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They say the internet never forgets, making 'offense archaeology' possible. Digging deeply, Guido Fawkes is really going to town on the newly appointed editor of BBC Radio Wales and Sport, Carolyn Hitt. She's clearly one of life's perpetual Twitterers.  In recent years, she's keenly declared her dislike of Brexit and Tories, and declared that, though a life-long Labour voter, she'd voted Plaid Cymru as that was the party that 'reflects unambiguously about how I feel about Brexit'. She's also - within the last five or so years - written articles slamming the Welsh for voting for Brexit, backed Welsh independence, expressed admiration for Jeremy Corbyn and slammed The Sun , The Daily Mail and the Daily Express as “far-right rags”. So her views are clear. I've just done five minutes of digging myself on Twitter using the terms 'UKIP' and 'Farage' - which are so fruitful because they tap into how certain people react

Dr Amy Binns and Sophie Arnold of the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) have produced guidance for journalists to help them report court cases that involve a transgender defendant. Their work strikes me as being very sensible and useful, and clearly written too. It's well worth reading: 1. Avoid using definitive words without caveat especially in headlines and introductions. Headlines which use the word “woman” to describe a transwoman implies that the writer, and publication, agrees with the proposition “Transwomen are women”. This is an opinion, not a fact, and so should not be used in the headline of a news report. Similarly, describing a person who has recently changed their name as a “transwoman” implies to the general reader that the person has made a sincere, permanent commitment to a gender change, probably with medical treatment. This may not be the case. In headlines, the words woman or transwoman are better avoided. In body copy, phrases can be used such as

[ h/t StewGreen ] History Debunked's Simon Webb has a new video  out about how history is being faked for woke reasons and how the BBC sometimes simply swallows and regurgitates such fake history. It's very obvious from Googling around that some 'journalist' at the BBC, back in 2017, simply Googled around too, read some revisionist 'black history' sites, wrote the following and got it published on the BBC website , where it still sits five years later under the headline  BBC 100 Women: Nine things you didn't know were invented by women : 2. Caller ID and call waiting - Dr Shirley Ann Jackson   Dr Shirley Ann Jackson is an American theoretical physicist, whose research from the 1970s is responsible for caller ID and call waiting.   Her breakthroughs in telecommunications have also enabled others to invent the portable fax, fibre optic cables and solar cells.   She is the first African-American woman to gain a PhD from the Massachusetts Instit

It only seems like yesterday, but was actually two days ago , that I wonder aloud whether the BBC's capitulation to a complainant's call for the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) to be labelled when introduced (e.g. as 'free-market') would lead to think tanks from other parts of the political spectrum receiving similar treatment. I specifically mentioned BBC favourite the Resolution Foundation. Well, the BBC is making headline news of another Resolution Foundation report today under the headline Levelling up to cost billions more than government thinks, says think tank and, no, there's not a label in sight in that article. It's simply 'the Resolution Found' and 'the think tank'. Much as could have been guessed.

We all mistakes, but the BBC's online report about the Nasa launch of its first rocket from an Australian commercial spaceport went through five versions and four edits - and eight hours! - before someone corrected a rather big numerical blunder. Earlier versions said : But the data gathered in that time will help illuminate the secrets of star constellations 430 million light years away , says the chief executive of Equatorial Launch Australia, which runs the space centre. "Without getting too deep into the science, it was effectively a large X-ray camera looking at various... phenomenon and trying to capture parts of boulders in the Milky Way and particularly the star cluster of Alpha Centauri," Michael Jones told the local network Nine. The latest version says : But the data gathered by the mission's X-ray camera in that time will help illuminate the secrets of Alpha Centauri A and B, the closest double-star system to Earth that is located just 4.3 light

Language over abortion is clearly tricky, especially if you're broadcaster like the BBC with commitments to impartiality on such issues. The BBC News website report Roe v Wade: The world reacts to US abortion ruling , first published on Saturday, really went out of its way to cover all bases. It used 'pro-abortion' and 'pro-choice' and 'reproductive rights' campaigners' and 'gender justice activists' for one side and 'anti-abortion' and 'pro-life' for the other side. Suddenly today one of those phrases was removed and replaced...and I bet you can guess which one [click to enlarge]. And, at much the same time, a newer report Abortion care summit brings clinic buffer zones closer has now seen an identical edit [another enlarging click needed]: Perhaps the most surprising thing here is that some BBC journalists were using the phrase in the first place.

Just checking through our archive for our use of the word 'labyrinthine' - plus 'labyrinth' - to describe the BBC's tortuous complaints process, I find I've used it in five posts over the years - in 2013, 2014, 2017 and 2019. So it's gratifying to find that a former BBC head of news, Roger Mosey, and Ofcom's Kevin Bakhurst, both used exactly the same term to describe the BBC complaints process on this week's The Media Show on BBC Radio 4. It feels like vindication. Roger Mosey described the BBC as being “rather bad at accountability”: Roger Mosey : And now I'm outside the BBC you see that accountability is really important, and it's very crucial for the BBC that it is accountable. I think it's rather bad at accountability really. The complaints process is very complicated. I've only ever...Since I've been outside I've made one complaint in eight and a half years. And I know the system. And you just got stuck in this

I've belatedly caught up with this week's The Media Show where Ros Atkins talked to Ofcom's Kevin Bakhurst; Owen Meredith of the News Media Association; former BBC head of news Roger Mosey; and Alice Enders of Enders Analysis. Various thoughts flitted across my mind while listening to it, e.g. I tutted when Ros said: But on the broader issue of complaints. Here's a statement today from the BBC - and, by the way, we did invite the BBC onto the programme, but they've sent us a statement. It's always a little daft when the BBC declines to speak to itself. This led into my next thought, concerning Ros's role in the programme. One admirable quirk of the BBC, especially during John Humphrys or Eddie Mair's interviews with BBC people during times of crisis for the BBC, was that BBC interviewers can go in surprisingly hard on the BBC. One DG, George Entwistle, had to go after a particularly high-temperature John Humphrys roasting. Maybe it was because th

Any regular listeners to BBC Radio 3 will be familiar with Dr. Matthew Sweet , presenter of its film music programme Sound of Cinema and its late night discussion programme Free Thinking . Here he is on Twitter today calling for Ofcom to investigate GB News: I think it's time for Ofcom to investigate GB News for spreading anti-vax misinformation. It's Naomi Wolf again, building another conspiracy theory from data she doesn't understand - this time about recent neonatal deaths rather than Victorian legal records. In this interview Mark Steyn accepts her false claims about a rise in neonatal deaths in Ontario as truth and amplifies them. Then he agrees with her proposition that Bill Gates has bribed the BBC into suppressing the facts about it. Here are the facts . She then makes some defamatory allegations about an Office of National Statistics employee, who, she says, conceded that he had lied to the public. I recall the exchange from her now-defunct twitter feed, and

You've got to hand it to whoever at the BBC selected the photo of Prince Charles here. They couldn't have chosen a better one to make him look shifty. From that photo, he's clearly got a guilty conscience. 

Further to a post here from over a week ago, the Sunday Telegraph is reporting the comments of a “whistleblower” regarding the corporation's recent use of Global Butterflies, a trans organisation, for training BBC staff. The Telegraph 's headline sums up the story like this: BBC staff told there are more than 150 genders and urged to develop ‘trans brand’ Material provided to radio staff by Global Butterflies, a transgender group drafted in by corporation for training sessions last year The “whistleblower” - “a senior staff member who recently quit the corporation” (ed - so ex-BBC, which is slightly disappointing. Why didn't they blow their whistle while still at the BBC?) -  claims that the BBC was “suppressing stories” that ran counter to trans activism and claims there is a “tight-knit cabal at the top of BBC News who give tacit approval to gender ideology”.  Here are further quotes from the article: “The BBC simply doesn’t understand what’s going on with g

Certain people on Twitter have been joking that certain other people on Twitter have suddenly remembered the definition of 'a woman' following the US Supreme Court's ruling on returning the right to rule on abortion laws from the federal government to the states.  But the BBC News website has struggled with it today, with its woker elements trying to impose their sensibilities on some of the language of the BBC's reporting and BBC editors, eventually, overruling them.  Again, Newssniffer helps us lay us what happened in the article headlined: Abortion: What does overturn of Roe v Wade mean? By Robin Levinson-King & Chloe Kim & Paul Sargeant The original version spoke of “pregnant people”: In 1973, the court had ruled in Roe v Wade that pregnant people were entitled to an abortion during the first three months of their pregnancy, while allowing for legal restrictions and bans in the second and third trimester. 15 hours later “pregnant people” was

Friendly fire time for the BBC as The Observer loads up this Sunday headline:   BBC’s Amol Rajan criticised for using phrase ‘pro-life’ in Roe v Wade interview. Pro-choice campaigners say hearing the term, seen as partisan, on Today programme was ‘disappointing’ . The Observer 'reports':  One of the BBC’s most high-profile presenters has been criticised for using the term “pro-life” to describe anti-abortion campaigners in a discussion about the US supreme court’s overturning of Roe v Wade. The term, which is considered partisan, was used twice by Amol Rajan during Saturday morning’s Today programme on Radio 4, in segments about the landmark ruling ending Americans’ constitutional right to abortion. The BBC News style guide advises journalists to “use anti-abortion rather than pro-life, except where it is part of the title of a group’s name”. Now, a BBC reporter using the term 'pro-life' in the context of abortion is not what I'd expect, give

What happened when Israel sent its refugees to Rwanda?  runs a story on the BBC News website by the BBC World Service's Daisy Walsh.  It's quite a story - and even more of a BBC achievement - managing to bash Israel, push the 'racism' angle and slam the UK government's Rwanda plan, all at the same time.  The BBC has scored a hattrick! 

One of the things with blogs like this is that we cannot but repeat ourselves.  Unfortunately, this isn't like in TS Eliot's Little Gidding where “We shall not cease from exploration/And the end of all our exploring/Will be to arrive where we started/And know the place for the first time.”  No, however much we explore the BBC, we know the place we arrive at all too well and it never feels like 'for the first time'. Or, to put it another way, we've been here before with the BBC far, far too many times and it's always the same. There's been another horrific terrorist attack in Norway today. Though the BBC News Channel presenter this morning raised the far-right terrorist Anders Breivik, most other outlets by that time had been reporting that the attacker was Iranian-born, suggesting another motive - especially given that a gay bar was evidently a prime target. I read account after account from major UK and international outlets, nearly all mention

I could become slightly addicted to Newssniffer . I find it fascinating watching the BBC edit their News website reports. Following on from the previous post... The BBC's report today on the violent and deadly invasion of the Spanish island of Melilla by mostly sub-Saharan African adult male 'asylum seekers' via the border fence with the Kingdom of Morocco saw two significant changes, highly revealing of the BBC mind in editing mode:  The first versions of the headline told the story straight, saying Eighteen dead in mass break-in to Spanish enclave of Melilla . This then changed to Eighteen dead trying to cross into Spanish enclave of Melilla .  I'm assuming that 'mass break-in' was far too accurate a way of putting it and needed softening into something, so to speak, more 'mostly peaceful'-like.  Then, as per the Newswatch discussion transcribed in the previous post, the BBC edited the line Spanish officials say several hundred migrants

Samira Ahmed : Hello and welcome to Newswatch with me, Samira Ahmed. How should BBC journalists describe people crossing the English Channel in small boats? Asylum seekers, refugees, illegal migrants? Samira Ahmed : When news of Thursday's two by-election results came in, Boris Johnson was in Rwanda, and hanging over his trip, there was the government's controversial plan to send asylum seekers to that country. That term 'asylum seekers', along with 'refugees', is the most common one being used around this issue on the BBC, as you can hear in these two recent reports. BBC reporter : It's a hotel in Kigali like many others. Inside, one of the rooms made up and ready to receive their unwilling guests - refugees forcibly removed from the UK. BBC reporter : The government's policy to remove asylum seekers to east Africa is on hold, but the Home Secretary this lunchtime insisted it will happen. Samira Ahmed : But some Newswatch viewers aren't ha

The BBC's regulator Ofcom reports its own findings pretty clearly in the following four headlines:  BBC must transform the way it serves audiences, Ofcom warns Too many people lack confidence in BBC complaints process, which must improve Audiences consistently rate it less favourably for impartiality Ofcom introduces new regulation to make the BBC more transparent and open Of the BBC's tortuous complaints process, Ofcom have this to say:  Fewer than one in five complainants told Ofcom they had a satisfactory complaints experience, and over half reported a bad experience. Others were concerned about the tone and detail of response; and that the BBC took too long to respond. Fewer than half of complainants said they received an initial substantive response within two weeks, the BBC’s target response time. Furthermore, around two thirds of UK adults who have cause to complain do not go on to make one at all, with 42% feeling it would not make a difference and 29% feel

  The Taubman Museum of Art is pleased to present   Treasures of American Art: The Cynthia & Heywood Fralin Collection , on view now through Sept. 4, 2022. The exhibition features 93 works from 64 American artists spanning the period of 1861 to 1975, collected over a period of 25 years by Cynthia and Heywood Fralin. It marks the first time all of the works will be on view together. Robert Henri, Johnny Patton, n.d. Oil on canvas, 24 x 20 inches. “The Fralins are among the nation’s most ambitious and discerning collectors of late 19th-century to mid- 20th-century American art,” noted Dr. Karl E. Willers, Taubman Museum of Art chief curator and deputy director of exhibitions and collections. “The Fralin Collection contains truly extraordinary examples of artworks by some of the best known and respected American painters of their time who continue to influence and inspire today - from Mary Cassatt to John Singer Sargent; from Winslow Homer to Norman Rockwell; from Georgia O’Keef

I've just been reading a Twitter thread by ex-BBC/ex-Channel 4 reporter Michael Crick: Oldham child sex exploitation report is extraordinary: “Offender A worked for Oldham Council between 1998 and 2006. He was employed as a welfare rights officer in the welfare rights unit of the council seconded to the Oldham Pakistani Community centre”. “In May 2012 he was found guilty of two rapes, aiding and abetting rape, sexual assault and trafficking for the purposes of sexual exploitation […] offender A lived in Oldham and was a member of the Oldham Labour Party”. And: “At the end of Sept 2008, the Probation Service notified Oldham Council that offender A had been charged with sexual assault. No action was taken by Oldham Cl to undertake a safeguarding assessment of Off A following this information or to liaise with colleagues in GM Police.” “Furthermore, it was known by the police that offender A was a council employee and insufficient enquiries were made into whether his role gave

There was an interesting edit made overnight to the BBC's main report on the French general election. Early versions said that President Macron's “centrist Ensemble coalition has won Sunday's parliamentary elections”. The BBC has now removed that statement .

Recently - including when defending itself against claims of bias - the BBC has prayed in aid certain polling data which 'proves' that the public still broadly trusts it. The BBC has, of course, been highly selective in the data it cites. So the corporation won't be pleased - to put it mildly - that the latest Reuters Institute Digital News Report shows that trust in BBC News has fallen 20 percentage points in the last five years. That a massive drop. As Guido Fawkes points out , “According to the Reuters Institute distrust of the BBC has more than doubled in the last 4 years”, and “the majority of those who distrust the BBC [53%] are Conservative.”  And as one of Guido's Twitter commenters put it , “If anyone involved in running the BBC does not understand the devastating implications of that, the organisation is truly lost.” What will make the BBC squirm most here is that this is from Reuters, so they can't just dismiss it. And it gets worse...

Costing some £5 million, the BBC's highly controversial News at Ten/News at Six studio revamp , aimed at attracting a younger audience, was the main topic on this week's Newswatch as viewers objected to the cost of it - especially as it was carried out at the same time as the BBC has been pleading poverty and making cuts. By describing it as 'highly controversial' there, I was of course trying to make it look bad. As regulars will know, I've long had a bee in my bonnet about the BBC's used of the c-word.  Now, sometimes 'controversial' can be used to describe something that is indeed 'controversial' - i.e. with an air of objectivity - but it can also be used as a negative label to predispose an audience against something or someone - i.e. in a biased fashion. This week, the man on the new highly controversial BBC curved catwalk himself, Huw Edwards, presented Wednesday's News at Ten and read out a bit about the government's Rw

When I was a lad I listened to Radio 4's From Our Own Correspondent to learn about the world.  Are there autodidactic lads and lasses out there doing the same today? Are there still teenagers noting down the facts in Kate Adie's introductions? I ask because today's From Our Own Correspondent included a feature on Georgia [the country not the US state] and began with a few facts from Kate. I imagine a teenager somewhere noting down [1] that  Russia has “ a land border with 14 countries ” and [2] that “ eight of these countries were once part of the old Soviet Union ” and [3] that one of them is “ the central Asian nation ” of Georgia [4] “ which sits between Russia, Turkey and Azerbaijan ”. If you were wondering the 14 countries with land borders with Russia are: Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia, Ukraine, Finland, Belarus, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Norway and North Korea. And the eight of those that were once part of the old Soviet Union

The BBC's language police swung into action early today.  There's a lead story on the BBC News website headlined Migrants: Some due for removal from the UK could be electronically tagged . Newsniffer reveals some telling edits . The BBC has evidently been massaging the message: I became II became III became IV became

The June 9 auction of Old Masters | New Perspectives: Masterworks From The Alana Collection at Christie’s New York Orazio Gentileschi, The Madonna and Child. Oil on panel, 36 x 28 1⁄4 in. (91.4 x 73 cm.). Estimate: $4,000,000-6,000,000. © Christie's Images Ltd 2022. Pieter Brueghel The Younger, The Tower of Babel, oil on panel. Estimate: $1,500,000 – 2,500,000. © Christie's Images Ltd 2022. MASTERWORKS FROM THE ALANA COLLECTION FRA GIOVANNI DA FIESOLE, CALLED FRA ANGELICO (VICCHIO C. 1395-1455 ROME) Saint Dominic and the Stigmatization of Saint Francis tempera and gold on panel Price realized: $4,740,000 The June 9 auction of Old Masters | New Perspectives: Masterworks From The Alana C...  read more Christie’s 20th / 21st Century: London / Paris Evening Sales on 28 June Claude Monet’s *Waterloo Bridge, effet de brume* will be a highlight of Christie’s 20/21 London to Paris sale series, offered in the 20th / 21st Century: London Evening Sale on 28 June. Depicting the Tham