BBC Unions Threaten Tory Conference Coverage

I've just seen the news that BBC unions will be going on strike on 5 & 6 October. How totally coincidental that this is during the Conservative Party Conference and that the BBC may not be able to broadcast David Cameron's speech or give it any news coverage. And even more coincidental that the second strike will be on 19 & 20 October, the day of the Comprehensive Spending Review. Who'd have though it, eh?

The strike is all about BBC pensions, which are among the most generous in the public sector. The Deputy Director General, for instance, will get a pension of more than £215,000 a year for life. I suppose if I had that I wouldn't want to give it away either. Clearly not all BBC employees are on this level of pension, but they are pensions most of us in the private sector would never be able to achieve. Ah, we're told, people in the public sector forego large salaries in order to guarantee a better pension. Rot. Virtually everyone I know at the BBC, in whatever department, earns more than their equivalent in commercial TV or radio.

I do hope the BBC management scupper this interference in the democratic process and take a feed from Sky News. I'm sure Rupert Murdoch would appreciate the irony...

Guest Blog: The BBC - Anachronism or National Treasure?

By Gerard Eastick*

In a couple of weeks’ time I shall board the Caledonian Sleeper in Edinburgh, sit in the lounge car and stare disconsolately at the miniature bottle of Gordon’s gin, wondering whether any of my fellow travellers secretly harbour the wish to buy two miniatures and thus enjoy a nightcap just like the one you would expect to have in the comfort of your own home. On the journey, I shall probably be reminded that the trains of a bygone age, The Coronation, in particular, carried its own Cocktail Bar, a ladies “retiring room” and a hairdressing salon.

Of course, it is no good lamenting the passing of a bygone era; those rose tinted glasses disguise the tinge of yellow-brown, not just on trains, but everywhere, due to the universal habit of smoking in public. We conveniently forget that in order to provide this degree of liveried, linen-lined chic, a dozen railway employees laboured, on slum-dweller wages to maintain the upper classes in passable, if not, dignified, comfort. The cocktail bar was added in 1923, coincidentally, or perhaps not, the same year that the BBC started broadcasting from Scotland.

On my way, ostensibly cocooned in my bunk I shall unconsciously pass over something that is going to form the main purpose of my visit to London. It is Hadrian’s Wall. I am going to the British Museum to see an exhibition entitled “Hadrian: Empire and Conflict”. The Wall fascinates me. I have walked along it. I have studied it. I have visited the ruins and imagined it in the days of the Roman Empire. And yet, the wall was almost an anachronism from the day the first stone was laid, leaving it to spend the majority of its operational life as a job creation scheme for soldiers who may otherwise have mutinied out of sheer boredom and dismay at filthy locals.

The monolith that is the BBC is today facing the challenge of being outmanoeuvred in an explosion of media innovation. But Mark Thompson its Director General has plans. A while ago, he came up with something called “Creative Future”. I am not going to attempt to explain it. To me it sounds as if two buzz words have been stuck together. He said, during the course of his talk to the assembled BBC staff, “We need 360 degree commissioning in knowledge content”. I mention it in passing because I am afraid I do not know what that means.

I have said before that the BBC’s major sins are, I think, sins of omission. The Thompson speech is morally neutral and not surprisingly liberal in tenor but bereft of humility and to me, vaguely sinister: “We're going to take diversity, onscreen and off-screen, far more seriously than we have,” he says. But nowhere in this (and you wouldn’t really expect it) does he respond to external criticism of bias.

The first Director General, John Reith, was a dour, brooding Scot. You may be familiar with the type. He was however, a man of principle. He told us that the BBC was to be “a drawn sword parting the darkness of ignorance”. Publius Aelius Hadrianus, I am certain, would have approved of the analogy. It has the tone of command and the military confidence needed to render shock and awe.

Today, Hadrian’s wall is a ruin. But it is also a major heritage site; a testimony to a bygone age. It is both an anachronism and a national treasure. I am inclined to ask if the same can be said of the BBC, and leave it at that.

* Gerard Eastick is better known on this blog as Wrinkled Weasel.

Bloggers to Be Part of BBC Election Night Coverage

The BBC Election night programme is, for the first time, going to include bloggers as a real part of their mainstream coverage. They've been watching the US primaries closely and have seen the important role played by bloggers in those programmes. Last year when I was on 18 Doughty Street we found that we were getting results far more quickly than the BBC and Sky because people were emailing and texting us with what was going on. Just monitoring sites like PoliticalBetting.com and ConservativeHome was far more reliable than relying on one reporter at one particular count. So along with Labour blogger Luke Akehurst and LibDem Alix Mortimer I will be at City Hall with Emily Maitliss appearing every half hour on your screen but also live blogging the whole night both on this blog and the special BBC Election Night blog.

The BBC would like us (the bloggers) to...

• Act as an alternative results service- if you can help us beat David Dimbleby, we want to hear from you.
• Find out what's going on a round the country- atmosphere at counts, rumours, gossip, colour- we want it all
• React to what we're writing on our blogs
• Shamelessly fish for and draw attention to other eye catching posts on political blogs- tell us if you've seen something deserving of wider attention
  

And tonight the final London Mayoral debate takes place between Messers Johnson, Livingstone and Paddick on Sky News from 7.30pm. Along with Alex Hilton and Jo-Christie-Smith I will be doing the pre and post match analysis on Sky News and their online operation. More details HERE.

BBC Caves in to Climate Change Activist?

Anyone who expresses a remote scepticism about climate change is instantly branded a "denier". Nigel Lawson's article in the Mail on Saturday summed things up brilliantly.

With the collapse of Marxism and, to all intents and purposes, of other forms of socialism too, those who dislike capitalism and its foremost exemplar, the United States, with equal passion, have been obliged to find a new creed.

For many of them, green is the new red. And those who wish to order us how to run our lives, faced with the uncomfortable evidence that economic prosperity is more likely to be achieved by less government intervention rather than more, naturally welcome the emergence of a new licence to intrude, to interfere, to tax and to regulate: all in the great cause of saving the planet from the alleged horrors of global warming.

But there is something much more fundamental at work. I suspect that it is no accident that it is in Europe that eco-fundamentalism in general and global warming absolutism in particular has found its most fertile soil. For it is Europe that has become the most secular society in the world, where the traditional religions have the weakest hold.

Yet people still feel the need for the comfort and higher values that religion can provide; and it is the quasi-religion of green alarmism, of which the global warming issue is the most striking example, which has filled the vacuum, with reasoned questioning of its mantras regarded as little short of sacrilege.

Does all this matter? Up to a point, no. Unbelievers should not be dismissive of the comfort that 'religion' can bring. If people feel better when they drive a hybrid car or ride a bicycle to work, and like to parade their virtue in this way, then so be it.

Nonetheless, the new and unattractively intolerant religion of eco-fundamentalism and global warming presents real dangers. The most obvious is that the governments of Europe may get so carried away by their own rhetoric as to impose measures that do serious harm to their economies. That is a particular danger at the present time in the UK.

Now, even the BBC has allegedly caved into the Climate Change zealots, who don't want anyone to even know that some of their views are being questioned, however gently.

On Friday I reported THIS piece about some cooling which is taking place as a result of a phenomenon known as La Nina. The BBC correctly reported some facts about the levels of global warming since 1998. Over the following two days their Environment Editor Roger Harrobin came under intense pressure to change the BBC's report, pressure which he resisted and then, according to climate change sceptic Jennifer Marohasy, caved into. See the full email exchange HERE. Jo Abess, the climate change activist, says at one point...

"I don't think you should worry about whether people [are] suspicious that the full extent of the truth is being withheld from them ... it would be better if you did not quote the sceptics.'

That rather says it all, don't you think?

Labour Alleges BBC Pro Cameron Bias

The complaint to the BBC by some Labour MP I've never heard of is risible. Dawn Butler (for it is she) complains that David Cameron is given an easy ride by the Today Programme interviewers. What utter rubbish. I've heard at least half the interviews she refers to and he's interrupted and challenged just as often as anyone else. Indeed, I would argue that it is Gordon Brown who gets away with an easier time because he's not interrupted as much and answers the question he wanted to be asked rather than the question he was actually asked.

Butler whines that David Cameron is often only interviewed on one subject and then - wait for it - ONLY for eight minutes! Is she complaining he doesn't get enough airtime?

Let's be clear, political parties complain about things like this, not in the expectation that the BBC will hold up its hands and say "yup, you're right". What they do is put in a complaint in the full knowledge that BBC producers will have it in the back of their minds during future interviews.

I was told by a BBC producer that the Labour Party had complained about one of my News 24 appearances where they captioned me as a political blogger, rather than a Conservative blogger. Fair enough, I suppose, but on my next appearance they went so overboard in describing my Conservative leanings it was almost comical. As if the viewers couldn't have worked it out for themselves!

Do Al Qaeda Want McCain To Win?

Yes, according to BBC America Correspondent Justin Webb. He writes on his blog today...

Islamic terrorists want war. They want suffering - among others and their own people alike. They would surely surmise that McCain will give them what they want. Bin Laden himself intervened with what many thought was the effect of keeping President Bush in power in 2004 with that weird tape just before the poll. I think al-Qaeda would back McCain - that is not an argument for or against America backing him, but it seems to me that the vague assumption that the terrorists would back a lefty is lazy thinking...

Quite an astonishing thing for a BBC reporter to say, even on his own blog.

Hattip Centre Right.com

BBC Makes us Pay Twice

So the BBC intends to charge us twice for watching their programmes and again through iTunes. Currently their programmes are available for 7days on the iPlayer (which is superb). I thought the reason they couldn't be available after that was one of licensing. Apparently not, if they are going to be on iTunes. I'd have no objection to them being on iTunes if they were also permanently available on the iPlayer too. Perhaps someone from the BBC could get in touch to explain why licence fee payers are now expected to pay £1.89 to watch a programme they have already paid for through the licence fee - and twice the amount American subscribers of iTunes are being charged.

UPDATE: Some people in the comments are drawing an analogy to DVD sales. I understand the point but I think it is misplaced. I have no objection to these programmes being on iTunes so if people want to download them they can. In those terms it is similar to buying a DVD in that you have bought a product. What I object to is being told that the programmes can only be on iPlayer for 7 days for licensing reasons. That is quite clearly not the case. Streaming a programme is very different from downloading one. I do not understand why a programme cannot be streamed more than sevemn days after its transmission. Perhaps someone can enlighten me.

Sunny Hundal's Biased View of the BBC

Sunny Hundal is one of the left's more sensible bloggers and is usually worth reading, but his piece on CommentIsFree today on media bias is so full of holes, I hardly know where to start. He asserts that its time that the liberal left withdrew its uncritical support for the BBC. The subtitle of his article reads: "Rightwing bloggers don't care about balance at the BBC. It's time the left dropped its uncritical support and went on the offensive."

He seems to object to anyone on the right objecting to examples of left of centre bias within the BBC, and accuses the BBC of backing down far too often to people on the right. Perhaps he should give more credit to the BBC. Sometimes, just sometimes, they admit that we have a legitimate complaint. They don't always react to complaints but there have been recent examples of where they's held up their hands and admitted they got it wrong. Far from losing their collective cojones, it actually takes real cojones to do that, particularly in a top heavy organisation like the BBC, where it's usually wisest to keep your head down. Sunny writes...

The BBC has always come under attack from the political right and left for its supposed bias towards the other side. But the rise of rightwing blogs in the US
and UK has encouraged a more shrill atmosphere, where a vast leftwing conspiracy
is assumed to exist at every corner.

Not true. There are just as many left wing bloggers who believe there to be a vast right wing conspiracy. Indeed, from his article, Sunny appears to be one of them. He continues...

Then there is the constant cry that the Beeb itself admits it's institutionally biased. Except ... erm, the report said nothing of the sort. And are we really to be surprised that a bunch of rightwing papers play up accusations of leftwing bias by a few employees? Would the Daily Mail ever give such coverage to someone who accused it of rightwing bias? I suspect not.

First of all, I don't recall anyone alleging that the BBC has admitted any such thing. Proof, Sunny? Andrew Marr has indeed said the BBC has an inbuilt 'liberal' bias, but he's not the whole BBC. The key difference here is that tha Daily Mail is open about its bias, and it doesn't receive a penny of taxpayers' money. The BBC receives £2.5 billion a year. A very weak argument, Sunny. And there's more...

Rightwing bloggers and the growing number of newspaper commentators who support them are not interested in editorial balance...The bloggers and much of the press won't be happy until the BBC reflects their worldview without accepting that the whole picture may lie somewhere in the middle, despite their continual hypocrisy. Not only are they uninterested in balance, they are completely obsessed and convinced that this vast leftwing conspiracy dominates the Beeb.

A bold assertion, which again Sunny fails to back up. How can he say that I do not believe there should be editorial balance at the BBC. Of course I do. I only ever get irritated when I see that balance disappear - just as, from the opposite perspective, no doubt Sunny does. He continues...

BBC editors themselves seem to have collectively lost their cojones, or at least their editorial guidelines. The first sign of an outraged rightwing blogging campaign leads editors to hurriedly make changes while simultaneously releasing statements that any accusations of bias had nothing to do with it. Who is that going to fool?

Has it ever occurred to him, that sometimes - just sometimes - the right may have a point? Sorry, silly me. But now we come to the most idiotic part of Sunny's article, for in this next paragraph he actually admits that there IS a liberal bias within the BBC, which surely undermines everything which precedes it.

Now, to my main point. For many of us on the liberal left, the BBC is a useful if somewhat increasingly dumbed-down antidote to the hard-right propaganda of
most of the press. It keeps us vaguely sane, so we support it.

Quite a revealing admission, wouldn't you say? His final two paragraphs are a clarion call to the left to fight back and attack the BBC in the same way that he appears to believe the right does. Desperate times, eh?

It is only obvious then, that those on the liberal left should stop supporting the BBC. Instead we should continually attack it and expose its rightwing bias. Supporting the corporation or focusing on editorial balance only seems to result in the centre ground shifting further to the right, since they are the only ones complaining. The likes of Iain Dale, Guido Fawkes and Biased BBC are merely following a strategy pioneered
by the American loony-right blogs. It's time the liberal left fought back.

Quite the most badly argued and incredible piece I have read on CommentIsFree for some time. And that's saying something. But it does give me some solace. It makes me think that those of us on the right are actually getting somewhere if we can provoke pieces like this!

UPDATE: Sunny has responded to this HERE. he reckons I have misunderstood him. Make your own minds up. If I have, then I have to say he should have been clearer in his original article!

BBC Responds to Redwood Bias Allegations

The BBC's Director of News, Helen Boaden, has written a piece on the BBC Editors' Blog responding to my blogpost on Sunday accusing the BBC of doing Labour's dirty work. She apologises for showing John Redwood singing the Welsh National Anthem, but says their coverage of his report was entirely fair. She quotes all the opening lines from BBC News reports throughout the day, and helpfully includes the one I heard...

Labour has condemned the latest review of policy carried out by the
Conservatives as a lurch to the right wing of politics. The review - led by John
Redwood - identified ways of deregulating business. The secretary of state for
business, John Hutton, said the Tories were now more right wing than they had
been under Michael Howard and William Hague.

Game, set and match I'd say. Well, it would have been had I not said that 'all; news bulletins carried these words. I actually heard the 5 Live bulletin, and normally on a Sunday the Radio 5, 4 and 2 news bulletins are more or less identical. It appears this Sunday they weren't. But the fact of the matter is that the 11am bulletin on 5 Live carried exactly the words I said it did, yet Helen Boaden still seems to feel that this was acceptable.

Media blogger Simon Dickson - under the headline MOUSE SQUEAKS, LION ROARS BACK - reckons it was remarkable that Helen Boaden responded at all...

There’s something faintly surreal at the lengths Helen Boaden goes to, to rebut Iain Dale’s claims that the BBC was biased in its reporting of the weekend’s Tory red tape review. If you wanted evidence of how ‘proper’ media is taking bloggers seriously, here it is.

Well I have never been described as a mouse before!

Defending Peter Allen & Jane Garvey

Several sites are trying to make out this exchange on Radio 5 Live as a typical example of BBC bias. It's Jane Garvey and Peter Allen from the highly rated DRIVE programme describing the BBC on 2nd May 1997...

Jane Garvey: I do remember I walked back in - we were broadcasting then from Broadcasting House in the centre of London, all very upmarket in those days - and the corridors of Broadcasting House were strewn with empty champagne bottles. [Hearty laugh from Peter Allen] I'll always remember that. Er... not that the BBC were celebrating in any way, shape or form…
Peter Allen: No no no, not at all...
Jane Garvey: ...and actually I think it's fair to say that in the intervening years... er... the BBC, if it ever was in love with Labour has probably fallen out of love with Labour, or learnt to fall back in, or basically just learnt to be in the middle somewhere which is how it should be. Um, but there was always the suggestion that the BBC was full of pinkos who couldn't wait for Labour to get back into power. That may have been the case - who knows - but as I say there have been a few problems along the way over the last ten years. Wish I hadn't started this now."

I shall now surprise you all and come to their defence. If you are a regular listener to 5 Live you'll know that Allen and Garvey are two interviewers who are staright down the line. Allen in particular regularly gives Labour Ministers a very hard time. Garvey's sense of humour and mischief often gets the better of her and lands her up in situations like this - but that's why people love their programme. In my opinion they are the greatest double act on British radio.

A Strange Sense of News Judgement

I've just been to get my car out of the carpark and was listening to the 5 Live News. How about this for warped news priorities...

FIRST ITEM
Blue Peter presenters apologise for phone cock up

SECOND ITEM
MPs vote on Britain's independent nuclear deterrent

Bizarre.

Why Won't the BBC Interview Robin Aitken?

Robin Aitken spent 20 years as a BBC current affairs journalist. He's written a BOOK about the experience, called CAN WE TRUST THE BBC? He confirms Andrew Marr's assertion that there is an inbuilt liberal bias within the BBC. The book has received widespread coverage in the press, but Aitken reckons the BBC have put a blanket ban on him appearing on their airwaves. The BBC deny any such ban exists, but the fact remains that not a single programme has interviewed him on his book. If you want to find out more, we're spending an hour with him on 18 Doughty Street at 9pm tonight. He's also written an article HERE.

EXCLUSIVE: Has the Government Gagged the Beeb?

There is a strong rumour tonight that the government (or maybe it's the Labour Party) has tonight taken out an injunction against the BBC to prevent the reporting of something substantive regarding the Cash for Honours Inquiry. As I am in Washington I cannot take advice on what I am able to say about this or not. But something is going on. I will put comment moderation back on. If anyone has any info, please leave a comment or email me privately.

And in a BBC News Exclusive Tonight...

At the RTS Awards for news programmes the BBC only won one award. ITN won seven and Channel 4 won five. Peter Horrocks, the Head of News at the BBC has hit the roof and ordered News 24 editor Simon Waldman to send an email to all BBC news journalists.

"Peter H [Horrocks] led a discussion in the wake of what he called 'one of
the grimmest nights in terms of BBC TV News performance' at the RTS. As you
know, TV News won NOTHING - apart from the admirable Darren Conway winning
cameraman of the year (again)."

Horrocks reckons the BBC should "concentrate on uncovering exclusives" which "challenge those in power". This is a very revealing quote. Surely the role of BBC News is to report the news, rather than create it. Surely it is the role of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition to challenge those in power, rather than BBC journalists. BBC journalists are there to report the news in the most impartial manner possible. That's not to say that no BBC journalist should report on matters unfavourable to those who wield power, but the story has to warrant it.

We need fewer hyped up reports which start with the words "the BBC has learned". This sentence is used to create the impression that a journalist has been burrowing away to discover information which someone has tried to keep from them. Sometimes that is indeed the case, but it often means that they have either picked up some good gossip which is worth a punt, or they have been leaked some information by someone with an agenda. You'll see the same thing on the front page of The Times most days.

So when you hear criticism of bloggers for revelling in gossip and unsubstantiated fact, just think to yourself what methods mainstream journalists are using to collect their information. They're little different. But if a blogger wishes to express and opinion and "challenge those in power" that is all well and good. But it's not the role of the taxpayer funded BBC News department. Its role is to report on facts and events.

Will the Last Tory to Leave the BBC...

Robin Aitken worked for the BBC for twenty years. This week he's got a book coming out called CAN WE TRUST THE BBC? It's serialised in tomorrow's Mail on Sunday. If you want to find out what he felt like working at the BBC as a Tory click HERE.

Although I do think there is an institutional liberal bias at the BBC (as Andrew Marr admits) I am constantly surprised at the number of political journalists there that I know to be Tories. Perhaps the fact that they hide it well is to their credit. If only some of their left of centre counterparts did the same...

Watch an interview with Richard D North HERE on his new book SCRAP THE BBC. Hat-tip Spin Blog.

UPDATE SUN 10am: Well, I waited in vain for Andrew Marr to ask Tony Blair about the Cash for Peerages Inquiry. Not one question, not a single one. Astonishing.

The Sun, the BBC and a 'Police State'

There are many reasons to attack the BBC, but The Sun this morning has got it wrong. It takes the BBC to task in its EDITORIAL for reporting the remark of a freed terrorist suspect that Britain is a "police state".

It sometimes seems the BBC would prefer terrorists to succeed than for an
innocent man to be briefly held without charge.In their politically correct
bubble, intelligence is always flawed and anti-terror action is inevitably
heavy-handed.So the release of two suspects held over the alleged plot to behead
a British Muslim soldier was a gift from heaven.For 24 hours, BBC bulletins
repeated the ludicrous claim by one of them that, for Muslims, Britain is a
police state.The truth is that these suspects were swept up in a legitimate raid
by police who had reasonable grounds for suspicion — and freed after
questioning.That is not the action of a police state. Far from being too harsh,
our police may have been too soft.

I didn't see the TV reports of this man, but I did hear an extended interview with him on Radio 5 Live conducted by Peter Allen on the Drive programme. Allen gave him a real grilling and certainly didn't pander to him. But let's not forget, the man had been held for seven days without charge before being freed. If you were innocent and had the same thing happen to you I suspect you'd be angry too. The man, Abu Bakr, was extremely eloquent and while his remarks were over the top and extreme, you can understand his state of mind. That is not to say the Police weren't right to hold him and question him. If they suspected him of a potential crime, what on earth were they to do? In this environment, there will always be people arrested on suspicion of a crime who turn out to be completely innocent. They have a right to be angry. But the people have a right to be protected. The age old argument between civil libertarians and authoritarians rages on. And it always will. It's only when the arguing stops that we will have lost our freedoms.

David Blunkett & the BBC

I nearly choked on my cornflakes. Well, I would have done if I had been eating them, but when I read in the Daily Mail that David Blunkett had ruled himself out of the race to be Chairman of the BBC Trust I thought I must be reading things. It got even more bizarre when I read on and found that Peter McKay was suggesting Blunkett would make a rather good, independent minded, Chairman. Bit early to be on the sherbert, isn't it Peter? Anyone who has read a few chapters of Blunkett's Diaries wouldn't let him near a whelk stall, let alone an institution which gets £3 billion of our money each year. The man in completely unhinged. I have now struggled to page 813 of his diaries. Only 43 pages to go, thank God.