Matt Chorley is making waves in his new role presenting BBC 5 Live. His first interview with Prime Minister Starmer unearthed the explosive story that Keir’s daughter was getting a Siberian kitten, and today he was discussing the ins and outs of the benefits of Labour’s new Renters’ Rights Bill. Chorley brought on the director of Generation Rent, Ben Twomey to heap praise on the new policy. Though the top hack forgot to mention the rest of Twomey’s resume…
Twomey stood as the Labour candidate for Police and Crime Commissioner in Warwickshire in 2021. He’s also a long-standing member of the Labour Homelessness Campaign. No surprise that the activist was so supportive of Labour’s plan, then…
This morning the Today Programme brought on the BBC’s North America editor, Sarah Smith, to give her analysis of Tim Walz‘ running-mate speech at the Democratic National Convention. What followed was pure fawning praise:
“It was a very impressive performance from somebody who is not an experienced public speaker and he gave the energy of your favorite high school teacher suddenly stepping up to the plate and telling the country things could be better I thought it was really interestingly brief which is always merciful in political speeches and extremely effective and he showed that this is a man who is a campaigner who is ready for the national stage even though I think most people in that hall had not heard of him three weeks ago.“
Nick Robinson tried to offer some counter by weakly adding that Republicans call Walz a “phony“. Smith was having none of it:
“That was a man dripping in authenticity that we saw appear there tonight. Somebody really very very unaffected by the national stage who looked entirely what he is: A former high school teacher a former football coach, the governor of a small state who’s proud of what he’s achieved in that state and who wants to bring things to America. There is nothing about him that seems contrived in any way at all. Now maybe you don’t want somebody bringing the ‘big dad’ energy to the campaign maybe you don’t like his small-town values but I think it would be very difficult to describe him as a phony of any kind.“
Robinson then also gave up with the impartiality malarkey and said Walz is a “very good warm-up act too“. To much agreement:
“He does, and and he was talking a lot about how proud he is of Harris and how great she will be for the country and he was a very very effective spokesperson for her.“
The entire 23-minute episode of Smith’s Americast episode about JD Vance’s RNC speech featured only impartial, to-be-expected coverage. Guido leaves it up to co-conspirators to decide whether today’s coverage corresponds with the BBC’s impartiality guidelines…
Disgraced presenter Huw Edwards has been asked by the BBC to pay back the salary he earned after his arrest in November – the princely sum of over £200,000. The letter from the BBC Chair states Edwards had “behaved in bad faith”. To say the least…
A reminder: BBC boss Tim Davie did know of Huw’s arrest in November over having Category A images of children, though continued to pay him till his resignation in April. Still, the question remains: Will the BBC cut his taxpayer-funded £300,000 pension?
Another day, another episode of BBC Verify failing to mark its own homework. This morning they published an article covering a shocking video of men charging towards a silver BMW, forcing open its doors, and attacking those inside. BBC Verify were quick to identify those involved: an “angry crowd of white men” attacking people of “Asian heritage”. Only problem is they appear to have ‘mis-spoke’ when labelling the attacked…
Humberside Police had to tell the BBC that the people targeted by the “white angry men” were actually Eastern European, not Asian, prompting the fact-checker site to swiftly update its headline. Considering the division has 63 people with combined salary costs of £3.2 million, one would assume they were more thorough when covering contentious issues like this…
The Huw Edwards scandal has blown the lid off the BBC’s HR practices. In the wake of Edwards’ disgrace, employees are stepping forward to reveal that complaints about top BBC talent are routinely swept under the carpet. Whistleblowers against Edwards report their evidence was flat-out “ignored”. Some workers are more equal than others…
It’s odd, then, that the BBC’s HR department is so ineffective, considering that as of February, they boasted a staggering 331 HR staff members. Just the top four HR directors alone pocketed a whopping £815,000 last year. All this on the taxpayers’ tab…
Veteran wonk Sam Bowman pointed out on Twitter that BBC Verify seems to have slowed down recently with old stories on its top page. Sure enough, only half of the top stories you see when landing on its page are from this week. Scroll down and more items are from June. One is even from December last year…
Guido got in touch with the BBC to ask about this and was told that it’s “completely untrue to say that there have been cuts to Verify… It’s business as usual.” That is: “it’s always been like this”…
According to an FOI request from Guido, the BBC moved staff from other departments into the BBC Verify Team this year – As of February 2024 there were 63 people with combined salary costs of a whopping £3.2 million. Last month they advertised a correspondent position in the team for £69,000…
According to the ‘latest updates’ section, since the beginning of last week Verify has produced nine stories. Nine stories in twelve days – that’s 32 hours per story. It also means that the 63 staff have been paid around £13,675 per article. Maybe the BBC should verify this project’s value for taxpayer money…
Former leader of the SNP in Westminster Ian Blackford told Times Radio why he believes Nicola Sturgeon’s claim that she spent no time in the kitchen and therefore didn’t see any of her husband’s purchases:
“She doesn’t have a passion for cooking.”