It’s armageddon for the Remainer dinner party alliance, so spare a thought for them on this cold Monday morning. The resignations of both Tim Davie and Deborah Turness have them playing all the greatest hits as they attempt to blame anyone but the BBC for its failings. It’s the populists, it’s the MAGA movement, it’s the Telegraph, it’s the forces of grievance and division, it’s those who wish to upset the delicate broadcasting ecology…
Alastair Campbell has written a 700-word diatribe in ‘The New World’ (a rebrand of The New European, apparently) in which he attacks “the hard right populists and their corrupt media allies” for a “campaign” against the BBC, and claims they “hate it because they can’t control it“. He then laments the BBC’s supposedly incessant coverage of Farage and Reform. You’d think there’s a contradiction there for Bad Al, but seemingly not…
Former Sun Editor David Yelland is also struggling to cope. He spent last night tweeting about the “populists” and “cabal of toxic plotters”, declaring it a bad day “for our values [and] our country”. He said the same on Radio 4 this morning. This was a view shared by Emily Maitlis, who retweeted Yelland’s screed and announced a short delay to The News Agents’ emergency podcast because the story is “far more complicated” than anyone else understands. Maitlis, Sopel and Goodall should have it figured out by this afternoon…
Outgoing BBC Head of News Deborah Turness has insisted that BBC News “is not institutionally biased” and that their “hard-working” journalists are not “corrupt“. On why the mistakes weren’t dealt with on Trump, anti-semitism and women’s rights, she said: “I’m sure that story will emerge.” Still awaiting the BBC’s apology…
Deborah Turness gone too. And Chairman Samir Shah is to apologise to MPs in the week…
Live reporting on the BBC News website:
“BBC director general Tim Davie and CEO of News Deborah Turness resign following criticism that a BBC Panorama documentary misled viewers by editing a speech by US President Donald Trump.
We’ll have more on this shortly.”
An internal memo from Michael Prescott, who served as independent external adviser to the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee (EGSC), regarding Panorama’s programme on January 6th:
“The spliced together version of Trump’s comments aired by Panorama made it seem that he said: “We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be with you and we fight. We fight like hell and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not gonna have a country anymore.”
In reality, the first part of Trump’s speech: “We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be with you,” came 15 minutes into the speech. The second half of the sentence that was aired by Panorama, “and we fight. We fight like hell…” came 54 minutes later.
Fifteen minutes into the speech, Trump actually said: “We are gonna walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be with you. I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”
It was completely misleading to edit the clip in the way Panorama aired it. The fact that he did not explicitly exhort supporters to go down and fight at Capitol Hill was one of the reasons there were no federal charges for incitement to riot.
That was not the end of Panorama’s distortion of the day’s events.
On Jan 6, 2021, the so-called Proud Boys, Trump’s supporters, marched to Capitol Hill before Trump started speaking.”
The memo is part of a larger report on bias which is leaking into SW1. This is the reporting that single mothers are prosecuted for failing to pay for…
Media watchdog Ofcom has ruled that the BBC documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone broke the broadcasting code by failing to disclose that the narrator’s father was a member of Hamas. The BBC has already admitted the doc breached its own editorial guidelines…
Now Ofcom has come to the same obvious conclusion:
“Our investigation found that the programme’s failure to disclose that the narrator’s father held a position in the Hamas-run administration was materially misleading. It meant that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the information he provided.”
The breach is so serious that the BBC will now have to air a statement of Ofcom’s findings against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with the date pending. A howler for the broadcaster…
Just 43% of BBC viewers believe the broadcaster is effective in being ‘independent from the government of the day’, according to the BBC’s own data. Of the 872,701 viewers polled, 91% believe that independence should be important. A whopping 48 point gap…
There’s also a significant gap between the importance of reflecting different parts of the UK, and the broadcaster’s current effectiveness in doing so. Hilariously, the BBC says it will “discuss [the results] with government, which will ultimately take the decision on the overall future focus and funding of the BBC, after consulting with the public.” The licence fee exodus is forcing the BBC to make changes already. New media is changing the game…
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.”
