Piers Scholfield, one of the many BBC journalists reporting from the Chilean mines, was a new name to me. Just had a little look back through his Twitter account. You couldn’t make this stuff up:
Caroline, please listen to my gushing report about your election chances, slurp slurp.
A Brighton-based BBC Green Party supporter reporting on the Green Party in Brighton during the election. Your licence fee at work.
I’m getting quite a collection of screenshots of BBC employees expressing political opinions on Twitter. They’re all lefties. Funny that. I guess the BBC’s thousands of right-leaning employees take their duty to uphold the concept of impartiality more seriously. Unless – and I know this might sound crazy – there aren’t many right-leaning employees at the BBC, and they don’t express political views on Twitter because they fear opprobrium and career stasis.
“there aren’t many right-leaning employees at the BBC, and they don’t express political views on Twitter because they fear opprobrium and career stasis.”
Make that double for those of us working in academia!
Good work DB.
A website of screenshots would be useful evidence for those still blind to old Auntie’s persuasions.
Perhaps it could be called the “The Cash Peters Network of Impartial Journalists” 😉 😉 I am sure he would be suitably honoured such is the enormity of his self-smugness (which is inversely proportional to his intellect – a proven law of nature for many on this earth).
Google Dunning Kruger for proof of your law of nature.
The BBC has NO front line premier on air right wing journalists, the BBC has no senior editors and editorial executives. The BBC has no senior programme makers who are right wing and the BBC has no right wing members of the top management. The BBC trust is made up of leftists/socialists/Marxists/centrists/apoliticals but no real right wingers are present.
The BBC is a right wing free zone. Now you might get some extremely wet left wing ‘tories’ sprinkled around in non essential areas but these cannot be called right wing. Face it folks, the BBC is a right wing free zone, it is also a right wing hate zone and a real right winger would be as wecomme a black man at a KKK rally.
I wouldn’t be completely sure about that Cassandra, although I’d submit that any right wingers are likely just ‘passing through’ the BBC, rather than seeing it as a career choice. Any of them wanting to work in media may see the BBC as the only choice short term as it is such a large employer.
I was very surprised myself at the University I work at. Having been gritting my teeth for some time one of the Union leaders at the university decided to distribute a ‘send to all’ email criticising the vice-chancellor for “trying to run the university like a business”. It had all the usual left wing canards and dogmas in it. I blew a fuse as I couldn’t stand his assumption that silence meant consent to his view.
So I responded in kind with a ‘send to all’ email of my own, defending the vice-chancellor and taking the Union leader’s points apart one by one. Shortly afterwards I received a flood of emails from academics privately congratulating me for being brave enough to express such sentiments, many of them also saying that – privately – they agreed with me. A couple of days later I was also approached by a Professor from the engineering department who congratulated me for ‘holing him [the Union leader] below the water line’.
The sentiments are out there, it’s just a matter of helping us all find eachother in the institutionally left wing organisations.
Very interesting. Thanks for posting that. There is some small hope for freedom of opinion and expression in university after all.
But this is the problem, the left wing view is always treated with love and caring on the BBC but any opposing view is attacked for being racists, homophobic anti women, anti gay, anti black you name it.
The BBC is not interested in impartiality or debate, it decides on the message then spins it.
BBC audiences that are loaded with left wingers, Radio 5 phone-in’s where ‘random callers’ are no random at all but either beeboid plants or returned calls to text messages that give the view the BBC want.
I’ve proven this by texting from two phones a different opinion on a 5 Live phone-in, I’ve done it two or three times now and in two cases the BBC rang me back on the phone I texted the ‘right’ on left wing message’ (in the other case no calls) but nont once have I ever had a call to my ‘right wing phone’.
I wonder why?
But why should anyone right-of-cente have to operate slightly under the radar? By accepting this we accept that we are outside of the political norms and we are not.
“We”. Again. May I suggest this joins the list of BBC genius quotes on the sidebar?
I think it’s great that your license fee has been put to such good use. Clearly that Social Media training course has paid dividends. I guess all those non-Left BBC employees just haven’t taken it yet.
Nice work, DB.
Another great catch DB.
Here’s the election piece he did for the World Service about the Green Party. “Slurp slurp” sums it up perfectly.
Quite disgraceful. The BBC is a stables in dire need of a Hercules.
If the licence fee was scrapped then the BBC would have to be run like business. It’d then have to have a more right wing approach to stay afloat.
May be that would create a better balance of journalists.
Problem is the left can’t run a business, the Guardian and Indy are both on their knees financially and rely on state funding in the jobs department to keep them afloat.
Years ago there was a left wing Sunday paper (can’t remember the same now) and that went down the toilet, even in the USA left wing talk radio (Air America for example) is failing.
Well scrapping the licence fee is a win win situation.
Either the BBC becomes more right wing and balanced or it dies a slow painful death.
Which would everyone prefer?!
death
The left wing paper was called News on Sunday. The leader of the faction that published it was Alan Hayling who became BBC Head of Documentaries.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/features/lefties3.shtml
“The BBC’s reputation for impartiality and objectivity is crucial. The public must be able to trust the integrity of BBC programmes and services. Our audiences need to be confident that the outside activities of our presenters, programme makers and other staff do not undermine the BBC’s impartiality or reputation and that editorial
decisions are not perceived to be influenced by any commercial or personal interests.”
Click to access personalweb.pdf
Why don’t the BBC just tear up these guidelines? They are completly ignored by all.
I always check the bio…
‘BBC journo working in London and worldwide – living in Brighton. Opinions are mine and mine alone.’
‘Hey, I work for the BBC brand and might be a smidge more worth hooking up with for some odd reason than any normal schmo..’ check
‘Despite claiming my opinions are nothing to do with my employer (see above), I’ll punt out some very personal opinion in their name, and try and weasel out with a disclaimer they gave me‘ – check
‘Brighton..’ – check
Er, no Aunty. It doesn’t work that way in the real world.
Even if you do put a trench a mile wide between your professional persona and private passions, if one intrudes on the other… and it’s inappropriate… you are toast.
Unless you are… unique, in some way.
As the headline suggests, time next to see how the delightful Ms. B’s blog is doing again:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2010/09/impartiality_is_in_our_genes.html
Guest Who, you’ve been doing some fine work on Helen Boaden’s blog. I’ve put on three new comments, all of some length – though none any longer than many of Simon 21′s posts – so the BBC mods should have no excuse to park them.They are all studiously polite too, so again they should be allowed to stand. I very much doubt that she’s been near the post again since writing it, still it’s a good place to dump lots of evidence of BBC bias.
As for Simon 21, what a character! I’d like to see him fisk my comments. It would take him hours.
Oh, he will.
And he does seem to have those hours.
The guy needs help. But in terms of squatting over the hole Helen dug and dumping hourly, a glittering career handling Franny’s Armstrong”s next project beckons.
What is more worrying is him straying into areas of personal abuse that goes beyond robust blog exchange, and the mods allowing it through, at least initially.
And he did!
Simon21 posted copiously on Justin Webb’s blog (when he was still North America “Editor”) and I had a number of “debates” with him. He’s a particularly obtuse, biased and unpleasant specimen of the anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, and anti-for-the-sake-of-it left winger. And his comments are as unreadable as ever, both re the content and the format.
I note he only had two uncharacteristically short responses to your comments. Takes a lot to stop Simon21 spouting rubbish, so well done.
I’d like to see the Brighton Pavillion constituency covered in wind turbines, hundreds of thousands of new homes built and filled with immigrants, fuel prices put up to at least £5 a litre and heating bills up by 80% so they can all live in the Green Party utopia that they voted for.
I’m not sure why it is that when BBC employees express political opinions they range from centre-left to hyper-left, but since the BBC – as it keeps insisting – is an esteemed, impartial public service broadcaster that adheres to its charter like a drowning cartoon polar bear to a tiny iceberg, that this must be some sort of massive coincidence.
Who are you going to believe, the BBC or your lying senses?
One wonders how he made his way to Chile.
In a mini-Zeppelin – “Powered by my own sense of self-satisfaction.”
(Hat tip to The Simpsons).
In fact, has anyone thought to ask him that question? I would, but I’m not on Twatter.
Can I just correct a small detail please?
The greens are NOT green, they are RED, deeply ingrained Marxist authoritarian RED.
Intolerant and bigoted and prejudiced they choose to hide their true colours behind a fake mask much like the islamist ‘charities’ do.
Beware the fanatic who claims to hold the sole keys to the truth and the light. Beware the fanatic who demands that we all live as they command and that we are somehow less able to create and design a lifestyle of our own.
The most dangerous enemy any of us will ever face as a society are those who come in the guise of a friend and saviour, those who loudly calim to have our best interests at heart usually have actual plans that could not be more different.
Dear reader of my humble words, these ‘greens’ are not what they appear and they know they have to hide their true colours away from view, they are purest evil, their motives are purest evil and they are more dangerous us all than any whakjob nazi wannabes.
The greens are the deepest blood red and they have plans for you and me, they hide a terrible darkness in their hearts and all they need is to get us to believe they are green and we will find out in fullest measure just how evil and dark their hearts truly are.
lets save the planets untill i need power,food etc then i’m first in the queue,every green i know lives on their own planet untill you argue the point then they attack like dogs,should get a job at the beeb..
When reading this article on waste in UK central government, I kept thinking about that waste there must be in another large organisation, the BBC:
“Report shows ‘staggering’ waste”
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23886763-report-shows-staggering-waste.do
The BBC should be investigated for wasteful practices, and not by its ‘Trust’.