The BBC’s director of news, James Harding, has said there will be an extensive programme of training to educate BBC employees on how to report on issues surrounding the EU referendum impartially. Can’t imagine why he would think this was at all necessary.
Every BBC journalist will be sent on a compulsory training course about the European Union, as part of the corporation’s attempts to ensure that its coverage of the forthcoming European referendum is impartial.
James Harding, the director of BBC News, told MPs that thousands of BBC reporters, including newsreaders and Today programme presenters, will be sent for mandatory retraining, as he admitted that the referendum, due before 2017, will “test perceptions of the BBC’s impartiality”.
“We know this will be a period really of great scrutiny of our coverage, so our view is that we should reinstate mandatory training of all BBC journalists, so that they are as well-informed as possible of the issues around the workings of the institutions of the EU and its relationship to the UK.”
Perhaps such a course could be implemented for those reporting on the Middle East as well where the BBC’s journalists display a stunning ignorance of history as well as a blatant disregard for any rules on impartiality and accuracy.
Not only will news and current affairs programmes be subject to such training but documentaries, drama and comedy, the BBC having a well known tendency to use its non-news programming as vehicles to deliver particular messages that the BBC thinks its audience needs to hear and absorb….
David Jordan, the corporation’s director of editorial policy, told MPs that dramas and comedy shows such as Radio 4’s News Quiz would also be covered by the corporation’s referendum impartiality rules. He said: “Referendum guidelines cover all BBC output, not just news. It includes drama and comedy.”
Of course it’s a bit late for such conscientious impartiality when the BBC has spent years bashing the likes of UKIP as ‘racist little Englanders’ and produced films such as The Great European Disaster Movie…
The film was made by Bill Emmott, an ex-editor of the Economist, and Annalisa Piras, an Italian journalist who writes for the Guardian. Europhiles often portray their opponents as swivel-eyed fanatics who are impervious to reason, but The Great European Disaster Movie wasn’t exactly a model of dispassionate, evidence-based analysis. On the contrary, it was an example of the scaremongering often engaged in by pro-Europeans, except instead of merely claiming that Brexit would cause the economy to collapse, it threw in Western civilisation for good measure. As the Conservative MEP Dan Hannan pointed out, the only thing it left out of this apocalyptic scenario was flesh-eating zombies.
I am really looking forward to the next couple of years in the run up to the referendum. No, really. A couple of years of claim and counter claim and all the time filtered through the likes of Andrew Marr who will be pretending to take it all so seriously as they discuss it all endlessly in ever-decreasing circles.
Can’t see the BBC really altering its engrained prejudice in favour of the EU…..when it came under scrutiny before when doing its own impartiality review it did change its behaviour for a short time but then reverted rapidly to type, so how long will the new look BBC last? Weeks probably.
Personally I think the best solution would be to ban all talk of the European Union from the airwaves until the referendum is over and then ban it again when the result is in.
It sounds like window dressing to me. A leopard can’t change its spots.
Of course it is. And of course the BBC and staff can and will not.
Any more than training will inspire a supposedly professional, compassionate nurse to offer a dehydrated patient a glass of water or help change a soiled sheet.
It is scary how little any of our media or our politicians seem to know about the EU.
It is as though there is a secret ‘masonic’ council that has issued a edict of ‘do not ask’, just feed the plebs stories about ‘bent bananas’. Either that or all of our media are part of the same ‘inner circle’ and they know what is going on but just don’t want to tell us.
For years now the British have been told outright lies about the EU, when it has been mentioned at all.
Such as:
1. Only the British have euro-sceptics
2. Only EU citizens can live in the EU (no holiday homes in Spain)
3. Only EU citizens can work in the EU
4. The EU gave us peace in Europe (and a civil war in Ukraine?)
5. Only the EU can negotiate trade deals for us as we are a weak insignificant country
6. Only the EU can fight international crime, (sorry Interpol!)
7. The EU gave us cheap air travel within Europe, (cheap as in comparable to really cheap travel to the USA!)
I wait in vain for any journalist to tell us the real reason why politicians/civil servants love the EU – it allows them to impose legislation on the masses that cannot be revoked but would never be passed if proposed at ‘national’ level.
The EU is not the same EU it was a year ago. Merkel is desperate to admit Turkey . Hungary looks to be on the brink of leaving by default . The invasion from the third world is gathering pace and is now out of hand. Germany is in chaos and Sweden looks like turning in to Mogadishu within a year.
So what on earth is the BBC doing with this window dressing nonsense.? Out of date before it starts.
Rule number one. When situations start to get out of control then collapse and chaos happen almost overnight. It is no longer whether we vote in a referendum but whether the EU will still be in existence come voting day.
They have bought it on themselves but are dragging the rest of us down with them, In Germany the question is now whether the Merkel regime is going to survive the months ahead. In Sweden it is too late. In Hungary ? In Poland ? In the Czech Republic?
Meanwhile Cameron twitters and May bleats.
There are few options left and so cowardly is the EU elite that it will not face up to them.
I expect this elite to react violently soon so be warned. Once again we will have cause to be grateful for our island home.
If we were still a nation of enterprise we would see this impending chaos as an opportunity to assert our own leadership on Europe, seize the EU by the throat and start twisting it to our own advantage, and to the advantage of any other nation that would join with us in turning it into the simple free-trade area that it should always have been.
Instead of which we are busy tying ourselves to the apron-strings of one of the most disgustingly corrupt and dictatorial regimes in the world, and inviting them to insert themselves into our infrastructure and assorted sovereign assets. I assume this is all a ploy to pre-empt what looks increasingly like a vote for Brexit, ensuring that the obvious anticipated benefits of kneeing the EU in the groin become impossible to achieve, as we will be glued to the hem of the Chinese emperor’s robes.
Dave.S Yes indeed. ‘Merkel is desperate to admit Turkey ‘. And Cameron is also desperate to admit Turkey. And this worries me. The last act before the referendum and collecting his retirement payoff from the Saudis/Qataris.
“Every BBC journalist will be sent on a compulsory training course about the European Union, as part of the corporation’s attempts to ensure that its coverage of the forthcoming European referendum is impartial.”
It meansa all the Beeboids will be sent for indoctrination courses to the EU so they will all have the lies off pat. It is intended to make them completely partial (so another lie in their statement already). As far as they are concerned ‘The benefits of EU Membership are settled”. And no Beeboid will be allowed to say anything that may look like breaking the ‘concensus’. All will be trained to argue against the facts of the ‘Out’ side and how to snigger when any good fact is told.
“Perhaps such a course could be implemented for those reporting on the Middle East as well where the BBC’s journalists display a stunning ignorance of history as well as a blatant disregard for any rules on impartiality and accuracy”
Whatever could you mean?
http://bbcwatch.org/2015/10/21/explaining-away-terror-bbc-bowen-style-part-one/
Maybe Jezza could hire Jezza as spokesman if the new guy isn’t extreme enough?
Can’t imagine why he would think this was at all necessary.
Corect Alan.
Unnecessary, the BBC, since its inception has been the most impartial, neutral, fair, even-handed, dispassionate organisation since the Big Bang (Source BBC).
So what is going to happen on these “training” courses?
#1 More public money will be wasted.
#2 The training will encourage the bias to become more polished and professional.
#3 The training will highlight the arguments against the EU, well some of them, otherwise the courses would be indefinitely long: and teach the attendees how to ignore, deflect, dismiss and otherwise negate them.
#4 The training will illuminate the alleged advantages of the EU and inculcate an ability to overstate, magnify, and lie about it in a more convincing manner.
#5 The training will promote a more disciplined, determined army. No leaks, no tweets demonstrating the loathsome treason of the BBC.
#6 The training course will finish with everyone singing “The Red Flag” and an admonition to work and wait, in a short time the corridors of this slimy, scum infested building will be littered with empty champagne bottles again. They hope.
Who’s going to be running the training courses? Would be less than surprised to find it run by a former Beeboid, or a former Blairite (or both).
I was wondering the same, in house training or out there will be a price and it’s unlikely the BBC will publish the cost of this exercise, the purpose of which appears to be to instruct BBC staff to behave as they should already be doing. Any staff who have undertaken CP courses will have to be deprogrammed too or kept well away from the EU debate.
Does anyone know if the public are entitled to know how much this is going to cost ?
Dave
Sorry I cannot help you.
The Gravy Train has so many carriages now, carriages full of the downtrodden masses, that it is impossible to guess.
They’ll go to their usual brainwashing /indoctrination/training provider ,Common Purpose
Would it not just be easier and cheaper to pull the plug on the BBC during the campaign and referendum?
Perhaps Harding should start with those reporting on the UK steel industry, to remind them that under EU rules we cannot provide government financial aid to British steel firms which are in trouble. Of course my own complaint to the beeb that they really if ever mention this “minor detail” has gone unanswered thus far.
It’s important, I think, to use the phrases ‘anti-EU’ or ‘anti-European federalism’ or ‘pro-UK independence’ if one is on the ‘leave’ side. We’re going to hear the phrase ‘anti-European’ a lot in the coming months and it is heavily loaded with xenophobic connotations.
‘European (or EU) Colonialism’ does it for me. And that’s a dirty word to lefties.
What a strange publicity stunt by the BBC because in effect it is admitting that its world-beating journalists, despite working for the corporation for a combined number of many, many years, are incapable of fulfilling the Corporation’s basic charter obligation to impartiality.
So how do they conduct this re-training given that, to a man, they have such an ingrained pro-EU bias? They already know what the arguments are in favour of Brexit because they have studiously attempted to suppress them throughout their coverage for the last 40-odd years.
No, only a cull of the left-liberal clique that the BBC have deliberately recruited over many years will solve the problem of all the BBC’s eco-socialist bias, not just over the EU, and to hope that the Islington leftists at the top of the Corporation have any inclination whatsoever to do that is just pissing in the wind.
That’s all this over staffed mob need. No doubt the “training” budget will be allocated to some left wing supporting operation at a huge cost to the public via usage of the licence tax.
You can bet they will not be shown any training videos surropunding events in Germany with the fire bombing of immigrant hostels and the rise of Pergida.
it really is such bollocks! Who trains the trainer?
May I point out a danger here
The EU is complex and boring when going into the details .
And in the details there will be positive things to so many people , as you could find in anything of like , such as the Soviet Union . Actually the SU achieved so many things , just that for the greater good , it was crap .
Will the BBC put their arts correspondents through these EU familiarity workshops ?
Are their arts correspondents going to have to learn about the Working Time Directive and its affects on construction workers , foresters and meat handlers? Are they going to learn about fractional lending in the finance industry, or the EU s plans for parking for international trucks on the TEN ( of interest to me ! ) . Boring subjects . Complex .
I single out arts correspondents, but could just as easily said sports correspondents or medical correspondents or space correspondents or any other .
When the EU collects what it thinks is its dues , it’s in a very very generalised fashion through the member states but when it distributes its largesse , it is as direct as possible, making it hard to see that a tax here , community charge there or parking fine are collected , collectivised and used with. The Ring of Stars endorsement.
As an example of why we don’t need the EU , why do we need the TEU ? ( ten pounds if you get this one ) .
Al Beeb is ‘past its sell by date’
Bin it along with the EU.