy with the boy’s case. Nor did he acknowledge that any Tory politician approached with the offer of a sight of a picture on a media phone while on camera in an election campaign would rightly have suspected a trap. Later, Iain Watson filed for the BBC a mawkish item online called ‘One sick boy and the NHS’, equating extreme protest with wider public opinion. On Tuesday’s lunchtime BBC News, efforts were made to imply that a Tory social media campaign had spread lies saying that the hospital picture had been staged. The BBC never offered a clear narrative about what had actually happened, or explained who had put Jack on the floor and why. It just wanted to keep going for as long as possible with the Jack picture.  

This contrasted sharply with the BBC’s handling, also on Tuesday, of the leaked phone conversation between Jon Ashworth, the shadow health secretary, and a Tory friend of his about how normally Labour voters in the north and Midlands ‘can’t stand’ Jeremy Corbyn, and how he would be seen in government as a risk to national security. Here it concentrated not on what Mr Ashworth had said, but on how his friend had betrayed him — not a line the BBC, with its uncritical praise for ‘whistleblowers’, usually deploys. In its PM programme, Evan Davis turned the Ashworth revelation into part of a story about ‘the fight between honesty and mendacity’, introduced with a quotation from the fiercely anti-Boris Lord Patten of Barnes, the BBC’s ex-chairman. 

More 'reaction'

"Andrew Neil eviscerates Boris Johnson over interview no show" says Steerpike in the Spectator online. But you know what? (I do hate that ‘you know what’ habit) (I’m just doing it now to annoy myself) This is what. Not everyone is with you.

if Andrew Neil, (associate editor of the Spectator) read the comments below the film clip + transcription featured in the online mag he co-edits,  he might find that his ‘no show’ rant is not quite the evisceration Steerpike envisaged. If anyone was eviscerated, some would say it’s the BBC’s eviscerator-in-chief himself. 

Don't appease him Boris!

I hope Boris continues to frustrate the self-aggrandising unattractive brute that is Neill: he's not worth the bother. And neither are most of the other broadcast political journalists worth the bother, all of whom appear to want to appear pointedly rude to their interviewee to illustrate what tough guys they are. When everyone of them are playing the same game it get tedious. Boorish.

Oh! ..am reminded: And what a total prat Marr made of himself when he attempted to outdo Neill with his incivility. Pathetic.

says commenter Bruce Mills. 

(At the time of writing, that was posted “14 minutes ago”, but the world has moved on since then.) This conversation has been going strong since yesterday. 

The oldest comment (by someone using  the moniker “The Macho King” ) says:

Brillo just comes across as a complete moron here.

He thinks he's bigger than the election, some kind of superstar interviewer that all must come before for some kind of validation. He is making that cardinal sin of starting to believe his own hype. And who the hell says that anyone who wants to be PM must pass through the gates of Brillo to win?

Would Trump do Brillo? No, Because Trump couldn't care less who this idiot is. Trump is perhaps the last Alpha male on the planet (bar the Macho King) and does what the hell he wants.

So Boris is right to ignore him. Don't play to his ego and appear on his show, it just validates his superiority complex.

There are one or two dissenting voices in the mix, most of which boil down to an assertion that Boris is an unprincipled buffoon and frit. Several say Boris was quite right to give the would-be inquisitor a wide berth - as if his berth isn’t wide enough already. Or did I mean girth. 

There’s an element of truth in both points of view if you ask me. But who’s asking?

Interrupterview; the transcriptions

Further to Craig’s remarks about the difficulty of transcribing the Andrew Marr v Boris Johnson ‘interrupterview’  I was amused by the Spectator’s attempt, which, aside from “con dine” instead of ‘condign’,  included several inappropriate full-stops, whereas the official transcription used the dash to indicate ‘unfinished’ sentence.

Of course, a transcription would be hard-pressed to convey the full extent of the interruptyness of the interrupterview; even inserting (interrupts) in between endings and beginnings as we often do here on ITBB doesn’t quite cut it. 

However, the full-stop version does have an absurdist, deadpan, robotic charm about it. It amused me anyway.

See over page.