Remarkable silence from the BBC as Synagogues and Jews are attacked….no doubt as a result of inflammatory reporting from the likes of the BBC:
The BBC weren’t so slow to report any ‘Islamophobic’ attacks in this country after the murder of Lee Rigby.
The BBC’s new drama, The Honourable Woman, is based around events, historic and present day, occurring in Israel and Palestine.
We are assured that it is entirely neutral in its approach and does not take sides.
The Author, and producer/director, Hugo Blick, tells us he has been scrupulously careful in exploring the issues:
The lead character is an Israeli – do you think that might cause some to react to the drama suggesting it could be biased?
It is important that viewers and critics watch the entire series – as intended – before making judgements on the characters or story arc because great care has been taken to explore this complexity. It is also important to note that the character played by Lubna Azabal is a Palestinian and that the series title could equally reflect upon her.
The Guardian applauds his skill in negotiating the political minefield:
Does anyone perceive Blick taking sides? I thought he walked a difficult tightrope with real skill. Calling for equality of opportunity with the statement: “Terror thrives in poverty. It dies in wealth,” felt powerful without being contentious.
The first 15 minutes would disabuse you of any notion that this is not an anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian polemic….it is based upon the premise that Israel must be destroyed.
It starts with the brutal murder of the ‘Honourable Woman’s’ father, an apparently Zionist arms dealer, killed by a Palestinian with a pair of tongs…no doubt an ironic comment on the supposed ‘David and Goliath’ power relationship between the two combatants now so fashionable in BBC interpretations of events….otherwise known as ‘The News’.
Blick’s tale is a shallow, naive allegory of the Middle East…the father is the old Israel, or rather the Israel that it still is, ‘armed and dangerous’, whilst the daughter, Nessa Stein, that ‘Honourable Woman’, is the new Israel, or rather the ‘one state’ solution where the walls are taken down and there are no barriers any more between the Jews and the Palestinians and everyone lives happily everafter.
The father, as said, is killed off, just as Israel should be we are led to think… Blick admits the conflict is embodied within the characters…. ‘In The Honourable Woman the conflict is used as a creative device – a reflection of the internal conflict of the central character.’
Nessa tells us that strong walls were needed for Israel to thrive, and that’s what her father offered, strong walls for a fledgling nation….but those walls aren’t needed now.
She goes on….telling us that Israel’s GDP in the previous year exceeded $220bn…a fledgling nation no more….the Palestinians on the other hand had a GDP of only $4bn.
She tells us ‘What a difference a wall makes.’
Which wall would that be Mr Blick? Could he possibly be making a not so subtle allusion to the Israeli security barrier?
Nessa goes on to reveal that ‘I believe in Israel’ but there needs to be ‘fundamental change….the greatest threat to Israel is Palestinian poverty, terror thrives in poverty, it dies in wealth…..The strongest wall we can help Israel to maintain is one through which equality of opportunity can pass.’
I’m certain Blick has absolutely no intention of making any allusion whatsoever to the ‘infamous’ Israeli ‘wall’, that security barrier that defends it, its people, from Palestinian terror attacks….but which anti-Israeli activists like to characterise as a symbol of apartheid and economic oppression crushing the Palestinian people, unfairly restricting their lives and economy.
Blick is saying that that wall must come down, it must be breached, he is saying Israel must be destroyed as a nation.
And Blick is not above using Jewish stereotypes…the moaning wife of Nessa’s brother being an archetypal ‘Jewess’ whilst the Jewish businessman, Shlomo, wanting the contract for laying communications cables, is the Pub ‘humorists’ idea of a Jewish businessman…brash, rude, loud and obnoxious….add onto that a racist talking of that ‘Palestinian bastard’ and subliminally suggesting that Arabs are ‘fucking camel jockeys’….oye vay!
If Blick gives up writing drama he can get a job writing jokes for Al Murray’s ‘Pub Landlord’….not so very different to good old Shlomo.
It should also be noted that the BBC was happy to screen this programme despite it involving the kidnapping of a Palestinian child. No cultural sensitivities, no postponing of the broadcast, at a time when a Palestinian teenager has indeed been kidnapped and killed.
Why might that be? Could it be that later on we find out that the kidnap in the programme was at the instigation of some ‘evil’ Israelis and the BBC is quite happy to reinforce that impression in light of the arrest of some Israelis for the kidnap and murder of the Palestinian?
The Guardian certainly liked what it saw and applauded its ‘relevance’…check the link they provide:
‘This new eight-parter is among the most exciting TV events of the year (pace the World Cup). The opener didn’t disappoint, weaving not one but two whodunnits – the suicide/murder of Samir Meshal and kidnap of Kasim – around the most intractable political issue of the day (it could hardly feel more timely) and the life of the woman in the middle.’
But never mind the politics just how good was the programme as entertainment?
Other left leaning publications also love it, which might indicate something of the politics:
From the New Statesman:
The momentum, richness and complexity are maintained. The Honourable Woman will win every award going and when it ends in the final days of summer, its fans, who will be legion and messianic in its cause, will have to take up needlepoint or mah-jong. Nothing on telly is going to be this good for some time to come.
When the BBC do it right, they do it superbly, as with ‘The Honourable Woman’ – an engrossing political thriller AND family drama that looks like it could become the UK’s answer to ‘Homeland’.
Unfortunately their political persuasions get the better of their critical faculties…the programme is clunky, clumsy, simplistic and obvious. It is a student project that incorporates every device known to ‘media man’ to laboriously make its points.
A highly political and very old fashioned production…it’s like something dragged out of the 70’s lacking style, sophistication and real, believable excitement. Has Blick not seen anything by Tarantino, or even the BBC’s, still lefty but stylish, Sherlock?
The Huffington Post and others say ‘it could become the UK’s answer to ‘Homeland’. ‘
No, it couldn’t, have they not actually seen Homeland? The first series was brilliant, the second maintained the standard, the third was pretty dire. The BBC has gone straight for ‘dire’ with ‘The Honourable Woman’.
The acting was wooden and lifeless…when the Zionist arms dealing father was killed off in front of his children they just sat there staring….the Mail explains:
The victim’s daughter was an eight-year-old Nessa Stein. She sat frozen with her father’s blood spattered across her face, in a green velvet chair far too big for her.
That Alice-in-Wonderland image of stillness amid chaos is a trick borrowed from European cinema, light years removed from the all-action blur of Hollywood.
Blick borrowing from ‘European cinema’…that could explain why it is crap.
Maggie Gyllenhaal as Nessa Stein, a supposedly powerful business woman, is unbelievable, not unbelievably good, just unbelievable…with an incredibly annoying ‘breathy’ voice over.
Her brother might as well be replaced by a bag of sand, the nanny seems a few drinks short of a good time and the other supporting actors are highly mannered stereotypes…I do though like the MI6 fellow, Sir Hugh Hayden-Hoyle,….though how Rod Liddle got the time to play the part is beyond me….however, again likeable but still too stagey.
The supposedly dramatic and exciting finale where the the boy is kidnapped was laughable nonsense…..Nessa’s bodyguard appearing out of nowhere, completely unnoticed by the kidnappers despite the open nature of the area, managing to shoot a kidnapper with a pistol at long range in the dark…never mind the whole tortured invention of the kidnap itself…a ridiculously complex concoction once again more probably the result of a drunken brainstorming session by those students of film check-boxing all the required ingredients for a thriller resulting in a cliched and uninventive ‘spectacular’.
Still, that’s purely my view…others beg to differ:
Blick patiently and methodically lays out the building blocks of this drama like a grandmaster positioning his pieces.
The Honourable Woman is a marathon, not a sprint: a drama with more layers than Rachel Green’s traditional English trifle and Dante’s circles of Hell combined – and twice as darkly fascinating.
Though thinking of it…that could just be damning by faint praise….‘a grandmaster positioning his pieces’? Are we to be dragged through 7 epsiodes of mind-numbing pawn play only to be rewarded finally with a rising crescendo of eyepopping action and the tying up of all loose ends in an intellectually gratifying masterpiece that satisfies the most jaded of critics?
In 2006 Hamas was busy murdering its rivals for power in the Palestinian territories, dragging Fatah men from their hospital beds before shooting them or throwing other Fatah members from the roofs of buildings.
The BBC told us that Hamas were ‘merely flushing out the corrupt and violent Fatah’.
How different the BBC reaction when Israeli bombs accidentally kill civilians and hit a home for the disabled. Whilst Hamas deliberately set about killing patients the Israelis did not. But it is Hamas that receives the BBC’s stamp of approval….despite deliberatley storing weapons in hospitals and mosques.
Whenever you read, hear or watch BBC, and indeed other organisation’s, news broadcasts about Israel and the Palestinians you have to remember the context…that Muslims have been attempting to wipe out Israel for over 60 years and that attempt is ongoing. Israel has endured repeated invasion attempts and endlessly relentless terror attacks on its civilian population.
And yet it is Israel defending itself that comes under the most concerted attacks by its self- appointed critics.
The only reason Palestinian civilians are caught up in the war is because their leaders, Hamas, in this case, continue to prosecute a war against Israel with the intent of wiping it out.
Stop that war and the killing will stop, stop the war and life will begin for Palestinians.
The Israelis cannot proclaim a unilateral peace treaty. It takes both sides. Those like Rory Stewart who declare that there is only one solution, a one state solution, have no idea of what the outcome would be….but the BBC don’t tackle him on his idiocy…for an ex-diplomat he is surprisingly naive…or maybe not….perhaps he realises that Israel would be finished and so would the Jews…once again destined to roam the world at the mercy of every anti-Semite in the countries they seek refuge in. Perhaps like many in the FCO he doesn’t care….remember ‘Fucking Israelis, fucking Jews’?
Israel is doing the job all civilised nations should be doing…attempting to neutralise one of the most dangerous proponents of an ideology that has sprung up across the Globe since Nazism or Communism.
Here is what a senior Hamas member said in 2007:
“We believe that this is the era of change, that the coming decades will see Islamic rule in Arab countries,” he said. “I am not speaking about hopes here. I am just reading the reality. Today, even the thief, before he commits his crime, asks god to help him.”
“In a few years [Islam] can gather supreme power in the form of money, power, armies, human beings… from Morocco to Indonesia.”
“How are we going to manage the relationship between the West and Islam? If we are going to see each other as enemies we will see world war IV.”
In 2007 he predicted the Islamists would be taking charge across much of the world…..they’re certainly giving it a good go and having a great deal of success.
Hamas of course is a Muslim Brotherhood offshoot….the same Muslim Brotherhood championed by the BBC’s Jeremy Bowen.
The same Jeremy Bowen who now tells us that in this complex world ‘…you have to be careful of your reporting and the words you use.’
The BBC has indeed been very careful recently, selecting words and images that present a very particular view of Gaza to the world….concentrating on Palestinian civilian casualties, oh, Bowen mentions Israelis are being rocketed…but he says the Palestinian attempts are far less potent. I guess an Israeli injured or killed by one would only conclude that Bowen thought their life was worth less than a Palestinian one.
The BBC’s concentration on civilian casualties can only be a calculated attempt to sway public opinion against the Israelis. Its reporters acknowledge the power of images of dead and injured women and children.
And yet it uses them to full effect.
Here Kevin Connolly admits Hamas uses civilian casualties for political advantage….
Hamas’s military leaders might be calculating that the sight of Palestinian civilians suffering under terrifying aerial bombardment will force the Palestinian Authority to show much greater solidarity and prompt Arab governments to show more support.
Hamas might reason that there were few advantages in keeping the peace whereas once hostilities have started it can demand concessions for agreeing to end them.
Connolly then highlights the advantages of the dramatic exploitation of dead children to a cause….
Israel might argue that it’s trying to avoid civilian casualties while Hamas is trying to cause them. But television pictures of civilian dead in Gaza – especially children – will help shape perceptions of Israel round the world.
Why then does the BBC not only ‘ambulance chase’ dead and injured children but allow Palestinian propaganda to go unchecked in its news?
Here Yolande Knell not only doesn’t challenge a claim that Israelis deliberately target civilians but accepts it as true (via BBC Watch):
BBC News website under the title “Gaza death toll rises as air strikes continue” – which amplified and promoted the same inaccurate claim from the head of a political NGO – the PCHR.
In that report, the BBC aired footage of Raji Sourani saying:
“This is a third consecutive war against Gaza since 2008 and Israel always, I mean, do target the civilians and they are in the eye of the storm.”
Bowen yesterday (08:49) decided that his main role was not to report the conflict and the politics behind it but to influence listener’s perceptions by using emotive language and exploiting the traumatic injuries of a child.
Bowen told us that there was ‘Terrible death and destruction, terrible human pain’ in Gaza just now…of course Israel was suffering…but as said above…its suffering was far less potent.
He made a beeline for a hospital in Gaza where in the intensive care unit he honed in on an 8 year old with the ‘fragments of an Israeli bomb punched into her brain.’
Bowen asked the Palestinian doctor….‘As a Palestinian what do you think when you see this?’
A curiously loaded question as we know exactly what the doctor would say. Bowen clearly wanted a particualr response and got it…easy money.
The doctor said the girl had been injured at home where she should feel safe…and asks Bowen where his children would feel safest…Bowen pointedly replies ‘At home’.
Not saying Bowen is manipulating us emotionally…but he is.
Possibly no coincidence that earlier a Hamas spokesman said this:
“There is no safe haven in this place and Palestinian civilians are once again in the eye of the storm and are paying heavily. Israelis.. are trying to pressure militant groups through targeting civilians.” ”
Note that ‘Targeting civilians’ claim once again…which the BBC prints without challenge.
Bowen moves on to another patient and once again goes for the emotional asking….‘How would describe what has happened?‘….only to be told that she isn’t a ‘patient’ she is a ‘victim’ of Israeli aggression.
Bowen tells us that this is an example of how you have to be careful of your reporting…
A sign of the complexity of issues in the Middel East.
To me that sounded like an excuse to treat Palestinian claims as fact even when the facts prove otherwise…all is relative to the BBC….and once again adopting the Palestinian narrative in preferrence to the truth….as with the word ‘Terrorism’ and the BBC’s reluctance to use it.
Kevin Connolly was also out ambulance chasing (2 mins 30 secs) visiting the home where disabled residents were killed by an Israeli bomb which hit their home.
At the home for disabled people where two women were killed he tells us that it is ‘a daily routine in Gaza searching ruined buildings’…and that it is ‘particularly heartbreaking today.’
Locals, he tells us, were angry and bewildered and that the UN has said that the Israeli targeting homes of militant commanders could be a war crime.
Strangely Connolly doesn’t dwell on the inconvenient revelation by the local who complained that the Israelis were normally very careful to target only military locations and rocket launch sites.
As said the context of this latest round of fighting has to be considered…it is a 65 year war so far and the BBC’s attempt to isolate this recent fighting and tote up the casualties, the body count, as if that gives some sort of moral superiority to one side, the Palestinians in this case, is hugely dishonest.
The Israelis have suffered thousands of casualties in dead and injured over the decades as they are forced to defend their country…casualties that the BBC doesn’t bother to detail….casualties that would nevr have occurred had the Israelis been left in peace.
Remember the Fogels? Well you wouldn’t if you’d had to rely on the BBC for news…the Fogel family that was slaughtered one night in their own home by a Palestinian with a knife…practically cutting off the head of the baby of the family.
And just as the BBC didn’t report the Palestinians holding up three fingers celebrating the kidnapping of three Israeli teens they didn’t bother with this either:
Or what about this family in 2009?:
Three people — two men and a woman — were killed and an 8-month-old baby was critically injured Thursday morning after a rocket blasted into a four-story building in Kiryat Malachi in southern Israel. Six people suffered from shock.
The names of the victims were cleared for publication late Thursday afternoon. Aharon Smadga, 49, Itzik Amsalem, 24, and Mira Sharf, 26 will all be buried Thursday evening. Sharf was reportedly pregnant.
Or how about civilians forced to flee their homes?
Yolande Knell tells us that:
“This isn’t a family outing; it’s an exodus. Palestinians head away from their homes in northern Gaza and take their most prized belongings with them. Israel’s warning there’ll be a heavy bombardment of the border area where they live….We find hundreds of Gazans coming inside a school for shelter. They’re exhausted and distressed.”
Knell doesn’t mention that Hamas has tried to keep the people in their homes, to ignore the Israeli warnings:
“Urgent call to the residents of the Gaza Strip” in which locals were told to ignore the calls and warnings made by Israel and the IDF. “To all of our people who have evacuated their homes – return to them immediately and do not leave the house.”
“You must follow the directives of the Interior Ministry. This is psychological warfare, random messages to instill panic in people.””
Nor does the BBC tell of the thousands of Israelis who have been forced in the past to evacuate their homes under the threat of constant Hamas rockets.
It is curious how the BBC seems to follow the narrative of the Palestinians and their supporters. Concentrating on Palestinian civilian casualties, how the Israelis are supposedly perpetrating war crimes and that this is a battle of the Palestinian David versus the Israeli Goliath…the impoverished, under-equipped Palestinians up against the might and power of the Israel war machine.
Here is Owen Jones last week…….
‘Israel under renewed Hamas attack’, says the BBC. More balance is needed
The media coverage hardly reflects the reality: a military superpower armed with F-15 fighter jets, AH-64 Apache helicopters, Delilah missiles, IAI Heron-1 drones and Jericho II missiles (and nuclear bombs, for that matter), versus what David Cameron describes as a “prison camp” firing almost entirely ineffective missiles.
And here is Kevin Connolly a few hours later (51 mins 35 secs) :
Connolly tells us that Hamas’ only weapon against Israel (and her aggressive, violent attacks on Gaza?) is these rockets…the subtext to that is that Israel is the aggressor and Hamas is almost defenceless against that aggression.
He says that the only tool Hamas had at its disposal to respond to the round-up was rocket fire from Gaza – and those arrests were reason enough for that bombardment to intensify.
Though the BBC pays lip service to Israeli’s being bombarded, targeted, by Palestinian rockets, the thrust of the narrative is all about the suffering of the Palestinians whilst dodging around inconvenient truths that the Israelis work hard to target military sites and that Hamas is using civilians as human shields.
I have to be honest and say that I did a double take when reading Jeremy Bowen’s twitter feed. I THOUGHT it has to be a parody but evidently not. Hamas must love him.
And Israel has serious questions to answer. Especially after lethal attack on disabled home #Gaza
— Jeremy Bowen (@BowenBBC) July 12, 2014
Over the years, we have covered many of the flare ups in this region and the BBC bias is truly visceral. Palestinians are ALWAYS innocent victims and Israelis are ALWAYS the aggressors. The script never changes. Never any investigation into how Hamas operate. Never any consideration of why Hamas rockets Israel on a daily basis. The three young Israelis boys kidnapped and shot to death now forgotten. Most times, I can brush off the BBC bias with the contempt it deserves BUT when it comes to this vile Palestinian propaganda machine, it makes me seethe with anger.
A few days ago, parts of the public sector chose to strike. The Daily Mail suggests that the public sector strike was not as successful as anticipated whilst some of the BBC’s early web news headlines implied a “mass” turnout. There seems to be a bit of a contradiction ? I am sure the Daily Mail has a bias in its coverage but so has our allegedly impartial State Broadcaster surely?
On Wednesday Owen Jones made a rather surprising claim in the Guardian (Jones never lets a bandwagon go by without jumping aboard)…that the BBC was pro-Israeli:
The macabre truth is that Israeli life is deemed by the western media to be worth more than a Palestinian life – this is the hierarchy of death at work
The media coverage hardly reflects the reality: a military superpower armed with F-15 fighter jets, AH-64 Apache helicopters, Delilah missiles, IAI Heron-1 drones and Jericho II missiles (and nuclear bombs, for that matter), versus what David Cameron describes as a “prison camp” firing almost entirely ineffective missiles. Twenty-seven Palestinians are reported to have died in Gaza – and, mercifully, no Israelis have been killed by Hamas rockets – and yet the BBC opts for the Orwellian “Israel under renewed Hamas attack”.
The BBC is a public broadcaster, duty-bound to provide balanced reports that accurately reflect the reality on the ground. It is failing to do so, and it is up to licence payers – to whom it is accountable – to demand that it does.
Incredible that Jones manages to ignore every other headline from the BBC or their continuous reports of Israeli bombardments of Gaza killing ‘Palestinians’…and oh yes…The Palestinians may have fired off a few ricketty homemade rockets into the deserts of Israel where absolutely no one was hurt.
So BBC…tell us who all those ‘Palestinians’ were…just how many were Hamas terrorists?
Why is it that it is always ‘Palestinian medics’ who the BBC report as the source of casualty figures…why not the true source…Hamas propagandists who control everything the media does and sees in Gaza? The BBC won’t use ‘terrorist’ but will use ‘medic’…adopting Hamas’ own preferred narrative.
Later in the day the BBC’s Kevin Connolly came on to the Sheila Fogarty show (51 mins 35 sec) to talk about events in Gaza….he told us that essentially Israel is to blame for the Hamas rocket firing…a response to Israel’s extensive search for the three kidnapped teenagers.
Connolly goes on to say that Hamas’ only weapon against Israel (and her aggressive, violent attacks on Gaza?) is these rockets…the subtext to that is that Israel is the aggressor and Hamas is almost defenceless against that aggression….which Connolly actually says later in the piece as he describes the bombing of a Hamas house which Hamas used as a propaganda opportunity….demonstrating Connolly thought the power of Israel against which Hamas is defenceless….which again puts the blame for the violence squarely in Israel’s court.
Connolly talks of the power of images in such a war and how they alter perceptions…Fogarty agrees that images have a huge impact on how we see situations….and tells us that it shows how important it is that journalists are there to bring us the truth about those images. Had to laugh about that considering the BBC’s past record on photos from the conflict.
Connolly today put that down in print.…but made a much more rounded effort in describing the motivations of both sides:
Note that he changes the words…whereas he said rockets were Hamas’ only ‘weapon’ in the radio report here he replaces ‘weapon’ with ‘tool’:
The only tool Hamas had at its disposal to respond to the round-up was rocket fire from Gaza – and those arrests were reason enough for that bombardment to intensify.
That changes the perception of Hamas…from being aggressive, even in what it claims is its defence, to a more technical, neutral term that removes that violent subtext.
Connolly still downplays the effectiveness of Palestinian rockets:
Lots of the rockets in Gaza are workshop weapons.
What he doesn’t mention are the thousands of highly effective missiles imported from Iran.
Connolly does at least admit that Hamas may be using civilians as human shields and a propaganda weapon, or is that propaganda tool?…
Hamas’s military leaders might be calculating that the sight of Palestinian civilians suffering under terrifying aerial bombardment will force the Palestinian Authority to show much greater solidarity and prompt Arab governments to show more support.
Hamas might reason that there were few advantages in keeping the peace whereas once hostilities have started it can demand concessions for agreeing to end them.
Connolly goes on to admit perceptions can be manipulated by Hamas….
Israel might argue that it’s trying to avoid civilian casualties while Hamas is trying to cause them. But television pictures of civilian dead in Gaza – especially children – will help shape perceptions of Israel round the world.
And he alludes to the possible terrors of Israeli civilians under rocket bombardment, but doesn’t go into detail…..
To the outside world the Gaza rockets may seem ineffective – partly because many are homemade and partly because they’re hopelessly overmatched by Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile defence system.
But Israeli civilians judge the rockets by the intent behind them and not by their military effectiveness. They are grimly familiar with the ritual of running for shelter with their children when they hear a 15-second warning. They expect their government to put a stop to it.
Connolly should perhaps give more time to reporting the effects of the missiles on Israelis:
In May 2007, a significant increase in rocket attacks from Gaza prompted the temporary evacuation of thousands of residents from Sderot.[157] According to the United Nations, 40 percent of the city’s residents left in the last two weeks of May.[158] During the summer of 2007, 3,000 of the city’s 22,000 residents (comprising mostly the city’s key upper and middle class residents)[citation needed] left for other areas, out of rocket range.
During the 2008–2009 conflict, a large section of the residents of Ashkelon, a southern coastal city put in range of Grad-type rockets since the beginning of the conflict, fled the city for the relative safety of central and northern Israel.[159] On January 10–11, according to Israeli media, 40 percent of the residents fled the city, despite calls by the Mayor to stay.[160]
In February 2009, the BBC reported that 3,000 of Sderot’s 24,000 residents had “upped and left.”[1]
A few quibbles with his web reportbut it was generally fairly balanced, his radio report seeming more inclined to play up the ‘defencelessness’ of Hamas against the military might of Israel…..ignoring the fact that all the bombing would stop if Hamas stopped rocketing or otherwise attacking Israel and agreed a permanent ceasefire.
And Owen Jones…he is of course just a professional contrarian who has to ‘protest’ every ‘right-on’ cause to maintain his leftwing credentials and keep the paychecks rolling in in exchange for his not so unique brand of leftwing demagogy.
Overdue but the floor is YOURS. Any views on the Hamas British Broadcasting Corporation and its BIAS?
Robert Peston hints that the BBC Trust should and might be split….its power to regulate the BBC removed:
Here are a couple of mildly interesting tidbits about my own shop, the BBC.
First (and there is nothing terribly revelatory about this) Lord Coe is a virtual shoo-in to be Lord Patten’s successor as chairman of the BBC Trust.
Of course his appointment is not 100%, because there is a formal and slightly cumbersome appointments process.
That process includes interviewing and vetting by a Department of Culture, Media and Sports appointments committee, a recommendation of a preferred candidate by government – after all the “appointable” candidates have been interrogated by the culture secretary, Sajid Javid – then pre-appointment scrutiny by MPs on the DCMS select committee and then formal appointment.
Phew.
But for the government, which for this sort of thing really means the prime minister and chancellor, Lord Coe is the outstanding candidate.
So presumably they will find a way to get him over these many hurdles.
Why do they rate him so highly?
Well they know him well (George Osborne and Coe once shared an office, I think), and they regard him as an impressive leader, with a remarkable record of success off the track (leading London’s Olympics bid, chairing the organising committee for the games, and so on).
One senior government source complained that among the chattering classes Lord Coe is widely and snootily under-rated “as that bloke who won some gold medals”.
Oh, and he is a Tory, which is de rigueur (other candidates take note).
Also Lord Coe is reckoned to be broadly positive about the BBC, which matters to Cameron and Osborne because – unlike perhaps the majority of Tory MPs – they are supporters of and believers in the BBC.
Which is not to say they are blindly uncritical.
But they place value on how the BBC wins important friends for Britain overseas – the role it plays in reinforcing the country’s “soft power” – and what they would see as its largely standard-raising role in the ecology of UK news, arts and media businesses.
That does not mean the review of the BBC’s charter – which the government said when advertising for the post of Trust chairman will now not start till after the general election – would be easy for the BBC, if the Tories form the next government.
The BBC would doubtless face challenges on the scope of what it does and could not expect any increase in the licence fee out of line with austerity in the rest of the public sector.
But it does suggest the charter review would not be about dismantling the BBC; it would not be a choice between life and death.
That said, the review is likely to be rather more existentially challenging to the BBC Trust itself, the body that has the often uncomfortable task of reconciling sometimes conflicting responsibilities – those of regulator, representative of licence-fee payers (who for these purposes can be seen as the owners) and occasional human shield when the Director General lands in a spot of bother.
As I understand it, Osborne and Cameron have never quite understood why the regulation of the BBC could not be done in a cleaner and more ostensibly impartial way by Ofcom.
If the Trust’s regulatory functions were removed, it would resemble something like the old governing board or even possibly a public company board, concentrating on oversight of senior executive appointments, money, risk and efficiency. There would be clarity that its ultimate duty of care would be to licence-fee payers.
With these more focussed duties, the BBC Trust chairman could step into the fray and shield the DG from heat in a crisis, without that compromising the chairman’s perceived impartiality as regulator (a constant tension under the existing system).
All of which adds up to my second tidbit, which is that there may have been a misinterpretation of the fact that the advert for the Trust chair job says he or she will serve a four-year term.
This was seen as somehow evidence that radical reform of the Trust is off the agenda.
That, I am reliably told, is wrong: if the BBC is not dismantled, the Trust may be.
Capitalists can obviously go up stairs.
Top BBC shows like Doctor Who, Top Gear and Strictly Come Dancing face being privatised under new cost-cutting plans at the corporation.
Hundreds of millions of pounds’ worth of TV programmes currently produced by the BBC will no longer be protected from outside competition under reforms announced by director general Tony Hall today.
In return, Lord Hall wants the BBC’s in-house production company to be free to make shows directly for other broadcasters, particularly in America, in a bid to generate millions of pounds.
Here is a taste of things to come with an early tender for the Dr Who franchise:
Israel launched a terror alert as BBC journo assumed to be Hamas terrorist…how could that ever happen?
