The BBC’s top execs wriggled under scrutiny from MPs this morning following the appointment of Jess Brammar. There were two main lines to come from the encounter: Tim Davie claimed Brammar deleting her 16,000 tweets was a “good thing to do” and emphasised that Brammar’s position was “3 levels down” in terms of seniority, not number 3 in news. He also complained that the culture war is now raging and making the BBC’s job more difficult; and Richard Sharpe saying he doesn’t think the BBC will figure out where the Robbie Gibb leak came from. Funny given everyone else can make a pretty good guess…
When asked whether Davie was still committed to diversity of thought, and how Brammar’s appointment aided that, he confessed the BBC doesn’t ask applicants their views on issues. Surely making his goal impossible…
The Commons’ DCMS Committee will get an opportunity to scrutinise the BBC’s top bosses tomorrow, with the promise of tough questioning over their foot-shooting decision to hire Jess Brammar as their new executive news editor. The Committee announced on Friday MPs will be graced with the presence of Tim Davie, Richard Sharpe and Leigh Tavaziva, who will face questioning on the Director-General’s progress on his initial priorities, the licence fee and “senior editorial appointments”. Sources clarify this does mean Brammar specifically…
The Committee may also ask questions of how the news of Robbie Gibb voicing his concern over Brammar’s impending appointment made its way to the media in the first place. The process by which a board member’s concerns became public knowledge should surely be a subject of inquiry…
The BBC has made the decision to appoint Jess Brammar as their new executive news editor, and she will take up her role this month:
“Jess Brammar is an award-winning editor with wide-ranging experience in broadcasting. Jess has previously worked at the BBC, most recently as the acting editor of Newsnight, which won a number of RTS awards during her tenure. She started her career at the BBC’s Question Time and has also worked for ITN. Jess was editor-in-chief of HuffPost UK until earlier this year. In her new role Jess will oversee the BBC’s two 24 hour news channels – BBC World News and the BBC News Channel.”
The likelihood of her being confirmed in the role was increased when the texts revealing her appointment would upset the BBC – government relationship were leaked. If the BBC was seen to back down it would have looked weak on the BBC’s part. The corporation claims the role is part of the BBC’s “news modernisation plans”, it looks more like a continuation of the same old tired regime…
The Times is reporting that the BBC is set to appoint the left-wing former editor of HuffPost Jess Brammar as Head of News. This appointment will be seen by many as a challenge to the claim that the BBC is an impartial news organisation…
Brexit-hating Brammar’s appointment will prove controversial. She has faced opposition from BBC Board member Robbie Gibb and the Leader of the House of Commons Jacob Rees-Mogg who asked whether the BBC would appoint someone from Guido. No doubt a confirmation of her appointment would prompt an even bigger backlash…
Jess Brammar’s appointment comes in spite of the fact that Tim Davie told staff in September 2020 that the BBC must “urgently… champion and recommit to impartiality” and “if you want to be an opinionated columnist or a partisan campaigner on social media, then that is a valid choice, but you should not be working at the BBC”. With Frans Unsworth stepping down after a 40-year career another critical BBC job is up for grabs. That position will need to go to someone who will rein in Brammar’s instincts…
The BBC won plaudits from the left-wing media establishment yesterday after the Mail on Sunday dropped them in another Jess Brammar controversy. The paper’s award-winning showbiz editor, Katie Hind, came under sustained attack from the usual corners after claiming the BBC had repeatedly refused to answer her questions about whether a fair recruitment process had taken place. The BBC press team said they did answer this question, replying with their ‘statement’ in full:
For the record, this is the statement we sent you last night:
— BBC News Press Team (@BBCNewsPR) August 22, 2021
“The role has been advertised under fair and open recruitment and we will make an announcement at the appropriate time.”
Despite many Twitterati members thinking this showed the MoS to be in the wrong, Guido would simply point out it doesn’t prove anything regarding fair recruitment processes. It’s not uncommon for a job to be publicly advertised despite the new hire already having been decided on. It also doesn’t answer the paper’s questions on whether the corporation’s own rules about ethnic minority shortlist candidates for all appointments were followed…
To compound the row, the BBC’s resident Labour spokesperson Lewis Goodall waded in, claiming the paper’s simple questions about her suitability for the job were “unhinged, simply misogynist attacks”. Shortly after he was told by his bosses to delete the offending tweet, replacing it with a hissy fit tweet:
At the risk of being accused of misandry for criticising Goodall’s manifest political bias, the very political divisiveness of Brammar raises obvious questions. Does Goodall seriously believe his and the rest of Twitter’s media lefties’ open support for Brammar will lessen the questions about her political bias?
An Ofcom survey of regular users ranked Huffington Post lower than Twitter, YouTube and other social media sources as a source of news and understanding about Covid. The majority of readers of newspapers like The Sun and the Daily Mail rated the publications as providing helpful news about Covid-19, compared to less than a third of Huffington Post readers. Guido wonders whether the BBC – who are considering HuffPo’s former editor Jess Brammar for the role of Executive News Editor – will take into account that her own readers didn’t rate the coverage she oversaw very highly. HuffPo users rated their coverage half as positively compared to BBC users when it came to understanding Covid…
According to the Ofcom News Consumption Survey, which was carried out months before Brammar quit and HuffPo closed the newsdesk, just 40% of its regular users deemed HuffPo a good Covid-19 news source. With just 32% of regular HuffPo users considering the online news site helpful at reporting Covid-19 restrictions, making it the lowest ranked online new-source employing journalists – polling even lower than Snapchat (35%), Instagram (35%), and Facebook (36%). Extraordinarily poor ratings when one considers the latter are user-generated news sources rather than a news source editorially driven by paid journalists…
