Usual business

Toby Young is disappointed:

I tuned into Newsnight to see how close we are to the deal and am none the wiser. The usual adversarial format, with backbench Conservative MPs doing their best to to defend the govt from the BBC’s prosecuting council, is neither informative nor entertaining.

That does seem to be the standard format these days.

As does the unbalanced panel, stacked against Brexit supporters.

Munroe, Paris and Chelsea delete, delete, delete a Doctor Who story writer

Alpha Centauri, a gender-fluid alien from the less serious end of the Jon Pertwee era

Four full episodes of Doctor Who have been written by screenwriter and novelist Gareth Roberts. He who also writes Doctor Who novels and short stories, and the BBC recently asked him to write another Doctor Who short story for a new anthology. Gareth duly wrote it and submitted it. But news of his involvement leaked out and some intolerant transgender people demanded that the BBC drop him, or else.

Why? Because (in 2017) he'd tweeted a couple of "cheerfully vulgar" things that 'offended' them - namely "I love how trannies choose names like Munroe, Paris and Chelsea. It's never Julie or Bev is it?" and "It's almost like a clueless gayboy's idea of a glamorous lady. But of course it's definitely not that." (Gareth is himself gay).

And guess what? Instead of simply ignoring the censorious transgender militants or, even better, telling them to sling their hooks, BBC Books caved in.

Gareth's story will no longer be in the anthology (though the BBC will still pay him for it).

Now you, like me, may think this is shocking, but take care not to bring up the BBC licence fee, as Toby Young did, or the BBC's finest will be after you:

This is shocking. It’s one thing for a commercial publisher to muzzle an author for their dissenting views on transgenderism. But for BBC Books to do it — a publicly-owned company — is an affront to free speech. Why should everyone pay the license fee if some views are censored?

Yes, it was Mark Easton, the BBC's Home Editor no less, who was on that as quick as can you say 'Nick Robinson':

BBC Books is not a publicly-owned company.

That's Toby told!

Eurovision (2)

And the pro-EU #FBPE brigade aren't the only ones trying to politicise the Eurovision Song Contest. Haters of Israel are at it too. 

An anti-Israel campaign group staged a stunt outside Broadcasting House in December and the usual Israel-obsessed suspects (Ken Loach et al) wrote to the Guardian (obviously) last week. 

Both groups were demanding that the BBC boycott this year's competition because it's being held in Israel. 

So far the BBC is holding firm, saying:

The competition has always supported the values of friendship, inclusion, tolerance and diversity and we do not believe it would be appropriate to use the BBC's participation for political reasons. 

"Because of this we will be taking part in this year's event. The host country is determined by the rules of the competition, not the BBC.

Toby Young has a fine piece about this in The Spectator. focusing on the sheer hypocrisy and double standards of the people involved. It ends with Toby saying:

If the BBC heeds their demand to boycott Eurovision I will cancel my licence fee.

Britain's Hidden Presenters

Toby Young in The Spectator discusses the Cassian Harrison affair. 

Cassian, if you recall, is the white, middle-aged and male editor of BBC Four who says that the era of "white, middle-aged and male" standing on a hill and "telling you like it is" has "passed".

Toby offers three possible explanations for Mr. Harrison's controversial comments:

• That he genuinely believe there should be more black and brown faces on the BBC.
• That he was sending a signal "that he has fully embraced the left-wing identitarianism that is fast becoming the official ideology of the liberal establishment". 
• That he was "simply trying to get across that he’s a member of the media’s Brahmin class" - "In this light, Harrison was advertising his status as an ‘upper-white’ by attacking his own racial group, something a ‘lower-white’ would never do. You know the type — the kind of knuckle-dragging troglodyte who voted ‘Leave’ in the EU referendum"

Whatever the reason, here's something a commenter wrote below Toby's article:

Here's Cassian's statement rewritten, to reflect how the majority of people in this country feel when they switch on their TV sets:

"There’s a mode of programming that involves a presenter, usually non-white, young and female, standing on a hill and talking absolute gibberish about a subject they clearly know nothing about, clearly having got the job because of their identity at the expense of people far better qualified and more able to do the job,’ he said. ‘We all recognise the era of that is well and truly here to stay.’"

Well, quite. 

One BBC Four programme I've been watching is Britain's Hidden Masterpieces. I suspect it directly shows the handiwork of Cassian Harrison in action. 

The hour-long programme alternates between its two presenters.

The first, Bendor Grosvenor, is "white, middle-aged and male" and knows what he's talking about. He's a proper expert with expertise directly relevant to the subject at hand and a first-rate communicator.

The second, Emma Dabiri, is "non-white, young and female", an "author, TV presenter, model" and a postgraduate student with some teaching responsibilities at SOAS, University of London who the BBC presents as a "social historian". She seems more suited to The One Show. 

The result is a real curate's egg of a programme, which should have been two separate programmes.

In the first episode of the latest series, for example, you have Bendor being informed and fascinating about Rembrandt and Emma learning to play golf and saying it's a great shame that some golf clubs still don't allow women in.

And in the second episode of the series, you have Bendor telling us about the German painter Johann Zoffany, a favourite portraitist of the royal family under King George III, while Emma is getting excited about a portrait of a black man because it's a portrait of a black man. The bits about Zoffany were some of the best BBC television I've seen this year while Emma's bits were just the usual, run-of-the-mill BBC social justice warrior stuff.

It's a shame.

Incidentally, if you've not seen Britain's Hidden Masterpieces but recognise Emma's name or her face from the image at the top of the post that might be because you've seen her recently on Newsnight saying that Justin Bieber shouldn't wear dreadlocks because that's "cultural appropriation".

#WorldOnThe MoveDay / No ‘even-handedness schism’

There’s a good post in the Telegraph about the BBC’s anti-Brexit bias by Toby Young. Note Toby’s use of those two little hyphenated words in his first sentence. 

"As a Vote Leave campaigner I've been pleasantly surprised by how ****-******** the BBC has covered the Brexit debate"

I missed most of the programmes Toby listened to yesterday, but I did hear Today, and I think Toby is quite right. Sarah Montague’s jaunt to Vietnam was unadulterated pro-immigration propaganda, and not relevant to the current crisis at all. 

I also heard the trailer for #WorldOnTheMove and assumed listeners were in store for an avalanche of emoting and uneven-handedness.

I didn’t listen to Martha Kearney or James Graham’s drama, and by the sound of it I’m very glad I didn’t. I’m allergic to Angela Jolie Pitt. It’s that Angelajolieophobia again I’m afraid, so I didn’t tune in. 

However, as I said somewhere else, despite the BBC’s (at times) fairly obvious pro-remain bias, at least they haven’t made all the Brexit arguments virtually inaccessible, as they have with all the arguments for Zionism, eg., Israel’s side of the history of the Middle East, all objective and honest analysis of the Palestinians’ approach to the two-state solution (or any solution) or indeed any even-handed reporting of  any aspect of the situation as seen from a pro-Israeli perspective. 

With very few exceptions, the pro-Israel point of view is absent from the BBC. Reporting of the Israeli /Palestinian conflict is presented entirely in pro-Palestinian terms, and all arguments take place on these terms, with total and complete censoring of Palestinian racist/religious hatred, incitement to violence and the actual violence itself. 

Unreported. 

Silence. 

If you want to see a heartbreaking example of this kind of bigotry look no further than the NUT.  A must-read article by David Collier.

I realise the NUT is not the BBC, but these people get much of their news and views  from the BBC, and they are teaching the next generation.

For all the education-related do-gooding the anti-Israel campaigners indulge in, they neglect to mention the antisemitic hate-fest that runs through the Palestinian education system. No mention, either, that this is rife throughout the Arab world.

As for this blog, a series of hostile comments from an anonymous commenter have done exactly what I hoped people would not do - recoil at my use of the phrase “even-handed”. I tried to make a subtle point, and perhaps I should have avoided that phrase altogether. It was like a red rag to a bully. 

The Boris and Hitler formulation.

However, let’s be clear, as politicians are known to say, Craig and I are not on opposite sides.  There might be slight differences in emphases, but we do not disagree.

In fact there's nothing to disagree with in Craig’s statistical breakdowns of the BBC’s bias. His efforts are admirable and I don't doubt the veracity of his findings for one moment. I am in awe of the diligence and dedication he shows on our behalf and I believe his analyses give enormous credibility to the view that the BBC is biased against leaving the EU. I share that view, but I don’t think it’s the whole story.

Yes, the BBC has been biased, but at least they haven't made the argument for "Leave' completely inaccessible, as they have done with the entirety of Israel's point of view.  

I have heard the arguments for “Leave” expressed very well on the BBC. That is why I say the BBC has been trying (up till yesterday) to present both sides of the EU argument for our careful consideration, even if some of it has been through gritted teeth. 

How many voters have been seduced by the BBC's pro-remain bias is yet to be seen. Please remember, there is life after the referendum. There will be an aftermath. Whatever happens there will be recriminations,  probably more bias than ever, and somehow, whatever the outcome, we’ll have to adjust, come to terms,  and, yep, we'll just have to suck it up. 

When we started this blog Craig and I aimed to be fair and vowed to avoid becoming self-radicalised. That can happen very easily.  Sorry, anonymous, there is no schism.

We value your custom.  It’s good to receive responses, and I don’t mind a bit if you disagree with me, but ideally you’ll have comprehended what you’re disagreeing with before firing.

Maybe we should have an open thread for all those OFF TOPIC contributions?

And...

Not the best placing of your hands there, Toby

And, also from the Andrew Marr show introduction, here's another of those inconsistent 'labelling' things...

Well, President Obama continues to dominate the papers today, and here to review them are the journalists Toby Young, who definitely won't be heeding the President's advise when it comes to the EU referendum, and Gillian Tett, US managing editor of the Financial Time,...

And if, like me, you were waiting for Andy to tell us where Gillian Tett of the pro-EU FT stands in advance of us hearing her, well, it never came. She's impartial, you see (like the BBC)...

...despite not sounding remotely anything like it during the paper review. She backed the anti-Brexit Americans, talked of the 'uncertainty' of Brexit and disagreed again and again with Toby Young on the issue, always putting the anti-Brexit side.

Andy Marr, in contrast, did strike me as acting as impartially as possible here during this discussion, so points regained for him for that! 

Abusers of language (and of human rights)

If you’ve been paying attention you’ll know I’ve been ‘out of the office’ for a few days During my awol many troubling issues came and went. Far too many, and now it’s too late to try and catch up. These issues might have remained unaddressed forever - if it weren’t for the fact that others have dealt with them quite satisfactorily thank you very much. I’m redundant. Superfluous. Surplus to requirements, which is great. I didn’t even watch Galloway’s Newsnight, but BBC Watch did.

Actually I do think something is happening. An ever increasing number of people are saying that they’ve more or less given up on the BBC. They seem to have concluded that it’s a lost cause.  They’re resigned to the fact that if you don’t share the BBC’s approach to life, the world, the universe and everything, you’re stuffed. 

We all know that complaining is a waste of time. You get rebuffed. If one complaint does sneak through the barricade, it’s logged on an obscure website and hardly anyone is any the wiser. Nothing changes. No “lessons” are learned.

I’ll just tackle a general theme, which is the effect of the public’s reliance on the BBC for information about things they aren’t deeply familiar with or knowledgeable about, like politics and religion. Despite our relative ignorance, some of us are especially opinionated about these matters. 

There’s also the issue of language, obfuscation, bias and bigotry.  Here’s something that’s just up my street,  about language by A.J. Caschetta.

“The belief that "political chaos is connected with the decay of language" led him (Orwell) to conclude that language had become "ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish [and] the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts." Today, the ways we speak and write about the threat of Islamism are often inaccurate and slovenly, making "foolish thoughts" almost inevitable. Everyone involved needs Orwell's prescription.
The post-9/11 era is rife with what Orwell called "the abuse of language" ("war on terror," "overseas contingency operations"), but no abuse more obviously illustrates his complaints than the media cliché describing how a moderate Muslim becomes an Islamist: he becomes radicalized. This euphemism (a passive construction in grammatical terminology) denotes almost nothing. Orwell calls it a "verbal false limb," that is, a device used to "save the trouble of picking out appropriate verbs and nouns." It has become the default explanation for a phenomenon few want to discuss.”

 Khaled Abu Toameh has written a piece called: Palestinians: Western Media's Ignorance and Bias

“These "parachute journalists," as they are occasionally called, are catapulted into the region without being briefed on the basic facts of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Sadly, correspondents such as these are more the rule than the exception.” 

 Do take a look at the comments below this article (as well as the piece itself.) 

“Mark Twain commented, over 100 years ago, "If you don't read the daily newspapers you are uninformed. If you do read the newspapers you are misinformed!" “ 

said a commenter.

It’s accepted - taken as read - that in any given incident you’re getting (from the BBC and other media) a combination of half-truths based on someone’s agenda rather than a complete picture, impartial, factual and fair. 

Specially where the issues are contentious, like, say, Trump. I’ve lost count of the times his infamous “Muslims ban” has been repeated without the qualifier.  It’s not only with left wing media. (there’s another example of lazy terminology)  The others are just as bad. Jeremy Corbyn’s infamous ‘friends’ statement, and the ‘tragedy’ one.

“Afterwards, when these comments were widely reported, Corbyn’s supporters said they’d been taken out of context — the standard defence whenever he is criticised for saying something positive about Islamist terrorists, such as describing Hamas and Hezbollah as his ‘friends’ or the death of bin Laden as a ‘tragedy’. 

said Toby Young in the Spectator.  Of course they were taken ‘out of context’, not least because the caveats Corbyn appended were flimsy and unconvincing, as was Trump’s “until we figure out what’s going on” . But nevertheless, seizing on the statements and omitting the qualifiers altogether to make a political point is quite iffy.

The staggering ignorance shown over the public’s perception of Israel is one I’d lay at the foot of the BBC. Is that an expression? Lay at the foot of? - I mean hold it responsible. I would hold the BBC responsible for the findings of this random survey. Out of a possible choice - Israel; ISIS; N Korea; Saudi Arabia; Iran, “who's the worst human rights abuser?”

Sorry, who?

Don’t bother to tell me. I knew which it would be before the film properly got going. 

Such a shame.

What's to be done with the BBC?

Toby Young's latest Spectator piece, curiously unplugged by the Speccie's website - and, thus, unnoticed by most online Spectator readers - is well worth a read.

(If the Spectator had promoted it Toby's piece would doubtless have garnered hundreds of comments rather than the two it has now). 

I like Toby. He's never alienated me. He's always replied to my emails and has, twice, linked to my pieces. His latest piece, however, bears a title that initially made me stop up short:

Why I still have a deep attachment to the BBC

He recounts his experiences of feeling very relieved to hear BBC broadcasts whilst living on a kibbutz in Israel. As Palestinian terrorists rained missiles on the kibbutz (in the early '80s) Toby tuned to the BBC and found the sounds of the BBC World Service "deeply reassuring". (Jeremy Bowen obviously wasn't around back then). 

He goes on: 

Ever since then I have always felt an emotional attachment to the BBC. I am not one of those Tories who believes there is something inherently left-of-centre about a public broadcast organisation and the only solution is to abolish the licence fee. Rather, I think of the BBC as a precious piece of our heritage that has been captured by the enemy. The task facing the present Conservative government is how to prise it from their grasp without destroying it at the same time.

He goes on even further:

It would be an exaggeration to call the people who now run the organisation as ‘Marxists’, obediently following Gramsci’s advice to complete the long march through the institutions. Rather, they are, for the most part, metropolitan liberals who think of their left-of-centre views on issues like Europe and immigration as politically uncontroversial. They don’t regard themselves as biased because they never encounter anyone in their day-to-day lives who doesn’t hold the same opinions. As far as they’re concerned, they’re just expressing the commonsense wisdom that everybody shares, whether left or right.

He gives some of the "countless examples" he finds of this, before giving his prescription:

So what can John Whittingdale, the new Culture Secretary, do to restore the BBC’s reputation for political impartiality? Everyone agrees that the BBC has grown too big and in many respects is just mimicking a commercial organisation. So separate off the drama and light entertainment, the music and the sport, and invite all those inessential bits to become self-funding entities. That would leave only the news and current affairs division to be financed by the licence fee, which could be much reduced. I would then make the BBC Trust responsible for appointing all the members of the executive board, not just the director-general, and, crucially, I would remove the power to appoint members of the trust from the Prime Minister and transfer it to a politically neutral body, such as the Privy Council or some other institution created for the task.

His final pro-BBC paragraph runs as follows:

That should do it. And for the sake of all those beleaguered souls out there, cowering in the dark, it must be done or it will surely perish.

That is a beautiful idea, the idea of a BBC giving hope to the beleaguered, freedom-loving folk of the world, and to Britons in peril. It's what I want the BBC to do, and I wish I could believe that the BBC still does it. 

On a more mundane level, however, I have to say that I too would hate to 'cower in the dark' if the best of the BBC was lost forever.

However much I complain about the BBC, I'm not one of those people who says that the BBC produces nothing of value. The BBC produces a hell of a lot that's valuable - quite a lot of which is absolutely priceless.

And to lose all of that would, to me, be an absolute horror. 

So I'm with Toby in hoping that a public service BBC can still be saved from itself, shorn of its commercially-successful light entertainment aspects (which would easily survive) and its bias, and regain its position as a beacon of glorious British broadcasting...

...by which I mean, as an example, some of the truly magnificent, world-beating programmes I've heard on BBC Radio 4 this week. 

But, that said, why should a 'poll tax' be imposed on the vast majority of people who don't want to listen to In Our Time or Radio 3? Why should we who like More or Less and Private Passions be subsidised by people (most people in the UK) who prefer Eastenders, Strictly and BBC One dramas - programmes which, under our plans, would be completely cast adrift from the licence fee?

That's a point Toby appears to be missing.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the 'Question Time' Studio

First came James Delingpole, writing in 2013:

I talked about this afterwards to the lady who vets the audiences [on 'Question Time']. It's an urban myth that before each show the BBC sends a coach to pick their audience up from the Socialist Worker's Party Social Club, Hizb ut Tahrir and the EU Commission. In fact – and I totally believe this – they are rigorously screened and pre-selected to reflect the political spectrum.

Then came Nigel Farage, in 2014:  

I am one of the few people who can’t really complain about the editorial policy of Question Time having been on it 26 times since I was first elected in 1999. In terms of the coverage it gives Ukip I have found it fair and in the past few years the programme has even started accepting Ukip panellists other than me!

But there have been a couple of programmes in which my colleagues and I have faced a hostile audience which in no way represents how Ukip is normally received or which are representative of the opinion polls. I am not pointing the finger of blame at the QT team but the question I want to ask is whether the Question Time audiences are being exploited by the hard left?

And, also in 2014, Janet Daley had this to say:

This is precisely what Left-wing activists in BBC Question Time audiences do, by the way. Whenever I’ve been on the panel, I have been struck by it. The audience is not, as the folks at home often think, overwhelmingly on the Left: it is just that the Leftist groupies have positioned themselves around the room and are causing enough ruckus to intimidate those who disagree with them. The producers of this hapless programme always claim that they screen out activists with their advance audience questionnaires. So let me tell you something else about committed political agitators: they tell lies. And they do that – I mean this quite charitably – with the most honourable intentions.

And now, in 2015, comes Toby Young:

I’ve often heard conservatives complain that the BBC packs the audience with lefties so they’ll jeer and hiss whenever the Tory on the panel uses a stock phrase like ‘long-term economic plan’. Not true. The makers of the programme bend over backwards to try to ensure the audience contains a broad cross-section of political views. By definition, a majority of them won’t be Conservative voters, so in all likelihood I’ll be given a hard time. But that’s the country’s anti-Tory bias, not the BBC’s.

Each of them has a somewhat different take on why the audiences on the BBC's 'Question Time' appear so overwhelmingly biased towards the Left, but they all seem to agree on one thing: that the people who produce 'Question Time' for the BBC aren't to blame. 

******

Toby Young, appearing on this week's edition from Glasgow, also notes something that backs up Janet Daley and Nigel Farage:

....lots of SNP activists are deeply suspicious of what they perceive to be the BBC’s anti-independence bias, so they may well use subterfuge to smuggle their way in. On Monday a Twitter account calling itself ‘Scotland for independence’ tweeted a link to the website inviting people to sign up to be in the audience, accompanied by the following advice: ‘I recommend pretending you’re a red, blue or yellow Tory so you can be hand-picked by the British Biased Corporation.’ 

Wherever 'Question Time' goes, it appears, activists (of the Amy Rutland variety) will attempt to hijack it. 

And sometimes, presumably (pace James Delingpole and Toby Young) in order to try and balance the audience, 'Question Time' will go out and invite other local activists to attend.

So whether there's much space in the 'QT' audience for anyone who isn't some species of activist is a moot question!

The BBC v free schools (2)

As you may recall, various right-leaning commentators took the BBC to task for spinning a recent report about free schools to make it look worse than it was. They accused the BBC of having an "anti-free schools bias".

Toby Young, in particular, specifically charged BBC online education correspondent Hannah Richardson with having written a "misleading article", accusing her of "Left-wing bias". 

Just to test the grounds for this allegation, I've checked back through the BBC News website and tracked down all of Hannah's articles which focus (to a lesser or greater extent) on the issue of free schools. (I've not included all those articles where they are mentioned merely in passing, usually when some union leader is denouncing them in a speech).

Here are those articles in chronological order:

22 Jul 2010 

Free schools 'could widen social divide'

"The creation of Swedish-style free schools in England could increase social segregation but net limited improvements, a leading academic claims.

Dr Susanne Wiborg, of the Institute of Education, also says it could lead to many private providers running schools."

14 Aug 2010

Firms and charities line up to run free schools

"Private firms are lining up with parent groups to run the Conservatives' flagship "free schools" in England.

These are the new schools that Education Secretary Michael Gove wants parent or teacher groups to set up and run with public funds."

24 Nov 2010

Gove puts focus on traditional school values

"The National Union of Teachers warned the expansion of the academies and free schools programme was a wrong move that would a two tier education system."

2 Dec 2010

School reforms 'could lead to more segregation'

"Plans to shake up the schools system could lead to increased segregation, the Department for Education's own research warns.

Boosting school choice could lead to parents selecting schools for their "peer groups", a study on the impact of its Schools White Paper says."

14 Jan 2011

First green light for community's free school plan

"A community-led group in Suffolk has become the first in England to get formal approval for their plans to open a new "free" school."

7 Jan 2012

Free schools 'will not boost access to good schools'

"The government's flagship free schools programme is unlikely to boost access to good schools as they are too expensive, research has suggested.

The Bristol research said it was "inconceivable" more than one parent-founded school would be set up in an area with spare places."

20 Mar 2012

Fund primary places not free schools, Labour urges

"The government should tackle the growing crisis in primary school places rather than approve more free schools, says shadow education secretary Stephen Twigg."

13 Dec 2012

Maharishi free school fails to enter pupils for Sats

"A flagship new free school where pupils practise transcendental meditation twice daily has been reprimanded by the government after it failed to put any of its pupils into compulsory national curriculum tests."

15 Oct 2013

Gove urged to monitor free schools 'more closely'

"Michael Gove has been urged to monitor free schools more closely after a Muslim faith school was closed temporarily because of safety concerns."

17 Oct 2013

What does Al-Madinah say about free schools?

"Described as "dysfunctional" and "in chaos", there can be no doubt that the problems at the Al-Madinah School go right to its core.

Rated inadequate in all four inspection areas, Ofsted said problems at the Derby school were "myriad".

Not only does it lack the basic structures needed to operate, it is said to be close to "collapsing".

Al-Madinah is the second free school to be put into special measures, after Discovery Free School in May 2013."

24 Oct 2013

Free school head checks scaled back, documents show

"Checks on inexperienced staff who want to be head teachers at free schools have been scrapped, despite warnings from civil servants."

11 Dec 2013

Free schools budget trebled to £1.5bn, report shows 

"The government's flagship free school programme will cost at least three times the sum originally allocated, the public spending watchdog has found."

13 Dec 2013

Failing free school is ordered to close

"The government has ordered the closure of a failing free school for the first time after education inspectors found standards there unacceptably poor."

As you can see from that list, Hannah has been consistently and almost unremittingly negative in her reporting of free schools since the very beginning. (The exception is First green light for community's free school plan.) 

Critiques from anti-free school academics, criticisms from union leaders and Labour, negatively-spun leaked reports, heavily-spun academic/civil service reports, plus every whiff of bad news about free schools (especially about the only two which have got themselves into serious difficulties) has been seized upon by Hannah Richardson.  

I'd say that this provides pretty clear evidence that Toby Young is correct about this particular BBC reporter's anti-free school bias and that she is in danger of being seen as a campaigning journalist if she's not careful. 

Don't you agree?

The BBC v free schools

Leading free school advocate and Telegraph blogger Toby Young is not happy with the BBC:

The BBC's anti-free schools bias is becoming laughable

The National Audit Office's report on free schools is generally favourable, though you wouldn't know it if you relied on this article on the BBC's website. 

Toby notes all the positives in the NAO's report and then argues that the BBC has opted to spin them into negatives. 

He specifically accuses BBC online education correspondent Hannah Richardson (the article's author) of having written a "shockingly misleading article" and accuses her of "Left-wing bias". (I've been reading Hannah's articles for several years and, yes, she does seem to have a strong Left-wing bias - even by the standards of a BBC reporter.)

To add a little more to Toby's analysis, I'd add this.

Just compare the BBC's headline about this NAO report:

Free schools budget trebled to £1.5bn, report shows

with that of the Times about the very same report:

Free schools ‘are good value’

As they say at primary school, "spot the difference".

Continuing in the same vein, now compare the opening paragraphs of Hannah Richardson's BBC piece

The government's flagship free school programme will cost at least three times the sum originally allocated, the public spending watchdog has found.

The National Audit Office said the scheme allowing groups to set up state-funded schools would cost £1.5bn - the original Treasury grant was £450m.

The NAO said the programme prioritised speed over cost and schools were not always where places were most needed.

The government insisted [there's that "insisted" again!] its free schools offered value for money.

with those written by Greg Hurst of the Times:

Michael Gove’s flagship free schools policy has received a boost after the Government’s spending watchdog said it appeared to deliver value for money.

Free schools cost on average £6.6 million each to open, which was about 45 per cent lower than previous construction costs of new schools, the National Audit Office said.

But it said that costs were creeping upwards as more free schools opened and called on the Department for Education to look at why some cost much more than others.

Free schools are new state-funded schools that are independent of local councils. In the past three years the Government has opened 174, which at full capacity would have 82,000 places, with another 105 schools due to open next year.

They could hardly be more different, could they?

Two key differences stand out: (1) The BBC's angle is negative while that of the Times is positive and (2) the BBC's opening paragraphs are wholly negative while those of the Times offer a measure of balance between positive and negative (i.e. they are more impartial than the BBC!) 

As angles go, the differences between the respective takes of the BBC and the Times are acute, certainly but is the BBC being obtuse here? Is either side right, and whose reaction is a reflex action, Toby's or Hannah's? 

Well, Googling around shows the right-leaning media in general opting for positive headlines. The Telegraph, for instance, has Free school boost for areas in need. The Spectator's What the National Audit Office really said about free schools also targets the the BBC's negative coverage.

The left-leaning media, in contrast, opts for negative headlines - such as the Independent's Too far, too fast: Free schools are costing £1.1bn – twice as much as planned, the New Statesman's How free schools are still failing to address the places crisis and the Guardian's Cost of establishing a free school doubles to £6.6m, auditors find. 

The BBC thus finds itself (surprise, surprise!) sharing the Left's angle on the NAO report.

The key to being sure about who's spinning here and who's being straight is obviously to read the (lengthy) NAO report and form your own judgement.

As far as I'm concerned though, that's not going to happen. So I'm stuck with an issue of lefty spin v righty spin, and another case of 'Who knows!' (You, however, may be made of sterner stuff!)