Frustration at 'Panorama'

 

Sticking with the same paper...

The Mail on Sunday's Jonathan Bucks reports that BBC journalists working on a John Ware-fronted Panorama special investigation into how Martin Bashir obtained his famous interview with Princess Diana - and a possible BBC cover-up over it - "have complained that BBC bosses are unwilling to co-operate". 

They are said to feel "frustrated" after "the Corporation denied them easy access to even the most basic documents". 

Producers trying to access the BBC’s broadcasting guidelines from 1995, when the interview was broadcast, were told they would need to submit Freedom of Information requests – an arduous process that takes up to 20 working days for information to be provided.

Oh dear! Many of us are aware of the BBC's reluctance to give in to Freedom of Information requests anyhow. Wonder if Panorama will get the usual response?

We can advise you that the information you have requested is excluded from the Act because it is held for the purposes of ‘journalism, art or literature.’  The BBC is therefore not obliged to provide this information to you and will not be doing so on this occasion….

Lazy, dishonest and biased.

I’m very sorry but I hardly watch the BBC these days. It’s not really a question of aligning with the ‘defund’ or ‘defend’ side of the argument or whether I think the BBC should be ‘reformed’ or ‘removed’. It’s partly because of the increasingly desperate pandering to a demographic…. 

“Generation Z, or Gen Z for short, are the demographic cohort succeeding Millennials and preceding Generation Alpha” 

 …..that has moved on and doesn’t watch TV! And now, neither do I. (Well, I do, but rarely the BBC) The bias looks more and more entrenched. Who is in charge of this ‘unconscious bias’ training they’re talking about? 17 minutes to 9 (2:44) If the bias is unconscious, then how can the trainers know whether they too are suffering from it? It’s those wretched unknown unknowns again.

This @Guardian article is based on a @BBCArabic hatchet job. The program fails to note that the neighborhood only became 'Palestinian' after Jewish residents were driven out in the 1930s, or that the Sumarin family was evicted because it stopped paying rent.#InconvenientDetails pic.twitter.com/dCpBHlHcFE

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) September 22, 2020

I didn’t want to watch Panorama last night - I haven’t watched it for years, the exception being the controversial John Ware episode that shed light on the Labour Party’s malevolent racism. However, the programme was on when I walked into the room just in time to see Richard Bilton cycling, W1A style, through deserted city streets. (why?) 

Well, it seems that he had unearthed some dirty dealing, which could be summed up as:

BREAKING NEWS: A man living in Israel donates large amount of money to an Israeli organisation based in the capital of Israel.

Surely worth a Pulitzer no? https://t.co/NHZg4lDNhI

— SussexFriendsofIsrael (@SussexFriends) September 21, 2020

And the reason I’m even bothering to mention this is simply to point out that Bilton’s emotionally loaded language epitomises bias, be it conscious or unconscious, but not only the conscious/unconscious/subliminal repetitious utterance of trigger words like ‘settlers’ and the BBC/ Guardian’s casual scattering of “illegal under international law” and “Palestinian land” etc etc, this emotive background nagging demonstrates how effortlessly ‘unconscious’ or bog-standard ‘conscious bias’ is slipped in, enabling Richard Bilton and his unconscious mates to virtue-signal rather than apply the rigour of genuine curiosity and self-examination to his research.  (Research? What research?)

Litigious news and other stories

This on antisemitism by @afneil was a depressing, yet informative, explanation on how it spreads on the Left and in so-called academia. pic.twitter.com/RGFdiJeDTa

— Darren Grimes (@darrengrimes_) July 25, 2020

So the BBC is cancelling Andrew Neil to make way for more diversity and youth-orientated content. Well, there does seem to be support for left-wing, antisemitic-flavour broadcasting.  Jeremy Corbyn’s go-fund-me pot has reached a quarter of a million pounds and rising, so the demand is obviously there.

‘Adolf Hitler’ and ‘B’stard Son Of Netanyahu’ help fund Corbyn’s legal costs  by Adam decker

A Go Fund Me page set up to finance the former Labour leader's court battles has raised £231,000 due in part to the generosity of self-proclaimed racists.

[…]

“Among the most generous donors are former deputy leader of Liverpool City Council Derek Hatton who’s given £1,000, prominent anti-Israel campaigner and Labour member Susanne Levin who’s offered £500 and music producer Brian Eno, who’s provided £500.”

Update! As you were! The fund has so far reached  (a staggering!) £300,000 

Strangely, the BBC seems to be embroiled in a complicated tangle of litigation, would-be litigation and counter-litigation. Who’s suing whom? It’s as farcical as one of those ‘you couldn’t make it up’ farces that cry out for the erudite clarification of a Captain Blackadder.

Panorama has been going since 1953! In all that time the BBC has exposed many scandals and injustices, but I have found just three litigious cases involving something that could be interpreted as vaguely ‘philo-Semitic’. 

In 2005 a case involving the BBC’s John Ware drew a complaint from the Muslim Council of Britain. 

From the BBC report:

"MCB secretary general Sir Iqbal Sacranie complained the show was "purposefully trying to sabotage" the progress Muslims were making in the political mainstream.

Panorama reporter John Ware also found groups affiliated to the MCB promoting anti-Semitic views, the belief that Islam was a superior ideology to secular British values and the view that Christians and Jews were conspiring to undermine Islam.

MCB secretary general Sir Iqbal Sacranie complained the show was "purposefully trying to sabotage" the progress Muslims were making in the political mainstream.

"John Ware's team have made a deeply unfair programme using deliberately garbled quotes in an attempt to malign the Muslim Council of Britain," he said.

The BBC rejected that complaint.

Another case followed a couple of years later when the BBC was made to pay damages. 

BBC's Panorama in libel payout to Islamic charity boss (May 2007)

"The former general manager of Islamic Relief UK, Waseem Yaqub, today accepted undisclosed libel damages and a public apology from the BBC at London’s High Court over a Panorama programme called Faith, Hate and Charity.

Mr Justice David Eady was told that the programme was broadcast on BBC One and investigated the London-based charity Interpal which gives funds to charities on the West Bank to help needy Palestinians.

It was said to reveal that some of the charities were linked to Hamas and helped build support for the movement by spreading Islamist ideology.

22nd July 2020  and we’re back in the room. John Ware is at the centre of a sue-storm; a blizzard of articles appeared in the press. Who’s suing whom? I can’t reliably put the articles in chronological order, but things are happening. 

'That Panorama’ was aired on BBC Two one whole year ago.  “Is Labour Anti-Semitic?” A bit like this blog - the question is rhetorical. David Collier had already exposed the tsunami of Corbynite/ Momentum antisemitic material that had engulfed Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour, both in real life and on social media. A certain amount of momentum had been created, a demonstration had occurred in London and more and more ‘incidents’ were being unearthed. Yes, we all knew the answer to the question. Labour definitely is antisemitic,  but the Panorama exposé was still unexpected.  The BBC allowing such an overt critique of their beloved Labour Party?  Whatever next?” 

Here’s what was next. The Labour Party’s vengeful treatment of the “Panorama whistleblowers” became the subject of a court case resulting in Labour being forced to apologise and to pay damages to the seven former employees appearing in the programme. The BBC published this report, no byline:

Anti-Semitism: Labour pays damages for 'hurt' to whistleblowers 

The party has issued an unreserved apology in the High Court for making "false and defamatory" comments about seven whistleblowers who spoke out in a BBC Panorama programme last year.

The individuals had criticised the then leadership's handling of complaints.”

Laura Kuenssberg also produced a report. 

Labour’s agony over anti-Semitism far from over

Astonishing still that the Labour Party, a political movement based on fighting for equality and against racism, found itself in a situation where its members and officials have been playing out a battle over anti-Semitism for so long - on the airwaves, in constituency meetings, in executive meetings and also in the courts. The argument is not settled.”

You can say that again! Next, still on 22nd July, an indication that a challenge is in the offing; The Guardian,

Corbyn-era Labour figures may challenge antisemitism settlement by Jessica Elgot and Lisa O'Carroll

Senior party members understood to be mulling legal action over verdict on treatment of whistleblowers

“Key figures in Labour when Jeremy Corbyn was leader are mulling a challenge to the party’s settlement with a BBC journalist and seven of its former staff over a libel case relating to a Panorama programme last year about its handling of antisemitism.

It is understood the former Labour leader himself as well as his former director of communications Seumas Milne have taken legal advice about the settlement and apology set to be read at the high court on Wednesday.”

and also from The Guardian:

Antisemitism settlement plunges Labour party into civil war 

“Jeremy Corbyn’s statement caused astonishment among litigants in libel action.

Labour’s decision to pay a six-figure libel settlement to ex-staffers who claimed the party was failing to deal with antisemitism has plunged the party back into civil war, with Jeremy Corbyn publicly condemning his successor’s decision to settle the case.

Corbyn’s statement caused astonishment among the litigants in the libel action, with the Panorama journalist John Ware confirming to the Guardian that he was “consulting his lawyers” and raising the prospect of another costly court battle over Labour and antisemitism.

[…]

Mark Lewis, the solicitor who acted for Ware and the whistleblowers, revealed to the Guardian that he had been approached by 32 individuals who want to take action against the party for a range of allegations, mainly centring on the fallout from the leaked report.

On the same day (22nd July) The Jewish Chronicle came out with:

The Corbynites have lied with impunity - now they face the legal consequences

"John Ware explains why he sued the Labour Party - and why his case is merely the first of several against alt-Left sites and individuals who lie

A year ago, the Labour Party declared all-out war on the BBC. Why? 

I was the reporter on a Panorama programme in which seven former Labour staffers blew the whistle about antisemitism in Corbyn’s Labour Party. They explained how they felt a growing factionalism had created a safe space for antisemitic views inside the party.

Labour responded by accusing me of having flouted journalistic ethics. I had, Labour alleged, knowingly promoted falsehoods and invented quotes. I had misrepresented and fabricated facts.

You don’t need much experience of television to know that the BBC’s editorial processes simply don’t allow for such mammoth corruption of the editorial process, especially a programme that examines such an incendiary subject as the relationship between the leader of the Opposition and antisemitism. Every line of my commentary was trawled over by the editor, lawyers and the BBC’s editorial compliance panjandrums. The whistle-blowers were also extensively cross examined."

Also on 22nd July 2020, Jewish News printed this:

Panorama journalist John Ware planning to sue Jeremy Corbyn By Jack Mendel

The journalist behind BBC Panorama’s on Labour’s antisemitism row is planning to sue Jeremy Corbyn for libel.

Labour falsely accused Ware of “deliberate and malicious misrepresentations designed to mislead the public” regarding the show.

Media lawyer Mark Lewis said: 'I can confirm that I have been instructed to pursue claims' against the former Labour leader

It’s irritating when journalists like Philip Collins allude to 'journalistic ethics' as if the BBC were a paragon of excellence in the journalistic ethics department. In one paragraph in an otherwise laudable essay, titled “Time to root out Corbybites once and for all” Collins wrote:

“The response of the Corbyn team to the allegation that Labour was not really serious about investigating antisemitism was to pour scorn on the journalistic ethics of the BBC.”

If it weren’t for the fact that this particular Panorama was a remarkably unrepresentative example of the BBC’s normal output, ‘journalistic ethics-wise’  Collins would have had a valid point. 

I can think of but one or two other exceptions to the BBC’s default Labour-leaning perspective, one, in particular, comes to mind.  Jane Corbin’s Panorama titled “Death in the Med’ where she quite rightly sided with the Israelis over the Mavi Marmara affair. If I’m mistaken and the other cases I’ve cited were in fact ‘the norm’ for Panorama, the BBC in general and not exceptions at all, please forgive me. I had the impression that Panorama’s output since 1953 has generally been in accord with the BBC’s left-wing ethics rather than plain and simple ‘journalistic ethics’.

“To declare war on all of the mainstream media is a disastrously stupid strategy for any political leader. In due course, Sir Keir will be well advised to be much more forensic than this in his choice of media enemies. He will need some — a media bogeyman is always handy in politics — but it most certainly ought not to be the BBC.”

..adds Collins. Why ever would a self-proclaimed Labour supporter like Philip Collins suppose Starmer is likely to alienate the BBC? The BBC loves Labour under Starmer and I daresay it’s mutual.

I have no idea what Seumas Milne and Len McCluskey are up to, but if antisemitism is really going to be deemed beyond the pale they’ll have to carefully consider the best use of the monies generously donated by ‘Adolf Hitler’ and ‘B’stard Son Of Netanyahu’

The BBC is dumping Jane Corbin I hear, as well as Andrew Neil. I rest my case. (M’lud.)

A fatal act of self-harm

Tom Mangold, back in the day

Tom Mangold's Mail on Sunday piece headlined "I fear that my beloved BBC’s bizarre obsession with a toxic culture of wokeness will end as a fatal act of self-harm" ought to matter to the BBC because Mr Mangold isn't just any old BBC veteran. He was Panorama's lead investigative reporter for many years and has always been held in high esteem. So for him to speak out in such an outspoken way about "the greasy slope down which [the BBC] is sliding faster every day" is really something, and a major sign of just how bad things have got recently. 

While expanding on his excoriation of Yogita Limaye's "biased, partial, unbalanced, filled with spite and venom" anti-Churchill report (see previous post), he adds the words "Never mind the truth". I doubt he would never the phrase, of course, but essentially what he's saying is that it was 'fake news'. 

'What on earth has happened?', he wonders. After all, the BBC's charter remains "unequivocal" on its statutory commitment to impartiality. Well, he says, the "holy contract" is now "well and truly broken". 

He seems to believe that Ms Limaye's late evening report, given the full backing of the News at Ten and Huw Edwards's "authority and credibility", was a bone deliberately thrown to the BLM movement. 

And the BBC's doing it, he says, because of its "bizarre obsession with youth, diversity and the ever-growing pressure of woke argument" and because BLM - and "the Twitter trolls, the social media addicts, the young, the immature and the often daft" - have become "the BBC’s recruitment and audience target." 

Why this "'threatens to become [the BBC's] final act of self-harm" is because such people are a "minority audience". 

He also quotes another wise old head, Trevor Phillips, saying that "the increasingly woke behaviour by the Corporation is endangering the central justification for special treatment, which is its universal reach." 

All of which is very true. The BBC is alienating its core audience in pursuit of a small demographic that probably won't be watching it regardless. It's a sign of the state the BBC's in at the moment that it doesn't even seem to see the folly of its position. 

The present situation with over-75s having to pay the licence fee from next Saturday is relevant here because 66 Conservative MPs  signed a letter to Tony Hall last week objecting to the BBC's decision over the licence fee, and added: "We question the need for the BBC to allocate the enormous sum of £100 million on diversity, which with strong management could be achieved for minimal cost". 

Tom Mangold in this article makes a related point: "Tony Hall has found £100 million in an ever-ready slush fund to increase diversity in the BBC. Meanwhile it gets rid of talent such as John Ware and Jane Corbin as permanent reporters from Panorama, presumably to save a bob or two". 

Why is the BBC splashing out such huge sums on diversity? After all, as the Observer observes today, it's devoting £12m of its commissioning budget "to making diverse and inclusive content" for the next three years, and devoting £100m of the current television commissioning budget to "on-air inclusivity", and bringing in a mandatory off-screen target for "20% diversity across the networks for new commissions" from April 2021? Because it's signalling to its new target audience. 

Tom Mangold goes on to quote Trevor Phillips saying, "The BBC has to recognise social change, sure, but it is not the institution’s role to lead it." Well, yes, but that's not how the young Turks who have been silently taking over at the BBC see it. To take just one example, on being appointed the BBC's first LBGT correspondent Ben Hunte said "There are a lot of marginalised voices that need to be given a mouthpiece" when he was appointed. He clearly meant that he intended to be that "mouthpiece". There's a lot of that about at the BBC now. 

Wonder what the bulk of the BBC will think about this? I'm guessing a huge chunk of them are too far gone to care what one of the old hands thinks, especially if it's in the Mail on Sunday. But some might take it as a proper, serious wake-up call. If they love the BBC as much as Tom Mangold does, what are they going to do about it?

Unfolding story

Labour pays out six-figure sum and apologises in antisemitism row.

The BBC and the Guardian are reporting this as if butter wouldn’t melt. I can’t fully access the Guardian’s article now unless I register, and I can’t say I want to do that at the present. However, when I saw it earlier today (when I could access it for some reason) their report looked extensive. That’s one thing one can say about the Guardian; unlike the BBC whose write-ups always sound so non-committal, as if they’re walking on eggshells of their own making - the Guardian goes into detail. The general effect of the BBC’s über brevity is that anyone can project their own meaning onto any given story.

Anti-Semitism: Labour pays damages for 'hurt' to whistleblowers

After Jeremy Corbyn's statement, which said Labour settlement was a 'political not legal' decision, journalist John Ware understood to be consulting his legal team

— Laura Kuenssberg (@bbclaurak) July 22, 2020

BREAKING: I am told that journalist John Ware is planning to sue Jeremy Corbyn.

— Oz Katerji (@OzKaterji) July 22, 2020

According to a few Labour sources this morning, it's "very possible" and "highly likely" that Jeremy Corbyn will have the whip removed very soon, as a result of some of the recommendations in the EHRC report.#LabourAntisemitism

— Adam Cailler (@acailler) July 22, 2020

‘Germans are good engineers’ and other slurs

“Here! This’ll interest you “ said my beloved as he thrust today’s Times at me. Turns out it was a report about a part-time university lecturer being sacked for a racist remark, even though the 'bigotry' in the remark was ‘positively’ discriminatory. The clever Jews smear, if you like.

The current atmosphere of heightened racial sensitivity is the perfect setting for mountains to be made out of molehills. To extrapolate: As 'one’ myself, my antennae are set to ‘trigger-hair’ mode, and they bristle disproportionately at the merest whiff of the stereotypically racialized innuendo.

Even the assumption that this article would be of special interest to *me*  could be construed as a bit, well, totalitarian in principle, at any rate in the present media-propelled climate of racial ultra-sensitivity.

Anyway, although I have some sympathy for both sides in this particular case, the new taboo on words and meanings that may or may not have  ‘racist’ connotations seems utterly bonkers and amounts to the curtailment of  Free Speech. 

The current ‘racism’ malarky isn’t confined to ‘race’ these days, either. It’s not about race at all now, rather it’s about clumsy, one-size- fits-all categorisations, where exceptions definitely don’t prove (or disprove) the rule. 

Blanket-style categorisations are always potentially dangerous. I must admit that when I read the article, one of my first instincts was to look at the picture of the Dr Bonar to see if she looked Jewish.  I recognise that my small act of curiosity has racist connotations, and the fact that my own physical appearance is hardly typical of anything much clouds the matter further and makes me look hypocritical.

I’m being silly about what isn’t much of a laughing matter, especially to the two people concerned. So I Googled Stephen Lamonby to see how the case has been reported in the wider press. Blimey! It’s everywhere!  The headlines vary:

 “Sacked lecturer said “Jews were cleverest….’ (Times)

“Southhampton lecturer sacked over racial stereotype comments….” (BBC) 

“University lecturer. 73, is sacked after telling colleague…….(OMG Daily Mail)

and so on, almost ad infinitum.

Funny dat. If you look through them, the majority of headlines mention Jews.  “Jews are the cleverest” they scream. I think the collective agenda behind that specific emphasis is designed to mark the irony of ‘even’ positivity being deemed racist and indicates that the media’s sympathies lie with the professor rather than the accuser. “How unfair and ridiculous the sacking is; things have gone too far” is the message I get from the most frequently featured framing.

The conspicuous exception is the BBC, which has a very different take on the issue. The illustration it uses doesn’t feature the individuals at all. It’s a picture of a rather austere university building. 

Solent University building

Pointedly, the focus of the BBC’s report is on (negative) remarks about black people. 

“..black students did not have it "in their DNA to do engineering” ” is the example given.

Only twice in the report, towards the end, does the BBC mention Jews - almost as an afterthought.

 

So what’s going on? 

Has the BBC belatedly become over-sensitive to the whole antisemitism debacle? There’s a lot of it about at the moment, what with the breaking news of damages being  awarded to the ‘whistle-blowers’ who took part in John Ware’s BBC Panorama.

If anyone is interested in my personal opinion, I have mixed feelings about the Lamonby case and I think it’s one example of the BBC taking an unusually independent approach to a potentially ‘low-hanging fruit’ of a news item, albeit for questionable reasons. 

I think demonising the offendee, Dr Bonar, which many of the other reports appear to do is also unfair. When anyone suddenly asks you if you are Jewish because of any perceived stereotypical characteristic they may have divined around your persona, it tends to make your hackles rise. “What does this mean?” one is bound to ask oneself.

And don’t forget, this court case was brought about by Professor Lamonby about unfair dismissal and not by Dr Bonar about racism. The reporting tends to give the opposite impression.

Maybe the pendulum has swung way too far in the wrong direction, and any casual, stereotypical generalisation whatsoever allows the media to make a massive mountain out of what might, a short while ago, have qualified as a mere molehill. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NYT has:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Panorama's John Ware sues the Labour Party for libel

John Ware's damning 10th July 2019 Panorama on antisemitism in the Labour Party provoked a predictable outcry from furious Corbynistas. 

Some complained to the BBC - including the Labour Party itself, which compiled 28 objections to the programme. This then went through to Ofcom. 

Well, Ofcom has now thrown out Labour's complaint declaring the programme to have been duly impartial. 

John Ware and some of the whistleblowers featured in the programme are now suing the Labour Party and some of its 'outriders' (gobby people on Twitter no doubt!) for libel.

They've hired Mark Lewis QC.

I wish them all the luck in the world.

A sizeable iceberg beneath the surface

🚨🆕 PODCAST🚨Panorama’s John Ware on #LabourAntisemitism
1️⃣”livid” at Labour claim he’s “motivated to mislead”
2️⃣”sizeable iceberg beneath the surface” for Labour
🎧SOUNDCLOUD https://t.co/rpC3mJAS13
🎧APPLE https://t.co/bNQwsrjmJ1
🎧 SPOTIFY https://t.co/7MsiIKtiix pic.twitter.com/EwewrorzL8

— Jonny Gould’s Jewish State (@jonnygouldpod) July 24, 2019

You might be interested in downloading this podcast.

Extra footage represents a "sizeable iceberg beneath the surface” according to John Ware.

Legendary documentary maker John Ware talks to me about his findings and if he's changed his view of both Labour and Jeremy Corbyn in the weeks since his documentary, "Is Labour Antisemitic?" aired on primetime BBC1. 

In this candid interview, John reveals how "livid" he is at Labour's allegations that he was motivated to mislead, predicts how it'll pan out in the coming months - and delivers his own verdict on whether the Labour leader is anti-semitic.

It’s reassuring to know that the Beeb’s legal eagles passed John Ware’s film for veracity and impartiality. It would also be useful to know whether the BBC’s legal team took the opportunity to scrutinise John Sweeney’s “Tommy Takedown” Panorama before it was postponed or abandoned. Perhaps this kind of scrutiny is carried out at the last minute,  say when the programme is edited and ready to go on the air.
However, if they’ve also given Sweeney’s dubious methodology the nod, it makes a mockery of John Ware’s assurances, much as I don’t want to doubt John Ware.

Well, Is Labour Antisemitic?

As ITBB’s resident antisemitism geek it’s a matter of duty for me to discuss the John Ware Panorama. 

The problem is where to start. A difficulty that constantly dogs my blogging life is the question of background; how much to include and how much to leave out.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, how can you make sense of what I write? Lacking the ability to summarise complicated and nuanced history succinctly yet fully, I’m left with a choice between laboriously reiterating material that becomes more meaningless with each repetition or just skipping it and assuming that it’s a simple matter of ‘any fule kno'.

For similar reasons, I found some of John Ware’s examples of antisemitism from Labour Party members rather tedious. The Ken Livingstone - John Mann shouty contretemps on the stairs, that mural, etc, seemed like a blast from the past. How many more times do we have to sit through that?

But I suppose they had to be in there to substantiate the existence of the antisemitism in question. (Even so, on the ‘day after the night-before’ edition of the Victoria Derbyshire show it was clear that denial of substantive evidence of antisemitism still thrives in Corbynista land.) 

“All one needs to do,” asserted audience member Salma Karmi-Ayyoub “Is to make an allegation of antisemitism, which then becomes the truth” she opined. And Ms Karmi-Aayyoub has apparently seen no compelling evidence of antisemitism whatsoever.  Yet we’re supposed to believe she watched the programme. 

As far as that viewer and her ilk are concerned Panorama needn’t have included evidence in the shape of Ken and his absurd interpretation of the Havaara agreement and his obsession with Hitler, or heard about the more recent activities of the NCC and various heavy-handed and autocratic individuals - or even the verbal insults and abuse of staff trying to do their jobs, because people see and hear only what they want to see and hear. The antisemitism evaporates into the air like a mist of particles from an aerosol can.

The revelations of the greatest significance in John Ware’s programme concerned interference with the disciplinary process and the testimony of young, ‘disaffected’ Labour members, which was riveting in terms of ‘televisual’ impact and for its political significance. The NDA hypocrisy, too.

(How strange that the media hasn’t yet managed to lure Seumas Milne into the studio for a good grilling. Alistair Campbell and Peter Mandelson were never off our screens back then. Why so shy?)

 Throughout this programme, and even more so throughout the subsequent forum within the Victoria Derbyshire programme - there was a gigantic mammoth squatting menacingly in the room. So massive that one dare not speak its name.

Victoria Derbyshire kept trying  to trip people up by asking “When did this institutional antisemitism arise and why?” ‘Where does it come from?” She was virtually begging for someone to commit ‘Islamophobia’, whilst the participants, panel and audience, stubbornly refused to do so. 

She asked the same thing over and over again, but they all kept schtum. But how can you, now that any negativity about of Islam is off limits? How mischievous of Ms Derbyshire to try that on.

The other elephantine but invisible presence in the room is this thing about Israel. The default position, thanks to years of partial reporting which keeps the majority of concerned citizens in a state of ignorance of 90% of the aggression directed at Israel, is that one has to state one’s abhorrence of “What Israel is doing to the Palestinians” before throwing in one’s twopence-worth of opinion on antisemitism. It’s related to the ‘bad Jew’ syndrome where the only good Jew is an anti-Zionist 

At one point in the programme, an audience member announced that he was a Palestinian whose people were ‘ethnically cleansed’ on the establishment of Israel. Predictably, Victoria Derbyshire let that pass unchallenged.

This post has turned out to be more concerned with Victoria Derbyshire’s de-briefing of the Panorama than the Panorama itself. That’s the way these things go. 

I must say that I’m not one of those who dismiss Ash Sarkar as stupid. She’s obviously sharp and bright, but her ideological principles force her to defend the indefensible. She and Owen Jones are passionately opposed to racism (they’ve been fighting it all their lives, you know) and their dogged anti-racism compels them to ignore the racism that emanates from the ‘race’ of people they’re so focused on protecting.  You can’t oppose antisemitism properly if you’re blind to the primary perpetrators of it.

I will also add onto the tail of this post that over on Harry’s Place Sarah AB has effectively equated Islamophobia with antisemitism.  I doubt that she reads this blog these days, but just in case, Sarah! No! You’re better than that.

Is the BBC impartial?

I’ll reserve judgment on tonight’s Panorama till it’s all over, but there is plenty of pre-emptive activity around. (The Times) (£)

In case it seems hypocritical to put one’s faith in any episode of Panorama in the light of the infamously aborted Tommy Takedown, it does seem that there is justification for doing so sometimes.  

The upcoming programme about antisemitism in the Labour Party is the creation of John Ware, who has a uniquely non-BBC outlook, while the aborted Tommy-bashing episode was concocted by John Sweeney, whose agenda is typically Beeb. 

I don’t claim that either of these men is bias-free or that their programmes could be scrupulously impartial and/or agenda-free, but at least John Ware is prepared to go against the grain.

Unlike Dominic Casciani, whose Tweets are ‘deffo’ BBC through and through. (H/T Monkey Brains in a btl comment)

Are these shoes worn by Stephen Yaxley Lennon at his court case last week a posh designer brand? Any tips gratefully received! pic.twitter.com/1dF33pZNoh

— Dominic Casciani (@BBCDomC) July 8, 2019

What started out as a stupid and weirdly snobbish remark from Casciani turned into a massive sneer-athon by a trail of Tommy-bashing sycophants - half of them accusing TR (aka SY-L) of squandering £500 (of donors’ hard-earned dosh) on a pair of Gucci loafers, while the other half sneering that they were obviously only a ‘knocked-off” version.

Deffo that shoe or a knock-off. Thanks for your help.

— Dominic Casciani (@BBCDomC) July 8, 2019

(Yobbo! Know thy place!)

That sinking feeling is back

That sinking feeling is back. Glastonbury time again.

As if Glasto dominating the airwaves wasn’t bad enough, the thought of Ed and Yvette Balls queueing up for the showers and Jeremy Corbyn appearing on the pyramid stage, (presumably to rapturous applause) hearing that Radiohead had been heckled with shouts of  “Free Palestine”  was just about the last straw.

I see Malia Bouattia signed off her NUS presidency by shouting “Free, free Palestine”, doubtless to similarly rapturous applause from her student fans; but a glimmer of light is here, in the form of a lone voice at the BBC, John Ware, who happens to have noticed the Al Quds Day March, even if his BBC colleagues didn’t.

"How's this for hate?
"We are fed up of the Zionists, we are fed up with all their rabbis; we are fed up with all their synagogues; we are fed up with their supporters."
Or this?
"Zionists. are responsible for the murder of people in Grenfell Tower - the Zionist supporters of the Tory Party."
I went to the annual Al Quds Days march in central London last weekend to watch several hundred supporters of Hezbollah, the "Party of God." [...]

“Please welcome Nazim Ali, the Al Quds' Master of Ceremonies for the march, organised by the Khoeminist oxymoronically named Islamic Human Rights Commission
Here's another of Nazim's gags. 

While presenting the IHRC's "Islamophobe of the Year" award shortly after the 2015 massacre by jihadists of 12 journalists and a policeman at the Paris-based satirical Charlie Hebdo magazine, he said: "No one from Charlie Hebdo could make it" (to the awards ceremony). 

Are you cracking up? No? How 's this then?
"We've always been a peaceful, family-friendly, humanitarian protest" Nazim shouted to the marchers. "That's what we're about." 

And then pointing to the protestors, he said ""Do not react to these people... Do not react to the IDF." 

Judging by the frenzy Nazim had worked himself into, my impression was that "react" was exactly what he hoped the Jewish protestors would do. "You've hit the nail," a police officer said. 

"Bye, bye Zionists, bye bye bye" taunted Nazim, waving his hands as the march prepared to move off. 

"Free, free Palestine" he chanted which got the ritual response: "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” [...]

"The march was nothing short of a three-hour public hate fest against Jews who regard themselves as Zionists – who are the vast majority of Jews. Nazim Ali repeatedly referred to the only "real Jews" being those marching with him, the tiny fringe from Neturei Karta. "Zionists are the imposters" he said ".Do not talk to them.they like to show themselves as 'victims': 'Oh, we're Zionists; we're victims; we've only killed 10 children today; we're victims - we didn't get a chance to kill 20'." 

So much hate in just 24 hours both in Finsbury Park and central London. It shows just how difficult some of these "difficult and often embarrassing conversations" in countering extremism, are going to be.

They say ‘we mustn’t let the terrorists divide us” but their refusal to connect the causes they support with the terrorism they say they wish to defy, means they themselves perpetuate and exacerbate the division.

Another piece in the JC explains where our government could ‘do the right thing’ if it had a mind to.

"The issue of government subsidies for Palestinian terrorist salaries has returned to the international spotlight. What began in November 2013 as a barely believable revelation — that taxpayers in Britain, the US and other Western nations were bankrolling terrorist salaries — has now become a universally-acknowledged, impossible-to-deny and impossible-to-defend embarrassment for governments.

"A recent in-depth study has calculated that all terror incentives and rewards paid by the Palestinian Authority over the past four years total a mind-numbing $1 billion. 

As more citizens are murdered by Islamist terrorists in Great Britain, Europe, the US and elsewhere, Western donor governments have found their financial involvement with the Palestinian Authority terrorist salary programme increasingly indefensible.

‘The Palestinian “Law of the Prisoner” openly rewards those convicted of even the most heinous attacks with generous monthly “salaries” and a phantom job in the PA government. 

The salaries increase on a sliding scale. The more carnage inflicted and the longer the prisoner sentence, the higher the salary. 

Terrorists receiving a five-year sentence are granted just a few hundred dollars each month. The bloodiest murderers are paid as much $3,000 monthly. Cheques are sent directly to the prisoner, who appoints a power of attorney to distribute the funds.”

What about the BBC doing an in-depth study of that preposterous situation? I’m sure John Ware would be up for it.

Things I've read (and can remember)

Having (it appears) become merely a weekend blogger, Friday night now seems to mean catching up with all sorts of things - and trying to remember all the other things about the BBC which have flitted across my mind in the past five days. 

(I wish the world would slow down. There's been far too much going on and my brain isn't what it used to be.)

Among the things I've read this week have been the following:


1. THE CONSERVATIVE WOMAN: Biased BBC will load the dice against Brexit and Cameron’s claim he has banished “ever closer union” is a legal fiction - both by former BBC producer David Keighley.

The first piece looks at the BBC Trust's slippery behaviour - first, in slipping out the BBC's editorial guidelines on the corporation's EU referendum coverage and, second, regarding the Trust's offhand rejection of MPs' concerns about monitoring BBC bias.

The second piece includes a striking example of pro-EU bias from the BBC News website, awarding "a win" to David Cameron for 'exempting us from ever-closer union'. Whether the PM has actually done so (legally-speaking) is disputed, so the BBC awarding him "a win" might be premature (and biased).


2. THE NEW STATESMAN: The BBC has never been a natural home for Eurosceptics – just ask the young Michael Gove - a piece by former BBC head of television news/former Today editor Roger Mosey.

Mr Mosey, as might be expected, puts a generally pro-BBC case, but admits:

(1) that he "came across vanishingly few EU withdrawalists in [his]broadcasting life". 

(2) that BBC colleagues would 'hear' "the flapping of white coats" when "Tory Euro-bashers" and UKIP's Lord Pearson denounced the EU and BBC pro-EU bias. 

(3) that he thinks the BBC is too London-centric and, thus, thinks too much like pro-EU London than the rest of the country. 

(4) that like the rest of the Westminster Bubble, the BBC tends to concentrate more on "process" than "policy" (hence, presumably, all the 'splits' stuff).

(5) that BBC staff are "much more In than Out".

3. THE SPECTATOR: Who will watch for BBC bias in the EU referendum campaign?  - by Charles Moore...

...in which Mr Moore hopes that pro-Leave campaigners will be monitoring the BBC for bias (I think his wish will come true!) and where he recalls a couple of hours of biased (pro-EU) BBC broadcasting on Today (a classic example of what I've recently been calling a 'snapshot').

An incidental moment in Charles Moore's piece recalls another Speccie piece by Rod Liddle (prior to Nick Robinson's arrival). Rod strongly suspected that John Humphrys was the rumoured "Tory" on the Today team. Charles suspects that John Humphrys might be the one non-Remain member of the Today team.

(That might explain the otherwise baffling series of features slagging him off over the past year or so on Roger Bolton's Feedback - a series of attacks that has always felt oddly personal to my ears.

Well, if the BBC can fill its airwaves with endless speculation, so can I!)


4. THE JEWISH CHRONICLE: Israel must stop making it easy for the boycotters - by John Ware.

The headline doesn't tell the full story here. The veteran BBC Panorama reporter lands a few solid punches on the strange and frequently antisemitic BDS brigade.


5. THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: The media is twisting the knife into Israel over the 'lone wolf intifada' - by Eylon Aslan-Levy.

Those notorious BBC headlines make their appearance here, and Eylon makes a strong case against the media in general. 

'Panorama' and Jeremy Corbyn

Last night's Panorama on the rise of Jeremy Corbyn provoked massed howls of outrage from the battalions of Corbynistas on Twitter - and, according to Mr Fawkes, from Mr Corbyn's own team as well. 

The terms "character assassination" and "hatchet job" were widely banded about. 

Even some people on largely right-wing forums are saying that the BBC appeared to be trying to stick the knife into Jeremy Corbyn here.

And I have to say that I think they're right about that. (And, from my own biased point of view, quite right too!)

Of course, Panorama isn't averse to putting out hatchet jobs. (The makers of Panorama do seem to like the odd hatchet job from time to time.) 

Panorama attempted a particularly brutal one on Nigel Farage just under a year ago. And it (twice) attempted another (one last year and one in April this year) on Lutfur Rahman in Tower Hamlets. The BNP got the Panorama hatchet job treatment in 2011 and the DUP's Iris Robinson got it in 2010.

The thing that connects those politicians is that they aren't establishment ones, so that could indicate a pro-establishment bias on the BBC's part....

....except that twice, in 2010 and 2012, Panorama doggedly went after a top Conservative donor, Lord Ashcroft. (Complications, complications!)

Now, both Sue and myself have had good things to say before about the Panorama reporter responsible for last night's Jeremy Corbyn report, John Ware. He's a BBC reporter who often goes where most other BBC reporters wouldn't dream of going. 

His pursuit of Mr Corbyn's dealings with Islamist terrorist groups and his linking of Mr Corbyn with a conference in Cairo which advocated attacks on British troops fighting in Iraq were, to my mind, worthwhile but, it has to be said, I really don't think he got very far at all. Jeremy Corbyn said enough not to come anywhere near close to incriminating himself, and didn't look at all rattled by John Ware's questioning. 

And John Ware couldn't get anywhere beyond those statements from Jeremy Corbyn, other than by asserting that Mr Corbyn didn't give a straight answer to the Cairo question....

...A bit of what I, in my younger years, might have called 'a damp squid' then.

Except for some pro-Corbyn vox pops and a pro-Corbyn comedian, all of Panorama's 'talking heads' were from what might be called the 'Labour establishment' - Bob Roberts, David Blunkett, Charles Clarke, Chuka Umunna and Tristram Hunt. Their message could hardly have been clearer: Don't vote Corbyn! Even the only other talking head, Chris Mullin, who had some nice things to say about the hero of the Corbynistas, didn't think Jeremy Corbyn could win an election.

At this point in a blog post, of course, a conclusion should come. Unfortunately, I don't have one, so please make of this mess of impressions what you will.

Is the BBC biased in favour of genetically modified food?

Is the BBC biased in favour of genetically modified food? 

That's a question you've probably never asked yourselves before today. (I know I haven't.)

I ask because quite a few anti-GM activists are spitting feathers over last Monday night's Panorama. 

They think it was heavily biased in favour of GM and against the environmentalist organisations that oppose it.

The programme's title was 'GM Food - Cultivating Fear' and, yes, it was green groups like Greenpeace and the Soil Association who were firmly placed in the dock by presenter Tom Heap and accused of stoking up groundless fears about GM.

In a strange inverted mirror image of quite a lot of the BBC's coverage of 'climate denial'...

...the programme (a) presented the case that the scientific consensus overwhelmingly shows GM to be safe, (b) featured a lot of credible-seeming scientists and repentant environmentalists criticising Greenpeace & Co, and (c) carefully positioned the contributions of the two GM 'deniers' (from Greenpeace and the Soil Association) so as to completely undercut their points (especially Greenpeace's chief scientist, who was made to look like a right plonker).

Oh, the irony!

As a supporter of GM, I was far from unhappy with the angle the programme pursued - because I believe the science is settled.

Or for that matter with its debunking of the 'deniers'. 

Plus, it was very funny to see the BBC giving exactly the same kind of belittling treatment to environmentalists which they usually give to 'climate sceptics' (like Lord Monckton or James Delingpole) in documentary programmes. 

I, therefore, think it was an excellent programme and heartily congratulate Tom Heap for making it (and I'm sure Professor Steve Jones, 'impartial' reviewer of the BBC's science coverage, would agree with me too, which is nice).

However, was it biased?

Or was just the BBC telling it like it is? Keeping it real? (as Rachel Dolezal might say...Respek, Rachel! Big up Yaself, Sista!)

****

The Soil Association's gripe about BBC bias does show though that the head of the Soil Association, Helen Browning (who to be fair to the SA, did get short shrift on Tom Heap's Panorama) was also invited to appear on Radio 4's Farming Today this week to denounce GM and that Lord Melchett was on Radio 5 doing the same (as it wouldn't do to have Baldrick serving up genetically modified turnips to Lord Blackadder, would it?)

I've no idea what Radio 5 Live was up to, but Farming Today was only balancing up the previous day's episode (one day for, one day against) where a U.S. government advisor stood up for GM and criticised European governments over the issue.

****

To return to the original question though: Is the BBC biased in favour of genetically modified food? 

Well, one episode of Panorama won't prove that, will it? It could, after all, simply be a (John-Ware-on-Lutfur-Rahman-like) BBC one-off. 

Searching the increasingly hard-to-search BBC website, is there anything else recently on GM food? Well, here's a screengrab of the latest results:

Besides that Panorama, the list includes the pro-GM edition of Farming Today and three separate incarnations of The Inquiry asking 'Is Opposition to GM Crops Irrational?' (quite a telling question, you might possibly think - if you're that way inclined)...

...which, when you read the website write-up, shows a 3 against 1 bias in favour of GM crops (and against opposition to GM).

Two clear examples of bias in the same direction.

Is that proof of BBC bias here? Or will many more examples need to be gathered first?

Given that I'm very happy with the apparent 'direction of travel' of this particular strand of (alleged) BBC bias, why should I bother to pursue it?...

...and why did I even mention it in the first place?

Well, any example of sustained BBC bias is interesting to report - even if it runs counter to your own beliefs and desires....

...if this really is such an example.

I'll leave it there as I seem to be losing my train of thought.