The BBC and the Russian invasion of Ukraine [and an EXCLUSIVE behind-the-scenes glimpse of an ITBB discussion]

Craig: The BBC is being praised to the skies for its war coverage, and not only by itself and the usual suspects. Not that I've seen any BBC coverage, so I can't say if it's deserved or not, but lots of surprising people are singing its praises. It seems to be having a good war.

Sue: Well, I was half thinking that the BBC is ‘having a good war’, too. But with all its resources and long-standing infrastructure it would be surprising if it wasn’t. 

I haven’t watched it very much though, but sometimes the ad breaks on other channels drive one BBC-wards. I haven’t seen any of the Beeb’s opinion stuff, only the Myrie/Doucet reporting. I must say Lyse is getting more emotional than usual (and Clive is okay. A bit drained obvs.) 

I saw Konstantin Kisin's performance on Question Time (excerpts on YouTube.) It’s weird to see him on the dreaded BBC, especially when he’d only just said he’d stopped appearing on GB News because he felt he was being expected/required to opine on things he didn’t particularly know enough about. 

This unexpected invitation from the QT team must be partly to do with the new ‘impartiality’ pledges. 

Speaking of which I dread to think why they’ve let Jeremy Bowen loose on Ukraine. He will inevitably make comparisons with the M.E., (how he sees it - The bully against the oppressed, the brave Ukrainian-Pally resistance, the almighty Russian-Israeli aggressive warmongering.) 

I think I actually heard him make a reference to the M.E. in an aside on the Today prog, though I couldn’t find it when I searched. Can you imagine how the BBC’s new impartiality regulators let someone like Jez go to Ukraine with all that baggage? 

Craig: I've tracked down that Jeremy Bowen bit:

The Chinese strategist Sun Tzu talked about building your opponent a golden bridge to retreat across. In the Cuban Missile Crisis - the closest the world has come to nuclear disaster in 1961 - the deal there after the Soviets put missiles into Cuba was that the US move missiles out of Turkey. Now, of course, the things are not...you know, you can't directly transfer the idea, but the point is, there needs to be in all these crises, to finish them, a face saving deal. Otherwise, the two sides tend to fight until one side wins or both are exhausted, which is a catastrophe for the countries affected by that, as we've seen in the Middle East extensively.

BBC reporters like Lyse being more emotional than usual was one of the topic on Samira Ahmed's Newswatch this week, asking: How new is it? Does it help or hinder the viewer's understanding? 

The fact that it featured a particularly toe-curling example of heart-tugging purple prose from Fergal Keane [‘On platform 6, a father's farewell to his infant son. What cannot be held must be let go. Until another day’] shows where that kind of thing probably began at the BBC, with the likes of him and Orla Guerin - and Jezza Bowen, with his endlessly-repeated, embittered, personalised memories of a particular moment involving Israel and his unfortunate friend. 

Even John Simpson cried recently - though he told Samira Ahmed that he's not proud of doing so and it won't happen again. 

So, as you can see, I've actually watched a BBC programme now. 

BBC comedy

Good grief, this looks excruciating, but the BBC seems to be very proud of it:

🥋🇷🇺 Britain's newest chat show host - please welcome Vladimir Putin to @BBCTwo pilot #TonightWithVladimirPutin: https://t.co/DVY8uVOWSM pic.twitter.com/ifgw0s0kWB

— BBC Press Office (@bbcpress) May 21, 2019

Comments definitely could be going better. 

Mark Seddon of the FT has tweeted:

Pity the poor BBC reporters in Russia who are going to have all sorts of shit thrown at them because of this morbidly unfunny garbage. 

THE clear and present danger

Andrew speaks (or tweets rather):

Vladimir Putin and the Saudi Crown Prince shared an enthusiastic handshake as they sat down for a meeting at the G20 in Argentina.

For more, head here: https://t.co/Q9yahEuyXz pic.twitter.com/lOI6QbNcFd

— Sky News (@SkyNews) November 30, 2018

,

Where John Sweeney rushes in...

Oh no! Has Newsnight's notorious Graphics department got at this Steve Rosenberg photo too?

There was an interesting interview on this morning's Newswatch between Samira Ahmed and the BBC's Moscow correspondent Steve Rosenberg. 

In recounting his experiences of reporting in Vladimir Putin's Russia, it struck me how different his experiences were to that of his colleague John Sweeney as reported on Panorama. 

John Sweeney managed to get himself tailed repeatedly and even got arrested and never got to speak to the Kremlin. Steve Rosenberg has had none of that and even got to ask President Putin a question. 

What did Newsnight's star reporter do that the BBC's Moscow correspondent hasn't yet done to get himself into such trouble?

Anyhow, here's a transcript (for anyone who's interested):

Samira Ahmed: Well, Steve Rosenberg joins me now on the line from Moscow. Steve, you do give us the Kremlin's side of the story. And as we just heard in those e-mails, some viewers fear that it gives them credibility. How do you answer that?  

Steve Rosenberg: Well, I consider my job as the BBC's Moscow correspondent to tell viewers in Britain and around the world what Moscow is thinking. This is a very confusing story and I think it is important to listen to what the Russians are saying. They have a range of arguments. And I think then I have to use my experience of living and working in Russia - and I have been here for 23 years, not with the BBC all that time - but to use my experience to examine what the Russians are saying and to try to cut through all of that and give my interpretation, my opinion, about what is going on here. As I say, it is a very confused story but I think it is important to present the Russian perspective on it.  

Samira Ahmed: We saw you on the campaign trail asking quite a tough question of Putin. Was that a difficult, even scary, thing to do?  

Steve Rosenberg: I wouldn't say it was a scary decision. It was quite a challenging thing to do because normally question and answer sessions with President Putin are heavily controlled. We were covering him on the campaign trail, we found ourselves in a position physically where we were able to pop a question to him and it was the question that really everyone wanted to ask at the moment. Journalistically, I think it was the right thing to do. And the thing about Vladimir Putin, whether you like him or hate him, whatever you think of him, you know, he has no trouble answering questions.  

Samira Ahmed: As you mentioned, you have been in Russia for 23 years. One wonders how hard it is to report there now, and how it compares to reporting from there in the past.  

Steve Rosenberg: I think one thing that we can't always get into our short two-minute news reports but I think it is important to say is that if you go outside the bureau here, Moscow seems like a normal European city.  We don't get the feeling that we're being followed by people in long raincoats with trilby hats and that we're being watched constantly. So, in that sense, we don't feel greater pressure  now. Having said that, we have been harassed while covering controversial stories, sensitive stories, and this didn't happen, say, ten years ago.  

Samira Ahmed: One does wonder how much real political opposition there is in Russia, including from ordinary citizens.  

Steve Rosenberg: It's an interesting question. Vladimir Putin has just been re-elected with a landslide victory and it's clear that, although this was not a level playing field, this election, and only those candidates who posed no serious challenge to Vladimir Putin were allowed to take part, many Russians do support Vladimir Putin - some because they really like his sort of muscle-flexing, his strong-arm tactics, his anti-Western rhetoric. There are other people who support him because they fear change. Many Russians fear change. They don't want life to get worse than it is now and they fear picking a new president.  

Samira Ahmed: You talked about being on the campaign trail for this election. How did it compare to covering a Western election?  

Steve Rosenberg: Well, it's not like a Western election. As I said before, only those candidates who didn't threaten Vladimir Putin were allowed to take part. Russia's most prominent opposition figure, Alexei Navalny, he was barred from taking part in the election. And then you look at the amount of airtime that was given to President Putin on Russian television ahead of the election - he had far more airtime than all of the other candidates put together, and all of the coverage of Putin was very positive. So, you know, in that sense, no, this is not like a Western election.  

Samira Ahmed: The Russian authorities have been particularly critical of the British media. Do you worry about your safety at all?  

Steve Rosenberg: I have not worried up till this point. As I say, walking around Moscow right now, it feels pretty normal. You go into the coffee shop, you get happy smiley faces serving you. And although there is - I have noticed more anti-British sentiment on Russian television. For example, I saw a report the other day where the reporter claimed that over the last few centuries, Britain has had it in for Russia and they listed all the things over the last few hundred years that Britain has done to Russia. So we have seen that, but from the public, I have not noticed really any rise in anti-British sentiment. And also, Russian government officials are still talking to the BBC. We get comments from the Foreign Ministry, from the Parliament, so - which is important because, as I say, it is important for us to be able to listen to what Russia's argument is and then include that in our pieces.  

Samira Ahmed: Steve Rosenberg, thank you.  

Steve Rosenberg: Thanks. 

Real news?

The final item on today's The World This Weekend was a feature about 'fake news'. 

As you might expect from the BBC, this present day issue was framed as being exclusively a problem with social media. Indeed, the piece ended with Jonny Dymond saying, "The headlines...the real news...again".

To put it far too simplistically, the world is increasingly divided between those who think that 'fake news' is a serious problem associated with the mainstream media and those who think it's a serious problem associated with social media - and the BBC, naturally, is very much in the latter camp.

Nick Robinson, would-be doughty defender of the BBC, has a Mail on Sunday piece today headlined Vladimir Putin is using fake news just like tanks and missiles...and from Brexit to Catalonia his goal is to weaken the West. It's also entirely in line with the view that it's social media which is the problem and that the mainstream media is the real, trustworthy media. 

Now, I've absolutely no doubt that Vlad the Imputin is trying to undermine the West and that social media is one of his government's key tools - and Nick's "Now, I’ve learned, there are concerns that Russia is even fuelling anti-vaccine campaigns on social media" is alarming, if the concerns he's "learned" about are justified - but I still think his (biased) slip is showing here.

This is the kind of piece which includes such rhetorical gambits as:

So far, there is no firm evidence the Kremlin tried to, let alone succeeded, in bringing about Brexit. However....

I am not arguing that those who backed Brexit or Scottish independence fell for a foreign plot. But...

Hmm.

(And please read this comment from the Open Thread about Nick's piece too).

My Twitter feed, incidentally, is full of people disagreeing furiously about the Mail on Sunday's lead story concerning claims that the pro-Brexit Legatum Institute think tank is under the malign influence of Putin's government and, through it, that the Russians were linked to "Boris and Gove's Brexit 'coup'".  Some think it's fake news. Others think it's real news.

Andrew Marr (in my view rightly) handled the story cautiously this morning:

Finally, the Mail on Sunday there, quite a complicated story about an alleged link between Brexiteers and Russians and so forth, but you have to follow quite a lot of dots to work it out. 

Don't give up the day job

For our Russian readers :

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