You have to laugh….long and loud. The biters have been bitten by the very culture of sanctimonious, offence taking, trigger-word fearing, safe-place craving, snowflake ‘don’t mention reality’ neurosis that they helped create…and deep joy…Trump’s ‘beauty’, Jon Sopel, is one of the victims….and there is a tape recording to prove this one.
BBC ‘deeply unimpressed’ over Carrie Gracie pay jokes
The BBC is “deeply unimpressed” with an off-air chat in which two of its high-profile journalists joked about the gender pay gap, a BBC source has said.
Radio 4’s Today presenter John Humphrys and North America editor Jon Sopel were discussing Carrie Gracie, who had quit as China editor over equal pay.
Before Monday’s show, The Sun and Times reported, they joked of “handing over” pay to keep Gracie in the role.
A BBC spokeswoman said the presenter regrets the “ill-advised” conversation.
Speaking in the Radio 4 studio, Humphrys reportedly asked Sopel about “how much of your salary you are prepared to hand over to Carrie Gracie to keep her”.
He then referred to “other men who are earning too much” at the BBC.
Sopel is understood to have replied that “if we are talking about the scope for the greatest redistribution I’ll have to come back and say well yes Mr Humphrys”.
The presenter is then reported to have uttered a profanity and said that he was “still left with more [pay] than anybody else”.
They were shopped by…
Miriam O’Reilly, who won an ageism case against the BBC in 2011 after being dropped from Countryfile, described the exchange as “base, smug and condescending”.
Claiming to have heard a recording of the chat, Ms O’Reilly said it represented the attitude of “back-slapping entitled males”.
Hilarious…a completely harmless jokey conversation that would be entirely normal in the circumstances has now become an issue of sexist, entitled, smug and condescending males. Note that ‘claiming’…when she clearly had heard it.
This is how it happens to the likes of Trump…innocent or innocuous comments taken out of context by people with axes to grind and whipped up into a cause celebre and given plenty of sensationalised airtime by the BBC.
Nice to see it happen to their own.
However, one more wrinkle….O’Reilly believes she was taken off air in order to silence her once it was known she had heard the incriminating tape…
She also said she had been dropped from Friday’s Today programme, when she was expecting to talk about equal pay, adding that she believed it was because of concern she would mention the leaked tape on air.
A BBC spokeswoman denied this, saying it was because the item on the programme had become “a much broader discussion about social change” and another guest was more suitable.
She added: “The Today programme often makes changes to schedules and contributors in the run-up to broadcast… It’s wrong to suggest anything else.”
The BBC only so concerned about the gender pay gap and reporting it?….not so keen to do so if it thinks it can get away with it…nor to report on sexist and condescending comments from its own until forced to.
Yes the bbc were so ‘unimpressed’ that they buried this story way down their ‘news’ page. Just shows what a complete joke they are when two of their most prominent news reporters are caught red-handed taking the piss out of the no1 pressing subject for virtue signalling leftie SJW; an issue the bbc has been sanctimoniously lecturing us all on. You couldn’t make it up. They’re all full of shite. There’s no hypocrite like a lefty hypocrite.
Maybe President Trump would do the UK a big favour by classing Broadcasting House a shithouse!
Ironic that in some circumstances the use of one word can cost some one their career whereas humph and beauty Sopel get a free pass .
I would be interested to see if humphs pay has been cut to only£450000 – no doubt he will be “ compensated “ in an apt way such as a series on exploring sunny places – with a book deal of course .
Sometimes, it would take a heart of stone not to laugh.