The BBC never fails to entertain with their so-called ‘fact-checking.’ Last night’s Question Time saw Reform Party chairman Zia Yusuf call out the staggering number of asylum seekers flooding into Britain after it emerged that the Foreign Office has splashed over £4 billion on support for refugees and asylum seekers. Zia rightly pointed out that the UK takes in more asylum seekers per capita than France. ‘Moderator’ Fiona Bruce was quick to shut him down:
“France takes more per capita, we are quite far down the list.”
Cue an awkward fact-check of her own fact-check. Not long after, Bruce admitted Zia was actually “right” before hastily moving on. No apology, of course. Doubt BBC Verify were the ones to tell her she was wrong…
Disgraced BBC presenter Huw Edwards has been sentenced to six months imprisonment suspended for two years with a requirement to complete a sex offender programme. As the chief magistrate told Huw, his “reputation is now in tatters”…
The court was told today that Edwards paid between £1,000 and £1,500 to a convicted paedophile, Alex Williams, for images of child sex abuse. On one occasion, Edwards replied “f***” to an indecent video of an underage child, before wishing the paedophile a Happy Christmas. Meanwhile, Edwards’ defence claimed he was “mentally vulnerable” and has “no memory of viewing any of the images”. Not a good look for the BBC…
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…
Paula Barker, Liverpool Wavertree MP backing Andy Burnham, told Times Radio there wouldn’t be trouble from the markets under Burnham:
“The markets will have to fall in line.”