The BBC | Tim Davie resigns as Director General over Trump documentary edit (p 187)

Vic said:
Oh, sorry... I didn't realise it was a serious question. Seeing as he made a statement about why he resigned, I assumed you were just being silly.
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Silly me, I didn't know that it was Gibb and the other assorted RWNJs that made the mistakes that Davie cited as the reason for his resignation.

Thanks for letting me know.
 
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BBC impartiality has always been a myth, as is the nostalgia for a time when the BBC had no political positions, either imposed from within top down, or imposed from without by a controlling government, or bubbling up from its creative, disproportionately southern, middle class, university educated workforce.

in 2000 Gregg Dyke took over from John Birt as director general of the BBC. He was appointed despite Conservative protests that he had donated £50,000 to the Labour Party and was a 'crony'. And In January 2001 Gavyn Davies was appointed vice-chairman of the BBC Board of Governors. He was promoted to chairman just 10 months later for a five-year term after being recommended by Tessa Jowell. Davies had in the past donated a portion of his considerable wealth to the Labour Party, of which he had been a long-term supporter. His appointment as BBC chairman sparked allegations yet again of cronyism from opposition political parties – Davies' wife Sue Nye was a private secretary to Gordon Brown and the pair were known to be good friends. Upon becoming chairman, Davies resigned his membership of the Labour Party.

These two met their demise over the "dodgy dossier" and the hangman on that occasion was Alistair Campbell, the same Alistair Campbell who is playing the "look over there! Look over there!" Game over Gibb and Prescott. Even for Alistair Campbell this is top shelf hypocrisy.

So the idea that it's only the right that engages in political interference at the BBC is clearly a nonsense, as is the idea that the BBC's present difficulty is a direct result of it. The right are responsible for exposing this shit show and the right are making hay with it, but they are not the cause of it.

This present scandal might have a lot of moving parts and a large cast of characters but essentially it's not difficult to understand, it's being made to look opaque by those with a dog in the race.

Over thirty years ago I spent a rather delightful day at the BBC studios where their Arabic output is produced, I worked in the Middle East at the time, I equipped hospitals, and I was accompanied by a very wealthy Lebanese business man who was my representative out there, I'd arranged the visit as he was a big fan of the BBC's Arabic output. Anyways as you can imagine the department was entirely run not just by Arabic speakers but by Arabs and they pumped out news in the pre-internet era that was gratefully received, particularly in places like Saudi and Syria, where their local broadcasters would decline to tell you whether the sun was shining unless sanctioned to do so by the State.

The BBC was then and still is a huge organisation, with lots of moving parts and its Arabic set up was just one small bit of it, but I got the distinct impression it ran its own little show, part of but distinct from Mr Blobby and Panorama. They decided their own editorial policy and unless they dropped a complete bollock no one noticed, in fact back then I suspect they dropped a bollock quite a bit but no one gave a shit, even then their output was quite distinct from the stuff that got pumped out to Tunbridge Wells.

Fast forward to the present and the world is a nastier and more fragmented place and I try to imagine what it must be like for the guys in the Arabic department today, in what was a dusty little corner of the BBC now thrust into the limelight. The only thing I do know is that there is no way folk in the Arab world would tune into the BBC's Arabic service if the BBC, under the imperative, straitjacket, whatever you want to call it, of impartiality, was compelled to pump out the same stuff it broadcasts to the folk back home. This problem is a consequence of the BBC's global footprint in an increasingly polarised world and the febrile nature of our political and broadcast environment and I have some sympathy for the BBC on this one.

But not too much.

We all laugh at Fox and GB News, the Telegraph and the Mail for their obvious political bias, their opinions dressed up as news or their infamous "alternative facts". But the BBC has opinions as well, it has a political stance, it just won't fess up to them, and given its size and global reach their opinions and politics are not consistent across the piste. What pisses me off about the BBC is that under the guise of impartiality, under the conceit of occupying a central role in our national life, their opinions, their politics, are proselytised courtesy of the licence fee, rammed home as de facto the "correct" politics, they have set themselves up as the moral arbiter of what is true, objective and impartial, when of course they are nothing of the sort, not now, not never.

The BBC must be saved, but it must be saved because it's worth saving and not just because the alternatives are much worse. And that's going to require a serious reality check and root and branch change, if not it has no long term future.
 
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Andrew Marr is interviewing Trevor Philips here and it's worth watching in its entirety, but I've copied the clip to start five or so minutes in because Marr asks Philips if he's interested in the Director Generals job and his answer is very revealing, he's effectively saying pretty much what I said in the last two paragraphs above and a couple of pages back that prompted some in here to completely lose their shit....

 
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The perfect fumble said:
Andrew Marr is interviewing Trevor Philips here and it's worth watching in its entirety, but I've copied the clip to start five or so minutes in because Marr asks Philips if he's interested in the Director Generals job and his answer is very revealing, he's effectively saying pretty much what I said in the last two paragraphs above and a couple of pages back that prompted some in here to completely lose their shit....

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So, from what he said, was it right to balance every economist saying Brexit would be bad by trying to find one to say it would be good - without saying how hard it was to find the one? Surely he doesn't want the BCC to broadcast every voice.
 
Vic said:
So, from what he said, was it right to balance every economist saying Brexit would be bad by trying to find one to say it would be good - without saying how hard it was to find the one? Surely he doesn't want the BCC to broadcast every voice.
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No he doesn't.

We don't see David Icke so much because, and I'm going out on a limb here, I think it's fair to say there's a general consensus that the world is not run by lizard people.

As I've said impartiality is not six of one and half a dozen of the other, the economic argument for Brexit needed to be aired because we were in the middle of a referendum, the public needed to know what the argument was and as a public broadcaster the BBC was behoven to air it. But the fact that the BBC might well have struggled to find an economist willing to bat for Brexit was a pertinent fact in that argument, the fact being that the positive economic case for leaving was clearly very much a minority opinion amongst economists, and the viewing public had a right to know that fact as well.

Editorial decisions need to be made dispassionately, that's all that Philips was saying.

And talking of dispassionate, this is Philips talking about the unite the kingdom march a couple of months back, the barely disguised disgust on the face of the bloke at LBC speaks volumes as to why Philips is the man for the job.....

 
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The perfect fumble said:
No he doesn't.

We don't see David Icke so much because, and I'm going out on a limb here, I think it's fair to say there's a general consensus that the world is not run by lizard people.

As I've said impartiality is not six of one and half a dozen of the other, the economic argument for Brexit needed to be aired because we were in the middle of a referendum, the public needed to know what the argument was and as a public broadcaster the BBC was behoven to air it. But the fact that the BBC might well have struggled to find an economist willing to bat for Brexit was a pertinent fact in that argument, the fact being that the positive economic case for leaving was clearly very much a minority opinion amongst economists, and the viewing public had a right to know that fact as well.

Editorial decisions need to be made dispassionately, that's all that Philips was saying.

And talking of dispassionate, this is Philips talking about the unite the kingdom march a couple of months back, the barely disguised disgust on the face of the bloke at LBC speaks volumes as to why Philips is the man for the job.....

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I'm not disagreeing that he'd do a good job at the BBC, but it seemed a bit naive of him to think that Tommy Robinson booking a black gospel group to sing "Jerusalem" was a sophisticated tactic to show they weren't white supremacists - rather than promoting a nationalist Christianity against his real enemy, Islam. (Jerusalem isn't Christian anyway, just a series of questions to which the answer is "No".)
 
gordondaviesmoustache said:
Surprise, surprise; all seems to have gone a bit quiet on this $1 billion to $5 billion defamation claim.
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It worked in the States, in so far as a number of US Broadcasters donated a few million to avoid the courts and more importantly for them to retain their White House press pass. For Trump this bullshit claim, as all these manoeuvres are, was all about leverage and intimidation but that isn't going to work with the BBC.
 
Vic said:
I'm not disagreeing that he'd do a good job at the BBC, but it seemed a bit naive of him to think that Tommy Robinson booking a black gospel group to sing "Jerusalem" was a sophisticated tactic to show they weren't white supremacists - rather than promoting a nationalist Christianity against his real enemy, Islam. (Jerusalem isn't Christian anyway, just a series of questions to which the answer is "No".)
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What Robinson is or isn't is almost immaterial, it's what he's tapped that's the issue and where it goes from here.

This is what matters....



Who are these people? Really? The only mainstream media figure who genuinely tried to find out, then wrote about it and toured the studios was Philips, and that's why he should get the job, but almost certainly won't.
 
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The perfect fumble said:
BBC impartiality has always been a myth, as is the nostalgia for a time when the BBC had no political positions, either imposed from within top down, or imposed from without by a controlling government, or bubbling up from its creative, disproportionately southern, middle class, university educated workforce.

in 2000 Gregg Dyke took over from John Birt as director general of the BBC. He was appointed despite Conservative protests that he had donated £50,000 to the Labour Party and was a 'crony'. And In January 2001 Gavyn Davies was appointed vice-chairman of the BBC Board of Governors. He was promoted to chairman just 10 months later for a five-year term after being recommended by Tessa Jowell. Davies had in the past donated a portion of his considerable wealth to the Labour Party, of which he had been a long-term supporter. His appointment as BBC chairman sparked allegations yet again of cronyism from opposition political parties – Davies' wife Sue Nye was a private secretary to Gordon Brown and the pair were known to be good friends. Upon becoming chairman, Davies resigned his membership of the Labour Party.

These two met their demise over the "dodgy dossier" and the hangman on that occasion was Alistair Campbell, the same Alistair Campbell who is playing the "look over there! Look over there!" Game over Gibb and Prescott. Even for Alistair Campbell this is top shelf hypocrisy.

So the idea that it's only the right that engages in political interference at the BBC is clearly a nonsense, as is the idea that the BBC's present difficulty is a direct result of it. The right are responsible for exposing this shit show and the right are making hay with it, but they are not the cause of it.

This present scandal might have a lot of moving parts and a large cast of characters but essentially it's not difficult to understand, it's being made to look opaque by those with a dog in the race.

Over thirty years ago I spent a rather delightful day at the BBC studios where their Arabic output is produced, I worked in the Middle East at the time, I equipped hospitals, and I was accompanied by a very wealthy Lebanese business man who was my representative out there, I'd arranged the visit as he was a big fan of the BBC's Arabic output. Anyways as you can imagine the department was entirely run not just by Arabic speakers but by Arabs and they pumped out news in the pre-internet era that was gratefully received, particularly in places like Saudi and Syria, where their local broadcasters would decline to tell you whether the sun was shining unless sanctioned to do so by the State.

The BBC was then and still is a huge organisation, with lots of moving parts and its Arabic set up was just one small bit of it, but I got the distinct impression it ran its own little show, part of but distinct from Mr Blobby and Panorama. They decided their own editorial policy and unless they dropped a complete bollock no one noticed, in fact back then I suspect they dropped a bollock quite a bit but no one gave a shit, even then their output was quite distinct from the stuff that got pumped out to Tunbridge Wells.

Fast forward to the present and the world is a nastier and more fragmented place and I try to imagine what it must be like for the guys in the Arabic department today, in what was a dusty little corner of the BBC now thrust into the limelight. The only thing I do know is that there is no way folk in the Arab world would tune into the BBC's Arabic service if the BBC, under the imperative, straitjacket, whatever you want to call it, of impartiality, was compelled to pump out the same stuff it broadcasts to the folk back home. This problem is a consequence of the BBC's global footprint in an increasingly polarised world and the febrile nature of our political and broadcast environment and I have some sympathy for the BBC on this one.

But not too much.

We all laugh at Fox and GB News, the Telegraph and the Mail for their obvious political bias, their opinions dressed up as news or their infamous "alternative facts". But the BBC has opinions as well, it has a political stance, it just won't fess up to them, and given its size and global reach their opinions and politics are not consistent across the piste. What pisses me off about the BBC is that under the guise of impartiality, under the conceit of occupying a central role in our national life, their opinions, their politics, are proselytised courtesy of the licence fee, rammed home as de facto the "correct" politics, they have set themselves up as the moral arbiter of what is true, objective and impartial, when of course they are nothing of the sort, not now, not never.

The BBC must be saved, but it must be saved because it's worth saving and not just because the alternatives are much worse. And that's going to require a serious reality check and root and branch change, if not it has no long term future.
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Very good analysis. For me, fact based independent news needs to be just that, FACTS. As soon as you bring in analysis you bring in bias so for instance (rightly or wrongly), Jeremy Bowen is thought to be Pro Palestinian, Laura Kuenssberg is thought to be a Tory, no BBC employee is thought to be a Reform voter. Now all of those things might be right or wrong but the point is that a sizeable proportion of people believe them to be true and therefore they believe the BBC is biased. So back to basic journalism WHO, WHAT, WHERE etc and less analysis where personal bias creeps in.
 
The perfect fumble said:
What Robinson is or isn't is almost immaterial, it's what he's tapped that's the issue and where it goes from here.

This is what matters....



Who are these people? Really? The only mainstream media figure who genuinely tried to find out, then wrote about it and toured the studios was Philips, and that's why he should get the job, but almost certainly won't.
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gotta be AI surely?
 
Trump and the various attackers of the BBC have done their jobs well.

Now self - censoring the Reith Lectures of all things to hide Trump's corruption from view.

 
johnny crossan said:
gotta be AI surely?
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You might think so given the ludicrous numbers quoted in the mainstream media.

it's not progressive to lie because you believe you're lying in a good cause, it's not progressive to lie because you don't like what you're seeing and it's not progressive to misrepresent because it serves your agenda and it's not progressive to promote stupidity as virtue, or mangle language to accommodate a manufactured alternate reality, nor is it progressive to eschew real pluralism in favour of unquestioning adherence to a rigid political belief system.

It's progressive to find out why an avowed right wing nationalist, who not too long ago could barely fill an upstairs room in an East End pub now has the traction to pull in thousands, and it's progressive to find out who those marchers really are and what motivated them to turn up in such large numbers and it's essential for progressive to find out why so many folk have seemingly rejected multiculturalism, and it's an absolute must to have a meaningful dialogue with these people because right now there's none.

The left needs to wake the fuck up, there needs to be less talking to people you already agree with and less finger pointing and talking down to those you disagree with, less name calling, less thought-terminating clichés, a lot less dogma, a bit more self criticism and searching for common ground. A common ground that only comes from greater self awareness and a realisation that you might be losing the argument because of the holes in that argument and not because the masses are under the spell of false consciousness, and you need to stop indulging in deliberate misinterpretation and misrepresentation in order to dump the shit you don't like into the bigot box, so that it doesn't contaminate your cosy hermetically sealed groupthink.

Because if the left doesn't do these things pronto and those numbers grow, then in the not too distant future it won't matter what progressives think, because they'll have lost the argument coz they were too busy jerking each other off.
 
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roubaixtuesday said:
Trump and the various attackers of the BBC have done their jobs well.

Now self - censoring the Reith Lectures of all things to hide Trump's corruption from view.

Click to expand...

The BBC has always self censored, not so much on Trump I grant you, but it's self censoring now on the Orange twat because the organisation is flaccid and it's wobbling under pressure and it's grown this way because it doesn't know what it stands for any more and what's more it now realises it's losing its fan base. Oh I've no doubt the Corporation is chock full of mission statements and there's the school motto of course, but the Head Master isn't in charge, the middle class, university educated, southern softy Millennial pupils are, and they've just been spanked and now their arse has fallen out
 
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johnny crossan said:
gotta be AI surely?
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The start is from this:



I had a quick look at the account, and it's a bit weird. Seems to be some Bangladeshi lawyer type living in the UK doing visas for people back home. And it basically just looks like he's editing loads of footage together himself, and then put an awful filter over it to hide the fact that it's copyrighted footage.
 
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