Apologies for being two weeks late getting to this, but it’s not time-sensitive, and so here it is now. Justin Webb wrote a “Diary” installment for the Spectator issue published on Oct. 13. They’ve turned off the pay wall for a few weeks since launching the new online format, so for the time being you can read the whole thing here.
I’m interested in observing Webb’s personal opinions, so we can judge if this influences his broadcasting in any way. With this in mind, check out the obvious enthusiasm with which he remarks that Miami is controlled by non-white, non-English speaking people. It’s one thing to make the impartial observation that the region has become this way, and to point out the geographical and political reasons behind it. It’s quite another to express approval.
I am still buzzing with the sheer un-American hedonism of Florida’s finest city. The really good thing about Miami, they say, is how close it is to the USA. Quite right: it is close but separate. It is more than ever the capital of Latin America, home to a Spanish-language media market that extends — carelessly skipping over political borders and anti-immigration fences — through Mexico and Honduras and Nicaragua, down as far as Colombia and Venezuela.
Because he’s judging the entire situation in Miami based on the color of the protagonists’ skin, he approves. Why? Why is it a good thing? By his own admission, ol’ Justin is not a fan of the US. Oh, sure, he likes many of the inhabitants individually, as people. He even thinks his youngest daughter’s flat vowels were so cute that he regrets that she’s lost her US accent now.
But don’t take my word for his biased reporting. Take his, as broadcast in January 2006, while he was still working the US beat. While talking with Stephen Sakur on air, he criticized what he considered to be an anti-American tendency at the BBC and other media outlets, specifically about the false moral equivalency of saying the US was just as bad or worse than any brutal dictatorship. Listeners complained to the BBC about such pro-US bias, and ol’ Justin was compelled to defend himself a few days later. I’ve bolded what I think are the key bits.
Roger Bolton: I spoke to our correspondent this week, and asked if he had gone native
Justin Webb: No, I haven’t, and what I would say to those who complained about me is that I genuinely do apologize to them. It’s not my business to upset and annoy people and its not my business to be seen to be partial or indeed to be partial. And, to the extent that I was in this broadcast, then I think I do owe them an apology.
RB: You agree you were a little partial. You expressed yourself perhaps a little too warmly?
JW: Possibly a little too warmly. But what I was trying to do – and I would say this in mitigation – is puncture an atmosphere which developed, I thought, during this broadcast and which I think does occasionally develop on the BBC, and on other broadcasting outlets, where there is a kind of cosy feeling that somehow if only America would behave differently, then everything in the world would be fine. I think that is a view which does annoy and upset Americans, as I said it did. And it’s not just the White House – it is a broader thing than that – and also a view which is, to put it mildly, open to challenge, and that’s what I hoped to do, so to the extent that I upset people, I do apologize for that and I would ask them to listen to the range of work that I do, because America is such an important place I am on the radio pretty much every day, and I don’t think they could generally accuse me of being someone who is pro-American. In fact, most of the work that I do, frankly, is sceptical, certainly about the Bush administration and, to a wider extent, about American policies and motives. But I do think occasionally, and I would reserve this, in the context of a discussion that is an open, free discussion, not a news program, I do think it is important that we keep an eye on this tendency that I think we do sometimes have just to throw up our hands and take the easy road, which is to suggest that everything would be fine if only the Americans behaved better.
In other words, it’s okay for him to be biased against the US and various factions within but it’s not okay for him to show even a hint of bias in support of the US. It’s amusing also due to the fact that ol’ Justin has also admitted to some culpability for the anti-US reporting from the BBC.
America is often portrayed as an ignorant, unsophisticated sort of place, full of bible bashers and ruled to a dangerous extent by trashy television, superstition and religious bigotry, a place lacking in respect for evidence based knowledge.
I know that is how it is portrayed because I have done my bit to paint that picture, and that picture is in many respects a true one.
He’s also admitted another aspect of his bias, for which he has never been brought on air to apologize.
“I’m rude about quite a lot of people, I was very rude about Sarah Palin which upset some people.”
This charming behavior was a prime factor in his getting that Today presenter job. Here’s another example of Webb freely expressing his opinion in way that he simply wouldn’t be allowed to if the subject matter were different:
Stone-Age superstitions
Eleven-year-old Kara Neumann was suffering from type one diabetes, an auto-immune condition my son was recently diagnosed with.
Her family, for religious reasons, decided not to take her to hospital. They prayed by her bedside and the little girl died.
The night before she died – and she would have been in intense discomfort – her parents called the founder of a religious website and prayed with him on the telephone. But they did not call a doctor.
If Kara had been taken to hospital, even at that late stage, insulin could have saved her. She could have been home in a few days and chirpy by the end of the week, as my son was.
It was an entirely preventable death caused, let’s be frank, by some of the Stone Age superstition that stalks the richest and most technologically advanced nation on earth.
Show me one example of any BBC employee who is allowed to say this on air about Islam. Kilroy Silk mentioned it once, but he didn’t get away with it. Yet ol’ Justin can not only openly “deplore” non-Mohammedan religious belief, but gets promoted for it.
This leads us to the conclusion that Justin Webb loathes much of what he sees as the White United States. This in turn makes him celebrate the scene in Miami simply because they’re not white. There’s no other basis for it, and his own words in the Diary piece make that clear.
Getting back to the Spectator Diary, then, Webb gives us prime fodder to consider what I put in my post title: Nature or Nurture? Lots of energy has been spent both here and around the blogosphere and even in the mainstream press about the nature of the internal culture at the BBC. Lord Tebbitt has gone so far as to suggest that their self-selecting method of hiring like-minded people has created this hive-mind which permits the kind of bias I’ve highlighted here, while simultaneously squashing unapproved thoughts and demanding apologies for bias in the other direction.
This brings us to the question: Is it then the innate nature of the people hired, or does the BBC’s internal culture nurture such biased behavior, to the point where people who otherwise wouldn’t be so far to the Left have, as many have suggested about Nick Robinson, gone native? With ol’ Justin, I’d say it’s a bit of both.
Six years ago my mother died and that change came to me that comes to us all when the parents are gone; we are grown up, fully, whether we like it or not, or are ready to cope with it or not. My mother’s birthday was this month and I have rather shamefully failed — yet again — to gather her remaining friends and relations together for some kind of memorial event. But it occurs to me that she, as a socialist, pacifist Quaker, with an admiration for punitive income taxes and Chinese communism, would still have appreciated a birthday mention in the pages of The Spectator. She had a sense of humour, you see: so Happy Birthday, Mum. And although history has yet to smile on all your political programmes, I note, as a dutiful son, that a crisis of capitalism has indeed occurred and that admiration for China, or at least a desire to fly there, animates Conservatives as much as it did you.
We see here that Webb was raised not only Quaker (which, contrary to a certain defender of the indefensible’s assertion, clearly hasn’t made him tolerant of minority religions other than Mohammedanism), but Socialist. This and his LSE education seems to have blinded him to reality, and made him stupidly say that the financial crisis of 2008 was a “crisis of capitalism”, when in fact it was a crisis of capitalists and not-so-capitalist politicians. He would never suggest that Stalin’s mass starvations and purges, or Mao’s devastating Cultural Revolution, or Pol Pot’s killing fields, or what Mugabe has done to Zimbabwe, were crises of Communism or Socialism. He’d say the same thing the rest of the apologists do: these were acts of men, a beautiful ideology ruined by some bad apples. Never mind the clear unawareness that China’s economy, built on smoke and mirrors, is not very far away from its own disaster.
So Webb was born and raised (and then educated) to be a Socialist. Was he similarly prepped to be a Beeboid? He wasn’t raised to be one, but it’s certainly, to borrow from Helen “Hugs” Boaden, in his DNA:
BBC’s Justin Webb reveals his real father was newsreader Peter Woods
Woods was married with two young children when he had an affair with Webb’s mother, Gloria Crocombe. Webb had no contact with his father except for a brief encounter at the age of six months but always knew his true parentage.
It will come as a shock to no one here that this was during the period when there was a very free sexual attitude at the BBC and, as Mark Thompson admitted, had a “massive Left-wing bias”. As for Beeboids having affairs and fathering children out of wedlock, well, plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
(Side note: Interestingly, Webb’s trajectory seems to be mirrored by his successor, Mark Mardell. Like Mardell, ol’ Justin was the BBC’s Brussels-based Europe editor before taking up his US position.)
Is his BBC journalism biased? Yes. It’s been documented here over and over again. Here are just a few examples:
Justin Webb Reveals His Bias And Dishonesty
This blog has been observing Webb’s bias since at least 2005.
Ol’ Justin was born and bred to be a biased Beeboid. He sought out the BBC like a salmon instinctively returning to its spawning ground. And his biased journalism got him elevated to one of the most coveted spots in BBC broadcasting.
There’s something wrong with the corporate culture which creates this. The left-leaning culture has been there for decades now, and they continue to hire like-minded people, and crack down on unapproved thoughts. That’s what needs to be investigated if the BBC is ever to learn the proper lessons about not only how Jimmy Savile was allowed to get away with what he did, but how the BBC has become such a biased broadcasting organization.
PS: Justin Webb isn’t the only genetic Beeboid. Aside from the Dimbleby dynasty, BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones was not only similarly sired by a Beeboid, but is married to the Co-Chair of the Trust. One has to wonder if, like at certain universities, there’s a legacy admission clause.
Brilliant article DP. As to the “very free sexual attitude at the BBC”, it seems that we’ve bee hearing a lot about that lately.
Excellent posting, David. I’d suggest mind that you are too kind in your simile of Mr Webb/Woods. It’s rather like a dog returning to its own vomit rather than a salmon to its spawning grounds.
I wonder how we, as a country if not we as Western civilisation, have allowed so many communists/socialists etc to be infiltrated into our national institutions. And why, when a socialist/communist is found out, nothing is done about them; whereas, anyone (white, christian, male) who shows the least hint of free-thinking is persecuted as a right-wing (whatever that means) bigot, racist, homophobe. As I’ve suggested previously, and in all sincerity, I can only conclude that there is a genetic connection to socialism, because to hold such beliefs is not normal.
Top-class research, but I suspect that Webb and his cronies would just wear this like a badge of honour; and indeed, probably boast about the unlisted examples where he smuggled his bias past his unsuspecting paymasters.
You’re probably right, Sir Arthur, about ol’ Justin taking the Sorabji approach to my post. However, he stated in one of the articles I linked to above (the one where he says he was rude about Sarah Palin) that BBC blogs are allowed to be more open, more personal, more acerbic, just to keep it interesting. I say yeah, fine, but then don’t pretend that we don’t know your personal beliefs on various issues. And don’t pretend that you haven’t blurred the line when you use that same blog for reporting and supposedly serious analysis related to BBC reporting. Same thing with Twitter, really.
The thing is, I actually prefer Webb to Mardell when it comes to reporting on the US. You can imagine what that says about Mardell. Mind you, ol’ Justin thinks anyone who opposes The Obamessiah’s policies is just as racist as Mardell does. But at least he thinks we’re nice racists, and didn’t tend to report on us as if he were Victorian landed gentry forced to walk amongst the great unwashed, scented handkerchief clasped firmly to his nose and mouth.
“time-sensitive”? Let’s run that up a flagpole and see which way the wind blows… or something.
Dear me, I really hate that gobbledegook.
(Sorry, I’ll go back to sleep now that I’ve given 110% effort to square that circle)
An interesting read, David. I might even call it a forensic take-down of the perennially smug Mr Webb. Keep up the good work!
Webb is a simpleton with a big ego. He fits the BBC stereotype perfectly. He should have stayed on the Breakfast Programme sofa with the made-over Barbie doll Raworth. They were just about in their depth then in TV’s shallow end of the pool.
You return to a lot of old and stale vomit here David. But yet again you either misread or willfully misrepresent the Spectator article. ‘Good thing’ is clearly qualified by ‘they say’ and is in relation to its ‘closeness’ to the US; a quip. He is ‘buzzing’ at the hedonism, not the multicultural nature of the place.
The stuff about his genes is risible.
You a socialist, Jim? Or do you just not like folk who loathe the socialist BBC? Or both?
Old and stale? If I hadn’t put in any of those links, you’d be chiding me for not providing any background support for my point. How am I supposed to demonstrate that Webb’s personal biases don’t inform his reporting if I don’t provide any examples of it?
The hedonsim Webb speaks of is the point. If someone from the Right wrote that sentence, you and others would be calling them a racist for it. Yet it’s okay for him to celebrate Balkanization, because it’s a thumb in the eye to the people he spent a few years telling you are racist.
You also seem to misunderstand how I’ve read it. Of course that one sentence you highlight is Webb making a quip he attributes to others. He was using it to support his thesis. That doesn’t mean the rest of his statement is not his opinion.
Yes, the stuff about his genes is a bit silly. Like Justin, I was using humor to support my thesis. But it’s illustrative of the intellectually and culturally inbred nature of the BBC. Which is the underlying point of the whole thing.
David, surely impartiality is in their genes, and if so, then socialist tendencies can also be there.
“Stone Age superstition”
Can I as an Astronomer and Mensa member, say that about the fucking morons at the BBC.
They censor climate science that shows that the University of East Anglia is up to its neck in scientific fraud.
They censor the news that CERN is censoring the high energy cosmic ray results of the CLOUD experiment.
They censor the news that the IPCC is ignoring the implications of the Unifed Theory of Climate in its potential for directly calibrating carbon dioxide warming in the Earths atmosphere, because it is calculated to be far to small to be detectable.
Or do BBC Guardianistas, believe in the Stone Age superstition of anthropologic Climate Change. These BBC Humanist morons insist that this time we have upset Gaia not God. Therefore we must censor scientists that do not agree with environmental activists with qualifications in the arts and humanities.
‘As a Mensa member…’
Surely the most pompous and yet meaningless phrase in the English language. And I would hope an astronomer would know the difference between ‘anthropologic’ and ‘anthropogenic’.
Awesome.
Assuming you’ve finished with the insults, feel free to start addressing his arguments.
Dear William Tell
I do not have much experience of your unusual intellectual curiosity about astronomy, therefore I assume that you must be employed by the BBC, therefore I will try to answer your questions about my article on your level of intellect.
(1) “Elitist” would be more accurate than “pompous and yet meaningless”
(2) “Man-made” would be more accurate than “anthropologic”
(3) “English teacher” would be more accurate than “astronomer”
English was my worst subject, as I went to a state comprehensive school unlike my father and grandfathers who where all working class grammar school boys. Therefore I always use spellchecker if the word has a red jagged line underneath and in this case did not read and chose the correct word in spellchecker.
Also it has become necessary for climate sceptics to emphasise their intelligence as believers in man-made global warming regard this is as a very important factor before deciding whether to debate global warming with us.
I do not have much experience of your unusual intellectual curiosity about astronomy, therefore I assume that you must be employed by the BBC…
– No. I also have a top-class degree in a technical subject from a leading university. So quit the patronising nonsense.
(1) “Elitist” would be more accurate than “pompous and yet meaningless”
– It would not. Your comments consistently point out your membership of this organisation, which has precisely nothing to do with your competence to comment on these issues. Moreover, you cherry-pick the academic papers you think tally with your opinions, whilst overlooking the majority which disagree. I was pointing out that your claims to authority are meaningless.
(2) “Man-made” would be more accurate than “anthropologic”
– ‘anthropogenic’ is the technical term, so I’d prefer it to ‘man-made’.
(3) “English teacher” would be more accurate than “astronomer”
So why begin your post with the self-important ‘As an Astronomer…’, then?
Also it has become necessary for climate sceptics to emphasise their intelligence as believers in man-made global warming regard this is as a very important factor before deciding whether to debate global warming with us.
– More important than intelligence is expertise. Characterising opponents of your viewpoint as ‘environmental activists with qualifications in the arts and humanities’ is patent nonsense. In fact those with relevant qualifications are very much AGAINST your point of view. Polls of scientists consistently show that over 90% believe that AGW is a proven hypothesis. Your opposition is pretty much everybody working in the environmental sciences, not to mention the national science academies of every major Western nation.
Is it the University of East Anglia.
The Unified Theory of Climate is the academic paper cherry-picked because it is the only academic paper that has all the answers for the temperatures in all planetary atmospheres in the solar system, that is important in Astronomy. Therefore I have wasted a great deal of time learning about the standard theory that gives 33 Kelvin for the greenhouse effect on the Earth and 3 Kevin for Mars.
“More important than intelligence is expertise” Is this the cause of the problem. Environmental activists with qualifications in the arts and humanities dominate the debate on the BBC.
“In fact those with relevant qualifications are very much AGAINST your point of view” and “Polls of scientists consistently show that over 90% believe that AGW is a proven hypothesis” At Wadham College, I found that hardly anyone was aware of the science beyond the temperature rising and the carbon dioxide levels rising at the same time. So widespread ignorance is a major problem in science, that is why the space special interest group of mensa is trying to better inform its members about the science beyond the sparse science on climate that appears on the BBC.
“proven hypothesis” I suppose every hypothesis is proven, but it cannot become a theory unless the correlation is proven. That is why if you cherry pick academic papers that answer that question, then you will win the argument. But then that is the reason why any mention of Cosmoclimatology and the Unified Theory of Climate will not appear on the BBC, because they prove the assumptions are wrong.
I am afraid you are most likely someone who is financially motivated to be on the losing side especially if you are employed in environmental sciences, then your career would be dependent on this scientific fraud as are thousands of scientists.
Is it the University of East Anglia.
– Nope.
The Unified Theory of Climate is the academic paper cherry-picked because it is the only academic paper that has all the answers for the temperatures in all planetary atmospheres in the solar system, that is important in Astronomy
– It’s not an academic paper. It’s a presentation given to a non-academic audience and which has not been published in a journal or peer-reviewed. The only place it has received a sympathetic hearing is on climate sceptic websites. If it’s so important, let the authors submit it to a journal for scrutiny.
“More important than intelligence is expertise” Is this the cause of the problem. Environmental activists with qualifications in the arts and humanities dominate the debate on the BBC.
– This is errant nonsense and glosses over the fact that the vast majority of sceptical voices on national media are those without scientific expertise. The professional scientific bodies all argue against your position.
At Wadham College, I found that hardly anyone was aware of the science beyond the temperature rising…
– Was this while you were studying for a degree, while you were at an academic conference or when you were there with your Mensa colleagues? If the latter, why drop the name of the college? The fact that Mensa rented some rooms in an Oxford college adds precisely nothing to your argument.
So widespread ignorance is a major problem in science, that is why the space special interest group of mensa is trying to better inform its members about the science beyond the sparse science on climate that appears on the BBC.
Is it the University of East Anglia.
– Nope.
The Unified Theory of Climate is the academic paper cherry-picked because it is the only academic paper that has all the answers for the temperatures in all planetary atmospheres in the solar system, that is important in Astronomy
– It’s not an academic paper. It’s a presentation given to a non-academic audience and which has not been published in a journal or peer-reviewed. The only place it has received a sympathetic hearing is on climate sceptic websites. If it’s so important, let the authors submit it to a journal for scrutiny.
“More important than intelligence is expertise” Is this the cause of the problem. Environmental activists with qualifications in the arts and humanities dominate the debate on the BBC.
– This is errant nonsense and glosses over the fact that the vast majority of sceptical voices on national media are those without scientific expertise. The professional scientific bodies all argue against your position.
At Wadham College, I found that hardly anyone was aware of the science beyond the temperature rising…
– Was this while you were studying for a degree, while you were at an academic conference or when you were there with your Mensa colleagues? If the latter, why drop the name of the college? The fact that Mensa rented some rooms in an Oxford college adds precisely nothing to your argument.
So widespread ignorance is a major problem in science, that is why the space special interest group of mensa is trying to better inform its members about the science beyond the sparse science on climate that appears on the BBC.
– Widespread ignorance is indeed a problem, but professional scientists are not the ‘ignorant’ ones. Science is evidence-based and tries to be dispassionate about the facts. Is a group of amateur astronomers more expert than the Royal Society,which entirely disagrees with your members’ point of view?
“proven hypothesis” I suppose every hypothesis is proven, but it cannot become a theory unless the correlation is proven.
– Your ignorance of terminology speaks volumes. ‘Hypothesis’ and ‘theory’ (not to mention ‘conjecture’ and ‘theorem’) all have important and distinct meanings. Look them up.
But then that is the reason why any mention of Cosmoclimatology and the Unified Theory of Climate will not appear on the BBC, because they prove the assumptions are wrong.
– The Unified Theory of Climate currently has no scientific credibility. It has not been peer-reviewed. It has however been leapt upon in the blogosphere because to the layman it looks plausibly mathematical, it uses methods also used by climatologists, and reaches conclusions that some people would like to reach.
I am afraid you are most likely someone who is financially motivated to be on the losing side especially if you are employed in environmental sciences, then your career would be dependent on this scientific fraud as are thousands of scientists.
– Wrong again. In fact my own conviction is a) that anthropogenic warming is real and proven; b) that there’s not a thing we can do to stop it. If you like, I’m a warmist by conviction and a denier economically and politically.
And the idea that there is a ‘fraud’ being perpetuated by thousands of scientists just doesn’t hold water. Scientists don’t work in hermitically sealed enclaves of individual disciplines. Each discipline overlaps with another; it simply isn’t possible for an entire scientific discipline to make something up and for that fraud to be undetected by the scientific community at large. If there’s a fraud, the bulk of the scientific profession is in on it. And that is pretty darn unlikely.
– Widespread ignorance is indeed a problem, but professional scientists are not the ‘ignorant’ ones. Science is evidence-based and tries to be dispassionate about the facts. Is a group of amateur astronomers more expert than the Royal Society,which entirely disagrees with your members’ point of view?
“proven hypothesis” I suppose every hypothesis is proven, but it cannot become a theory unless the correlation is proven.
– Your ignorance of terminology speaks volumes. ‘Hypothesis’ and ‘theory’ (not to mention ‘conjecture’ and ‘theorem’) all have important and distinct meanings. Look them up.
But then that is the reason why any mention of Cosmoclimatology and the Unified Theory of Climate will not appear on the BBC, because they prove the assumptions are wrong.
– The Unified Theory of Climate currently has no scientific credibility. It has not been peer-reviewed. It has however been leapt upon in the blogosphere because to the layman it looks plausibly mathematical, it uses methods also used by climatologists, and reaches conclusions that some people would like to reach.
I am afraid you are most likely someone who is financially motivated to be on the losing side especially if you are employed in environmental sciences, then your career would be dependent on this scientific fraud as are thousands of scientists.
– Wrong again. In fact my own conviction is a) that anthropogenic warming is real and proven; b) that there’s not a thing we can do to stop it. If you like, I’m a warmist by conviction and a denier economically and politically.
And the idea that there is a ‘fraud’ being perpetuated by thousands of scientists just doesn’t hold water. Scientists don’t work in hermitically sealed enclaves of individual disciplines. Each discipline overlaps with another; it simply isn’t possible for an entire scientific discipline to make something up and for that fraud to be undetected by the scientific community at large. If there’s a fraud, the bulk of the scientific profession is in on it. And that is pretty darn unlikely.
The first person on here to unearth a right-wing point of view in a Beeboid’s ‘personal’ opinion piece will be….
Will be…….?
Probably living in an alternative universe.
I wonder if the Left-leaning ignorance of the Beeboid has anything to do with their mom being a slag. Perhaps some research will uncover a real pattern, or perhaps it is just coincidence?
By experience I find that up-north, middle class morons have a lot in common.
(1) They make up about one in five of the middle class population.
(2) They are as thick as inner city types
(3) They vote the same way as inner city types.
(4) They prefer the arts and humanities because they are too thick for maths and science.
(5) They get a job advertised in the Guardian.
(6) They move to London after getting a job at the BBC.
(7) They then find that everyone in Islington and the BBC is just like themselves.
(8) they then join the fraternity and abuse children
Ey-up, lads, less of the friendly fire.
Very good post David.
A couple of Saturdays ago – the day after that rather major story about George Osborne’s ticket upgrade – I was listening to Today when Justin Webb said there was some “great fun” happening on Twitter and – wait for it – organised by Lord Prescott. The “great fun” was people taking the train to the cuts rally in London posting pictures of their standard class tickets. I’ll now hand over to Jim Dandy to explain that that’s not at all partisan and that those of us who feel alienated by such smug leftie attempts at humour need to be a bit more relaxed about paying for it.