Is the UK’s NUJ developing its own more radical version of the now-disbanded left-leaning JournoList group from the US?
Thanks to BBC London journalist Jane Bradley (first seen on Biased BBC a couple of weeks ago) my attention was drawn to an event called Reclaim The Media which took place last night. Fresh from interviewing St Paul’s protesters for her employer, Jane asked yesterday if any of her colleagues would be attending the NUJ-backed meeting:
The link in that tweet goes to a website called Right To Work (“Save jobs. Stop the cuts. Defend public services.”) but the speaker list advertised there was a bit out of date. The actual line-up – apart from Pilger – included BBC NUJ rep Becky Branford, the NUJ’s “anarchist” president Donnacha Delong, and Gary McFarlane, Socialist Workers Party activist (and not, sadly, Gary McFarlane the Christian relationship counsellor sacked by Relate for refusing to give sex advice to gay couples. Now that would’ve been an amusing mix-up.)
Unfortunately for Jane, as with the Trafalgar Square demo a couple of weeks ago, she didn’t make it herself. But hey, she wanted to go and that’s good enough for radical cred at the BBC.
What did she miss? Well, according to one student journalist (not BBC – yet) who attended there was an exhilarating political vibe to the evening:
The same student said that they were getting a list together:
I wonder how many BBC journalists will sign up.
Has Comrade Jane reported about how the tent village is a quasi-ghost town at night? Or about just how much Communist agitation is going on there?
As for the “Reclaim the Media” deal, it shouldn’t be too difficult to catch a Beeboid tweeting or retweeting about it. Too bad there won’t be any consequences, as there won’t be a young assistant producer to be the fall guy.
More than half of the ones SHE spoke to say they DO stay at night:
@jane__bradley Jane Bradley Results of 3 days interviewing 150 #occupylsx protesters: more than half say they DO stay overnight – less than half say they’re unemployed
I’d be more convinced but for the fact that I now have a good idea of Bradley’s own political leanings.
Somehow I appear to have replied above DP’s comment (the one stamped 14:54). Don’t know how that happened.
Answering the question before last. Something from the BBC that is worth watching!
A true classic, Roland. They don’t make ’em like that (ie funny) anymore.
Ronnie Barker RIP. His comedy writing was real genious.
So she spoke to all six of them, then.
Ha ha –
1. Employed people work all day, they do not hang out at St Pauls, because they are paid to be somewhere.
2. Almost nobody sleeps over there – the evidence is clear.
3. Whatever they told our intrepid reporter, if she was worth her salt she would have gone to see, not just asked them!!
Well well well. “Pilger” and “brilliant” in the same sentence. You won’t see those two words together outside of certain circles. Pilger is a clapped out old leftist hack who is so blinkered he should be drawing a horse and cart shouting “any old rubbish!” Which is more or less what he does.
And what is this “activism?” Does Helen Boaden know? Won’t look good on the BBC impartiality scorecard. Perhaps she needs to convene a chapter of the Waffen SS for balance.
LC, you beat me to it; I was going to ask ‘what is an activist’. Is it an old-fashioned trouble-maker?
As for Mr Pilger – I have a set of his early pieces for World in Action (I thing it was). It is true that he produces some very compelling documentaries and he has some valid points to make in them. Unfortunately for Mr Pilger, it is hard to separate the true reporting from the propaganda and so the reality becomes lost in his version of the truth.
Indeed, if BBC NUJ rep Banford intends to promote some form of activism instigated at a meeting of hardline lefties then we need to know more.
and you beat me to it as well
if you see a leftard referring to someone as being “brilliant” you can be sure they are the complte opposite
most likely a total twat,in fact
OMG!!! SHE’S SO ON B-BBC AGAIN!!!
HEH!
All her, like, friends will be, like, SOOOOO jealous.
John Pilger has produced some terrific work over the years but has become his own worst enemy: his immense ego and tendency to ‘shape’ a story to suit his own agenda have compromised him as a journalist. Johann Hari will no doubt find this out in due course.
Paul Foot was, like Pilger, a superb investigative journalist and committed leftist yet one always had the impression he could compartmentalise and separate his own views from the work in hand. He seldom had need to pilgerise his stories, either.
These days Pilger is so fringe he is almost falling off the planet.
Anyway, this Jane Bradley woman still sounds like a smitten teenager. Waddya reckon she went to Cheltenham Ladies’ College or Godolphin?
…to Pilgerise. Like it!
Her Linkedin profile says Wilberforce College, Hull. Oh my God , that is John Prescott’s constituency !
Mind you she does look quite cute in her photo !
Calm down Grant. That’s like calling Myra Hindley “hot”
London,
Hey, steady on mate !!!!
Its like they do it on purpose…
More like no self awareness. Only self adulation.
Have a laugh at this tweet from International Journalism student Hazel Pfeifer:
Becky Branford: Fighting to reclaim the BBC is essential in the struggle to reclaim the media.
Words fail.
we’d all like to reclaim it from left wing,ecomentalist,Israel hating scumbags
“reclaim the BBC” – what, from all those BBC employees airing their nasty right-wing views on Twitter? Must’ve missed that.
Funnily enough, there are just 5 articles by Comrade Becky listed on journalisted – three are about North Korea, one is about an anti-U.S. Afghan woman MP attending a Stop the War Coalition rally in London, and the other is about a Thai anti-Tesco campaigner. Looks as if she’a letting her own convictions bias her reporting!
Helen Boaden, call your office. One of your minions wants to reclaim the BBC from you, dear.
Love her use of “nominally socialist” in this article. Because genuinely socialist societies could never end up like that.
Amusing that she was asked to do the North Korea stuff. BBC foreign correspondents are concerned that cuts will compromise impartiality. I’m not so sure we’ll be able to detect much difference.
Thought I’d look her up. Cookie cutter journalism #101. Just follow the formula. “Albert Simkins lives in Newcastle. At school he was abused by his teachers which fostered his hatred of authority. His father left home and his mother ran off with the gypsies. Now Albert lives alone in poverty on a blighted estate, crumbling from lack of Government money. He blames the state of modern Britain for his plight…”
God I hate this stuff
Yea, racism is bad, m’kay, in Report 1; a sports centre “has fallen victim to the spending cuts” in Report 2; a cyber-safety campaign group has something it wants to say in Report 3;young boozers are enjoying themselves despite the snow in Report 4; and an anti-steroids campaign group has something it wants to say in Report 5.
Worth ever penny of the licence fee, surely? *DONT_KNOW*
Yes it’s all a bit, “What would Alan Bleasdale say?”
DB, what would he say? “I would like to thank the Academy for this award. I’d like to thank my mum and dad, my wife and my children for standing by me while I was writing this play which shows the state of crumbling Britain as it is today. I blame the Tories and the fat cats in the City. Now, lets open the Chablis, serve the salmon and LETS PARTY!”
I am instinctively suspicious of any journalist who allies him- or herself to a political group or cause. After all, a journalist’s duty is to the truth and not to try and shape to truth to fit his own convictions. Disinterest is key.
I genuinely do not know (or care about) the political beliefs of, say, Bridget Kendall, Martha Kearney, Sophie Raworth, Shaun Ley, Ian Robertson, Alan Green, Julian Worricker, Mark Tully, etc. These guys and gals are fine broadcasters who do not need to share their world-view with the rest of us and probably wouldn’t compromise their impartiality by so doing.
That all sounds rather pompous, I know, but it disturbs me that all the BBC Twitter ‘gaffes’ pointed out by DB seem to come from the same direction, politically. And they’re happy shamelessly to share their beliefs with the world.
The Coalition may indeed be useless but they are not evil and their spending cuts do not threaten civilisation as we know it; there are decent right- and left-wing writers and thinkers around – no, honest; Israel is not a genocidal, rogue nation hell-bent on wiping out the world’s Arabs; not all US Republicans are stupid, God-bothering freaks; and the Daily Mail is just a bloody newspaper.
That’s some fine hammer-right-on-the-nail stuff right there, Jeremy.
All very valid stuff but Alan Green is a Tw@t.
Socialism is not the only bias in the bbc. There is also the sinister scouse mafia which infects a huge proportion of its sport output. Dalgleish will never need an enema as long as Green keeps his lower bowel clean with his tongue.
BTW did anybody catch the Humphry’s attacks welfare scroungers shockumentary.
Non left wing views on the BBC are so rare they should be nurtured and cherished, like a little baby bat.
Is it me – or does she come across as a total juvenile – wide-eyed, naive.
Impressive productivity though. A useless story every once in a blue moon, of course she is worth every penny of our licence tax.
You could halve the size of the BBC “news” staffing tomorrow, and not notice any real difference.
I’m sure that’s true, John. Guaranteed funding leads to complaceny and laziness. As is often pointed out on this site, Sky News often out-performs BBC News with a fraction of the budget.
I’ve come unfashionabley late to this party.
Jane, it seems, has made a complete arse of herself.
Being that naive and enjoying a BBC salary, wandering around in La La Land effortlessly and concluding, with great enthusiam, (get ready, it will be a first) you suggest – Communisum.
Jane, I don’t think you could get a fucking job in a fucked up factory (Which, and this will horrify you, is where the prolatariot slavishly make things Jane, such as spare parts for your au-pair’s husbands tractor as he plows the fields back home).
So Jane, would you like me to be one of your actavists ?
Or do you want me to be merely exhilarated ?
Either way, you are just another BBC twat and will proably go far if you screw the right line managers.
But there again ………………… ?
john,
Splendid, gave me the first laugh of the day !
Tonight’s tweets from Bradley are worth reading. Clearly pissed off that QT has, for once, not had a left bias. Also this:
@jane__bradley Jane Bradley Nigel Farage on BBC1. Herpes on C4. What to watch….?
So nice to see that license fee-funded Social Media Away Day pay dividends. They really don’t care, because they know they’re untouchable. We all saw Mardell tell the BBC CoJ that Twitter exists outside the BBC rules of impartiality.
Twitter exists outside the BBC rules of impartiality.
Yet… in almost all staff instances it bears their brand name and corporate URLs.
I know of few, if any corporate entity where employees could post personal bias (and often abuse that is near legally actionable) as evident salaried representatives, where ‘whatever tripe I write under the banner of the BBC here reflects in no way on the compnay that found me fit and proper to emply’ is enough to brush off any tainting by association.
I seem to recall various public servants in the political arena getting hounded for ‘interesting’ ‘personal’ views on twitter… why not those paid by the public at the BBC?
It’s… unique.
Ref: #3
http://www.fastcompany.com/1790769/the-7-iconic-transparent-empowering-business-buzzwords-that-need-to-be-retired-yesterday?
I note the disclaimer, with some rueful irony.
Don’t knock Twitter. Single-handedly it is providing sufficient evidence of “institutional bias” to kill the licence fee.
No knocking intended.
Twitter is indeed the gift that keeps on giving, daily.
Some gems now lovingly captured (even if stealth deleted when the copliance squad wakes up on occasion) are gold dust.
http://www.journalism.co.uk/news-features/lessons-from-auntie-as-bbcnews-goes-human/s5/a546528/
To savour.
‘Simply put: “humans produce better tweets,”... that, presumably ‘do not represent the views of the BBC’?
So they have four full-time employees just working Twitter to advertise BBC News? Value for money indeed.
It’s a new platform, so new staffing to manage is perhaps legitimate.
However… will the ‘what happens on twitter stays on twitter’ exclusion apply here?
And speaking of exclusions, given the claim of much vaunted BBC ‘two-way’ interaction, will this go the way of their blogs and modding, namely only in directions they approve of, with blocking imposed if things do not stay ‘on narrative’.
Already we have hive members creating comfy exclusion zones to keep the tweets within acceptable parameters.
If any entity can turn twitter into another broadcast only megaphone, it’s Auntie.
A matter of concern when it is already pretty much the BBC’s ‘sounding board’ for what ‘is’ in the UK for whose public they speak.