Monthly Archives: October 2007

, by, not surprisingly, given its modest name, Biased BBC commenter and sometime BBC employee, Nick Reynolds.

It’s not Nick’s first blog though. He has been blogging for a while within the Berlin Firewall that protects the denizens of the People’s Democratic Republic of Shepherd’s Bush from the reality of life, commonsense and popular opinion in modern Britain. Though perestroika is underway in the PDRofSB, glasnost is yet to arrive – we’re only to see “stuff from my internal blog which is OK to be shared with the wider world”. Still, having seen some of Nick’s ‘internal’ posts, he’s probably acting in everyone’s best interest!

Nick’s first big post, My ‘Friends’ At Biased BBC, is from the current issue of Pravda, known to BBC employees as Ariel – the BBC’s in house magazine – where it was published under the heading Don’t Dismiss Biased BBC, Join The Conversation Instead.

Nick writes that:

…there I was, sitting there, writing some guidelines on personal blogs, and thinking “I’d better find out more about this blogging thing.

I fired up Google blog search and searched for “BBC”. To my surprise I saw right at the top of the page a link to something called “Biased BBC”. My surprise turned to alarm as I clicked on to a purple and white web page filled with anti-BBC invective and examples of so-called “bias”. I remember saying to my colleagues “Have you seen this?”

Shocking! There is a world outside the BBC! And some of it doesn’t like us! My goodness, next we’ll have conscientious objectors refusing to pay the tellytax, being rounded up and dealt with by KGBBC goons just for possessing equipment capable of being used for receiving non-BBC approved broadcasts!

But alas, Nick hasn’t yet seen through the BBC entirely:

But in two years there’s only been one piece of BBC content highlighted by Biased BBC where I thought there was a real problem. There have been three or four where I have thought they might have half a point. But these have been sloppy journalism or poor phrasing, not bias. Considering the huge amount of web pages and other content that the BBC publishes, and that we’re human beings who sometimes make mistakes, not a bad record. Biased BBC proves its opposite; the BBC is not biased.

We live in hope for Nick though! However, ever a keen Beeboid (I put that in just for your credibility Nick), Nick knows a good thing when he sees it. Although he doesn’t agree with Biased BBC, he seems quite taken with the Biased BBC approach. I expect we’ll be receving a takeover ordffer, otherwise known as an ‘annexation’, just as soon as the BBC Borg has finished digesting its latest victim, Lonely Planet. (It is of course wrong to say that Lonely Planet is a victim – the real victims will be Lonely Planet’s erstwhile competitors).

Biased BBC denizens David Gregory and the pseudonymous ‘John Reith’ are both namechecked too. Nick says that ‘John Reith’:

…does fantastic work, debating and rebutting, with humour and occasionally acerbic comment. I’m still trying to work out who he is. He’s an ambassador for the BBC, a real champion. Yet he must feel that if he uses his real name he will get in trouble. It’s a terrible indictment of the BBC’s culture that someone supporting the organisation so well can’t use their real name.

…and there was me thinking that John Reith’s anonymity was to protect him from his fellow Biased BBC readers, tired of the careful selectivity of his arguments and his disappearances when the BBC is caught red-handed. I should have realised: ‘John Reith’ is a true Beeboid – like the frightened Russian of jokes past, so wary of his suspicious comrades that, when asked what he thinks of Comrade Thompson, he leads his questioner all across the city, rows out into the middle of a big lake, where, absolutely safe from listening ears, he whispers his confession: “I like him…”!

Martin Belam, a former (and I expect future) BBC employee, who has blogged about Biased BBC at length before, has blogged about Nick’s Pravda piece too, Biased BBC blog in the BBC’s Ariel newspaper, complete with a stylish photo of Nick’s Pravda article – showing a drawing of a resident of the Biased BBC bunker being tapped on the shoulder by the BBC Big Brother.

Like Nick, Martin takes the view that:

I don’t often agree with what I read on [Biased BBC], but I do agree with Nick that they… turn up examples of ‘sloppy journalism’ and ‘poor phrasing’, rather than evidence of a concerted top-down pre-planned slant on everything the BBC produces.

…which isn’t so far from my own view – as with the Jeff Randall quote in our sidebar, the BBC isn’t a grand conspiracy – it’s an unaccountable public sector organisation, bloated by years of government largesse, with many staff of a public sector mien quite inimical to the benefits of free-market competition among other things. We make no claim that Biased BBC is solely about BBC bias – far from it. There’s plenty of scope for exposing ‘sloppy journalism’, ‘poor phrasing’ and a range of other BBC issues, including BBC waste, incompetence, stupidity, ignorance and so on, including, every now and again, mention of some the BBC’s good points too.

P.S. Wikipedia has a scan of Ariel from 07NOV2006, complete with a sub-head that reads:

When it pays to fight for the right to know, page 4

I bet that article wasn’t about the Balen Report, which for some strange reason the BBC remains ever so keen to hide from the tellytaxpayers who pay for the BBC and who’ve paid for the BBC’s expensive lawyers to keep it hidden.

MediaGrauniad reports that:

ITV is bringing back News at Ten with Sir Trevor McDonald and Sky News presenter Julie Etchingham.

Michael Grade, the ITV executive chairman, has hinted before that he would like to resurrect this much-missed broadcasting institution and it is understood that ITV1’s late bulletin will switch from 10.30pm to its historic home at 10pm next year, MediaGuardian.co.uk can reveal.

…after Michael Grade admitted in March that getting rid of News at Ten was “a shocking mistake … it damaged ITV more than anything”. The Grauniad also reports that:

The confusion allowed the BBC to move its main news bulletin to 10pm, allowing BBC1 greater sway in the 9pm prime time hour.

…which isn’t quite the whole story. The excellent News at Ten was dropped by shortsighted ITV executives in March 1999 after 30 years of broadcasting, one of whom, David Liddiment, admitted in 2003 that:

ITV would be better off today if it had never tried to move News at Ten. Commercially it would still have a free ride at 9pm because the Nine O’Clock News would still be there, and corporately the political opprobrium heaped on ITV and its shareholders for tampering with a national news treasure would have been avoided. Instead they got the worst of all worlds.

Eighteen months later, after much complaint from all who cared about democracy and choice, ITV was forced to reconsider, bringing back News at Ten at least three days a week from early 2001.

But alas, our story of naked opportunism gone wrong and sort of put right doesn’t end there.

The main villain of this piece is, of course, the BBC, our supposed public service broadcaster. In August 2000, the BBC, led by arch-villain Greg Dyke, taking advantage of ITV’s ill-fated blunder, announced that it would move its flagship Nine O’Clock News to become the BBC Ten O’Clock News from September 2001.

When ITV was forced into sort of doing the right thing once more from early 2001, you’d expect that the BBC, naturally wishing to serve the public, would put its plans to move the Nine O’Clock News in September 2001 on hold. But no, not a bit of it. The BBC, aggressive and anti-competitive as ever, brought its plan forward by a year, with the BBC Ten O’Clock News starting in October 2000.

News at Ten duly returned for three days a week in 2001, but with its shifting schedule it languished against its by now established anti-competitive rival. Eventually, in early 2004, the current ITV News at 10.30 was born – an inadequate compromise, still crowded out by the BBC Ten O’Clock News immediately before it and by Newsnight up against it on BBC2.

With the amalgamation of various BBC News teams into one news operation, let us hope that Mark Thompson, willingly or otherwise, seizes the chance to put this historic wrong right, and bring back the BBC’s Nine O’Clock News – ensuring a choice of prime time news programmes for everyone – a choice of times and a choice of viewpoints, and of course the prospect of the Nine O’Clock News, ITN’s News at Ten and then Newsnight for the real news junkies among us.

It would be good for Britain and good for the British public. Bringing back the BBC’s Nine O’Clock News would be a great first step on the road back to the BBC being a true public service broadcaster at the service of the British people, rather than the expansionist, anti-competitive state-funded monopoly that it has unashamedly been over the last few years.

P.S. Next we need to get dear Sandy Gall, now eighty, back into Afghanistan for ITN! Anyone who remembers his marvellous reports from the 1980s knows he’ll make a better job of it than John “Liberator” Simpson ever could 🙂

The original BBC Views Online article, Rocket injures dozens in Israel, was published just after midnight on September 11th, as shown by Newssniffer.

The article progressed through a number of drafts, with version 7, at 9am, gaining a box-quote reading:

We will act, but I think it’s very important to make the point that there is no reason for this [attack]

Mark Regev

Israeli government spokesman

Skip forward fifty minutes and several revisions later to version 11, at 9.50am, and our box-quote is amended to read:

We will act, but I think it’s very important to make the point that there is no reason for this

Mark Regev

Israeli government spokesman

Did you spot the subtle change? Yes, the implied word, [attack], that put Mark Regev’s comment in its true context was deleted, leaving him sounding like he was saying that the Israelis would respond, but that there would be no reason for their response, rather than that there was no reason for the attack. And that’s the way it has been ever since.

A small but telling example of a Beeboid going out of their way to spin Mark Regev’s words as subtly as they could into what they wanted him to say, rather than what he actually meant.

Apologies for the brief interruption in posts. Catching up on recent events:

Too much management at the BBC writes Jeff Randall in the Telegraph, in an article that expands on the views he expressed on Newsnight last week (see clip below).

He starts off once again by pointing out the insanity of cutting news and documentary budgets whilst preserving some of the lowest common denominator dross that passes for content on BBC3, before pointing out the BBC’s ample girth – girth of the variety endemic in poorly managed public organisations:

If this sounds like special pleading for former colleagues, let’s be clear: consolidation of many BBC News reporting jobs is long overdue.

There is daily duplication, which not only squanders resources but frequently borders on the harassment of outside sources. Director general Mark Thompson is right to call for a more integrated newsroom.

When I was the BBC’s business editor (2001-05), Standard Life’s communications chief telephoned me at the end of a very busy day to beg for help. “We’ve had about 80 press calls and 35 of those have been from the BBC. Is there no co-ordination?”

I was too embarrassed to tell him the truth. Once a big story hits the wires, desk-bound BBC news-gatherers simply hit the phones.

In the case of Standard Life, it had taken calls from the BBC’s business unit, several shows at Five Live and Radio Four, regional radio outlets, BBC Scotland (lots from there), BBC Online, Breakfast TV, the One O’clock News, the Six O’clock News and the Ten O’Clock News. Oh yes, and News 24.

On another occasion, I was in Calais to cover a Eurotunnel shareholders’ meeting for the Ten O’Clock News. I arrived to find swarms of BBC reporters, producers and film crews falling over each other; the corporation had sent more people than the rest of the British media put together. In the evening, we filled three tables in a local restaurant.

…duplication (to put it mildly) that most people, Mark Thompson included, are only too well aware of.

I very much agree with Randall’s view that:

If Thompson closed Today and Newsnight completely, he would save £13 million, less than 0.4 per cent of his total budget. Chipping away at them makes no sense. Quite the reverse: these are much-admired shows from which the BBC gets the biggest bang for its buck. By any measure, they deserve more support.

The money that Thompson is hoping to claw back through the elimination of newsroom clutter should be reinvested in blue-chip journalism, not squandered on crackpot programming for the lowest common denominator.

…if only we could get BBC News in general and Today in particular away from the “public good, private bad” statist mentality also endemic in public organisations. I’m not sure that is feasible though, but given that public service programmes like Today and Newsnight are so relatively cheap (in comparison to Jonathan Ross and other non public services), perhaps there’s a case for funding two or three equivalents of each show – without the false notion of ‘impartiality’ that we see and hear now – with production teams independent of each other and the BBC. Something to discuss perhaps…

Please use this thread for comments about the BBC’s current programming and activities. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog – scroll down for new topic-specific posts. N.B. this is not an invitation for general off-topic comments, rants or chit-chat. Thoughtful comments are encouraged. Comments may be moderated.

: The Daily Mail reports an anecdote from Mark Thompson that was on News 24 yesterday morning:

[Thompson] said that during one recent “eye of the storm” news story he had “one interview request from ITN, one from Sky and 37 from the BBC”.

A great example of BBC duplication and triplication in action (should ‘in action’ have a space in it?).

A Grieving widow has been hit with a £180 fine after her dead husband was summoned to court.

Maureen Davies was stunned to be told her husband had been hit with the fine for failing to appear in court – despite the fact he died five months ago….

Following a six-week stay in hospital, the 47-year-old returned home to find that Swansea magistrates had fined husband Leonard, even though he had passed away in May.

Mrs Davies had been married to husband Leonard for almost 28 years, but he became ill after a freak fall.

The accident left him with brain damage, and although he had spent the past two years recovering, the 50-year-old died in May this year following complications caused after he fell out of bed.

Shortly before his death, the family home had been visited by television licensing staff who had quizzed Mr Davies about the licence. Because of his condition he was unable to give them the details they wanted.

But Mrs Davies called them back the following day to claim that their TV licence was in her name, which she paid weekly to make sure it was up-to-date.

Just a couple of days after the death of husband, she received another letter in his name demanding payment and threatening prosecution.

“I called them and said I had already told them once that I pay for the licence, and that my husband had just passed away,” said Mrs Davies.

However, in June another letter arrived demanding payment,

The strain of the loss of her husband led her to have a nervous breakdown, and she was taken into hospital for care.

The bit that takes the biscuit though is this, near the end:

A television licensing spokesman apologised about the incident, but said that Mrs Davies still was unlicensed and urged her to make payments urgently.

Whatever the status of Mrs. Davies’ tellytax account, what business do the BBC’s goons have discussing it with a newspaper? Haven’t they heard of the Data Protection Act, or is anythimg that threatens individuals and intimidates everyone okay with the BBC?

Awful. The full force of the BBC law being applied to a depressed widow. Still, it’ll keep those Beeboid hearts warm on their picket lines…

Visit Letters from BBC Television Licensing to see a wide range of the BBC’s intimidatory letters. See also Jonathan Miller’s campaign against the tellytax. The website could do with an update, but their BBC Resistance Forum is usually quite lively.

Just for good measure, here’s a video, originally from Jonathan Miller’s site, of a BBC tellytax enforcement goon assaulting a disabled man, Ron Sinclair, on September 1st, 2004. Ron’s crime? He filmed the goon after he went next door to ‘interview’ Ron’s neighbour.

See here for more details. Curiously, neither of these tales have been reported on BBC Views Online.

P.S. Have you seen those irritating ‘talking sofa’ adverts that the BBC broadcast along with all the other BBC adverts? The irony of an empty sofa in front of an unwatched television threatening people with fines for non-payment sums up the BBC nicely: pay us whether you watch the BBC or not.

P.P.S. At night the BBC often repeats programmes from peak time with signing for the deaf, and, yep, you guessed it: they have a ‘talking sofa’ ad with sign-language just to make sure the deaf are fully intimidated too.

Thank you to Biased BBC reader dai bando for the newspaper link.

Today, Jon Craig, late of the BBC, asks How many BBC men…?

On the day the BBC announced cuts and job losses, even the Prime Minister’s mild-mannered and quietly-spoken press spokesman, Mike Ellam, couldn’t resist a little dig at the number of the corporation’s senior correspondents attending the EU summit in Lisbon.

At a briefing about Gordon Brown’s so-called “red lines” in the controversial new EU treaty, Mr Ellam was asked for the Prime Minister’s view on the BBC’s announcement about job cuts.

“I could address that to the…” he said mischievously, pointing to each of the BBC journalists in front of him in the UK briefing room in the Lisbon Media Centre.

For the record, representing the BBC at the No 10 briefing were:

• Political Editor Nick Robinson

   

• News 24 Chief Political Correspondent James Landale

   

• Newsnight Political Correspondent David Grossman

   

• Radio 5 Live Political Correspondent John Pienaar

   

• Europe Editor Mark Mardell

Most, if not all, have their own producer at the summit and there is a team of BBC journalists here from Brussels as well as Westminster.

Incidentally, Sky News, ITN, Channel Four and Five News, each has just one correspondent at the summit.

Mr Ellam said, diplomatically, that the BBC cuts were a matter for its governors and licence payers, before adding, perhaps ominously: “They are entitled to value for money in the same way that taxpayers are.”

Quite.

Good old Sky – always first with the news…

Please use this thread for comments about the BBC’s current programming and activities. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog. Scroll down to find new topic-specific posts. N.B. this is not an invitation for general off-topic comments, rants or use as a chat forum. Space here is competitive – comments may be reactively moderated.

about proposed BBC budget savings, including a filmed report by Liz McKean, Paxman interviewing Sir Michael Lyons, Chairman of the BBC Trust and the best bit, a studio discussion with Stuart Murphy, former Controller of BBC3, Jeff Randall, former BBC Business Editor and Paxman.

Liz McKean’s package started off informing us that “[The BBC is] having to do so with less, £2 billion pounds less of the public’s money”, then a pause, then the truth, “than it wanted…”. This was followed by a snippet of David Cox, a former ITV executive, stating what is obvious outside of London W12:

The BBC’s priorities ought to be to do those things that commercial broadcasters don’t do. There’s no reason why single parents or old age pensioners should be forced at gun point to pay for something that could be perfectly well done by commercial broadcasters, supported by advertising or by subscriptions paid by the people who actually want to watch those things.

…followed by the heartwarming though ridiculous sight of five-thousand, sorry, five Beeboids ‘protesting’ half-heartedly on the street:

Save our BBC!

…which is of course part of the problem – they regard it as their BBC rather than the public’s BBC. Liz intoned gravely that “it’s expected that in news alone 500 jobs will be cut”, then a union rep. threatened strike action (bring it on!), then back to Liz: “the digital era is ushering in new platforms and the BBC is committed to occupying them all” – occupy, got that? And the sad news that “I understand that staff will be told tomorrow that the BBC’s vast website, six million pages, will be hacked back” – which I expect really means it just won’t grow so fast, so less of quality stuff like this then.

Liz then interviewed a BBC fan, followed by Mr. Richard D. North, author of Scrap the BBC!*, who is not a fan:

Mark Thompson can make all the reforms he likes and they are doubtless necessary and good reforms, but in the end, the game is up. There is simply no rationale for a compulsory fee funded BBC.

…then cut to a fluffy quote from noted broadcasting expert and recipient of BBC largesse, actress Joanna Lumley:

This is the gold standard. This is the one blue-chip company we’ve got in this country. The one!

…well, I guess turkeys don’t vote for Christmas Joanna, do they. We then headed back to the studio for the delicious irony of Jeremy Paxman declaring:

Well, at this point, the BBC has required me to declare an interest because I’ve spoken out about how the BBC’s cuts might affect Newsnight.

…before starting his interview with Sir Michael Lyons, which starts at exactly five minutes into the first video clip (I’m too tired to transcribe it in the early hours, so you’ll just have to watch it):

The best part of Newsnight’s coverage was the studio discussion, see second clip, with Stuart Murphy, the former Controller of BBC3, deliciously and preciously defending his inconsequential and expensive little bit of the BBC against obvious barbs from Paxman and Randall. Randall, as ever, was on the money:

An illustrative excerpt:

Randall: “I think this requires some really big bold judgements from management, not asking every department to lose a little bit, forget Newsnight, let’s look at the Today programme, £5 million annual budget, that’s less than the BBC pays Jonathan Ross in one year, and that’s not to be nasty to Jonathan Ross, but it puts into perspective the kind of pressures that are on news”

Murphy: “But it’s really difficult making those comparisons, isn’t it, I mean, when you look at the talent cost of Jonathan Ross I think licence fee payers expect, the main thing is, licence fee payers expect there to be maximum value from the licence fee, licence fee payers also, won’t come to the BBC, unless the BBC has major talent they love, and it’s a balancing act, you need to pay big stars big wages or they won’t be at the BBC”

Absolutely classic Beeboid drivel Stuart – most folk couldn’t care less if Woss was on ITV or the BBC – the more so when they realise just how extravagant the BBC was in paying him so much over the odds for his so-called talent.

Please try not to weep too much (in mirth or despair) in the comments…

* available in hardback direct from the publishers, The Social Affairs Unit, for a bargain £4.00 plus £2.75 postage via Amazon Marketplace (look for seller omm-sau).

Thank you to Biased BBC reader Lurker in a Burqua for the Telegraph link.