What's right?

The early morning news (Radio 4) gave a serious warning. What about? You ask.

“The "febrile" atmosphere around Brexit could be exploited by far-right extremists, the UK's most senior counter-terrorism officer has warned.”

Who is this most senior counter-terrorism ocifer? one wonders.

Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu is he. “It’s something to do with a ‘no deal Brexit’” he claims, enigmatically. How so? We’ll have to take his word for it for now.

“while extreme right-wing activity was still a "relatively small threat", it was also "something we've got to pay very close attention to in this country - that we don't let that kind of far-right drift into extreme right-wing terrorism and we're working very hard to stop that”.

Ah, here comes the Brexit connection:

"We saw a spike in hate crime after the referendum, that's never really receded.”[…]”So there's always a possibility people are being radicalised by the kind of febrile atmosphere we've got at the moment.”

What, you mean “Poles go home?” that sort of thing? I thought that had been debunked. But perhaps not.

I clicked on a linked-to web page. At first, it appeared to be just the BBC's customary virtue signalling. I was completely taken in!  I really thought it was meant to be sinister and ominous….. unless (it suddenly occurred to me) it’s a parody. Yes, that must be it.  How gullible am I, thinking it was a simple tale of “Bad goes ‘Good’ And Learns Error of Ways”. Silly me. I’m a silly son of a gun. I work eight hours I sleep eight hours I that leaves eight hours for blogging.

A fine example of deadpan comedy that video is too. Unfortunately, Blogger won't let me embed it.

“ ‘John' joined far-right groups aged 15, but now works to prevent extremism,” 

announces the strapline.

”At the time I shared a lot of material on social media.” 

says “John”, affecting one of those exaggerated, northern-esque, comedy accents. Victoria Wood used to do that a lot; remember “test tube baby”?. And “sectional intecost”? Very funny.

“ I did say Islam was a plague, and much like the plague, we have to get rid of it” 

he continued. Of course, you don’t get to see John’s face, or you’d twig it was Paul Whitehouse or someone, but you do get to see the interviewee nodding sympathetically and hamming it up with a somewhat overstated ‘worried’ expression; very like Victoria Derbyshire and quite amusing.

Listening face

Anyway, “John” has learned his lesson after being kicked out of a classroom for answering a trick question in an offensive, right-wing manner.

The teacher, very likely an undercover agent from the Prevent squad, (as teachers are, these days) had asked: “Why do people emigrate (sic) to Britain?”  “Because of the benefits”, he replied, falling into her trap and, inadvertently revealing the true extent of his deluded, far-right mindset.

By now I was getting into the spirit of it,  and it somehow reminded me of Blackadder and Baldric. 

By the end, everyone had learned their lesson and lived happily ever after. (unlike Baldric who turned into the un-amusing Tony Robinson)

So I think it’s time we had a clear definition of the term "far-right", BBC style.  By Jove, I think it’s anyone who is worried about the rise of Islam. That includes me!

I wonder when the terms far-right, and to a lesser extent 'right-wing' morphed from the traditional meaning: antisemitic, homophobic, sexually repressed, hard-hearted, intolerant, short-back-and-sides, ‘get yer haircut!' men who never cry, and think a woman’s pace is in the kitchen, and transformed into 'anyone to the right of Jeremy Corbyn who happens to worry about the rise of Islam'.

 The following question occurred  to me while I was in the bath:

How come a huge organisation largely staffed by atheist or lapsed Christian, gay, liberal, pacifist-inclined, university educated, progressives and would-be creatives, strives so very hard to normalise the customs, rituals and practices of the followers of a medieval, homophobic, antisemitic, warmonger whose pseudo-biblical salad of contradictory religious dogma is believed to be the direct word of God, from which any part can be cherry-picked to ratify a cornucopia of homophobic, antisemitic, illiberal and murderous activities? Long sentence, but there you are. 

I tried to imagine a kind of Venn diagram, where things like antisemitism and homophobia overlap. Right, Left, Religion, BBC, etc., but by then I’d turned into a prune. Not a good look. I don’t think I’m likely to drift into extreme far-right terrorism at the moment.

Over to David...

There's an excellent piece here by News-watch's David Keighley about Question Time under the new chairpersonship of Fiona the Bruce:

Welcome to the Fiona Bruce Remainer Show

David spotted an exchange I missed between Fiona and Isabel Oakeshott about Question Time's question selection. Please give it a read.

All the news that fit to misreport

Not so honest Injun?

Well, well, well...

As far at the 'Catholic schoolboys v the Native American Vietnam veteran' reporting disaster goes, it just gets worse and worse. 

On top of everything else, The Washington Post has now had to issue a correction on another point:

Earlier versions of this story incorrectly said that Native American activist Nathan Phillips fought in the Vietnam War. Phillips served in the U.S. Marines from 1972 to 1976 but was never deployed to Vietnam

The BBC, which I suspected of largely copying-and-pasting their largely-wrong version of the story from like-minded papers like The Washington Post (plus CNN and Twitter), has been sticking with its original, largely-false narrative, long after it's been discredited (see earlier post and comments).

And now this!

Yes, the BBC News website continues to wrongly say:

The quality of the BBC's reporting here just seems to sink lower and lower. 

*******

DB meanwhile has been tackling the BBC's finest on Twitter about this. Jon Sopel actually replied, if only to do the 'it's nothing to do with me, guv' thing: 

DB: The noble Native American not only lied about his interaction with the Covington boys, he lied about being in Vietnam. Looking forward to the BBC's report exposing his lies (won't hold my breath). 

Jon Sopel: If I didn’t report it, why would I need to correct it?

DB: The BBC report still says "Mr Phillips - a Vietnam War veteran". That's not true. You are BBC North America Editor. What does that title actually mean if you don't take responsibility for what's written on the BBC US page?

*******

I wasn't holding my breath that Mike Wendling & Co. at BBC Trending would chronicle the whole fiasco, which began with mainstream media outlets seizing on an edited, context-free video which went viral (like the plague) on social media. 

A perfect BBC Trending story, you'd think. 

And it appears to be good thing that I didn't hold my breath, because they don't seem to be touching it with BBC-sized £3.8 billion barge pole. 

What a surprise (not)! BBC Trending are very selective in the 'viral' stories they choose to report. 

There are two sides (at least) to every story

As a critic of the BBC whose main beef is one-sided reporting, I (me) of all people should always bear in mind that there is usually more than one side to a story. 

Here’s a nice cherry-picked image of the SNP’s  Steward McDonald, which I’ve deliberately chosen because it makes him look a bit … …

I was shocked to watch Theresa May in the HoC sympathising with the unfortunate member over his ‘ordeal’  yesterday in the chamber.  And that was shortly after expressing sympathy over the bomb-blast in Derry/Londonderry. And these remarks were solemnly and emphatically seconded by Speaker Bercow in the way that only Speaker Bercow can. And they were echoed by various other crowing MPs.

All I can say is, do get some perspective, please!!

The ‘ordeal’ in question was the threat of being, (and, for your convenience, in “a” and “b”  format)

a) violently confronted by 

b) interviewed by

a) far-right, ex-EDL thug Tommy Robinson whose real name is double-barrelled in a most audacious  fashion

b) campaigning activist against Islamist-extremism and self-declared journalist Tommy Robinson

 who was waiting in the freezing cold outside Pollockshaws Library with

a) a hand-held microphone and a cameraman

b) a coordinated gang of angry far-right hooligans 

to 

a) interview

b) harass 

c) “Jo Cox” (the verb)

 the unfortunate SNP. 

However, the honourable member was holed up inside the library which “offers a wide range of services and activities in relaxing and inspiring surroundings” and not coming out.  A highly visible police presence had been summoned by the SNP for his personal protection.  

In addition to the friendly library staff who are “always on hand to help you get the most out of your visits”, this entailed valuable police manpower being diverted away from Glasgow’s notoriously simultaneous wall-to-wall crime-scenes in order to prevent Tommy Robinson (etc etc) from getting anything whatsoever out of his library visit and, consequently, to ensure that the friendly library was also inaccessible to members of the public, (McDonald’s constituents) even to return their library books.

 The “a)” and “b)” format is more cumbersome than it’s worth, but one must be aware that there are (at least) two sides to every story, albeit some sides are nearer the mark than others.

So what was all this fuss about? Well, there has been much social media-driven and highly exaggerated angst recently about MPs being hassled and jostled and generally interfered with as they go about their lawful business. 

There is a principle behind that of course. One might argue that in Anna Soubry’s case it was a rather a benign form of direct action, (which is legitimately regarded as undemocratic) (but she was laughing throughout, dammit) but on the other hand it’s seen by many as the inevitable precursor to violence and the “Jo Cox scenario” all over again”.  

(Please don’t ask at this point to explain whether I a) think / b) don’t think this is parallel to the scenario whereby non-violent (verbal) antisemitism is the inevitable precursor to the next Holocaust)

There is also a middle ground, which takes into consideration the ‘helplessness’ felt by the disenfranchised, the inarticulate, the fearful and the un-listened-to, where shouty, intemperate behaviour is seen as the only alternative to just sitting quietly and sucking it up.

While Tommy Robinson (etc etc, double-barrel etc) was hanging around in the freezing cold with his trusty smartphone, he was live-streaming (?) (not quite sure about that) but he was filming as he went, and the raw footage was posted on blogs. I think I saw it on Biased-BBC.  For all I know there were several armed members of Tommy’s entourage waiting off camera, but as far as one could tell the ‘coordinated mob’ was just Tommy Robinson and a cameraman.  Maybe that was not the case at all. I have no idea. 

The footage I saw would have been hilarious, had the circumstances been less ominous. 

While this was happening, social media was evidently on the case and several individuals rolled up wanting selfies with Tommy. Respectable-looking local ladies expressed solidarity with him. Car-horns beeped. People shouted to congratulate him.

As if to echo the vile abuse that Jewish MPs have received from Corbyn’s followers, poor Mr McDonald has been forced to un-publish his Facebook account because of the vile abuse he’s had from Tommy Robinson’s followers. Parallels everywhere you look, and some are nearer the mark than others.

Here’s the final edit of Tommy Robinson's YouTube version, complete with inserts showing the slanderous comments about Tommy Robinson (calling him a racist thug and a fraudster) made by McDonald and Speaker Bercow in the HoC, (who called him "A loathsome, obnoxious, repellent individual") while happily protected from prosecution by Parliamentary immunity. 

Is that fair? Discuss.

In Praise of DB

Talking of DB (me and Sue's old blogging pal), he's on fire again at the moment, and his Twitter feed is a must - if you're into Twitter.

Please follow him if you can.

Here's a selection of his posts from the first three weeks of 2019:

I

Hmm. Maria reminds me of another pro-EU Newsnight employee with a Polish-sounding name, Maya Rostowski. Maya's apparent heavy involvement in a report slagging off her pro-EU Polish politician dad's political opponents, the conservative Law and Justice, raised eyebrows - to put it mildly.

II

Nomia's not a Rod Liddle fan, obviously. 

(In contrast, I thought this from Rod in this week's Spectator, on a related theme, was another gem from the former Today editor).

Nomia isn't new to us. She did a pro-hijab report for BBC One's news bulletins.

III

And here's that very The Young Talks video for your delectation, featuring alt-right-obsessed, left-wing, ever-so-impartial, senior BBC Trending guru Mike Wendling. Enjoy!

IV

This preceded the previous example of the BBC leaping on an anti-Trump story from a major US mainstream media source and swallowing and regurgitating it hook, line and sinker (see next-to-last post). Here the BBC, making it their top News Website story, leaped on an anti-Trump Buzzfeed story that, like an insubstantial pageant, dissolved and appears to have left not a rack behind, leaving the BBC scrambling, discreetly, to bury its tracks. 

(MB has been closely following this on the previous Open Thread). 

V

Ah yes, good old Hugh. Coat always hung up at the door of BBC impartiality. 

And that 'gotcha' so excited the BBC that Reality Check generalissimo Chris Morris was wheeled in in to deliver the coup de grace to poor, babbling Boris. 

Oddly, Chris's take (and other would-be 'reality checks' across the BBC, and elsewhere) piled on just three examples - two throwaway, somewhat ambiguous comments and one co-authored letter with Michael Gove and Gisela Stuart. 

And that was pretty much it. Where was the long, damning list of quotes?

And, to me, this actually, accidentally, showed that Boris had, in reality, made next to nothing of the Turkish EU accession question in the run-up to the EU referendum. 

But "latch on" and make "a huge gotcha moment" of it the BBC tried to do nonetheless.

VI

This one was initially prompted by StewGreen:

Well done More or Less! The BBC's BBC Global Gender and Identity Correspondent (yes, really), to give her full official BBC title, certainly did get called out by Tim & Co, there. Ha ha. 

For more on Megha from me and Sue, please click here. She's very BBC - not into Ivana Trump, a fan of Naomi Klein, someone who wants to explain explain arranged marriage "to white people", and someone who deleted a tweet damning pro-gay rights Ireland for backing Russia in the Eurovision Song Contest!

VII

And, OMG, here's something about Katty:

Yes, Katty actually just-about, in a roundabout, unspecific way, acknowledged that mainstream media types, leaped in too soon on the Buzzfeed Mueller story. but then - having, as DB noted, evidently learned nothing, was straight in their again on the Native American/MAGA-capped schoolboys media fiasco. 

Oh Katty, as we approach Burns Night, please bear this good-natured advice in mind:

O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion.

Aye to that! Cue bagpipes...

Pitch perfect

Here’s a much more fact-packed account of the subject of my previous post, including Huw Edwards’s intro, which I had missed.

The thing that struck me was, well, it looks as if Huw knew that the shortages and deprivations inflicted on Gaza's civilians were due to internal political feuds and enmities, but he threw in “years of an Israeli blockade” for good measure. Why? Because he could. Lazy and biased.

Nearly all BBC broadcasting is fundamentally pitched from an identifiable position. Andrew Marr’s line of questioning is clearly constructed from the Remain perspective. All Middle East reporting is as seen from ‘one side of the fence’. All religion-related items are from an anti-Christian and pro-Islam base. (As illustrated in today’s The Big Questions) If not explicitly pro-Islam, the more contentious elements of the ideology are invariably ‘let off the hook’

Here’s one of my favourite people; I don’t know if it’s still legal to call yourself ‘Fats’ these days, but this particular 'Fats' shows you don’t have to be skinny or young to be beautiful. 

This should be the Brexit song. There are better sound recordings available, but the pure visual joy in this performance cheers me up. My quibble is with the subtitles. Why write “strolling” when the lyric is clearly ‘rolling’? The word is vital to understanding the strange title of the song.

I love the musicality of the first legato “cra-a-a-a-y” followed by the jaunty, almost triumphant staccato of the second “cra-ha-ha-ha-hy”. That’s our message the EU when and if we ever finally actually exit.

Oh, and I much prefer the new set of The Big Questions. No more green and orange quilting, which was obviously designed to make your eyes bleed, as Claudia Winkleman might say.

Singing the Indian Song

Why has the term 'Native American' been trending so massively on social media today?

Well, a video went viral appearing to show a Native American veteran being surrounded and taunted by anti-abortion Catholic schoolboys wearing MAGA caps in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC.

Twitter went mad, and there was a mega-tsunami of outrage at the 'blatant hate, disrespect and intolerance' shown towards the drum-banging Native American by the (mainly white) children. And righteous hate duly flowed towards the Trump-supporting 'racist' kids. 

The mainstream media - from CNN and The Washington Post - then took up the story with a vengeance and reported it from the same angle.

And, inevitably, the BBC followed suit, swallowing and then regurgitating this very angle hook, line and sinker.

(Indeed, the story has been one of the main headlines on the BBC News Website throughout the day.)

Via our old friend DB's Twitter feed, however, I then saw comments saying that their were other videos out there that showed what happened in a very different light, giving context to the viral video and disproving the account given by the outraged battalions on Twitter and the massed ranks of the mainstream media.

One comment came from 'alt-right commentator' Mike Cernovich, who called it "an outright lie".

Now, BBC Trending isn't a fan of Mr Cernovich, and having perhaps read too many BBC Trending pieces myself, I was wary. But, trusting DB, I read on and following further links I found those other videos.

They suggested that, contrary to how it had been presented, the Native American protestor went up to the boys, banging his drum, and deliberately stood in front of them. There was no surrounding of him by the boys. 

*******

At this point I'll pass you over to a fair-minded, left-wing American vlogger and strongly urge you to watch his video in full.

(WARNING: He uses lots of strong language & voices some left-wing opinions you might not like in a way you may not like - though it's none the worse for that).

I spotted his video because a fair-minded Radio 4 semi-regular, Timandra Harkness, retweeted a comment about it which said, "This story seemed too convenient from the outset". 

So what happened? Well, a small group of black nationalists were heckling the MAGA-hat-wearing, anti-abortion schoolboys, calling them "faggots" and saying that Donald Trump is a homosexual. Those loud black nationalist charmers, who also told off the Native American protestors for worshipping animals, also targeted black Catholic schoolboys at the rally, telling them that their white friends would be selling their body parts sooner or later and, very rudely, even deploying the n-word against them. The (mainly white) schoolboys weren't rude back, were aghast at the racism being flung at them, and stood by their black friends. (This was missing from the BBC's reporting).

Then we see the same Catholic boys chanting their school chant. (And it definitely is their school chant they were chanting). 

Next, the Native American protestor begins walking towards the boys, banging his drum. He walks into the crowd of schoolboys, beating his drum and is soon drumming in the face of one boy, who looks away. The other boys just look at him. Then the Native American veteran moves to beat his drum in another boy's face, who just stands there, awkwardly smiling back. And, for whatever reason, keeps on just standing there, smiling and staring back. 

Were the kids making fun of the Native American guy? It doesn't seem so. They seem confused, and danced along, and filmed him, and clapped along with his drum-beats, and sang along too. 

And the lad at the centre of events just kept starring at him. 

Thus, the narrative that the boys surrounded the Native American man and started harassing him appears to be the fakest of fake news.

And the Native American man's account to The Washington Post that the main boy blocked his way isn't true either. The other videos, beyond the viral (edited) video show that.

*******

As the chap in that YouTube video says, this matters. The kid's name has been made public, "and people are out for blood", wanting to stop him getting into the college he wants. And the other kids in the video must be feeling frightened too. "The amount of hatred they're getting right now is rather insane"m he says. And he blames his left-wing allies for "playing into conservatives' hands" by "freaking out over things before we have all the facts".

*******

Now, the relevance of all of this to us is that the BBC, which boasts of being the world's most trusted source of news, seems to have spectacularly misfired over this, misreporting the story in the worst way possible.

They really do seem to have "freaked out over things" too before they had all the facts. 

As far as I can see, the BBC simply didn't bother to check the story out before recycling it. I'm guessing they just read Twitter and cut-and-pasted their story from reports in like-minded media outlets....and then chose to make it front-page BBC news.

This was the headline that introduced the story this morning:

Well, the evidence suggests that the boys weren't "taunting" him at all, so that's already poor reporting. (Note the lack of quotation marks around 'taunting' in that headline).

The report then began: 

Footage of a group of teenagers - many wearing Make America Great Again caps - taunting a Native American man in Washington DC has drawn criticism.
The teenagers, students at Kentucky's Covington Catholic High School, are seen mocking Omaha elder Nathan Phillips as he sings and drums.
The students were taking part in an anti-abortion rally on Friday, while Mr Phillips, a Vietnam War veteran, came for an Indigenous Peoples' March.
The school apologised to Mr Phillips.
The footage of the incident went viral on social media.
A number of users said the youths' behaviour was "appalling" and their parents and school "should be ashamed".

The evidence suggests that the boys weren't "mocking" him at all. 

The BBC report continued in that vein for a while, quoting various tweets from people criticising the boys, before saying:

What did the footage show?
The teens are seen surrounding and mocking Mr Phillips and his companion, as the two men sing the American Indian Movement song.
One boy, in particular, is captured staring at Mr Phillips, appearing to be blocking the Native Indian.
Many of the students are also heard mockingly singing the Indian song. 

Well, if there's one thing that is clear here it's that the teens most definitely did not surround Mr Phillips. That's simply factually untrue from the BBC.

They dropped the word "surrounding" from later versions of the report, as News Sniffer shows. 

And News Sniffer also shows that they had to remove the line "singing the Indian song" from their report too, as 'Indian song' isn't PC. They changed it to "singing the song".

The BBC then quotes the 'aggrieved' Native American protestor, as it he were telling the gospel truth - which it very much appears that he wasn't. 

*******

Sorry for the long post, but this kind of biased BBC churnalism is absolutely disgraceful. The whole piece absolutely reeks of tawdry journalism. (Thank goodness for social media!)

Yes, it may be in a faraway country about which we know nothing - the United States - but it's still shocking stuff from the BBC.

One for Mike Wendling & Co. at BBC Trending to 'fess up over on behalf of the BBC?

The other side of the fence

Mishal Husain must have banked a mountain of footage while she was in Gaza. It must be piling up in the bowels of the BBC, waiting to be suitably edited and slowly drip-fed to viewers, lest we are distracted by Brexit and forget how awful Israel is. (“sorry this episode is not currently available”) 

So Gaza’s hospitals are suffering from terrible shortages. No money. No medicine. No electricity. No water. No medical equipment. And all because of Israel’s blockade or siege. Admittedly there was a fleeting reference to squabbles between Hamas and the PA, but the overriding message is that the architect of all this misery is the State of Israel.

Why would this comparatively narrow field of interest occupy a British team of reporters (when, for example,  there’s so much else going on in our own “any chess”) while conspicuously failing to explore the vexed question of what has happened to the shedloads of aid that the rest of the world has been pouring into the place? 

Any tuppenny ha'penny media outfit could string together a mawkish, misery-memoir documentary that merely serves to inflame and incite; but how lazy, how incurious and one-sided does it have to be before it’s seen as blatantly partisan agitprop?

Pushing the agenda further,  they drag it out again next day on the Today Programme. After hearing from UNWRA director Matthias Schmale, who has been experiencing some local difficulties of his own recently, Mishal Husain adopted her scornful schoolmarm voice to interrogate Israeli Ambassador Mark Regev. 

Obviously, all deaths and injuries are tragic and regrettable, and maybe the IDF has (understandably) got too used to defending itself (and Israel’s civilian citizens) preemptively. But needs must.

Mishal was pursuing the point that people were being shot at “inside the fence” and using the example of a fourteen-year-old boy who was shot and killed by the IDF. Why is Israel shooting innocent fourteen-year-old children who are peacefully protesting? (or words to that effect) fires Mishal at Mr Regev. The child only “put his hand on the top to the fence”, and bingo, a trigger-happy IDF soldier shot him dead. (Why would anybody put their hand ‘on the top’ of the fence’ if not to climb over it? Must peaceful protesters only be repelled once they have successfully broken into Israeli territory and stabbed a Jew or two?) Are their intentions not explicit enough?

Of course, the Hamas-orchestrated protests were deliberately constructed to make Israel look ‘bad’ at the expense of sacrificial fourteen-year-old boy martyrs. In taking her stance, Mishal Husain only encourages Hamas to dream up more such stunts, as they obviously bear fruit, exactly as intended.

“I’ve been there” she bragged. “So have I” retorted Regev. “I was on one side and you were on the other” she replied.

Indeed.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0002220#playt=2h22m59s

Open Thread

Brucie - didn't she do well? .........Praise for Fiona (or otherwise) on the new Open Thread

Nigel and Naga

Following on from his Question Time appearance on Thursday Professor Anand Menon was back on the BBC as the paper reviewer for BBC Breakfast this morning.

I was intrigued by the heavy-handed way he was introduced each time:

8.18 - Charlie Stayt: Time now for a look at the newspapers. Our guest this morning is Anand Menon, who's from UK in a Changing Europe. Particularly at the moment, and in Brexit times, people are very keen to make sure they know where everyone's coming from who we broadcast with. So just explain - I know you've told us before: Your organisation does what?  

Anand Menon: Well, we're a network of academics and, basically, what we're funded to do is to let people know what the research says. We're not allied to any side. We have to be impartial. We simply say, I've carried out a couple of years research on, for instance, what the economics of Brexit might look like, and this is what I've found.

9.18 - Charlie Stayt: Anand Menon is with us this morning, director of UK in a Changing Europe. Do the explainer for us so that everyone knows who you are and what you do.  Tell us who you are in what you do? 

Anand Menon: We're an impartial network of academics that simply lets people know what the research says. 

Impartial like the BBC perhaps? 

Well, that second introduction was immediately followed by one of the BBC's 'most impartial', Naga Munchetty, letting slip a predictable opinion of her own:

Naga Munchetty: OK, one of the stories that you've picked out....and I will put this to you. I don't understand, or lots of people don't understand, why we spend so much time talking about Nigel Farage.
Anand Menon: For several reasons really. Well, one is he's box office. I mean, he's good, he's entertaining, so the cameras like him...
Naga Munchetty: (interrupting) OK, what's his place when it comes to Brexit negotiations?
Anand Menon: His place when it comes to Brexit...
Naga Munchetty: (interrupting) Now. Not from the start, but now. 

That's all very 'Samira Ahmed' from Naga there, thinking that Nigel Farage shouldn't be paid attention to. 

Here's how it went on. As you'll see, Naga followed through on her first point:

Anand Menon: Now, I think he is positioning himself so that if he can credibly argue that there has either been a watering-down or a delay or a cancellation of Brexit, he's planning to relaunch his political career. And you can see there the danger for Theresa May from her right flank, which is, if she does what a lot of people are saying, which is to softens Brexit, join a customs union, join the Single Market, the Brexiters in her party will be very annoyed and people like Farage will make capital out of it.
Naga Munchetty: Isn't this though, if that's the case, if Theresa May pays the attention to Nigel Farage that David Cameron did, isn't there the danger of falling into the trap that some say David Cameron fell into did, because of the noise, the noise, around Nigel Farage being picked up and being given too much prominence?

Impartial like the BBC, Anand? 

Helpful Suggestion

I agree with the BBC's Technology Correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones:

Old Roarers (as he's known) is surely right that Would I Lie to You?, now on its twelfth series, is still good for lots of hearty laughs each and every week it's on, while Have I Got News For You?, now on its 56th series, is merely getting by on its (hugely inflated) BBC pension and waiting for 'Tuscan' Polly (Toynbee) to buy it a one-way ticket to Dignitas - once she's finished with all the elderly Leave voters.  

Modest proposal: Maybe Lee Mack needs to replace Ian Hislop? 

"Is Emma Barnett now officially the most biased BBC broadcaster of all time?"

By special request 😊...

Emma Barnett's Radio 5 Live show a couple of days ago discussed (among other things) those calls for a second referendum and during the course of the programme she interviewed a couple of politicians - pro-People's Vote Conservative Guto Bebb and pro-Citizens' Assembly Labour MP Stella Creasy - plus businessman and pro-Brexit campaign leader Richard Tice. Mr. Bebb and Mr. Tice specifically discussed the second referendum question. Now can you guess which interviewee got interrupted the most?

Well, resurrecting my old interruption coefficients again (where the number of interruptions is divided by the length of the interview and where, by and large, the higher the number the tougher the interview, and where the average is 0.7), what resulted was the following set of figures:

Guto Bebb: 

Interview length: 5m 24s

5 interruptions

I.C.= 1.0

Richard Tice:

Interview length: 6m 24s

22 interruptions

I.C. = 3.5

Stella Creasy:

Interview length: 5m 52s

4 interruptions

I.C.= 0.7

3.5 is a rare figure. It's one of the highest I've ever recorded. The intensity of Emma Barnett's interrupting of Richard Tice was, therefore, very extreme - even by the standards of BBC interviewers like John Humphrys or Andrew Neil.

The respective interviews begin at 23.24, 28.53 and 2.14.03 on BBC Sounds. 

Incidentally, whilst listening to some of the calls on the same subject I heard Emma recalling that very interview and saying:

When I was talking to Richard Tice earlier....he said that people like him who voted to leave wouldn't even vote if that was put there, that Remain shouldn't even be an option anymore. It should be about the terms of the deal.

Well, no he didn't say that. He said that Remain should be an option. 

The question should be 'Remain, or leave on WTO terms?'.....If it was 'May's deal, or Remain?; we Leavers would boycott the whole thing.

Quality broadcasting, eh!

Too much Tony?

Never enough David

A Twitter exchange involving my favourite financial pundit David Buik about Thursday morning's Today programme, which featured a certain Mr. Tony Blair:

David Buik: Surely there are other people worth talking to about their antagonism towards BREXIT and what to do about it than Tony BLAIR, who has been invited back AGAIN by the BBC TODAY PROGRAMME! Doesn't the audience deserve a bit of variety?
Richard Kakaso: He hasn’t been on in months and is an extremely well informed voice on the matter.
David Buik: Think you will find he was on much more recently than that. Tony Blair is very well informed but variety is the spice of life!

That reminded me of the old Rob Burley maxim that people you disagree with will sometimes be on TV, or the radio. 

But who's right here? Is David correct about Tony Blair being on a lot, or Richard that he hasn't been on in months? Well, the former PM was last on Today just over a month ago (so Richard was mistaken about in being "months" since his last appearance, and this is a list of his eight appearances on the programme last year: 

14 December 2018

7 September 2018

27 June 2018

22 May 2018

10 April 2018

29 March 2018

1 March 2018

4 January 2018

Is that excessive? 

Was 'Question Time' biased against Diane Abbott?

Was this week's edition of Question Time (which, unusually, I watched - and, even more unusually, very much enjoyed), biased against Diane Abbott?

Senior Corbynistas around the Labour leadership are claiming so, and an aide to far-left Labour MP Chris Williamson, Jyoti Wilkinson, wrote the following (which is receiving wide coverage):

New presenter Fiona Bruce came out to address the audience.  Hailed for her performance from the week before by fans, and after happily approving of the sycophantic praise that she was being adorned with from some quarters, Bruce proceeded to warm up the crowd.  I am aware that this was indeed a tradition with former host David Dimbleby, and audience members were encouraged to participate as vocally and enthusiastically as possible.  Nothing wrong with that, an exercise in democracy it would seem. 

However, it was at this moment in time that the real hostility towards Diane Abbott became evident.  Each panelist was given a brief bio; Rory Stewart – a member of the Government, Kirsty Blackman – SNP and a remainer, Isabel Oakershott – ardent brexiteer and Anand Menon – academic expert on the EU.  

When Fiona Bruce introduced Diane Abbott, Labour’s Shadow Home Secretary, she took it upon herself to instigate a roast. Comments along the lines of ‘let her know what you really think’ and ‘some may think she is in the shadow cabinet because of her very close relationships with Corbyn, nudge nudge, wink wink’ were made.  This indeed had the desired effect, and the carefully selected audience guffawed in delight as they had now been given licence to air their bigoted views in public.  An audience member in a pinstripe suit commented “I’m going to ask her to do a sum, but she will just claim its discrimination I’m sure.” This level of deliberate antagonism from the BBC is a disgrace, and the institution now desperately needs to be held to account. 

Now these terms were set, the now legitimised hostility became all too clear.  A brief practice session took place, where the most reactionary members of the audience were identified so that they could be returned to during the show.  Diane was given the cold shoulder as the other panelists chatted together chummily, and she was spoken over as if she did not exist.  

During the debate, the Shadow Home Secretary was interrupted by Fiona Bruce more times in three minutes that the others were in twenty.  Audience members barracked and abused her, questioned her legitimacy and jeered, empowered by the licence they felt they had been granted by the BBC to do so.  Sympathisers such as myself were simply ignored.  At one-point Fiona Bruce and Isabel Oakeshott ganged up like playground bullies to ridicule Diane Abbott over Labour’s polling, both making statements later proven to be false. 

BBC’s Question time is portrayed as a truly democratic spectacle, where the public can engage members of the Government and Opposition, as well as leaders of their field.  In reality, it is far from it.  It is a farcical stage-managed state propaganda tool in which the BBC use and legitimise institutional racism, misogyny and bigotry to stoke up reactionary sentiment amongst the general population.  At the very least the BBC needs to be reformed and we must build a new media.  This cannot be done soon enough.

So did Fiona Bruce single out Diane Abbott for mockery before the show began? Well, we mightn't be entirely inclined to believe a partisan aide to Chris Williamson, but another member of the audience has supported Jyoti's claim that there "was some humour at Diane's expense from BBC staff before the recording", while yet another said that "Fiona Bruce basically made fun of Dianne (sic) Abott (sic) in the briefing before it aired".

I'm assuming these widely-quoted claims are the ones the BBC is referring to when it talks of "reports circulating on social media" that are "inaccurate and misleading", continuing:

We firmly reject claims that any of the panel was treated unfairly either before or during the recording.

We can't be sure who's got it right here not having been there and not having seen the before-the-recording goings-on, and we can never be sure unless a (covert) recording emerging of it, but we can judge the claims about how Ms Abbott was treated during the programme itself.

Was Jyoti Wilkinson - as well as an oft-quoted Labour spokesperson - correct to say that she was interrupted by Fiona Bruce significantly more than the other panelists? Well, yes. By my reckoning, overall, Diane Abbott was interrupted 17 times, whereas Rory Stewart was interrupted 10 times and the SNP's Kirsty Blackman 6 times (with the two non-politicians being interrupted even fewer times).

As to his specific point that "during the debate, the Shadow Home Secretary was interrupted by Fiona Bruce more times in three minutes that the others were in twenty", clearly alluding to the opening 25 minutes of the programme, well, yes, that's an exaggeration but not too much of an exaggeration. I make it 9 interruptions for Diane Abbott and 15 interruptions in total for the rest of the panel during that time.

As for mockery during the debate, well again, yes, I do think that Diane Abbott got least respect from Fiona Bruce this week. My favourite jibe was this one:

Jeremy Corbyn sometimes says you have to talk to people with whom you profoundly disagree. He was talking about Hizbollah and Hamas. [Audience, panel laughter. Strong applause]. Theresa May?

But when Jyoti says that "at one-point Fiona Bruce and Isabel Oakeshott ganged up like playground bullies to ridicule Diane Abbott over Labour’s polling, both making statements later proven to be false", is he right (about the statements)? Well, yes, he is correct that both ladies did indeed make statements later proven to be false. These concerned the polls, and Isabel Oakeshott's claim that Labour was way behind in the polls - a claim Fiona Bruce echoed (including adding a "Definitely".) But of the latest ten polls 4 show a Conservative lead, 3 a Labour lead and 3 a tie, so - despite what Fiona Bruce said - there's no "definitely" whatsoever about the Labour Party being way behind in the polls. Note, however, that Isabel also talked about the Labour leader being way behind in the polls, and about that she's right.

More generally, was the audience biased? Well, despite having Labour Party activists (like Jyoti) in the audience, the bulk of the audience did seem - to the amazement of many Leave-supporting viewers! - to be strongly pro-Leave, and strongly pro-'No Deal' (giving that idea a HUGE cheer). Was it because they were the bulk of the audience, or only the most vocal part of it? Well, it did look as well as sound like the majority of the Derby audience to me - though there were plenty of exceptions. And, yes, Diane Abbott was their main target for booing, heckling and jeering.

As far as Brexit goes, was the panel biased? Isabel herself tweeted "Am I the only Brexiteer?" accompanied by "#prayforIsabel". Was she? Well, yes, if you mean a committed Leave voter who doesn't outright reject 'No Deal'. An audience member, however, took what might be called 'The Rob Burley Line' on this, quoting her tweet and telling her to look to two of the people sitting next to her - namely Rory Stewart and Diane Abbott, both of whom speak (in their different ways) of honouring the referendum result and being committed to us Brexiting (in some way or another, to some degree or another). I'll let you judge the truth of that particular 'line' for yourself.

As for whether the BBC "whipped" up a "hostile atmosphere" towards Diane Abbott because she's "a black woman" or was guilty of "legitimising racism" (as Labour MP Barbara Keeley put it), well, I don't think the BBC could ever be accused of intending that.

There are other reasons to jeer and heckle at Diane Abbott, especially after she opens her mouth.

********

P.S. Away from all of this, Question Time had an "expert" on - our old friend Anand Menon - who Fiona Bruce treated in the usual BBC way. I appreciated his take on a second referendum, so I thought I'd share it will you (just in case this post wasn't already more than long enough):

It might well be that another referendum - I can't stand the phrase People's Vote I afraid - ends up being the only way forward. And I don't think it's anti-democratic. If Parliament legislates for something, that's democratic under our system. But I think you've just got to be honest about how hard and how divisive it would be. 

Firstly, it's hard to achieve, because Parliament have got to agree to legislate for one......and then they've got to agree to a question, which would be a nightmare. 

I don't necessarily think it would be better than the first time round because I still think it would be an argument about a future about which we have no facts. It would be just as speculative and vague as the first one. 

And it would be massively divisive. Because whatever else you think about the referendum of 2016, it was a remarkable moment in our democratic history that mobilised people who either haven't voted or haven't voted for a long time and I think those people would, with some reason, feel a little bit hacked off that they were asked to do it again. 

And the final question I suppose is, would it definitely fix things? And there I'm a little bit uncertain because if you imagine we had another referendum, imagine we got to the stage were Parliament couldn't decide and we defaulted somehow to another referendum and we ended up with the result that was 52-48 the other way on a smaller turnout than 2016, with fewer than 17 million people voting Remain? Would that settle the question? No. 

Michael Gove: the speech

Everyone else has done it so we might as well publish the barnstormer we enjoyed yesterday. Funnily enough, the BBC chose instead to feature Tom Watson’s effort, over which the spectre of an enormous  ‘elephant’ loomed.

I have to admit that many of my political and philosophical positions are primarily emotional. For example, I’ve loathed Corbers ever since he hove into view alongside his Judeophobic colleagues, like, say Andy Slaughter and, I don’t know, Chris Mullin. That was long ago. Back when the prospect of such a wrong-headed individual becoming leader of the Labour Party was simply unthinkable.

But I’ve admired Gove, particularly are reading his 2016 Times piece (£) on antisemitism, way before the issue became a hot topic. 

From an emotional angle, admittedly, I think the label ‘back-stabber’ is unfair because I can very well understand his misgivings about Boris’s leadership potential and his reluctance to be closely associated with what he foresaw as a potential accident-waiting-to-happen. With hindsight, it may or may not have been a big mistake, but I like to believe it was sincerely motivated rather than malevolent. 

One might consider how Tom Watson must feel, knowing that despite losing an elephantine amount of weight he’s still shackled to another humungous elephant.

Not Brexit part 2

Rod Liddle is on top form this week.  I can’t resist nicking most of it - don’t tell anyone. Click to see the video: Liddle’s Got Issues Bias at the BBC. It includes an interview with Robin Aitken.

I suspect that the first thing many of you thought when you heard that a 14-year-old boy, Jaden Moodie, had been knocked off his moped and stabbed to death in east London — the first thing after the wave of utter revulsion and pity at a young life wiped out — was: what is a kid of that age doing out at night illegally riding a moped?

And then you may have checked yourself, feeling slightly ashamed. A mean-spirited question. Who the hell are you to know? East London is a world away, and they do things differently there. And yet, as is often the case, your first response would have been the correct one, surely. A question that none of the authorities or community leaders has the stomach to address. 

Not Brexit part 1

This is another belated point I wanted to make back along, away from Brexit - (I wonder how many Tourettes sufferers have “Brexit” as a tic?) (If I had a tic, that would definitely be it.)

Stephen Daisley is a controversial writer. They say he’s a bit of a lefty, but since I gravitate selectively towards his Middle East pieces I have little to say about that. However, though he has produced some outstanding articles on I / P over the years, the one I read a couple of weeks ago seemed to me to be a bit of a curate’s egg. The real Racism Against the Palestinians.

                     

“I’ve always railed against liberal blindness and hypocrisy on Palestinian extremism as a product of anti-Israel bias. I’m not so sure anymore. I’m starting to wonder if the real bias is against the Palestinians.”  

I wonder if Daisley just means the racism of low expectations. The racism of treating the Palestinians, or Palestinian society, as inferior; a biased value-judgement that assumes merely ‘being Palestinian’  inherently entails intellectual inferiority (to our own superiority.)

“Yes, Palestinian culture has a lot of work to do to catch up on democracy, human rights, minority rights, and much else besides. But none of this is inherent to being Palestinian; these are political and social values and they, and the cultures that espouse them, can change. This, however, is at odds with the underlying assumptions of Western policy on the Middle East in which Israeli misdeeds are aberrations to be condemned and corrected while Palestinian misdeeds are shrugged off, excused or justified. This is just who they are.”

That’s all well and good, but “the cultures that espouse them can change? Can they though? The missing piece of the jigsaw in this hypothesis is, obviously, Islam. That’s the spanner in the rather optimistic forecast that “things can change.” Islam isn’t going to change any time soon. It’s part of Islam's integral Mobius strip that says it can’t and won’t. 

“The sentiment is sympathy but the logic is pure bigotry. We are not friends of the Palestinians. We are not lending them solidarity by indulging their outrages. We are treating them like a savage tribe from an Edgar Wallace adventure, benighted but noble in their own way, wide-eyed grateful to the white man for understanding their backwards customs. There is your racism.”

It’s not exactly racism though, is it? It boils down to what some people might brand “Islamophobia”. In other words, we are indulging their outrages. Islam-shaped outrages - and we're on the way to indulging the Islam-shaped outrages everywhere else, to boot.

Along the way, Daisley cites two significant examples of the way in which Israeli and Palestinian societies differ. 

1) The murderer of British student Hannah Bladon was given a lenient sentence by the Israeli court because he was seriously mentally ill. 

2) The Palestinian court, however, also gave a lenient sentence to a Palestinian who was convicted of the heinous crime “attempting to sell land to a Jew”. He was sentenced to a lifetime of hard labour - apparently only avoiding the customary death sentence for that offence as he also holds US citizenship, and the state department is reportedly working to extradite him.

“If you get your news from the BBC, you might have missed this story, what with it not appearing to merit a single word on the corporation’s website. Happily, there was space on the Middle East page for a puff piece on Kholoud Nassar, ‘a Palestinian Instagrammer in the Gaza Strip [who] wants to show us a different side of life there’.” 

Stephen Daisley knows perfectly well what’s behind it but he doesn’t say so explicitly. To do so would be judged inflammatory and Islamophobic.

Anyway, “Brexit !!!”