News Later Paper ISO

I'm seeing lots of underwhelmed, sceptical, even derisive comments on my social media feels about Priti Patel's deal with her French counterpart Gerald Darmanin to double the number of officers patrolling French beaches and to increase drone and radar surveillance in a declared attempt to stop illegal immigrants crossing the Channel. The BBC's report on the story is, of course, critical of Priti Patel too, but - being the BBC- their criticism comes from the opposite direction. Their online report quotes only one other person, a critic of Ms Patel: Bella Sankey, director of the pro-migrant charity Detention Action. Being sceptical of the BBC's bona fides , I looked her up . She was the Labour Party candidate in Arundel and South Downs in the 2019 general election. The BBC didn't mention that of course. It's a very old story as far as BBC reporting goes. Not as old as Beowulf , but not far off.

Trees

One for Bella Sankey (see post above): November trees - the South Downs ...

"Do you ever feel that you are being played?"

For transcript fans, here's one featuring the BBC's economics editor Faisal Islam talking to Samira Ahmed on this week's Newswatch about the challenges of reporting government spending reviews and Budgets... Samira Ahmed : Not everyone finds it easy to get their heads around those numbers, not only because they are large but, in the case of a Spending Review or a Budget, there are simply so many them. And as the report released by the Office of National Statistics on Wednesday found, a large proportion of people lack a basic understanding of economic statistics such as employment figures or the deficit and also mistrust official data. That is one of the challenges faced by Faisal Islam, who joins me now from our camera position upstairs in the newsroom. Welcome to Newswatch . Even if we are not in a pandemic, the spending review would be a huge task for you to process and explain, can you briefly talk us through how you go about doing that? Faisal Islam : In the day

A tale of the BBC and two presidents

The BBC has spend most of this past month doggedly attaching phrases like "without providing any evidence" to headlines about US President Trump's claim of election rigging, so it's intriguing that they are adding no words of caution whatsoever to headlines like this this morning on the BBC News Channel: Iran's President Rouhani blames Israel for the assassination of a top nuclear scientist, saying his country won't be deterred from its nuclear ambitions. Shouldn't that be?: Iran's President Rouhani, without providing any evidence, blames Israel for the assassination of a top nuclear scientist, saying his country won't be deterred from its nuclear ambitions.

Fisking 'an Arabic speaker'

Talking about The Critic, I read a striking denunciation there yesterday from Oz Katerji. It was one last fisking, so to speak - of the late Independent foreign correspondent Robert Fisk. The piece's headline, Fabricator and fraudster , sums it up what Oz thinks of Mr Fisk - though he later adds "fantasist" as well. In a nutshell, Oz Katerji believes that Bob Fisk was an unethical anti-American/anti-Israeli propagandist who built a successful career by making things up and getting away it, and he's aghast at the "veneration" displayed in some of the obituaries of him. The BBC was one of those who gave him what Oz would probably regard as a whitewashed obituary , with Jeremy Bowen - a self-declared "admirer" - leading the eulogy. ( Anti-Israel Jeremy and anti-Israel Bob always mutually admired each other ). Oz Katerji puts the "veneration" of Robert Fisk down to the fact that "like him, they preferred to tell

"Oh, I could spend my life having this conversation - look - please try to understand before one of us dies"

John Cleese, thinking about BBC executives John Otto Cleese is displeased with the BBC 's pandering to 'wokes': I hear the BBC has apologised for a joke made in 2014. [Actually 2009] . I would like to apologise for the BBC in 2020. The executives are a craven clique of humorless jobsworths, none of whom are worth their salaries. The irony about the occasion when the BBC withdrew the 'Germans' episode, was that no one was concerned about whether the Germans were offended! Why not? Presumably because people think of Germans as proper grown-ups who can take a joke. And, in fact, they love that episode. [Didn't the BBC actually withdraw it because of certain words used by the Major?] So when wokes protest about humour involving certain groups, presumably it's because wokes don't regard these groups as grown-ups who can take a joke. Which seems to me to be very condescending. Perhaps the only people who really can't take a joke are the

Moving on up

President Liz Bonnin For some time now it's been quite evident that the BBC has been grooming Liz Bonnin to take over from Sir David Attenborough . She's a personable presenter and clearly knows her stuff, though with the BBC's obsessive pursuit of a very particular kind of diversity you can never quite rule out motives other than simple merit (of which she has plenty) for her rise. Of course, that obsessive pursuit is so pervasive now that the suspicion that merit alone isn't the key for someone's rise is far from being just a BBC matter. She's now also been made the first female president of the Wildlife Trusts, for example. Probably deservedly so - except that the newly-appointed vice-president of the Wildlife Trusts just happens to be another female BBC presenter of colour, Gillian Burke of Springwatch/Autumnwatch . The appointment of two BBC presenters to the top jobs in such a powerful, influential organisation (the Wildlife Trusts c

Performing somersaults with gusto

An editorial at The Critic points out something that doesn't get pointed out enough: "No one in BBC management ever pays a price for the BBC’s mistakes — they just happen, like the weather". (Poor hapless George Entwistle , who arrived as DG at precisely the wrong moment and lasted just 54 days, is the most obvious exception to the rule). We know [the BBC] has been paying itself far too much for years because its defence now is that it’s no longer doing so. Yet if you boast about cutting Gary Lineker’s income, for example, by £400,000, who takes responsibility for having overpaid him so much for so long? No one. For years, the official BBC line on pay was: we can’t tell you what we’re paying ourselves because otherwise all our talent will be snatched away (by namelessly wealthy rival employers, they live in the next media village, you wouldn’t know them). Then it was obliged to tell us and the line became: we’re worth it. This was followed by, we’re sorry, our pay s

Can things get any crazier?

We're well past the stage where even the daftest surrender to 'woke' sentiment by the BBC is beyond belief, but tonight's news comes close. The Sun reports that BBC football pundit Steve 'Tommo' Thompson has been suspended for describing a scuffle between two players as "handbags" - as in "handbags at dawn", one of those phrases footballers and football pundits have been using, week in and week out, for years. There were complaints. (From handbags?) The corporation said, “After listeners raised concerns, Steve acknowledged some of his comments on air didn’t meet the standards we expect. He is taking a break but will be back in the New Year.” Is there no end to the BBC's pandering to this malevolent lunacy? (Hope that doesn't offend the malevolent community).

Bottom of the League

This is the chart in Ofcom's latest annual report on the BBC that looks at public perceptions of impartiality, as highlighted by Broadcast : The BBC is fond of cherry-picking opinion surveys when it comes to impartiality. They use them to defend themselves against criticism. But this one shows the BBC in 2019/20 as falling below Sky News, Channel 4 News, ITV and even Channel 5 when it comes to impartiality: 'Is impartial' Sky News - 69% Channel 4 News - 66% ITV - 63% Channel 5 - 61% BBC TV - 58% All of those figures might surprise you - they certainly surprised me, in that I wouldn't rate any of them as being that high on the impartiality front - but for the BBC to be bottom of the league, and behind Channel 5, must surely come as a heavy blow to the BBC.

Coda to the post above

An update to the post above: Wednesday's News at Ten ramped up the language yet further. It changed from this at Six: One of the more controversial aspects of the spending review is the Chancellor's decision to cut - for the time being - the amount of money the UK gives in aid to poorer countries. Mr Sunak told MPs that to carry on spending abroad when we have a domestic emergency would be difficult to justify to the British people. Here's James Landale. ...to this at Ten: One of the more controversial elements of the spending review, was the Chancellor's decision to cut the amount of money the UK gives in foreign aid. The decision has been widely criticised , and a minister at the Foreign Office has resigned in protest. Mr Sunak told MPs that to carry on spending abroad when there was a domestic emergency was difficult to justify. Our diplomatic correspondent James Landale has more details. The remainder of the report then ran as follows, relegating the one def

The Papers

Good morning. Here is the news. Beginning with Jeremy Paxman in The Daily Telegraph : For so long a world leader, the BBC has grown fat and metropolitan, increasingly scorning the views of the parochial people who are forced to pay for it. When given its head, the BBC can still produce brilliant shows like Strictly Come Dancing but, at an institutional level, it behaves more and more like an embarrassing relative deciding to dance with the kids at a wedding. It’s hard to resist the impression of smug people who think they know better than the rest of us. The consoling glory is that none of us has to tune in any more. And here's Simon Heffer, also in The Daily Telegraph : No-one over the age of 55 who tries to watch BBC television or listen to its radio services will be surprised to learn, from Ofcom’s latest report on the Corporation, that people in their demographic are gradually giving up on it. As one in that age group, my own consumption of what the BBC offers is largely

A BBC ruling

We learn today that the BBC has docked comedian Jack Whitehall's Live at the Apollo routine about dwarfs...from 2009...after two grumpy people complained. The BBC, clearly not happy about his antique comedic turn either, ruled that, although audiences aren't dopey and know all about Jack Whitehall’s slightly bashful stage persona, it is not OK "to take a stereotypical view of dwarfism itself". It won't be re-broadcast. However sleepy you're feeling tonight, this ruling is clearly not to be sneezed at: It's a serious sign of where the BBC is these days. "We must be aware that audiences may find casual or purposeless stereotypes to be offensive", it says.

...and statistics

I read a piece by Matthew Moore in The Times yesterday noting those ex-BBC folk at Ofcom's findings that the BBC is starting to lose support among its most loyal viewers and listeners - older viewers. For the purposes of this blog though, it was the following which stood out for me: Only 54 per cent of adults believe that the BBC provides impartial news and around 20 per cent rate the corporation badly for impartiality. I must admit that I was surprised at those figures. Matthew thought they reflected badly on the BBC, but I found them unbelievably high (with the emphasis on 'unbelievably'). Even that dubious 54% wasn't high enough for the BBC evidently. I smiled on reading their own write-up . It didn't mention the impartiality findings at all, and just stuck to the identity stuff (as ever). Today I read an interesting new angle on the Ofcom findings from Broadcast . Its headline reads Impartiality: BBC News slips below C5 . It adds that the BBC is al

Characters

Twitter folk will twitter: Ben Hunte, BBC : My family and I have been sent racist and homophobic abuse following the below screenshot of me being posted. I am fine - but I will let the police take over. If you disagree with my job, or with the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines, or with wider LGBT-related decisions I am not involved in, please do not contact my family with hate. Please use the BBC’s complaints process. I am doing my job to the best of my abilities. I am proud of being a journalist and so grateful to those who share their experiences with me. Thank you ♥. Laurence Fox, actor : Hey Ben, saddened to hear you have had abuse. It’s horrible and I know exactly how you feel. My view is that the BBC is increasingly identitarian and divisive and should be defunded. I believe in people, not acronyms. Loz x #DefundTheBBC John Simpson, BBC : Deeply depressing that my excellent colleague, the BBC’s LGBT correspondent Ben Hunte, should have received racist and homophobic abuse in the wak

Only, just, controversial

I was reading some comments on Twitter earlier about last night's BBC One News at Six concerning the BBC's coverage of the Government's decision to cut the UK's overseas budget from the sacred figure of 0.7%. The thread began : Tweeter 1 : I've just watched the BBC News item on cutting foreign aid. The opening clip shows food being dropped directly to the people. That's the image they want you to take in - not grants to NGOs and Governments. Manipulation. It continued with such comments as : Tweeter 2 : Said exactly the same thing myself when I saw that last night. They also opened up with the comment ‘widely criticised policy’ as opposed to ‘widely supported’ which it undoubtedly is across the UK. Total bias yet again in the way they portray/report! The latter was referring to longstanding polling evidence that the public supports cutting the UK's foreign aid budget - a public mood reflected in YouGov's latest polling (from yesterday)

Third Half (sic) of November Open Thread

Good evening. Tonight at ten. A new open thread, just in case the comments aren't working for you on old posts but still work on the latest one (as, very oddly, seems to be the case for some of us). Update : Problem now fixed. Thank you for your comments.

Continuity Announcement

Hi. As you may be aware, the blog has malfunctioned technically and some functions lost. Normal service will hopefully resume shortly. Oddly, it works much better on my mobile phone.

Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669), The Dutch Golden Age: Prints by Rembrandt and his Contemporaries

Washington County Museum of Fine Arts, Hagerstown, MD 21741 November 8, 2020 – January 24, 2021 Rembrandt (Dutch, 1606 – 1669), The Annunciation to the Shepherds, 1632, etching, Gift, Mr. and Mrs. Nelson Goodman, Reading Public Museum, Reading, Pennsylvania During the Dutch Golden Age the arts flourished-many artists who are now household names, including Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669), worked during this period, when a growing middle-class became more able to afford material goods, including art. After the Protestant Reformation (1517) secular subjects became more common in Protestant areas, and landscapes, portraits, and scenes of daily life became popular as a new class of collectors brought artworks into their homes. Prints are part of this story-allowing for popular images to be reproduced in quantity and for a wide audience. Rembrandt (Dutch, 1606 – 1669), Dr. Faustus, 1652, drypoint, etching, and engraving, Gift, Mr. and Mrs. Nelson Goodman, Reading Public

No greater love

Mr Addict has a point, doesn't he?

Rumours

Rumours and conspiracy theories are rife on social media that Marianna Spring is the BBC's Selfie Queen. Such claims, however, are completely unfounded:

Healthy

Earlier in the day, the busy BBC News Press Team also risked cautionary words from Sergeant Wilson by tweeting the following : The reports online and in The Sun about Question Time audience numbers are untrue and the figures are wrong. Question Time achieved a healthy 1.3m viewers on 1 Oct and 1.4m on 19 Nov, a great performance by the team given the pressures of the pandemic. Even without looking at what The Sun said about Question Time audience numbers, it's hard not to agree with the huge upwell of comments in reaction pointing out the bleeding obvious: A 1.3-1.4m audience is pitifully small for a programme that Wikipedia reckons has an average 2.7m audience and which famously topped over 8m when Nick Griffin of the BNP was on. And bringing the pandemic into their defence surely crashes them into the buffers and requires the emergency services too: Many pointed out, quite reasonably I think, that with a captive lockdown audience supposedly turning to Auntie in the

Going for Bronze