Something tells Guido that Lewis fancies himself as a crooner. You be the judge…
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?
Newsnight interviewed former electoral commissioner and Cambridge law professor David Howarth to discuss the ongoing flat-gate scandal, during which he claimed “this is not a trivial matter, or just a convention“, and that “it’s about transparency and openness“. Wise words indeed from the professor…
Ironically, it seems Newnight had little interest in “transparency and openness” because at no point did the interviewer, Lewis Goodall, disclose that David Howarth is a former LibDem MP, having sat in Parliament for five years (2005-10) and previously served as both the Leader of Cambridge City Council, and as a member of the Lib Dem Federal Policy Committee. Hardly trivial background details, given the topic he was invited to discuss was party political and BBC guidelines state that viewers should be informed of party affiliations…
Newsnight kicked up a storm last night after Len McCluskey was broadcast in an interview with the BBC’s Lewis Goodall, saying Peter Mandelson – who has Jewish heritage – should go away and “count his gold”. A classic antisemitic trope. This morning McCluskey apologised. In other words…
Before this gets out of hand, let me say language is important and I apologise to Peter Mandelson and anyone else if mine has caused hurt. #newsnight @lewis_goodall @BBCNewsnight
— Len McCluskey (@LenMcCluskey) October 19, 2020
An impressionable young interviewer publishes a discussion with a well-known controversialist who comes out with a phrase widely understood to be racist and historically used to stir up racial hatred. The young interviewer doesn’t directly challenge him on it. There is an outcry and the controversialist later apologises. How soon can it be before the woke police summon Goodall for questioning? Will Lewis Goodall end up sharing a cell with Darren Grimes?
The BBC press office is being quite evasive even by their standards, we have got from them that Goodall’s New Statesman piece was apparently signed off by his superiors. They claim the blanket ban post-Hutton on BBC journalists writing about political controversies has been rescinded. The BBC press office further claims, with a straight face, that Goodall’s piece isn’t controversial.
All we got on the record from the BBC press office on the record is the following:
“It’s a piece of journalistic analysis, based on evidence, that holds to account the handling of examinations by all of the political parties that govern the UK.”
The piece spectacularly breaches the BBC’s own guidelines on impartiality on three grounds; it expresses strong views, advocates against a policy and exhorts a change in policy.
- The claim that “a government led by technocrats nearly destroyed a generation of social mobility” is a strong and controversial view.
- Expresses the view that “even if a set of algorithms could ever predict with certainty how an individual might perform then, for reasons of politics and, yes, morality, they probably shouldn’t.” A clear statement of self-defined – by Goodall – political and moral opinion.
- Expresses the view that the exams crisis “demonstrates the weaknesses of this form of technocracy” and is evidence that the data driven government as espoused by Dominic Cummings is a flawed “dataocracy”.
The whole article’s thrust implicitly advocates a change in government policy. That is not appropriate from the supposedly neutral policy editor at BBC Newsnight. Goodall should resign. Or be fired.
Lots of rumblings after the New Statesman unveiled their frontpage cover story about the government’s exam “ineptitude”, with graphics accusing the government of lying and describing them as having created a “lost generation”. The furore was sparked because the inflammatory headline was above Lewis Goodall’s byline – who despite consistently acting like an independent comment writer, currently remains the BBC’s supposedly impartial Newsnight policy editor. Downing Street sources detest him as a hostile opponent.
Back in 2007, the BBC banned Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis after one solitary outing in the Spectator the weekly right-of-centre rival to the Statesman, with the corporation saying “Emily should never have been given permission to become a contributing editor to the Spectator, or any other magazine.” At the time, the Guardian reported:
“After the Hutton inquiry, BBC journalists were banned from writing about political and controversial events in newspapers or magazines.”
The single most controversial issue in politics this week has been the government’s inept handling of the exam grades issue, the very issue that is the cover story in the Statesman under Lewis Goodall’s byline. How can we trust Goodall to be impartial on television on Newsnight when by day he writes for a left-of-centre magazine on the controversial issue of the moment? The only difference Guido can see with the Maitlis case is the different political slants of the Spectator and the New Statesman. The BBC’s press office has been contacted for an explanation and has yet to respond…
