“Is no one checking scripts any more?”

Under the headline BBC facing brain drain as exodus goes deeper than just the big names, The Sunday Times's media editor Rosamund Urwin reports on the mood of “despondency” among BBC news employees as the leaving parties pile up. The paper says the BBC “has lost more than 2,500 years of experience...since January 2020”, and another thousand employees might go.

As for BBC profligacy, I was particularly taken by this passage:

In her book, Scoops, published this week, Sam McAlister, the former Newsnight producer who clinched the interview with Prince Andrew, writes of a famous BBC presenter “who spent more money in taxi expenses than I earned in an entire year. Actually, not once, several times. I’d check to see I’d finally managed to out-earn his taxi expenses every year. I never did.”

Meanwhile on Twitter...

One of the earlier departed, Hugh Sykes, was listening to Radio 4 last night. From the sounds of it, a BBC programme was praising the BBC. That led to the following thread:

•  'A Hard Look At Soft Power' on BBC Radio 4  gave BBC News as one of the best examples, but it's at risk due to the over-75s licence deal scandalously agreed by ex d-g Tony Hall with John Whittingdale which slashed the BBC budget by 20%. Accuracy is one of the casualties - eg (more): 
• Inaccuracies are creeping into BBC News. For example, news bulletins describing abortion as a 'Constitutional right' in the USA. It has never been that. It isn't mentioned in the Constitution. Roe Vs Wade only made it a l e g a l right. Is no one checking scripts any more? 
• Conservatives politicians (like Nadine Dorries) undermining the BBC with tendentious ideological attacks may regret it when they are out of power and they find that the BBC is no longer holding their opposition successors robustly to account. 
• In Iraq nearly 20 years ago I had to explain the BBC Gilligan/Dodgy Dossier/David Kelly/Hutton row to a taxi driver. When I'd finished, he asked "So. BBC not government?!" No, I said, BBC not government. That needs to remain true if this British soft power is to remain powerful.

“Is no one checking scripts any more?”, asks Hugh. 

Well, on his specific point - e.g. on Saturday 2 July, the BBC News Channel repeatedly said, throughout the day, “It comes after the US Supreme Court's decision to remove a woman's constitutional right to an abortion.” - one person who evidently isn't is Amol Rajan. Here's Amol interviewing Billie Jean King:

At the time of our speaking, we have only seen the draft judgment of a proposal to overturn Roe v Wade, which is the landmark case of 1973 which enshrined a woman's constitutional right to an abortion in the US.

Camilla's nightmares

I do hope next week's Radio 4 Appeal will be on behalf of a charity that helps newspaper critics recover from watching BBC TV programmes. I for one would donate, especially after reading Camilla Long's deeply moving column in today's The Sunday Times:

There’s no shortage of programmes about race on television — turn on any channel and you will see Samuel L Jackson flying to Gabon or someone in a slavery drama having their skin flayed off. This month alone there has been Lenny Henry on the Caribbean [BBC Two] and a decent new iteration of the reality show Back in Time for Birmingham, about Asians [also BBC Two]. Our televisions are host to a dizzying range of what producers believe are provocative takes on race and diversity, except none of them is surprising, curious or even new.

None of these programmes says anything different; none of them deviates from the blunt narrative that, for a minority, life is appalling and must be turned into a fetishised form of entertainment. No one white is ever seen as anything except cynical or ill-educated, even though the vast majority of these programmes are produced by concerned white people for concerned white people. Frankly, it’s a nightmare to review them.

I'm so glad I'm not a newspaper critic.  

The BBC is “that polar bear on a shrinking ice cap”

Nadine Dorries has been interviewed by Charlotte Ivers of The Sunday Times. Here are her latest comments on the BBC from that interview:

There is a problem with groupthink within the BBC, and I don’t think those people think they are left or they are right. I think they just believe they are absolutely right about everything. And they have a world view and a view of the UK, which is, I think, sometimes very wrong. 

Our responsibility is to save the BBC from itself, because it is that polar bear on a shrinking ice cap. It’s a global British brand, which must be protected. If you could make sure you get that line in, Charlotte. That branding must be protected. 

I’m afraid the BBC in its present format, in its present funding model, will not exist into the future. Whether I’m here or not, it will hit the buffers as more people refuse to pay the licence fee. You have to open your eyes and see what’s coming.

BBC business

The Sunday Times has a strong piece today by seasoned business reporter Oliver Shah: 

BBC’s dilettante attitude to business is a symptom and cause of its woes

I learned from it that the Today programme’s business team is being moved from London to Salford “in a right-thinking but wrong-headed decision that could have been parodied on the comedy show W1A”, despite the capital being “the centre of big business and finance”. With most company directors remaining in London and some BBC people refusing to relocate, one even hiring a lawyer, and lots of BBC newcomers replacing experienced old-hands, it sounds like a right pig's ear has been made of it.

Oliver Shah's main point, however, is that the BBC has gone backwards in its business coverage and “is no longer serious about company news”. He quotes a BBC insider describing the default BBC position:

This is a longstanding thing. It doesn’t really like business or want to understand it. It has a mindset that it’s all a bit mysterious, and somehow a bit dirty. And maybe, in that, the BBC is a reflection of British society at large.

Greg Dyke tried to change that mindset, bringing in Jeff Randall and putting a business programme in a prime-time spot. Robert Peston and Kamal Ahmed continued to push business stories. But they've all gone and the BBC, Oliver says, has reverted to its bad old ways.

He's criticising it as a fan of the BBC, and says:

On business, Auntie is her own worst enemy. The Today programme’s way of covering the spike in BP and Shell’s profits last week was to bowl underarm questions at academics about the need for a windfall tax. This kind of intellectual laziness justifiably angers those on the right who perceive the BBC as existing in a luvvie bubble.

He concludes:

In this respect, the BBC’s attitude to business is both a symptom and a cause of its troubles with government. The more it produces business content that would embarrass most trainee reporters on The Times or The Telegraph, the more it winds up hawks who want to cut the licence fee, and the more pressure it comes under to find savings — by getting rid of business journalists. For reasons of self-preservation, let alone the blood pressure of listeners who care about free enterprise, director-general Tim Davie and chairman Richard Sharp urgently need to wake up to business.

From the Sunday papers

Here are a few BBC-related stories from the Sunday papers that you may have missed...

The Sunday Times alleges that the BBC is “glossing over” human rights abuses against migrants and detainees in Dubai and that an Emirati minder “oversaw filming” of the corporation's new “observational documentary” Dubai: Playground of the Rich. The paper gives examples, including:

In the third episode, a short segment shares the stories of tourists who have paid a “heavy price” in the past for not abiding by the “letter of the law”, including public displays of affection, sex outside marriage and homosexuality. But the section lasts only a minute and does not detail the long prison sentences, reported abuses of detainees or the UAE’s failure to allow access to UN experts and human rights organisations.

The Sunday Times accuses the BBC of “skirting controversy” - which sounds plausible. As we know all too well, they tiptoe very carefully around certain topics.

*******

Now, I must admit when I heard that Newsnight's 'everywhere correspondent' Gabriel Gatehouse had spent a year working on a podcast series about the events on Capitol Hill, Washington on 6 January 2021 I thought that Gabriel might have better spent that time preparing a 7-part podcast about the first year of the hapless Biden/Harris administration. Still, a review by Patricia Nicol in The Sunday Times has me intrigued:

Gatehouse tries harder here, reminding us that there have been information black ops, and blackouts, from both sides. He recounts the BBC’s own (fruitless) efforts, in early 2017, to stand up sensational claims that Trump was a Russian asset — smears that today look more like another disbelieving establishment trying to unseat a democratically elected president.

Interesting. Wonder why the BBC's QAnon-obsessed disinformation unit didn't tackle this?

*******

Meanwhile, for those with strong stomachs, the Mail on Sunday has a couple of paedophilia-related BBC pieces: How the BBC's lack of checks left children at risk of abuse for years after Jimmy Savile was exposed and Child sex offender was able to continue working as a BBC journalist despite his conviction.

Cod liver oil commissioning

Sunday Times arts columnist Patricia Nicol has written a piece headlined Why changes are needed at Radio 4. 

Despite the headline, she's a huge fan of BBC Radio 4 and doesn't accept many of the criticisms being made of it. Her only real beefs with the channel are with its comedy and drama output. “When did a new comedy format on Radio 4 last make you laugh out loud? Or a drama warm your cockles?”, she asks. 

My favourite line from her column is:

Too much of Radio 4’s drama feels like cod liver oil commissioning, sternly administered to do you good.

“Friendly fire” from David Blunkett

   

‘Right-on’ Radio 4 is a turn-off, complains Blunkett runs a headline in today's Sunday Times.

 

Though as a BBC supporter, the former Labour home secretary David Blunkett wants BBC Radio 4 to “stop taking its core audience for granted”.

He also argues that it's “playing into the hands of its critics by becoming almost the caricature its opponents think it is”. He says it's “not adapting and becoming less metropolitan” but “playing up to that perception.” 

He also claims “there’s too much focus on what its contributors and presenters are doing, rather than on being informative” and asks that the station should “think about what matters in the wider sphere” - eg. that Today should cover a wider range of subjects.

As for Radio 4’s dramas he says, “I fear that good, easy-listening drama that doesn’t have to lecture us or ensure we are ‘right-on’ has gone for some time. Misery and a constant reference to identity politics are not what people want.” 

And The Food Programme, he says, has “lost its connection with the ordinary cook” by focusing on the “interests of those making the programme, rather than those of the wider public.” 

He blames complacency, saying of Radio 4's producers. “They think they have a captive audience”.

I agree with Lord Blunkett.

A nest of singing birds

 

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

PM and Beeb coo in harmony

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

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

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

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

After four years of fraught negotiations and as the deal was about to be announced...

 

Tim Shipman's long Sunday Times piece today describes the big day at Downing Street, in which the BBC apparently had a truly surreal walk-on part:

Johnson got a good night’s sleep and got up for a run with his dog Dilyn. But he began to lose patience. A senior figure at the BBC spoke to No 10, urging it not to announce the deal during the broadcast of the corporation’s big Christmas Eve film, Kung Fu Panda. About 12.30pm Johnson spoke again to von der Leyen and said: “We really need to get this over the line now. We’ve got to get Frosty and his team home for Christmas.” An hour later Frost WhatsApped the prime minister to say: “I think we’ve got there.”  

Johnson called and said: “Go and close it out.” Twenty minutes later there was a video call with von der Leyen. Johnson asked: “So do we have a deal, Ursula?” She replied: “Yes, we do.” Downing Street staff at the back of the room burst into spontaneous applause.

Off Beam

The limitations of our comments system make it awkward to insert direct hyperlinks, so following a comment (by Anonymous)  - and for clarity, I'm posting the Government's rebuttal of the Sunday Times article below the fold. 

Michael Gove described the article as 'off beam." The Government sets out the 'claims' made by the Sunday Times and offers its 'responses' in full.  

Read more...

End times

Boris Johnson skipped five Cobra meetings on the virus, calls to order protective gear were ignored and scientists’ warnings fell on deaf ears

Failings in February may have cost thousands of liveshttps://t.co/90fMvq20O5

— The Sunday Times (@thesundaytimes) April 18, 2020

Big splash in the Sunday Times. Get Boris.

A scoop! A day by day; hour by hour diary of the government’s failures and gross mishandling of the pandemic. Boris’s selfish, narcissistic, stubborn deafness! His cavalier behaviour! Hundreds, nay, thousands of unnecessary deaths! Boris’s negligence! The government’s ineptitude!

The keyboard warriors had already been busy, piling in below the line by about 6:30 am! Get Boris!

The whole www blogosphere is full of people (like me) opining on stuff we know very little about. (But how could we? We know only what we’re told.)

“So whom” did no-one anywhere suggest “would have handled the crisis better?” Jeremy Corbyn? Decisive and presidential? He’d still have been ‘having a conversation’.

Andrew Marr, on behalf of the Labour Party, massaged Anneliese Dodds gently through her sermon.

Michael Gove had just been con-fronted by Sophy Ridge with the narrow-eyed stare that makes her look intense.

Marr’s fixers put him in the last slot where the imminent danger of ‘running out of time’ usually adds an extra frisson of suspense. No-one could have been surprised by the tedious predictability of the questioning - the likelihood of Marr getting a sudden surge of inspiration and imagination is next to nil.

“Did he or did he not miss five cobra meetings?” squeaked Marr, the air of triumph amplified by his extra-reedy tone of voice.

So pleased was he with this question that the moment Gove began his answer, Marr had already begun a series of ‘interruption’ noises. Nevertheless, Gove battled through the distraction with stoicism and forbearance.

“Did we not send billions of tons of our PPE to China?” continued Marr. But he had already stopped listening and concerned himself with the Marr Show’s rapidly approaching end time.

"The BBC has overreached for too long. Now that must end"

I bet Rupert Murdoch's ears will be burning today. His name is going to get bandied about a lot on Twitter. 

The Sunday Times has an editorial today headlined The BBC has overreached for too long. Now that must end.