Paul Mason: A Cameronite/Osbornist propagandist?

If I shake my head in disbelief any more this morning I might end up cricking my neck, or risk it dropping off into my cornflakes...

On last night's Newsnight, Paul Mason told us:

My final barometer of confidence is Twitter, because every time a report like this goes out saying the statistics show signs of recovery a lot of people tweet me saying, basically, I'm a Cameronite/Osbornist propagandist, and when that stops I think that will be a fair sign that confidence has returned.

Which suggests to me (a) that sections of the Twitterati must be several eggs short of an omelette and (b) that Paul wants Newsnight viewers to think that the charges of bias against him come from the Left. 

Both Paul - and many a Newsnight viewer - will be well aware though that the usual criticism he gets (away from the world of Twitter) is for 'reporting from the Left' (given that he is a left-winger). 

So he seems to be subtly deploying that well-worn BBC argument, 'we get criticised from both sides, so we must be getting it about right'. 

I'm not buying it though, Paul. 

Tweets about BBC bias on Twitter bare little relation to the views of people as found in opinion polls about the BBC, such as that YouGov one which found that though 37% of people think the BBC is biased in some way, shape or form a mere 4% think it's "biased towards the Right" - more than four times fewer than those who think it's "biased towards the Left". 

Check out Twitter though (search 'BBC bias') and just see the sheer predominance of those who hold that very minority view, that the BBC is biased in favour of the Right. 

On this issue at least, Twitter is a barometer of very little other than itself, I'd say. 

When Hell freezes over

For those of you hoping for the end of the licence fee in the wake of all the recent scandals at the BBC, JP Floru at the Adam Smith Institute applies Public Choice Theory and comes to the conclusion that the licence fee will be tackled "when Hell freezes over".

Here are his workings-out of the costs and benefits for three key stakeholders (with apologies in advance for the skew-whiff formatting):

The politician

Fighting the licence fee and the BBC:

                Cost: Very high. Death by BBC silence. Politicians live and breathe by media attention.

                Benefit: Low. A large part of the population believes in the BBC.

Standing up for the BBC:

                Cost: nil.  Will have political outlets to make his views known. The licence payer pays.

                Benefit: Very high. Becoming the Darling of the BBC. Re-elected.

The BBC employee

Fighting the licence fee and the BBC:

                Cost: Very high. Ostracised/unemployed/no leaving sweetener.

                Benefit: Nil. Unlikely to succeed – portrayed as disgruntled ex-employee.

Standing up for the BBC:

                Cost: Nil

                Benefit: Very high. Promotion?  High salary, cushy job, big sweetener when leaving.

The licence payer

Fighting the licence fee and the BBC:

                Cost: very high if one wants to make any impact at all, as virtually everybody has a reason to like the BBC (favourite nature programme, that soap, etc.).

                Benefit: £145.50 if the licence fee were to be abolished.

Standing up for the BBC:

                Cost: Little—join the club.

                Benefit: The BBC continues as before.

Another giant leap for mankind

Io

It's pleasing that the most read article on the BBC News website tonight is a piece by BBC science correspondent Jonathan Amos, Voyager probe 'leaves solar system'. It's proving even more popular than a piece about Harry Potter. Proof of a public appetite for science stories perhaps? (BBC programme makers, take note.)

Voyager-1, which first brought us face to face with Jupiter and Saturn and then glanced back and saw Earth as a 'pale blue dot', has become the first man-made object to leave the Solar System, passing beyond the heliosphere (the protective bubble of charged particles which surrounds us) into interstellar space - another landmark achievement in human history. 

For more of the hard science behind this please check out Ron Cowan's succinct but informative article in Nature as well. 

If you follow my advice though, you'll spot that there are still some outstanding issues, prime among which is the question, 'Has it really left the Solar System?'

Jonathan Amos writes:

Although now embedded in the gas, dust and magnetic fields from other stars, Voyager still feels a gravitational tug from the Sun, just as some comets do that lie even further out in space. But to all intents and purposes, it has left what most people would define as the Solar System. It is now in a completely new domain.

Ron Cowan, however, writes: 

[Ed] Stone [of Caltech] is careful to say that, although Voyager 1 has exited the heliosphere, it has not left the Solar System. The Oort cloud, a distant reservoir of comets, lies far beyond the solar bubble in interstellar space, but it is part of the Solar System and gravitationally bound to the Sun.

But with Voyager 1 firmly outside the heliosphere, “it’s a whole new mission”, Stone says. 

So the BBC's headline, placing 'leaves solar system' in inverted commas, might have been a wise precaution. 

Still, Voyager-1 is in interstellar space. In some 40,000 years time in may reach another star.

Clive James on Nigel Kennedy

Ah, the master is still at it, penning beautifully-written reviews of TV, junk or otherwise.

Here's Clive James, blessing the Telegraph with his presence, on Nigel Kennedy at the Last Night of the Proms:

In The Last Night of the Proms (BBC One) Nigel Kennedy might not have looked like a violinist specifically, but he sure as hell didn’t look normal either.

You could say that his clothes were just an assembly of random cloth that hit him after a mattress factory exploded nearby, but his hairstyle was the dazzling proof that his get-up was all his own idea. Spiked and shining with fixative, his coiffure rose vertically as if it were being sucked into an overhead air duct.

Meanwhile he was playing The Lark Ascending, by Vaughan Williams; and very beautiful it was. Well, if that’s what it takes for an instrumentalist to relax, why not? Although I can’t remember that Vladimir Horowitz ever wore a clown’s costume to play the piano. But then he really was mad, crazy etc. (You can always tell them: they work flat out to prove themselves normal, whereas people who carry on like nitwits crave attention, not solace.)

Tell us what you REALLY think, Edward

There was an interview on The World at One today with Edward Lucas of The Economist which caught my attention. 

Discussing President Putin's carefully calculated two-fingered salute to President Obama in the New York Times, Mr Lucas gave the following appraisal of President Obama - and it's somewhat different to that given by, say, Mark Mardell or James Naughtie:

I think that Barack Obama's proved to be the worst American president since Jimmy Carter. Perhaps even worse than Jimmy Carter. It's a quite astonishingly bad mixture of a very chilly attitude to allies, appeasing enemies, a very calculating, dithering approach followed by impulsive decisions that aren't thought through.

Ouch! If I were Barack Obama, my ears wouldn't just be burning after that; I'd have tinnitus.

James Purnell wants to keep the NOA at bay

The Culture Secretary, Maria Miller, has said that the National Audit Office must have full access to the BBC’s accounts, linking her decision to the controversy over excessive pay-offs for senior BBC executives.

The present situation is that the NAO can only access the BBC's accounts once a quarter, and only with the BBC Trust's permission. 

The corporation's Head of Strategy, former Labour Party cabinet minister James Purnell, has responded, saying that such a move could endanger the BBC's independence. He says that BBC journalists "should be able to be incredibly tough on politicians and people in power without having to look over their shoulder".

To me that reads like a classic (former) politician's appeal to the public to back them against the "people in power" - as if the BBC has no power of its own.

Quite why allowing the NAO access to the BBC's accounts is a potential threat to the corporation's editorial policy is something I really can't quite get my head around. 

Maria Miller's move sounds a reasonable one to me, while James Purnell's counter-parry sounds like a weak defensive gambit to try to cover an errant BBC's back (perhaps reflecting the thought processes of a former MP. Remember the parliamentary expenses scandal?)

Royal Mail For Sale

"I bumped into an old acquaintance the other day. He told me he had taken a job as a postman. He said it was better than walking the streets." (Tommy Cooper)

As they keeping saying at the BBC: Mrs Thatcher's government ruled it out; John Major's government thought about it, then thought again; and New Labour went quite far with the idea, then dropped it. Now here we go again. Yes, it's Royal Mail privatisation time, take three (albeit not Post Office privatisation). 

I can't say I'm much struck on the idea myself, but I'd like to hear both sides of the argument and re-consider the matter, if the other side persuades me. 

Which is where the BBC comes in. Has it been balancing the case for and the case against, allowing its viewers and listeners to make up their own minds?

Well, checking out three main BBC current affairs programmes (Newsnight, Today and The World at One) should help answer that question.

Allegra Stratton claimed the story as an exclusive on last night's Newsnight. She didn't look at all happy about her 'scoop' though, for some reason. Watch her for yourselves here. (Pregnancy blues?)

She did say that the sell-off would begin this very morning at 7 am, as per a "very well-placed source" - so her 'scoop' wasn't quite all it was cracked up to be, as that turned out to be dead wrong. 

It wasn't the programme's fault, I guess, that the only guest they had on hand to respond to this breaking news was Nicola Smith of the TUC who, as might be expected, gave the move an almighty thumbs-down, saying it would lead to the deterioration of the universal postal service, increased costs for small businesses, a deterioration of rural services and a rise in tariffs across the UK. 

In the absence of a guest who supports Royal Mail privatisation, neither Allegra nor Emily Maitlis made much of an attempt to outline the opposing point of view, so I wasn't that much wiser about the case in favour of privatisation.

What about Today this morning? 

Well, the programme closed with Billy Hayes of the Communication Workers Union, who opposes the privatisation for more explicitly left-wing reasons than Nicola Smith - complaining that privatisation leads to big rewards for CEOs, the board and "people in the City" but worse conditions for the workers. 

He certainly made John Humphrys laugh. 

JH's line of questioning here was to tell Mr Hayes repeatedly that privatisation is definitely going ahead and to ask, 'So what's the point of striking then?' 

He didn't attempt to argue with Billy Hayes about the rights and wrongs of privatisation - though that may have been because they hadn't time to do so, as (due to communication problems) the programme had only managed to get the CWU man on with less than three minutes to go.

An hour earlier though, just before the 8 o'clock news, came the opposing point of view, from government minister Michael Fallon. Sadly, he didn't make Sarah Montague laugh.

Sarah began by quoting Mrs Thatcher opposing post office privatisation, then asked Mr Fallon about whether it was right to go ahead with it at a time of strikes. She quoted Chukka Umunna's criticisms that the move is politically motivated and that there's widespread opposition to it. She cited further criticism from the Federation of Sub-Postmasters, who say it will lead to widespread post office closures.

Mr Fallon said in response that now is the right time and outlined what the process will involved - or, more accurately - as a result of Sarah's questions about people's concerns - what it won't involve. 

The points against, sketched in above, are easy to grasp. So what's the case for Royal Mail privatisation? Well, Mr Fallon said the move would allow Royal Mail to access the capital markets to enable it to raise money for further modernisation. 

That's pretty much only the argument he made, and it's not one to wow the crowds, is it? - especially when expressed in such a dry way. I would have preferred to have heard him expand on that point and explain why we, the public, should back his side of the argument. 

Perhaps Sarah's line of questioning - not giving him an open question that allowed him to made a positive case, only to to make a defensive case in response to people's fears - prevented him from having the space to do so, but I'm sure he could have tried harder.

So, thanks to Mr Fallon, I was still hunting for that elusive convincing case to be made for Royal Mail privatisation. Would The World at One come to my aid?

No, all we got from The World at One was a tiny clip of Mr Fallon's speech from the House of Commons followed by a report from the TUC, interviewing Dave Ward, deputy general secretary of the CWU, who opposes the involvement of private companies in the postal service and who (somewhat ironically) accuses the government of 'political dogma'. We then heard from several CWU delegates, all equally opposed to the move. Plenty of pithy arguments against them, still no strong case for.

Still, at least the programme ended with John Cunliffe, creator of Postman Pat (and his black and white cat). Mr Cunliffe thinks Pat would be adaptable enough to cope with working for a privatised Royal Mail. 

So just what is the case for Royal Mail privatisation?

I think I'd better give up on the BBC and start reading the online newspapers instead if I want to find that out. Best not go to the Guardian though.

Breaking news

Well, it just goes to show how wrong you can be.

Breaking news on the Sky News website, prominently placed as their third story, tells us that 

The publisher of the Sunday Mirror is being investigated over alleged phone hacking by former employees at the newspaper.

Trinity Mirror said Scotland Yard has informed its national newspaper publishing subsidiary, MGN Limited, that a probe is under way to establish whether it is criminally liable for alleged unlawful conduct by former employees at the weekly tabloid.

Based on past experience, I assumed that - given that this isn't a Murdoch-based hacking story - the BBC News website wouldn't be making much of it. 

Not so.

Breaking news on the BBC News website, prominently placed as their third story, tells us  

Sunday Mirror to be investigated over phone hacking

Police have begun investigating alleged phone hacking by former Sunday Mirror staff, the newspaper's owner has confirmed.

Trinity Mirror said its subsidiary MGN, which publishes the Sunday Mirror, was being investigated by the Metropolitan Police.

Update 8.55 That said...

Less than an hour later and the Mirror story has already dropped into the small print section of the BBC's homepage, falling to 6th place in their running order, while it remains one of the four banner headline stories for Sky News. ITV News has it in 4th place. 

So maybe I'm not going to be quite so wrong as I first thought.

Talking with Dinosaurs

Talking of the BBC's science coverage, one scientific lamp glowing in the dark of Radio 4 is The Life Scientific, hosted by theoretical physicist Jim Al-Khalili (whose name sounds like the word 'alkaline'.)

I listened to the latest edition live last night, but was reminded of it today by a post from Alan at Biased BBC, cleverly entitled A Warming From History. [I wish I'd thought of that. I suppose I could be cheeky and steal it for the title of this post, but as I've now admitted to thinking about doing that it probably wouldn't reflect well on me, would it? So I'd better not then. Note to self: Use it in a few months time.] 

Alan notes the way the issue of global warming managed to be shoe-horned into last night's discussion with guest Professor Mike Benton, Professor of Vertebrate Palaeontology (whose name sounds like 'Michael Bentine'), and observes that this is par for the course. 

Indeed. You're settling down with a nice cup of Horlicks, listening to a pleasant discussion about Dino, Posh Paws, Godzilla and Barney [as the humanities graduates at the BBC no doubt like to think of dinosaurs], when in crashes some reference to runaway, man-made climate change which will destroy us all, mwahahaha. It's enough to make you want to pour your malted milk drink over the radio.

Still, it was an interesting programme nonetheless, tackling (among many other things) the question of why so many of us get hooked on science when young because of dinosaurs (or astronomy, or both.) Prof Benton suspects that this may originate in children's love of stories about mythical beasts, such as dragons. Children then learn that these dragons actually existed, once upon a time. Their parents can even take them to a museum to see them. 

Britain was the birthplace of most of geology and palaeontology, but Western Europe isn't of great interest to geologists. Why? Well, said, Prof Benton, the Ice Ages meant that ice sheets covered most of Northern Europe and concealed or removed older geology. Plus our temperate climate and heavy population means that most of the surface is covered in soil. Geologists, naturally, prefer to see rocks rather than soil. It's places like Russia and China which appeal to Prof Benton, though their rules on exporting make life a little harder for geologists on expedition.  

He's presently working on a project which seeks to learn more about the feathers of early birds and dinosaurs, particularly their colour. How can they tell? Because certain pigments in feathers (and human hair) can be preserved. Melanin is one such pigment. It can come in two types, one leading to brown or black colouring, the other to ginger colouring. Both types leave a physical trace within the structure of the feather, thanks to the plastic-like consistency of keratin - the protein found in feathers. To get into the feather melanin has to be contained within captures inside the structure - the black-brown melanin within sausage-shaped capsules and the ginger melanin within spherical captures. So for those colours you can look at the fossils and, if you know where the feathers came from in the body, you can map out the extinct bird or dinosaur's colour pattern. So now you know.

Professor Benton's other main area of interest is mass extinctions. He said that species last on average some 1-2 million years (i.e. not long, in geological terms). There may be 10,000,000 species around today but that's a small fraction of the species that have existed. Species comes and go. A mass extinction is a time when more species than you would expect go extinct at a rapid rate. How rapid? Well, surprisingly, some can occur within just a few years. The most devastating one was the end-Permian mass extinction, some 250 million years ago, before the dinosaurs, when over 90% of species were wiped out. Life recovered, though it could have gone the other way - to the total extinction of life. What caused it? Siberian volcanic eruptions - possibly in two pulses or more  - seem to have been the culprit. Gases - including carbon dioxide - raised the temperature (possibly by 10-12 degrees in some areas) and increased dangerous acid rain, reducing the landscape pretty much to a rocky wasteland. And which point...in came the current global warming question. (It was soon passed over though).

Mike Benton, who worked on the BBC's Walking with Dinosaurs (before they knew about feathers), remains an enthusiast for communicating science - and he certainly communicated it well here.

Is the BBC anti-science?

It's a point that keeps coming up: Does the BBC have an anti-science bias? 

The question isn't usually meant in the sense of 'Does the BBC dislike science?'; no, it's more a question of whether the BBC has a preference for the humanities and whether it undervalues science. 

An earlier post tackled the question of why BBC One's Question Time features so few scientists (a mere two in over three years), but Professor Lisa Jardine has recently raised a more general point. She claims the BBC is, as the Telegraph puts it, "dumbing down science programmes because it is staffed with humanities graduates who are ignorant about the subject".

Her essential point is that BBC producers - most of whom are trained in the humanities - assume that we, the public, know as little about science as they do. Hence, science presenters are "told to avoid using any technical terms for fear of alienating people, while arts presenters can reference relatively obscure cultural figures without any further explanation".

She concedes that Radio 4 is now introducing more scientific content, but says that its science department is still dwarfed by the arts unit.

(I have to say that my impression is that Radio 4 has rather less scientific content now that it had during the four-year controllership (if there's such a word) of James Boyle in the late 1990s.)

This passage from the Telegraph article (quoting Lisa Jardine) rather tickled me - especially for the Telegraph's helpful parentheses, which seem to assume that its readers don't know much about anything!:

"Anyone who has done broadcasting on science for the BBC will know that whereas you are never asked to explain who (actor) John Carlisle is, if I say 'mitochondria' (energy-producing components of cells), they say, 'Can't you say it in ordinary language because people won't understand'.

"They always say, 'Because my mother won't understand'. Many mothers now have PhDs, so let's leave out the mothers. In the rising age groups, 45 per cent of that cohort went to University for goodness' sake."

(That said, though I knew about mitochondria, I will confess that I'd hadn't a clue who John Carlisle was.)

Now, though the Telegraph article quotes a BBC spokesman saying that's everything's fine and that BBC is getting it about right, I do think there's a lot going for what Lisa Jardine is saying. 

I've got my Radio Times for next week, and there's not much science on either BBC One or BBC Two - though there's more than there usually is. 

There's a new landmark history of British science starting next Wednesday, but guess who's presented it? With the inevitability of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, it just has to be Professor Brian Cox. 

Yes, he's an enthusiastic, knowledgeable man - and, wow!, coincidentally, used to be a pop singer and goes down well with the ladies because of his youthful good looks - but does the BBC have an ulterior motive for using him on so many of its high-profile science documentaries? Something to do with its ratings, perhaps?

Still, that other trusty and time-honoured ratings-grabber Sir David Attenborough also has a new series starting next week on the evolution of vertebrates, which sounds splendid. Typically, the blurb promises "stunning CGI". 

Both are on BBC Two rather than BBC One, as BBC One seems to have largely given up on Reithian values of education long ago. 

History seems more the BBC's thing, if this coming week's TV schedule is anything to go by (and it is, with four such documentaries), and Radio 4's schedule is stuffed to the gills with humanities-based material over the coming week, but offers very little science - though, ironically, Lisa Jardine's Seven Ages of Science is one of the exceptions.  

Curiously, if you think about it though, both Prof Jardine's Seven Ages of Science and Brian Cox's Science Britannica are history programmes too. They come under the category of 'The History of Science'.

Did that help them get commissioned? Did the humanities graduates at the BBC find something they could relate to - and assume their audiences could relate to - in that? Would they have so willingly commissioned a true 'hard science' series? 

While I'm on (and am I ever off at the moment, lord 'elp me?), another gripe of mine about the BBC and science arises from John Humphrys and his larky, 'ooh,-look-at-me,-I-don't-know-much-about-science-so-I'll-affect-an-ironic-tone-whenever-a-scientist-comes-onto-Today-and-everybody-will-love-me-for-it' attitude. Give it a rest please, John. 

The other Today presenters aren't as bad, but they usually sound as if they want to say 'Gee Whiz!' after every science story. 

So what do you make of the BBC's science coverage? Has Horizon got worse? 

I'm not sure about the last question because I stopped watching it some years ago. In the '90s, it was passing tolerable, though it went through a phase when most episodes seemed to climax in something apocalyptic (the end of humanity, the end of the universe) - so much so that I used to laugh when the inevitable 'We all doomed, doomed I tells yer!' passage came up [and it usually came up again and again in each episode] - but then it started getting silly and I gave up on it. Has it improved again? 

(I did watch one recently about cats, as I tend to watch things about cats. I enjoyed it - as it was about cats - but I saw lots of online comments slagging it off for dumbing down as well).

So what do you, our well-informed readership, make of this question? Is the BBC clueless about science?

And there's more...

So, it's not just James Naughtie who's been flown out to Washington to cover the Syrian crisis (at licence fee payers' expense). 

Newsnight's excellent Mark Urban must have enjoyed the same in-flight movie and now Jane Hill (Portugal's favourite, thanks to her role in reporting on the abduction of Madelaine McCann - something that didn't go down entirely well with the Portuguese, if you remember) is out there too for the BBC News Channel, standing around (as is her way). 

I've always wanted to visit the States. I should have joined the BBC. 

"A display of sober strength"

As some of our hard-earned money went towards funding James Naughtie's trip to the United States, I think we deserve some value for money from the Today presenter's reporting on the Syrian crisis.

[circumlocutory, adj. using or containing more words than necessary to express an idea. Synonyms: circuitous, diffuse, garrulous, logorrheic, long-winded, pleonastic, prolix, rambling, verbose, windy].

He was on first thing this morning (6.10) giving Today listeners his appraisal of Barack Obama's big speech last night.

"It was a very sober speech, and he laid out the case for military action, as he sees it - the justification, which he believes is there, for American intervention.

"He explained why he thought it was in the interests of the United States, in the knowledge, of course, that public opinion, as far as it can accurately be measured, is against him on that, and he left the Russian proposal very much to the end and indicated that he was interested in it, he wanted a peaceful solution, if one was possible, to this problem but indicated that chemical weapons were beyond the pale and if the Russian proposal didn't turn out to be what it purported to be then military action was justified and would follow. Congress, of course, would pause, he said. They would give it a chance.

"John Kerry is going to Geneva to see Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, on Thursday, and he said 'let's hope' but he gave no confidence that there would be anything other than, in the end, American military action. So it was a display, on his part, of what I think he would intend it to be - sober strength."

Reads like a White House press release doesn't it?

Not everyone thinks it was a speech of "sober strength" at all, as you will probably already know if you've been reading online newspapers and blogs and not just listening to Jim Naughtie.

Good value for money? Hardly.

Can we have a refund?

The Diver

I saw Greg Louganis dive in St. Louis
in 1984. Oh, the way he folded and
unfolded in the air. We all gasped
when he split the surface and disappeared.
But he rose up in a shimmering swath
of bubbles, unbounded joy.

Seventeen years later, a man steps out
through the lattice of a skyscraper and
folds himself into a breathtaking pike.
An anonymous diver, abandoning his
day job. Maybe you’ve seen the
photograph? A single body falling, white
oxford full and fluttering, like a peony,
blowsy, on that singular day.
           (Christine Hartzler)

Not all stray tweets are funny

There's a must-read article at Honest Reporting called How to Libel Israel: A Case Study.

It gives a striking example of the potential for sheer mischief that can arise from a stray tweet. Unlike the humorous case of Ian Katz and Rachel Reeves, however, this one is deadly serious.

Ben Phillips, Campaigns and Policy Director for the politicised charity Oxfam, tweeted (on 8 September) about how the "blockade of Gaza" had prevented his charity from receiving some equipment to help provide clean water for Gazans. 

The usual anti-Israel suspects, led by the Electronic Intifada, swiftly pounced (thanks to Ben's willingness to engage with them) and anti-Israel websites and Twitterers began disseminating this latest story of Israeli wickedness around the world. 

However, a senior figure at Oxfam then contacted the Electronic Intifada to inform them that Mr Phillips had been the victim of either a mistranslation or a misunderstanding, and that the delay in receiving that equipment had nothing to do with the blockade. 

In other words, Ben's tweet was a crock of shite.  

It's to the credit of Oxfam that they 'fessed up, of course, and it's a good thing that they did so quickly because, as Honest Reporting notes 

How long would it have been before journalists from mainstream media decided to look into a story of Israelis denying Palestinians vital equipment necessary to provide clean water? Would the journalists have bothered to do some elementary fact-checking beyond relying on the quotes of, in their eyes, a reputable source from Oxfam?

It's not hard to imagine a Jon Donnison, a Wyre Davies or a Yolande Knell re-tweeting that original tweet, then setting out to follow it up and "finding" what they expected to find, with all the ill consequences for Israel's reputation that would follow from that.

Even as it is, harm has already been done. Millions of people will have already seen the original story, and 

Thanks to the Internet, a story libelling Israel will remain in perpetuity to be recycled by anti-Israel activists who either ignore or have not seen a correction.

A depressing thought.

Laying down a few ground rules

Next Monday's Panorama, Tax, Lies and Videotape, will be going undercover in the City of London, in pursuit of tax avoidance by big companies.

It's a favourite theme for Panorama. (See, for example, here or here or here or here). 

It's to be hoped that their investigation will be fair and factual, and a good test of that will be their choice of 'talking heads'. 

There is, of course, absolutely nothing wrong with using anti-tax avoidance campaigners, such as those from the Tax Justice Network, as 'talking heads'. They are a key voice in the debate over tax avoidance. 

What would be wrong, however, would be to present them as independent, disinterested tax experts (i.e. as the kind of people viewers can trust not to be spinning them a line). 

Unfortunately, Panorama has sinned before in that regard before, as I've blogged previously. 

They once used not one but two Tax Justice Network campaigners as 'talking heads' in a single programme, labelling one of them as a "professor of accountancy" and the other as a "financial journalist". Their affiliation to the Tax Justice Network was never mentioned. 

So look out for the names Richard Murphy, Nicholas Shaxson and Prem Sikka. If any of these people appear, and if they are introduced by the presenter as some kind of independent expert, or labelled on screen as some kind of independent expert, then Panorama is at it again. 

Also look out for the name of their campaigning colleague at Private Eye, Richard Brooks. 

Time will tell whether this coming Panorama will prove to be a beacon of firm-but-fair investigative journalism, or a piece of campaigning journalism instead. 

Guess who's back?

Has a former prime minister ever been invited to write for the BBC News website before? Well, one has now:

Gordon Brown's school plan for Syria's refugees

By Gordon Brown

UN special envoy for education

Now, what would you rather do: Read that Gordon Brown article or listen to a Rachel Reeves interview?

"Good morning Sarah, and good morning BBC listeners"

The Guardian published an interview last night with Raquel Rolnik (above), the UN's special rapporteur on housing. Several further Guardian articles followed straight on. 

Ms Rolnik has entered the political fray here, denouncing the British government's spare room subsidy/bedroom tax as an attack on people's human rights and has called for it to be axed. 

(Her last major invention in British affairs came when she called for a halt to the eviction of the travellers from their illegal encampment at Dale Farm in 2011).

Where the Guardian leads the BBC so often follows, and this morning's Today invited Ms Rolnik in for an interview. 

Thankfully, they also did the right thing, balance-wise, by inviting on Conservative minister Grant Shapps for a right of reply. 

And reply he most certainly did, strongly, rejecting Ms Rolnik's criticism and denouncing her for having an agenda.

Given Today's coverage, I was also expecting BBC News online to be plastered with the story, but looking within the last hour suggests that hasn't been the case (so far). 

There's a new, very short article (a stub, you might call it) discreetly tucked away on their UK page, Conservatives protest to UN over 'bedroom tax' report, which merely reports Grant Shapps's denunciation of Ms Rolnik. 

Were there no earlier reports? That's most unlike the BBC, if the Guardian and Today are running with a story!

Sky News, reporting within the last hour, has the fuller report, Axe 'bedroom tax', says UN investigator, though it doesn't place it prominently. 

Sky gives both sides of the argument, describes Ms Rolnik as a "former left-wing workers' party politician" and notes that "the criticism is bound to be pounced on by the Labour Party, which opposes the reform and came up with the name 'bedroom tax'".

Here's a video of Raquel Rolnik in action (pace Guido Fawkes). It's quite something.

Will former Guardian editor Ian Katz run with the story on tonight's Newsnight? 

Immediate update (before the post was even published): The BBC News website has expanded that stub into a full-length article and it's now the fourth story of their home page. It has arrived! 

Like Sky News, it gives both sides of the argument but, unlike Sky, it doesn't describe Ms Rolnik as a "former left-wing workers' party politician", nor does it note that "the criticism is bound to be pounced on by the Labour Party, which opposes the reform and came up with the name 'bedroom tax'".

Closing credits

Here's how Newsnight's editor acknowledged his gaffe (tweeting that the scintillating Labour MP Rachel Reeves is a bore) on last night's programme:

#clever

Ignore the Right, support the BBC - says a Labour MP

The BBC's usual "right-wing and competitor" opponents must be ignored, states a disinterested political neutral at the Guardian tonight. 

"We must stand up for the BBC"...

At a time when public trust is so low, the BBC has proved time and time again its resilience. Its founding principles are to inform, educate and entertain. It is truly a public good which, despite everything, continues to be an incredibly successful global broadcaster providing high-quality journalism, factual programming and drama, and keeping journalistic and production values higher in the commercial sector than if it didn't exist. It is part of our national identity – let's stand up for it.

 ...says, er, Dame Tessa Jowell, of the Labour Party.

Quite a few on the Right think the BBC is a public menace, and far too sympathetic to the likes of the Dame.

Such people won't be surprised, I imagine, that she wants Guardian readers to stand up for the BBC.

The Gutter Press

Away from the topic BBC bias (again), I've been troubled for some days now by the fate of a fellow blogger, Fr Ray Blake, whose blog I've been reading for some time.

Fr Blake has been the victim of sensationalist reporting in a local newspaper. A reporter at the Brighton Argus misinterpreted an honest and thoughtful post of Father Ray's concerning his dealings with the poor.  

Unfortunately, things then got even worse. 

The original sensationalist report was taken up by the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph, who piled on the completely unjust agony for Fr Blake. (I won't link to those reports). 

As a result, the reporter in question looks unlikely to apologise. His report has been a good career move - if success is measured by the spread of his sensational misrepresentation around sections of the mainstream media and the harming of the reputation of someone who is, by all accounts, a good man and a fine priest.

Thankfully, Fr Ray has his doughty defenders, including on the original Argus thread. Most conspicuous have been Tim Stanley at the Telegraph and Mary O'Regan at the Catholic Herald.

Alas though, it looks as if Fr Ray is tempted to give up blogging as a result of his treatment at the paws of the media wolf-pack. 

That's understandable, but would be such a shame. 

As for all bloggers, there but for the grace of God...

Who's a hawk, Mark?

David Preiser at Biased BBC is not impressed with Mark Mardell. To put it mildly. 

Quoting the BBC North America editor's latest blog post, David says "Even here the disgusting Mardell can’t help but let his personal bias cloud his reporting." [That "disgusting" being an allusion to MM's own description of Biased BBC.]

The sentence from MM's piece which has really got David's goat is "The hawks in Congress may not like this but many Democrats will". 

This, as you may be aware, follows the Obama administration's decision to - as Mark puts it - pause over Syria (as a result of President Putin outmanoeuvring them. Not that Mark says that, of course!)

A casual - or even a not-so-casual - reader would assume that those hawks are Republicans, and that the 'pause' is one in the eye for those Republican war-mongers.

As David points out, however, the hawks on Syria are predominantly Democrats. Republicans are, by and large, far more 'doveish' over Syria. 

The incontrovertible evidence to back up David's point isn't hard to find. Try the Washington Post for example.

Surely the BBC's top man in the U.S. is aware of that? So why did he put it that way?

For David, it's clear. Mark Mardell is "an absolute partisan", a "LIAR" and "a complete failure as a journalist", always more concerned about whether things look good or bad for President Obama than about anything else.

I find it hard to disagree. Do you?

Can you see the BBC bias angle here? No, me neither

"Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?"

Indeed not, Sir Toby, and just because this is primarily a blog about BBC bias doesn't meet that there can't be a few Tommy Cooper jokes. 

So here are a few Tommy Cooper jokes.

I went to the doctors. He said 'What appears to be the problem?'. 
I said 'I keep having the same dream, night after night, beautiful girls rushing towards me and I keep pushing them away'. 
He said 'How can I help?'. 
I said 'Break my arms!'

I went to the doctor the other day
I said 'have you got anything for wind'
so he gave me a kite.

Sometimes I drink my whisky neat. 
Other times I take my tie off and leave my shirt out.

"Doc, I can't stop singing the green green grass of home."
"That sounds like Tom Jones syndrome."
"Is it common?"
"It's not unusual."

"Doctor, I can't pronounce my F's, T's and H's."
"Well you can't say fairer than that then."

Without hesitation, repetition, deviation, or repetition...

Psittacus naughtiecus

The second half hour of this morning's Today programme began with James Naughtie talking (from Washington) to Justin Webb about yesterday's remarkable events over Syria, when Presidents Obama and Assad both giving interviews to the U.S. media, John Kerry made a throwaway remark about Syria giving up its chemical weapons and Russia pounced on that remark to throw an almighty spanner into the U.S. administrations calculations by saying that Syria might indeed give up its chemical weapons, so there's no need whatsoever for strikes. 

From everything I've been reading in the last 24 hours, this has been reported as not reflecting well on either John Kerry or President Obama. Their diplomacy has been slated and Mr Kerry's remark has been widely seen as a massive 'gaffe'. 

So I was expecting James Naughtie to reflect something of that. I certainly wasn't expecting what he actually said:

"I was talking to Ambassador Nick Burns, who you know, very experienced American diplomat, a few minutes ago, and I said 'What about what Kerry said?' and he said, 'Well, I wouldn't call it a gaffe.' You know, what happened? Within three or four hours, the Russians said, 'Listen, we've got a plan'. Now if you look at it in that context, and given that this might suit Obama to have a longer diplomatic game to play, while he keeps the military pressure up...I'm not talking a game that goes on for months, but for weeks...then you can see it...maybe he didn't use the right words...but what it certainly hasn't done is to knock the thing off track. It seems to have opened up a new avenue, and from the point of view of a president who's having trouble on Capitol Hill that's no a bad thing."

Well, that's a paraphrase of what Ambassador Burns said, presumably. 

A master tactician. Apparently.

What followed shows James Naughtie continuing to pretty much regurgitate Ambassador Burns's views wholesale:

"What's going to be absolutely fascinating is that the president is going to speak to the American people from the Oval Office tonight, on Tuesday evening, and that is the moment when he'll try to synthesize these two things - the military presence, which he's undoubtedly trying to crank up on the other hand, but on the other his desire for something that does not involve American military action. The Russians will help in that and, as Nick Burns put it to me, President Putin has got every interest in being a deal-maker in this. That's him. If he can turn the hawkish America into a country that does a deal, well that's good for him, and it's very good for Obama, so who knows? The thing has taken a peculiar, an interesting, and, who knows, a hopeful turn."

Ambassador Burns's take is certainly an interesting one, that's for sure; but it's an unusual one, and a very helpful one for Mr Kerry and Mr Obama. They couldn't have hoped for a more charitable reading of events than that.

Why did James Naughtie simply repeat what Ambassador Nick Burns had to say? Why didn't he add any caveats to it? Why didn't he point out any alternative, less favourable takes on the Obama administration's behaviour? Yes, a pause might prove be a useful thing for the administration at the moment, a chance to catch its breath and get a grip, but that's only as the result of a lucky accident (getting played by the Russians), surely?

Moreover, what sort of reporting is this? Is it the biased reporting of someone who has a warm regard for the Obama administration? Or is it the kind of reporting someone does when they've only just arrived in a country and haven't got a single fresh insight of their own to offer? Or both?

'Today' - the first half hour of bias

Just taking a listen to the first half hour of this morning's Today programme on BBC Radio 4 let to the following thought: My goodness, it's amazing how much BBC bias can be found in just half an hour of BBC broadcasting! (Especially if you're looking for it.) 

Justin Webb and John Humphrys presented. Here's how it went.

The first paper review

After the news bulletin, the first hour of this morning's Today programme began with the paper review. Justin and John kicked off (as so often happens) with the Guardian (56 seconds) on Syria, then the Times (59 seconds) on bank 'rip-offs' over interest rates for savers, followed by the Independent (16 seconds) on the BBC's troubles and a funny Matt cartoon in the Telegraph (37 seconds), also on the BBC's troubles.

The BBC at the PAC

The BBC's troubles were next up. Justin interviewed his BBC colleague, David Sillitoe. David gave listeners his opinion. Mark Thompson "left convincing most of the MPs that he'd done his best" while Chris Patten gave "a pretty convincing argument". [To paraphrase Young Mr Grace, "You've all done very well."] He noted Lord Patten's "musing" about the replacing of the BBC Trust, warning it would be a long and complex process. David said said that "the Conservative government" [sic] has been saying they don't want to go through that process again [after seeing the 3-year process to set up the BBC Trust in the first place after the Hutton report.]

The IOC's new president will be a man

Next up was some speculation between John and the BBC's Dan Roan about the new Olympic president, to be elected today in Buenos Aires. Names were discussed. "All six are male candidates", noted Dan [just as you would expect a BBC reporter to note]. German Thomas Bach "is expected to win".

Business News: The Arms Trade

Business news, with Simon Jack. It's the International Arms Fair in London today, so the BBC put in a call to Kaye Stearman from the Campaign Against Arms Trade. 

[Yes, there really is no "the" in-between "Against" and "Arms", which is a shame because it's difficult to know how to pronounce the acronym CAAT (presumably like 'cart'?), whereas CATAT would pose no such problems - though it would sound a little like a machine gun beginning to fire which might not be the effect they're after. #justsaying.] 

Now balance was ensured by having defence analyst Howard Wheeldon along too, especially as he used to work for the security and defence industry and gave the opposing point of view.  Balance was marred, however, by Simon giving Mr Wheeldon a much harder time - the full BBC 'interruptions' and 'sarcasm' treatment.  

Business News: Bad Banks, Bad Accountancy Firms and Good News from Jaguar

Next up on business news, that story about banks and building societies fleecing savers over interest rates - a practise that Simon's introduction described, not entirely impartiality I think, as "a mean practice". His guest, economist Cornelia Meyer, thought it was very good that action is being taken against the banks. A fine for an accountancy firm, who did "wrong", was the next topic. 

So far this was looking more like 'anti-business news' than 'business news', but new jobs courtesy of Jaguar were hailed as "better news". ("A remarkable success story since Ford sold it"). 

Business news: Bad Bews for George Osborne, plus Immigration and UKIP

It was soon back to bad economics news though as, just when George Osborne thought it was safe to come out of the water, "a report out today from the right-leaning Institute for [sic - it's 'of'] Economic Affairs is warning the UK economy could flat-line over the next few years". 

Andrew Lilico from the IEA came on. Simon Jack pounced on him over immigration - and I do mean 'pounce', as this was the question he really wanted to ask and interrupted Mr Lilico to do so:

"Well, I'm glad you mentioned immigration because on your seven reasons to be not cheerful, to be miserable, you include 'the arithmetical effect of low-productivity immigrant workers being added to the working population'. Many people would disagree with you. Jamie Oliver came out the other day and said his immigrant workers were some of his best workers. Are you sure about this?" 

Quite a few hostile interruptions and sceptical noises-off then followed, as Mr Lilico gave his response, until Simon interrupted yet again and pulled out his trump card - an 'Aha!' moment:

"This is a patchwork paper, a number of different contributors, Tim Congdon among them, who's a member of UKIP. Was that his two pennies' worth?" 

Simon Jack, of course, knew full well that it was, as he could see that from the report - as you can too, here - so this was a classic BBC ambush.

I think we can safely say that for the likes of Simon Jack of the BBC, the fact that Professor Congdon supports UKIP, and that UKIP are bad, m'kay, and that they hold bad views about immigration, m'kay, means that any credibility he might have is automatically well and truly scuppered. That's not necessarily a view I, or plenty of others beyond the BBC mindset, would automatically take. 

Still, it's good to have a BBC reporter outing the political background of a report author. I look forward to hearing Simon Jack doing the same the next time a Resolution Foundation report comes his way.

P.S. Simon himself tweeted that he gave Andrew Lilico "a fairly hard time". I tweeted back to agree. He sure did.

Fight!

Ian Katz's editorship of Newsnight began last Monday. 

His editorial choices have been interesting, shall we say. Last night, we got the Arctic Monkeys.

Ian Katz is clearly trying to put a bit of trendy pep back into BBC Two's battered flagship, that forlorn Fighting Temeraire which, due to poor viewing figures and a string of self-inflicted wounds (Savilegate, Lord McAlpine), looked in danger of being tugged to its berth and broken up.

'Trendy pep' is probably how he sees it. 

Last week saw two separate features on mobile phones, accompanied by a request for viewers to record short films on their mobile phones, some of which were then broadcast - a feature called 'Show Us Your Shorts'. Wednesday's edition talked about tattoos. Thursday talked to Woody Allen (though whether he's still classed as 'trendy' is open to dispute). He invited hip-and-happening Bidisha, George Monbiot, Mehdi Hasan and Jacob Rees-Mogg on last week. Great! (as they used to say on The Fast Show).

'Trendy' isn't the word that springs to mind when you think of Jeremy Paxman though, and he arched bis eyebrows throughout much of last week. 

Having done his duty and requested that 'short shorts' from viewers, he said, "I can hardly wait." 

The following day brought the first batch of videos, another hangdog expression and these sneers from the Newsnight presenter:

"Now in this programme's relentless attempt to clamber on any passing bandwagon, last night we invited viewers to send in home-made short videos of up to 30 seconds. We had an overwhelming response. Literally eighteen people took up the challenge and produced gems like this."

"Go to our website to see how to submit your...offering. Another thing to look forward to." 

His face was even more of a picture during the tattoo discussion - a debate provoked by Cheryl Coles's bottom - and his eyebrows rose so high they risked flipping over the top of his head and disappearing down the back of his neck. 

One of the guests during that discussion, Rachel Johnson, then tweeted:

After the tattoo chat on Paxman tore off his mike and said "that was the most ridiculous discussion I've ever chaired on Newsnight."

The Paxo-Katz spat may be gaining momentum now as Ian Katz's Guardian chums begin to rally to his side. 

Former Guardian editor Peter Preston, describing the "new-look" Newsnight as "pacy", has an article today entitled, New Newsnight could do without a peevish Jeremy Paxman. The first comment on Mr Preston's post seems to rather nail it: "Bit of a puff piece for your mate isn't it." Indeed.

This blog, of course, is choosing to follow Mr Katz's lead. Trendy gossip is now the order of the day. A plug for Mumsnet will be along shortly.