Fawlty analogy

It is widely believed that Julie Birchill  coined a phrase that goes something like  “A stupid person’s idea of a smart person.” Other versions of the same thing can occasionally appear, such as “a stupid person’s idea of an intellectual” or sometimes it’s “dumb person” who has the idea, and it sometimes appertains to Stephen Fry. Anyway, I think it applies perfectly to this MCB report by The Centre for Media Monitoring. 

“The Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM) is a project of the Muslim Council of Britain” 

This report looks (to me) rather like an example of a semi-literate person’s idea of an academic study, or a dumb person’s idea of deeply intellectual analysis.  I hope Julie Birchill is okay with that comparison in case I look like a poor man's Julie Birchill (?) or dumb person’s idea of someone who's trying to be her. (I wish.)

I can’t deconstruct this report because life’s too short to skin this kind of word salad, and to be honest, I just think it’s laughable, and furthermore, I’m a bit astonished (or maybe not) that the BBC’s Mark Easton would lend his tuppence worth of credibility to the report by appearing in the Zoom discussion about it. 

Missed last night's report launch? Catch it here: https://t.co/uHvWFIN7N0

Many thanks to panellists @MirrorAlison @EmmaTuckerST @BBCMarkEaston @NesrineMalik @inzyrashid Wajed Iqbal, & Faisal Hanif, and guests @BrianCathcart John Holmwood, & Wajed Iqbal.

— Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM) (@cfmmuk) December 1, 2021

I’m only writing about this because  of Mark Easton’s amusing faux pas while  attempting to address the vexed question of “whether  it’s ever  necessary to identify anyone’s religion, or to mention that someone you are featuring in a report ”is a Muslim.” 

Attempting to expand on that theme, he began to offer a random example of that particular dilemma, citing “you wouldn’t always need to describe the famous entrepreneur Alan Sugar as  ……”  a panic-stricken look crossed his face - a brief hiatus, and he blurted  out……….. “ a Christian!” 

"Oh Lordy, what have I got myself into?" he might be wondering. “I mentioned it once but I think I got away with it.” 

Basil Fawlty circa 2009

For balance

We have previously indicated that the BBC does occasionally transplant a veneer of impartiality onto its programming by showing the ‘other side,' so this is going to be about the Jewish guy who “happens to be Jewish and British” and is also a BBC journalist. ”British, Jewish: Is Anti-Semitism on the Rise?  

I see that title not so much as a genuine question, more a half-hearted, ‘going through the motions’ investigation into a done deal. Like what bears, of necessity, do in the woods.

 

I do understand that the BBC has noticed the recent hullabaloo about antisemitism,  possibly in the aftermath of David Collier’s tenacious and meticulous exposé of antisemitism (particularly) in the Labour Party. Collier actually succeeded in getting left-wing antisemitism recognised by the unoriginal, world-weary media hacks whose blind eyes had been firmly turned away from it for yonks, arguably ever since they became infatuated with Islam, or Muslimness as the BBC will have it.

This is the BBC’s ”does it even exist?” inquiry into antisemitism.  A token gesture and a representation, of not just any old balance, but of the BBC’s special, unique, own-brand of balance.

I don’t want to trash Tom Brada, the BBC journalist who ‘happens to be British and Jewish’ and sure, one might “happen” to be Jewish, but no one just happens to work for the BBC.

Cast your mind back to 2012, a programme from a whole long time ago.  The War on Britain's Jews was an investigation into antisemitism by Richard Littlejohn, aired on Channel 4 in 2012 and still available on YouTube.  Tom Brada’s eerily deja vu offering brings much of it back all over again.  

Both journalists meant well, I’m sure, but both fell into a remarkably similar trap. In featuring extremely atypical, unrepresentative interviewees, the arrows fell short and most of the shots turned out to be own-goals. 

At the time I complained to the TV editor of The Times about the header the paper had chosen to advertise Littlejohn’s then-upcoming programme: “Right Rant”.  Much as I’d like to do so, it wouldn’t be practical to reproduce the entire correspondence here (with a cautious apology from him, actually.) The editor’s (negative) opinion of Littlejohn was a major factor in the choice of header and it clouded the decision to categorise it thus. He admitted it. Littlejohn is well aware that that “Nobody likes him, everybody hates him “ (and he don’t care.)

Anyhow, Richard Littlejohn wrote this:

“Back in 2007 I made a film for Channel 4 exposing the rise of anti-Semitism in this country. […]

The idea was originally pitched to the BBC after a producer approached me to present a documentary on a subject close to my heart. Ever since 9/11, I had become aware of a growing sense of disquiet among my Jewish friends and neighbours and wanted to investigate the root causes.

[...]

When the BBC learned of the direction I wanted to make the programme, they ran a mile. It was later picked up by Channel 4."

Nine years later, the BBC found itself unable to avoid acknowledging that antisemitism has become a thing, and I feel that the BBC, itself pressurised by accusations of bias pouring in from all directions, was hoping that a programme about antisemitism would make up for the awkward and increasingly obvious deficiency; or you could say it ‘caved’.

 

Sadly Brada’s film contained multiple idiosyncrasies and weaknesses, which bore several uncanny similarities to Littlejohn’s. With a few exceptions, he picked a particularly unrepresentative set of individuals to make his case. 

For example, I don’t want to be rude, but why did Brada choose a ‘convert’ to represent “the Jew"? Was Ashley the only Jew in the village? (Well, maybe; after all it was Burnley) 

The black Jewish lady was delightful but hardly representative of Anglo-Jewry. Instead, it seemed to highlight the BBC’s ‘bend-over-backwards’ policy of inclusivity, where people of colour pop up here, there and everywhere. 

A Muslim chap with the comedic name Mohammed Hijab sat on a deckchair beside Tom, carefully Islam-splaining the difference between anti-Israelism and antisemitism, and of course, they had to include a ‘good’ pro-Palestinian Jew for balance, forgetting that their own fifty years’ worth of biased pro-Palestinian output would have provided that without any of the bother.

Footnote: once again Camera has supplied the parts that I couldn’t reach.

https://camera-uk.org/2021/12/09/new-bbc-documentary-on-uk-antisemitism-doesnt-cut-the-mustard/

“Apparently Mohammed Hijab was so pleased with that interview that he uploaded it in its 44-minute entirety to YouTube and promoted it on Twitter. There, readers can see for themselves which parts the BBC chose to edit out, including the apartheid tropes, the admission of cooperation with the fringe anti-Zionist group Neturei Karta, Hijab’s claim to be “a Semite” and his assertion that it is “impossible for a Muslim to be antisemitic”. 

The Great Escape

The Palestinian jailbreak that rocked Israel 

The BBC and much of the UK media routinely approach Middle East news and views from the Palestinian perspective. Historically ill-informed and ideologically hostile-to-Israel staff are dispatched to the battlefield, where they cover selected stories and ignore others. This has been the case ever since I can remember and despite Tim Davies’s promises, the BBC is actually getting worse.

In this film Tom Bateman shows where his sympathies lie. Openly respectful towards the ‘resistance’, he shapes the narrative in a way that dehumanises the Israelis and distances them from the viewer. He pays the obligatory lip-service to “the other side of the story”, but Bateman’s script reeks of awe and admiration for the audacious Palestinian prison break.

“This is the story of an extraordinary jailbreak” Gushes the first caption, and the strap-line in the description exclaims: “But this is about more than just a dramatic jailbreak.” 

So what he's saying is (to coin a phrase) 'this is not just an ordinary jailbreak - this is a BBC portrait of a dramatic jailbreak'. Our own version of The Great Escape. Epic!

Much give-away signalling is in there; in my former OTT tl;dr mode I would have gone into minute detail, citing each of the BBC’s go-to, stereotypically emotive subliminals such as  featuring their pet Palestinian old crones and those photogenic, cheeky and bravely defiant young Palestinian lads Jon Donnison used to be so fond of. But life’s too short to skin a biased BBC film, and who cares, anyway? (I do, though) 

I drafted this a few days ago, and funnily enough, Camera has deconstructed the film for me. 

"Clearly Tom Bateman’s revisiting of this three-month-old story does not provide audiences with any information not already available. Rather, Bateman’s project was primarily aimed at advancing narratives and omissions that have dominated but compromised BBC coverage for years, while attempting to ‘contextualise’ Palestinian terrorism."

Slur-gate

Don’t let’s get this out of proportion. Okay, so a few foreign youths did their thing, prancing, spitting, and gesticulating at Jews in a bus. As they do. But don’t let’s describe these mincing girlie-boys with their skinny jeans and immaculate white trainers, as ……thugs! They’re not thugs! They’re just a particular kind of naughty, mincing, girlie-boys who have a thing about Jews.

Seriously, this is in danger of sliding perilously into farce. So Arabs hate Jews! Who knew?

Please don’t elevate this ugly but relatively minor incident till it turns into Tahrir Square-style mob violence. Nobody died. (This time) Don’t let the Jewish press exaggerate the gravity of the actual incident. It makes us look over-the-top sensitive, bonkers and hair-triggered triggered! and will probably bounce back to bite us on the bum. 

No one likes to hear: ”it’s part and parcel of living in a multicultural society” but that’s what many people do say, and sadly, it seems to be the grim truth.

The genuine outrage, and much more a matter of concern, is that an unidentified BBC personage thought he heard two words uttered by one of the beleaguered passengers, and then decided to add them into the (already filed) report. 

It turns out that the “Racial Slur” he, she/they detected - and ramped up from singular to plural for good measure - was a call for assistance, albeit in an unfamiliar language - Hebrew. 

The BBC’s truth was that a passenger had uttered: “Dirty Muslims!” What a discovery! One can almost sense the glee! Unfortunately for the BBC, this threadbare fragment of moral equivalency seems to have been conjured up by wishful thinking.  Did the BBC assume that those two little words would signal that  ‘the Jews brought it on themselves. 

“Dirty Muslims” indeed! Oh, the horror! But not an actual racist slur, is it? It might even occur to some of us that in the circumstances ‘Dirty Muslims’ would have been an understatement. And it’s not a bit like “Dirty Jews”!  That was a genuine slur, and an insult casually bandied about on the streets of Britain in the 1900s. As a schoolboy, my father found this profoundly wounding and hurtful.

Following on from that, I must admit that I rarely watch the BBC any more. I prefer to get most of the stories that interest me from reading and watching what’s currently known as ‘right-wing media. (Not that I think that’s a fair or accurate description) I suppose that makes me a kind of bubble-dweller.  

However, I do sense a mood-swing of late - an undercurrent perhaps, something in the air other than the snowman. A slight whiff of a gradually shifting zeitgeist. Do you have to be very right-wing to be less favourably disposed towards Islam? And what ‘wing’ must you be from to be somewhat less hostile to Jews than is absolutely necessary?

It might have nothing at all to do with concerns over mass immigration, but I think the BBC has even begun mentioning Israel dispassionately - without having to actually hold its nose - if only in its reporting of the global pandemic journey. Covid, the great leveller.

However, I think it would be sad if the Jewish media squandered any advantage that sympathetic coverage of recent events may have given it by over-egging the egregiousness of ‘slur-gate’ itself. I feel like I’m behaving  like someone trying to restrain his companion from getting into a fight - “leave it mate, it ain’t worth it”

Instead, please concentrate on the BBC’s curious compulsion to add or invent stuff, probably “for the sake of cohesion.” It wasn’t nice and it wasn’t clever, and just as the BBC itself has been 'stressing' so much recently over a different matter, the ‘cover-up’ compounds the wrongdoing, bigly.

If you're popping over from Classic FM to Radio 3...

BBC Radio 3 has a Twitter feed called BBC Radio 3 #NowPlaying Bot: ''Hear every song we play on BBC Sounds''. 

This tweet though caught a few people by surprise today: 

As someone quipped, ''Good to see the Tallis Scholars branching out''.

''This tweet has been deleted''

[h/t JunkkMale] 

Like stealth edits caught by Newssniffer, deleted tweets can offer a glimpse into the thought processes of BBC journalists. So when John Simpson deleted this tweet yesterday we can assume he realised he'd gone too far:

Either that, or BBC bosses told him to delete it.

Nick has HIS say

Here's Nick Robinson saying something nice about former BBC colleague/Newnight political editor Allegra Stratton in her hour of need:

Now that really is an apology … https://t.co/CvnM4U5LYg

— Nick Robinson (@bbcnickrobinson) December 8, 2021#

Of course, he's also saying that as a transparent sneer about Boris Johnson's 'apology' in the Commons today. 

All in all, he's, as ever, being quite free with his opinions today on Twitter. Here's another:

“Never apologise. Never explain” has long been Boris Johnson ’s watchword. He has now apologised & he has explained … that it was all someone else fault. He’s threatened those who work for him with disciplinary action. Those who trash their staff often live to regret it. 

I think he's right, but I don't he should be saying it as an impartial BBC reporter. But, as we know, that ship has already sailed for good, like the Titanic.

Of Twa hunters and Emily Maitlis

Further to a post here from last Saturday - the one featuring Michael Crick saying “Tonight the world’s eyes are on Washington,” says Emily Maitlis in her Newsnight intro. What total rubbish - here are the opening two paragraphs of a long-read essay at UnHerd by Aris Roussinos, which expand slightly on Michael's 'What total rubbish' critique:

“Tonight the world’s eyes are on Washington,” declared Newsnight’s Emily Maitlis recently, referring to the abortion debate currently going through America’s Supreme Court. No doubt, in the dark forests of the Ituri, Twa hunters paused their age-old stalking of game to deliberate on Mississippi’s new legislation; in the glittering skyscrapers of Shanghai and Guangzhou, the Chinese economy ground to a halt as industrialists awaited Amy Coney Barrett’s contentious deliberation; high in the mountains of Bolivia, peasant farmers abandoned their timeless struggle with the frigid Andean soil, huddling in their villages to confer on what this could all mean for America’s women.

Obviously this is a fantasy, like most British political commentary. It is Britain’s political comment class alone who are so destructively enamoured of the political theatre of a distant foreign country that American news crowds out our own in the battle for attention. Yet this colonised mindset is only true of a specific shade of American politics: an identitarian left-liberal strand tailor-made for our mid-Atlantic Twitter class.

Mark Steel's wish

Famous Radio 4 comedian Mark Steel goes even further than the SNP here during PMQs today:

 

Did he say 'Hold my pint!' to Jo Brand before tweeting that?

''The secret of Alan Yentob's chat for the 'British Backscratching Corporation'''

  

More on the story from yesterday about Alan Yentob appearing on the News at Ten to plug his big New Year's Eve interview with Mel Brooks - the godfather of his son...

Richard Eden of the Daily Mail has been talking to ''a source'' [BBC? Not BBC?] who says:

This is the British Backscratching Corporation at its worst. Viewers should have been told of Yentob's close connection to his subject.

This mysterious source questions why, if BBC bosses deemed the publication of Mel's memoir to be newsworthy, he wasn't interviewed by one of the BBC's many U.S. correspondents.

And, going back to direct quotes from the same source: 

And if it was considered a job so important that someone had to be flown out at great expense some 5,000 miles from London, surely the interview should have been conducted by one of the arts correspondents?

The feature was on Monday's News at Ten. I've just checked it and, yes, there's no mention whatsoever of Alan Yentob's close personal connection to Mel Brooks. It begins with Huw Edwards saying, ''He's been talking to the BBC's Alan Yentob'', then Mr Yentob saying, ''I know the word can be overused, but Mel Brooks is a legend. A movie legend, a musical legend and a comedy legend'', and ends with Huw saying, ''The great Mel Brooks sharing some of his remarkable life story with the BBC's Alan Yentob. And you can see the full interview on BBC News Channel and iPlayer on 31st December. That's it.'' 

All a bit rum.

"Courtesy of ITV News"

On that video ''obtained'' by ITV News showing Downing Street staff joking about a Christmas party last year:

Patrick O'Flynn: Great old-fashioned scoop by Paul Brand, no doubt about it. BBC News just had to lead with footage "courtesy of ITV News". That's how good a story it is.

The BBC hasn't even bothered trying its usual ''the BBC has learned...'' game.

Transcript - Mark Easton, BBC One 'News at Six', 7 Dec 2021

  

The panel [click to enlarge]

For those who want a transcript for tonight's Mark Easton segment on BBC One's News at Six, here it is. 

According to its polling, [a] 80% said they're concerned about Covid risks to the country, while 18% said they're not concerned, and [b] 63% said we should do whatever is necessary to prevent its spread - ''the highest proportion since the pandemic began'' Mark Easton said - while 21% said controls should be relaxed. 

---------------------------

Mark Easton - Christmas is coming, but so too we're told is Omicron, the latest Covid variant. So after last year's festivities were thrown into disarray by those last minute restrictions, how do people feel about Christmas this year, with case numbers rising FAST once again? We have assembled a cross section of people from across Britain with the help of pollsters IPSOS Mori. 

Mark Easton - Well, welcome one and all. I thought we'd start by getting a sense of how excited or worried you are about Christmas 2021. How you all feeling? 

Man 1 - We cancelled our Christmas dinner last year. There's no way we're going to cancel it this year. We've already bought all the food. 

Man 2 - I'm a little bit apprehensive. The health minister said it's the worst possible time for this current strain to appear. 

Woman 1 - I used to go to a winter wonderland which was all rides and extremely busy. This year I've chosen not to do that because I don't want to expose them to Covid and to ruin our family time over Christmas. 

Man 3 - I live my life now more scared that somebody else is going to impact my family Christmas. I live in fear that I'm going to get that NHS ping. 

Mark Easton - IPSOS-Mori conducted some polling to assess the nation's mood. 80% said they're concerned about the Covid risks to the country. Just 18% say they're not concerned. 

Mark Easton - We don't know how dangerous Omicron is going to be, and I want to know whether you think we've got the restrictions about right, are they too tough, or should we be bringing even more in? 

Man 4 - That is something, I'm quite upset about the fact they haven't toughed up on the masks. 

Mark Easton - So you would like to see even tougher restrictions, Nadeem? 

Man 4 - We have to see tougher restrictions just to make sure everyone else is safe, cos you'd rather me safe than sorry.

Man 5 - For me personally, I think everyone should just judge their own risk in an individual way. 

Mark Easton - You care about your liberties? 

Man 5 - You can't keep locking down, and I look at Europe and some of the restrictions seem quite scary. 

Man 6 - If a new variant comes up, that just means we're going towards being locked down again, so at some point we need to find a way to live with the various variants. 

Mark Easton -  IPSOS-Mori also asked about restrictions. 63% said we should do whatever is necessary to prevent spread and reduce deaths, the highest proportion since the pandemic began. 21% said controls should be relaxed. 

Woman 2 - I think people have lost respect and if you've lost respect, you've lost us. 

Mark Easton - What did our panel think about those rumours of a Christmas party in Downing Street last year? 

Man 3 - Now I completely believe about the party that the politicians had, because it's one rule for them, as we saw early on last year with the visit to the castle, and another rule for us. 

Woman 1 - Yeah. We have to wear masks, but they don't wear masks in Parliament. It is not a big deal. At the school gates. But I think it would be a disaster if the schools closed, so...

Woman 3 - For me wearing a mask isn't a big deal. At school gates. Yeah, I think it would be a complete disaster if the schools closed. That would be my biggest fear if everybody goes crazy at Christmas.

Mark Easton -  Well, thank you for your thoughts. And however you end up spending it, I wish you a peaceful and hopefully joyful festive period. So Happy Christmas to you all! 

Participants - Happy Christmas! 

The Board of Deputies takes action against the BBC

The 261-year old Board of Deputies of British Jews has taken the remarkable step of writing to Tim Davie, Richard Sharp and Fran Unsworth at BBC, copying in Nadine Dorries, to complain in the strongest terms about the BBC's reporting of the antisemitic incident on Oxford Street. 

The letter comes directly from Marie van der Zyl, president of the organisation. 

The BBC appears to have gone to ground over this, so this will smoke them out if nothing else. 

Ms van der Zyl outlines five main charges against the BBC:

1. Your report of the incident refers to the obvious antisemitic acts as mere “allegations” while reporting an unsubstantiated allegation of “racial slurs about Muslims” as fact.

2. Your report treats racisms differently.

3. Your video news segment goes as far as to suggest the Jewish victims may have been responsible for instigating the attacks.

4. The allegations made against the Jewish victims are wholly without substance or merit.

5. The BBC’s refusal to retract and apologise to the victims has caused further distress and compounded the harm.

She says that the BBC...

...needs to take immediate action to repair the damage done, discipline those responsible and work with us to undergo training to improve the BBC’s ability to cover our community with due care for accuracy, understanding and respect. Most importantly, it is imperative that you correct your report to mitigate any further damage, and issue an apology to the victims for all the distress that has been caused.

Now the ball is in the BBC's court.

Further reading - 

[1] Nicole Lampert, CAPX: From Wiley to the Oxford St attacks, some people always think Jews deserve it.

[2] Melanie Phillips, Substack: The BBC has questions to answer.

Update - I hadn't picked up on this, but in another twist the BBC's Harry Farley told GnasherJew that it was his editors who 'picked up' on the 'racial slur about Muslims'. It was ''not me'', he said. And, in a very interesting turn of phrase, he then added ''...and they wanted to reflect that briefly in the piece''. And it appears as if it was these editors themselves who added it after his piece was filed. 

The BBC DOES carry adverts - for itself

That tendency for BBC News bulletins to act as advertising boards for other BBC TV shows has manifested itself again. Bill Rogers at trading as wdr has an interesting titbit for us concerning one such plug on the News at Ten:

"The BBC's Alan Yentob" is again on the reporting beat across all BBC News outlets. He's flown to Santa Monica, in California, to meet his son's godfather, Mel Brooks, who has his autobiography "All About Me" out in time for Christmas. 

Presumably, the BBC's News commissioners believe there's something new for audiences to discover. Mr Brooks' film The Producers, has been shown on the BBC 13 times; Young Frankenstein 10 times, and Blazing Saddles 14 times. On the BBC 10pm News, presenter Huw Edwards directed us to a longer version of Mr Yentob's feature, to be shown on the BBC News Channel on New Year's Eve.

I like all of those Mel Brooks films.

BBC 98 Women 2021

It's that time of the year again - the BBC's annual showcase for women they admire: 

BBC 100 Women 2021: Who is on the list this year?

Well, one way of answering that is to say that there are two men on it for starters. 

And I was just going to post that when I saw a Spectator tweet saying:

By including transwomen in that 100 Women list, the BBC is siding with those who argue that “transwomen are women”.

It leads to a new piece by James Kirkup headlined Gender is contentious. The BBC is pretending it isn’t.

Bye bye B.A.M.E.

Stop whatever you're doing! There's important breaking news this lunchtime...

Yes, UK broadcasters, including the BBC, have ''welcomed the findings of the in-depth research by the Sir Lenny Henry Centre for Media Diversity'' [yes, really!] and ''committed'' themselves ''to avoid the B.A.M.E acronym wherever possible.''

Now as you were.

“The details of this story are pretty astonishing”

“The details of this story are pretty astonishing”, tweeted Jess Brammar, editor of the BBC's news channels, this morning. 

She was referring to a BBC News website report by James Landale, the BBC's diplomatic correspondent: Afghanistan: Foreign Office chaotic during Kabul evacuation - whistleblower. 

Reading it myself and then reading other accounts astonished me too. 

The headline in The Times shows where that paper's emphasis lies: Work-from-home culture fuelled Kabul chaos, leaving Afghan refugees in danger, says whistleblower. 

The Daily Mail agrees. In its account, the whistleblower's main point is that the UK's Afghan rescue effort was hampered by a 'work from home' culture in the Foreign Office. 

That, however, doesn't even get a mention in the BBCs report. It's not listed under ifs 'Key issues flagged' flagged section. It must be a key point, however, as the Guardian lists it as a key point under the sub-headline FCDO ‘working culture’. 

The public service 'working culture' at the FCDO sounds rather similar to that at the BBC. Is that why the BBC hasn't reported this part of the story, either because it made they weren't interested in it or felt uncomfortable reporting it? The ''chaos'' outlined in the BBC piece is about everything but that.

Update: As others are noting, the name 'Joe Biden' is missing from that long report about the chaos of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, despite him being ultimately responsible for it. 

Support for the BBC as ''a Waitrose bag for life''

Writing about this year's Reith Lectures [Professor Stuart Russell on artificial intelligence], the Daily Telegraph's Andrew Orlowski raises an interesting question about why the man whose name those lectures still bears - the founder of the BBC John Reith - hasn't been 'cancelled' yet. His Nazi sympathies aren't exactly unknown:

In an age when so many historical figures have been cancelled, it’s curious that the first director general of the BBC has so far escaped the mob’s attention. But today, blissfully ignorant of history, self-proclaimed “Reithians” wear their label with pride in their Twitter bios. Like a Waitrose bag for life, this is a signifier of their own good taste and superior moral virtues.

In passing, Mr Orlowski also talks of ''the corporation’s golden age of the 1970s, on which its laurels rest'' - which, if you think about it, has more than a grain of truth to it.

Update - One story about Lord Reith's attitude towards the Nazis is told in Tim Bouverie's Appeasing Hitler: Chamberlain, Churchill and the Road to War. The then DG of the BBC was at a party with German Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop: 

One of the few people to seem genuinely sad that Ribbentrop was leaving, Reith asked the German Foreign Minister to assure Hitler that ''the BBC was not anti-Nazi'' and that if they were to send his German opposite number over for a visit he would fly the swastika from the top of Broadcasting House. 

''Wokeness knows no bounds''

  

Passepartout and Phileas Fogg, BBC-style

The Daily Mail reports that actor David Tennant, due to star as Phileas Fogg in the BBC's new version of Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days, is wringing his hands about it, despite his adopted son also appearing in it. 

He tells The Radio Times that Phileas Fogg ''represents everything that’s alarming and peculiar about that old sense of British Empire. Potentially, it’s a story about an England that should elicit very little sympathy.'' 

The comments below the Mail piece give this short shrift: 

• Criticising a fictional character, wokeness knows no bounds.
• Written by a Frenchman as well. Blaming the French for Britishness is a new one on me.
• It's fiction, written by a Frenchman.
• With his views, maybe he should have turned down the part.
• Not alarming enough to refuse the role or have his son play a part too ... ridiculous!
• A fine actor, who hasn't learnt wokery mixed with nepotism is a bad look.

''Questions to answer''

Writing in the Daily Telegraph, former Labour MP Lord [Ian] Austin tackles the BBC's behaviour over the antisemitic incident on Oxford Street and says it has ''questions to answer'':

Was it attempting to draw an equivalence between a group of men intimidating children and their victims? And why did it report the abuse from thugs on the street as “alleged” but present the disputed allegation of a slur inside the bus by children as a fact? I have always defended the BBC, but can’t imagine an incident involving any other group being reported in this way. It needs to listen to people from the Jewish community and look at this very carefully. We can’t have people thinking that incidents of racism are handled differently depending on who the perpetrators and victims might be.

Chronicling other recent antisemitic incidents, his piece concludes:

Israel became an obsession on the Left, held to standards never applied to other countries, and Jewish people in Britain were expected to account for a government of another country. The demonisation of Israel leads to racist attacks against Britain’s Jewish community. Our national broadcaster should be shining a spotlight on that, exposing the racists and standing up for the victims, not bending over backwards seemingly to find an equivalence where none exists. 

Crystal balls

It's that time of year when humorists in the newspaper write next year's news today. Craig Brown has already got the ball rolling in the Daily Mail writing the future for Nick Clegg, Michael Portillo and others - and for BBC Radio 4: 

February  

The head of BBC Radio 4 issues new guidelines ensuring that from now on every programme must include at least four references to mental health. In future, each castaway on Desert Island Discs will be obliged to answer the question: 'And how's your mental health?' — before being permitted to introduce their first record.

They Don’t Know the BBC

I caught the above Guardian tweet the other day but forgot to share it:

‘I didn’t think this would air on the BBC’: the stars of shocking legal drama You Don’t Know Me. Samuel Adewunmi, Bukky Bakray and writer Tom Edge discuss highlighting startling racial prejudice in the justice system – and showing that it isn’t fit for purpose.

...to which my immediate first thought was: Never mind You Don’t Know Me, they obviously don't know the BBC. Nothing was more likely to air on the BBC than this at the moment. 

Just a thought

 

The BBC News Channel's been conducting lots of interviews today about the government's new drugs policy. Even Mark Easton has been deployed. Oddly Kit Malthouse, the minister responsible for it, appeared on BBC Breakfast this morning and Sally Nugent didn't ask him a single question about that. When he finally managed to steer the conversation onto the topic all she could ask him about was drug use in the Houses of Parliament. Important as that might be, if you've got the policing minister and you're lining up lots of people to comment on and criticise his government's drugs strategy throughout the day you should surely try to spare at least a minute or two of an 11-minute interview to question him about it?

Anyhow, when BBC home editor Mark Easton discussed the matter with Victoria Derbyshire at 9:40 this morning, he began by stating that with the drugs debate ''there are two broad views'': One is that we should see this as a criminal justice issue, be tough and crack down; the other is that we should see it as a public health issue and look at treatment and prevention and recovery. Guess which view Mark Easton made the case for [plus three separate mentions of funding cuts]? And there he was again later at 13:38 on the News Channel with one of his leading questions asking report author Dame Carol Black if the Government was ''preoccupied'' with the criminal justice element. 

Tyson's fury

Morecambe's very own Tyson Fury is giving the BBC a good hammering again over Sports Personality of the Year. For the second year running, the mighty boxer is threatening the BBC with legal action if they put him on their SPOTY shortlist. The comments below the Telegraph report are very much in his corner. One commenter recalled something I didn't remember at all, BBC presenter Clive Myrie in 2015 calling him a ''d🦆🦆🦆head''.  [''You can't be a d🦆🦆🦆head and win Sports Personality of the Year''.] That might not have helped.

Doctor Who vs the face-aches

  

The days when Spiked never used to criticise the BBC are long gone. 

They have a piece today about a Kirsty Wark-fronted programme called Womanhood which they say was “close to trans propaganda”: 

The BBC’s Womanhood presents trans dogma as truth and biology as lies. It treated a feminist activist appallingly, while letting males define what womanhood means. The BBC seems to think biological sex doesn’t matter.  

Meanwhile, another piece tackles “prejudice against the ugly” on Doctor Who under the headline Diversity: the ugly truth. Prejudice against the ugly is the last unchecked prejudice of our time. But who’ll stand up for the face-aches?:

It’s no secret that Doctor Who has been oddly tactful of late, with the thrills of time and space travel often seemingly taking a back seat to climate-change finger-wagging and lectures about historical racism / sexism. So I was a bit surprised to find myself irrevocably ‘triggered’ by something I saw in episode two of the new series: the Doctor, confronting an enemy whose features are entirely obscured by a battle helmet, yells, ‘Take your hat off, mate!’ – but when the enemy complies, revealing the hideous face of a Sontaran, she sneers, ‘Urgh – on second thoughts, put it back on!’. 

Harmless? Perhaps. But only if there isn’t a single child anywhere in this country who looks even a little bit like a Sontaran – and, frankly, we all know that there are plenty. So why does the BBC feel it’s okay to show something that could lead to those kids getting bullied in the playground, when it is clearly so pathologically cautious about anything that could endanger any of the others? The answer, I’m sorry to say, is that ugly people have become the last under-represented minority on British television.

Indeed. Us beautiful people need to be 'allies' of the homely and the ugly, and Dame Cressida Dick should have a word with Doctor Jodie about her hate speech towards that poor Sontaran. There should be no place in our society for Sontaranophobia, even if Sontarans want to conquer the Earth and enslave us all.

China and the BBC's pension pot (or Alibaba and the Licence Fee Thieves)

The Daily Mail has a Panorama-like story about pensions funds and unethical investments. 

The 'unethical investor' in this case is the BBC. 

The Mail's headline sums the story up neatly: 

BBC has invested more than £150million in Chinese state-owned companies accused of links to appalling human rights violations.

Sir Iain Duncan Smith is outraged, saying:

Licence fee payers would be horrified to know that, in one way or another, money that they pay to the BBC through their television licence ends ups sustaining a brutal, dictatorial and violent regime that practices genocide. It simply should not happen.

He should 'doorstep' the BBC. 

A BBC spokesman said: ''The scheme, which is operationally independent from the BBC, invests in a wide range of investments with a small proportion invested in Chinese companies. The Scheme has published a responsible investment policy and its fund managers are required to take environmental, social and governance factors into account when making investment decisions.''

Priorities

The news priorities of the BBC never cease to amaze me. Just look at the home page right now and see what their 2nd, 3rd and 4th stories are:

Why is a day-old story about a US congressman being condemned for a Christmas photo the 2nd most important story? And why a self-promoting story in 3rd place? Oh, and something about Israel being rocked, of course. 

Sky's choice of top stories - the thousands of homes still without power as Storm Barra approaches, Covid and poor Arthur Labinjo-Hughes - are surely more serious and relevant to the public. 

Who can reply? We can

It begins as a Twitter trail, but goes much further...

Mike Wendling, 'Editor of BBC Trending and the BBC News team investigating disinformation', took to Twitter this morning to promote a perfectly-balanced-sounding BBC News website piece headlined Mandatory vaccinations: Three reasons for and against.

That's one heck of an impartial-sounding title.

A chap called Robin Lee, 'writer and journalist - based in London', duly replied, ''This article is a disgrace''. 

To which Mike [after first popping on his Who can reply? People Mike Wendling follows or mentioned can reply message to limit the conversation] replied:

I guess if someone was completely ideologically opposed to covid vaccines for some reason, they might have that opinion about an interesting and balanced story on a matter of public debate.'

Robin replied, ''There was nothing balanced about that article''.

I will lay my cards on the table before continuing...

I had my booster jab today, and was perfectly happy to do so, and hope that I'm helping by doing so. And I'm not where many people hereabouts are on the issue of lockdowns. I'm one of those cautious types. And I'm as far from being an 'anti-vaxxer' as it's humanly possible to be. But I don't want people forced into having vaccines and I'm seriously alarmed by the draconian actions of some governments abroad, as cited in the BBC article, to cajole and punish refusers. 

So, knowing that, here's my take on this BBC article: 

Despite its promising title and Mike Wendling's protestations, it is far from balanced. 

In fact, it's almost a template parody of BBC impartiality. 

It begins by framing the argument and casting the actions of those many foreign governments enforcing vaccinations in a positive light, as if they're behaving reasonably and proportionately, thus implying that if so many reasonable governments from France to New Zealand to Canada are moving in the direction of compelling vaccines why shouldn't we?  

Then come three FOR points, alternating with three AGAINST points. 

Read them for yourselves and you will see straightaway that FOR Point No.1, Vaccines save lives, is straightforwardly a FOR case.

Then comes AGAINST Point No.1, There will be resistance. And this, in contrast, is also a FOR case scantily dressed up as an AGAINST case. It says, ''The point is, whatever a government does, it will face opposition'' and then piles on two experts, one presenting the 'resistors' as being emotional, the other neutrally summarising both the FOR and AGAINST cases in a single sentence. A photo of a 'gammon' with a placard saying THIS IS WAR comes midway.

So far, so unbalanced. 

It goes on. 

FOR Point No.2, We've exhausted other options..., even has a graph to support its point. It's another pure FOR section.

AGAINST Point No.2, ...or maybe not just yet, is the best yet. It begins with a classic bit of BBC 'impartiality', pretending to be an AGAINST point but starting by basically ruling the argument over in favour of FOR:

While there is a strong health argument in favour of mandatory vaccinations, it is not the only way to boost levels.

Do you see what I mean about this being ''almost a template parody of BBC impartiality''?

FOR Point No.3, End the cycle of lockdowns, is one obviously designed in a rather blatantly propagandist way to appeal to those opposed to lockdowns whilst being a FOR argument. An expert is on hand to agree with the BBC line. Midway comes a video when a passionate case is made for people to get their vaccines. 

And the final AGAINST Point No.3, It could prove counterproductive, is simply weird - and very BBC. It's the only AGAINST case this BBC piece presents as if it's a genuine concern. It features a couple of experts worrying that mandatory schemes might embolden conspiracy theorists and nasty right-wing political parties. 

Seriously, if Mike Wendling believes this piece is genuinely ''balanced'' then Marianna ought to be be pursuing him down the rabbit hole armed with Elmer Fudd's shotgun accusing him of 'FAKE NEWS'. 

The BBC reporter here, Thom Poole, is new to me, He's another BBC 'senior journalist'.