The Progressive

More muck-spreading at the Beeb

Seeing Peter Mandelson's smiling face on the cover of the current issue of our excellent magazine reminded me of  Nick Robinson's punchline on the Ten O'Clock News when covering Mr Mandelson's return to government.

"Peter Mandelson" he smirked "attracts controversy like manure attracts flies".

As a good member of Progress who is aware that Mr Mandelson is our founder, I rather took exception to the insulting crudity of Nick Robinson's metaphor and have dutifully complained to the BBC about it.

I am still waiting for the definitive reply, but, hopefully, the Beeb will have now learnt the lessons of the Ross/Brand affair.

Who knows, Mr Robinson may even be joining Mr Ross on his three month sabbatical.

Watch this space.

Making a mockery of the Reith tradition (Ctd)

Some time ago I complained to the BBC about a “Mock the Week” sketch in which fun was made of David Blunkett’s blindness and the fact that Gordon Brown can only see out of one eye. The BBC defended the sketch on the basis that those in the public eye were fair game and that what some may find offensive the vast majority will find hilarious. The full story is set out in a previous piece I did for the Progressive which can be clicked on here.

Obviously no lessons were learned, since the BBC have been at it again, allowing their star presenters, Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand, to perpetrate an even more offensive stunt on one of our most treasured actors. This time, the Beeb's misjudgement has rightly caused a national furore, with the Prime Minister himself speaking out against the peurile pair.

But in my view there is more to this matter than whether taxpayers' money should be used to handsomely reward such crass behaviour. Or whether or not Ross and Brand should be sacked.

The affair is symptomatic of the yob culture that has taken root in the mass media in the guise of that euphemistic expression, "edgy humour". Yobbish jokes on the radio and the telly, which have no regard to taste or civilised values legitimise yobbish conduct and attitudes in the community.

Tolerating the broadcasting of such vulgar excesses should be no part of a progressive agenda concerned about the quality of our lives. At least we can rein it back in that part of the media that lies within the public realm.

We should do it now, if only to stop Lord Reith spinning in his grave.

More bias at the Beeb?

How many of you are aware of the latest crime figures? You should be, since they show a remarkable overall decline of 9% compared with the previous year - at an accelerating pace!  Not only that, but the figures include a huge 17% drop in robberies, a 16% fall in serious violence and a 9% reduction in sexual offences. The only counter-trends were a 4% rise in gun-crime (but gun-related deaths and serious injuries were down) and a 21% surge in drug offences (related to the reclassification of cannabis as a Class C drug), both sets of figures representing just a tiny proportion of overall offences.

All in all tremendous news for the government and a wonderful opportunity for the media to calm fears and correct misperceptions about rising crime.

So how did our esteemed public service TV channel cover this exceptionally up-beat story? You've guessed it. The Six O' Clock News put it down about midway in the programme and led on the rise in the gun and drug crime figures (illustrated by a dramatic related package) with only the most fleeting references to the fall in the overall figures. Moreover their on-line, watch-again BBC News Player re-showing this edition of the Six O' Clock News headlined the item as "Crime rises by 4%". The 9 'o clock news summary referred to the 4% increase in gun crime but omitted to mention the overall fall. By 10 'o clock the story had been dropped altogether to find time for pieces about the calorie content of coffee and the latest on Amy Winehouse.

I am now seeking an explanation from the BBC (could it be that, post-Hutton, Aunty is averse to giving publicity for any government success story?). Watch this space for their response.

Hard times at the Beeb

Jeff Randall, ex-BBC business editor and now vocal critic of the corporation, got in quite a huff on last night’s Newsnight about the way news and factual programming look set to suffer in the round of cuts at the corporation. Why, asked Randall, should Today and Newsnight (annual budgets of £5m and £8m respectively) suffer cuts while BBC 3 (annual budget: £93m) – whose output includes such treasures as Tittybangbang and Help Me Anthea – I’m Infested - is spared the knife. It’s a bit like Mrs Paxman demanding the Paxman family achieve cost savings by cutting back on tea bags, he argued.

The key question is whether the quality BBC news output will become materially weaker as a result of the cuts. Stephen Glover says in today’s Daily Mail that it is difficult to see how cutting 20 per cent of news jobs could not result in a decline in quality.

However, according to its less than objective rivals, there are signs that BBC news could do with cutting back on a few staff. Sky News political correspondent Glen Oglaza noted on a blog that at the launch of Chris Huhune’s leadership bid the BBC staff present at the event numbered 12, against just three at Sky and ITN respectively. ‘Nuff said,’ concluded Oglaza, clearly with no axe to grind.

Making a mockery of the Reith tradition

I don't know how many of you watch Mock the Week. I'm not a fan myself but last July I came across this BBC TWO satirical comedy show whilst idly flicking through the channels.

My attention was caught by one of the comedians involved making a "humorous"remark about Gordon Brown being blind in one eye.This was followed by similar contributions from the other panellists about the blindness of David Blunkett, the tinnitus of Jack Straw, and the height of Hazel Blears. All to uproarious laughter from the studio audience.

Now I can enjoy a joke with the best of them but I must admit that the whole thing left me with a very nasty taste in my mouth. In fact I was so incensed that I immediatly reached for the phone to put in a complaint to the BBC.

Since the answer I received was so inane I decided to go to the next step in the complaints procedure with a letter to the Editorial Complaints Unit. Here is an extract fom that letter.

" The BBC Information team confirmed that the programme had been editorially vetted before transmission so we must assume that the BBC considers that such jokes are acceptable. The justification was that no offence was intended and what some find offensive the vast majority will find hilarious. No doubt the Romans would have said the same thing about the humiliation of their slaves for public entertainment.

The question of whether offence was intended is a red herring. This is a matter of taste and civilised standards which the old BBC from Reith onwards used  to uphold. Whilst accepting that the concept of taste changes over time, especially regarding matters of sexuality, I think there is a huge difference between schoolboy smut appealing to an adult audience (is that a contradiction in terms?) and nasty remarks making fun of disabilities and physical appearances, however light-hearted the delivery. Or can we take it that such considerations no longer concern the BBC?"

And this is how the Editorial Complaints Unit responded to these points.

" When we spoke to the Executive Editor for comedy, Suzanne Gilfillian, she told us that having discussed the piece with the BBC's editorial policy advisers before transmission she had felt it was defensible, primarily because the subjects of the material were Government ministers and people in the news. She told us " the role of the show is to Mock the Week and especially those in positions of authority. The facts are that Gordon Brown and David Blunkett are visually impaired. The joke would not have been relevant, nor indeed acceptable, had it not been made in this context "....I don't feel there are grounds for upholding your complaint".

So there we have it, straight from the horse's mouth. Considerations of taste and maintaining civilised standards do not now concern the BBC where the target is government ministers and those in the public eye. Gordon Brown and David Blunkett are visually impaired so they are fair game for being made fun of on this basis. Does it matter?  It matters to me. How about you?

Here is a transcript of what was said in the show to help you make up your mind.

Andy Parsons: He does look pretty uncomfortable doesn't he, Gordon Brown And I think that's because not a lot of people know , he's actually blind in one of his eyes. And I think so as people do know that he should wear a little patch, cos nobody would muck with Britain then would they - if we were run by a pirate. The trouble is he wouldn't be some sort of swashbuckling sort of Jack Sparrow thing would he. He'd look more, with a patch, he'd look more like a bear from Children in Need. We'd have the Right Honourable Pudsey running the country.

Michael MacIntyre: Does that mean there would've been meetings  between Blair, Brown and Blunkett and only three good eyes in that room? Blair could've run in in the blind spot while they were chatting. And Brown could be going "I can't wat for him to go. I've never liked him. I'm going to overthrow him". And he's like "Suprise! I was here all along, you didn't see me".

Hugh Dennis: But the other thing about that cabinet is that Jack Straw has tinnatus, so he can't hear anything. He's just got a constant buzzing in his head. So it's  a blind man , a half-blind man and a man with tinnatus.

Frankie Boyle: It's like the Wizard of Oz or something.

Russell Howard: They should all join forces like Optimus Prime did to create his one true self - all sort of  jump into each other.

Jan Ravens: Hazel Blears is a munchkin isn't she? Hazel Blears is only about so high (squats in her chair). Hazel Blears makes all her speeches from down there doesn't she. It's like, it's pint sized Hazel Blears.

Dara O'Briain: It's like she's pint sized and she's really small and he only has one eye so therefore no depth perception...he must think she's a long way away all the time.

PS   If my gripe is a generational thing all I can say is God help us!

Dark Deeds at the Beeb

It’s not often that a mere Progressive blogger finds himself having a central role in a BBC drama which exposes flaws in how this august institution works.

It all began about a year ago when I was watching Newsnight, as political nerds like us tend to do. The story, not uncommon at that time (or any time, come to that), was about the Blair-Brown rift over when the Prime Minister should go and how the government was falling apart as a consequence.

The item started with the usual sneering introduction by Jeremy Paxman, this time referring to government policy announcements (three weeks before the local elections) as if they were intended to be a distraction from the main media issue of when Blair should step down. A jocular film report followed in which a somewhat strained link was made between the “regeneration” process by which the actors playing Dr Who were changed and the change in the Labour leadership “something many in the Labour Party would dearly like to see right now”. It continued with a 10 second slot in which Tony Blair referred to the alleged divisions as “soap opera” that had been played up by the media. Then came interviews with two anti-Blair Labour Party members and a Daily Mail journalist who all demolished the position Blair had taken up. Finally there was a studio discussion with Andrew Rawnsley of the Observer and Peter Oborne of the Spectator who both agreed that the profound leadership split was real and that the government was more or less in meltdown.

All par for the course, you might say. Yet throughout the item there was no one at all putting the other side of the argument, not even in the winding - up discussion where “the other side” usually gets a hearing even if they are advocating that pigs can defy the law of gravity. Nor were there any of those challenging questions and grimaces that Mr Paxman seems to reserve for government ministers.

Knowing from previous communications with the BBC that such a blatantly one-sided presentation had to be in conflict with the BBC guidelines requiring them ”to avoid bias or an imbalance of views on controversial subjects” particularly in a period leading up to an election, I duly sent in a complaint on this basis. Nearly a year later, after the complaint had been dismissed at the BBC editorial level it was considered on appeal by the last meeting of the Governors’ Programme Complaints Committee (now the BBC Trust’s Editorial Standards Committee).

Their finding, which can be clicked on here (page 11 of the December ’06 report), was that the appeal was “not upheld”. More importantly the Committee’s explanation of their decision excluded any reference to the actual basis of my appeal i.e. that there had been an imbalance in the views presented. The technique (which those who have made complaints will be familiar with) was to spread the focus of my complaint to other largely irrelevant matters: then to tick off these more easily defended points and hope that no one will notice that the core of the complaint had not been addressed.

The only justification that came anywhere near to the actual terms of my complaint was their claim that they had been impartial because “a range of opinions had been sought”, notwithstanding that the only dissenting opinion they could come up with in the ten minutes that the piece ran was that of the Prime Minister himself in the 10 second slot that had been allotted to him . The fact that they say they also tried to get a Minister or MP to appear in the programme is no defence since the omission could have been made good in other ways. As regards the discussion, they “were satisfied with the choice of guests since they represented publications from different sides of political opinion and had written extensively on the working relationship between Blair and Brown”, again notwithstanding that both were renowned for writing up the relationship in terms of a deep and poisonous division.

When I challenged the Chair of the Editorial Standards Committee, Richard Tait, about how the decision had been justified the reply was that the decision did not need to be reopened because he was confident that “the Committee did absorb and consider all the material it received”. He also refused to change the website presentation of the case to reflect my objections to the rationale of the decision, as had been done on a previous occasion.

Now we all have our opinions on the importance of the differences at the top of this Labour government and Newsnight were perfectly entitled to run an item about them, even if the by-line was, in Paxman’s characteristic words, “how much longer can Tony Blair keep the day job without telling us when he’s going to give it all up?” What they are not entitled to do, under their own guidelines, is to present an almost completely unchallenged line of argument that the government of the day is in disarray, three weeks before local elections. Nor was the BBC Trust entitled to seemingly ignore the main thrust of the complaint in coming to their decision.

There is also a wider consideration here which is relevant to this kind of website since this story goes to the heart of how some parts of the BBC are interpreting the impartiality rule. It seems to me that huge efforts are made to provide a balancing view (however unrepresentative) to the “official line” (e.g. on climate change) but that this is not always the case where the balancing view needs to come from the government side. It’s almost as if some programme-makers regard certain “official lines” as so obviously wrong according to their conventional wisdom that they do not see the need for them to be properly represented in their programmes. Such arrogance is bad for the Beeb and even worse for our democracy. They should not be allowed to get away with it.

PS. The BBC Trust were given the opportunity to comment on the factual content of this post but declined to do so.

A bizarre Xmas tale

There I was, watching yesterday's Newsnight trial of Tony Blair for being interviewed by the police and dropping the Saudi Arabia fraud case when Kirsty Wark suddenly morphed into the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland screaming "off with his head". I must have been dreaming. Or was I?

After Auntie's bacon

Who says the media is obsessed with itself? On the Today programme this morning the two main feature items after the 8 AM bulletin were: 1) Michael Grade's defection from the BBC to ITV and 2) the death of the former Radio 1 DJ, Alan Freeman.

Momentous events in the world of broadcasting, I'm sure (and who with half a heart will not shed a tear for the sad departure of the fantastic 'fluff', 'not 'arf!' Freeman?). But, with radioactive material on the streets of London and the refreezing of Anglo-Russian relations, not to mention the ongoing situation in Iraq and Afghanistan, are these really the most pressing issues facing the UK today? What next: bacon rolls struck off BBC canteen menu shock?

Auntie should remember that the world does not revolve around Shephards Bush, particularly during this sensitive period of license fee renegotiation ...