One last hurrah

I see that the BBC put out yet another ruling against the dearly departed Emily Maitlis earlier this month.

Their Editorial Complaints Unit judged against her retweet of an anti-Boris tweet from former Conservative MP Rory Stewart, saying that “in the absence of any indication to the contrary, retweeting the comment risked giving the impression that Ms Maitlis endorsed the view it expressed.” 

As she then apologised on Twitter they considered the matter “resolved”. 

She certainly kept them busy in recent years, which is why I instantly believed the reports this week that said some at the BBC were glad to see the back of her and her partner in crime Lewis Goodall. 

If you missed that, here's how the Daily Telegraph reported it on Monday:

BBC bosses believe they have solved the problem of perceived Left-wing bias on Newsnight, after Lewis Goodall announced he was leaving to join Emily Maitlis at a commercial rival.

The Telegraph understands that the corporation did not make a counter-offer when Goodall, the programme’s policy editor, told them he had been approached by Global.

The departure of Goodall and Maitlis is being viewed as an opportunity to reset the programme and focus on impartiality after the pair were at the centre of damaging rows with the Government.

Two down, several thousand to go. 

Goodall news

And so farewell to blog favourite Newsnight's Lewis Goodall, who is departing the BBC in September to join Jon Sopel and Emily Maitlis at Global. Mark Urban might be left switching having to switch off the studio lights at this rate. Steerpike at The Spectator pays handsome tribute to the departing Lewis:

Departing from the BBC means that now Goodall is, at last, free to share his political views that have been so well-concealed to date.

The top comment at Guido Fawkes hit the spot too:

I for one will be curious to learn what Lewis's real views are now that he will be no longer having to work under BBC impartiality rules.

Maybe LBC should add another B to their name and become LBBC? 

Comparing GB News with Newsnight

For lots of reasons I've not seen much of GB News or the BBC for months, but I actually sat down today and watched last night's Newsnight on BBC Two and - live - this afternoon's GB News with Nana Akua.

Such a random snapshot proved useful because last night's Newsnight dealt with much the same topic as GB News's 'Great British Debate': the Rwanda/Channel-crossing migrants issue: so it made easy a simple exercise to compare and contrast them.

And the contrasts couldn't be clearer.

Nana's GB News debate saw Nana, the presenter, lay out the pros-and-cons of the debate, but she also declared her own hand. On the question 'Should illegal migrants be tagged like criminals?' she said:

'...But critics say that the plan treats those fleeing persecution as criminals...Well, they are, aren't they? They crossed the Channel illegally. Sorry, did I say that out loud?

She then interviewed Phil Brewer from the Human Trafficking Foundation, who disagreed with her. He argued that the tagging plan won't work and will impact badly on the mental health of the Channel-crossing people being tagged.

What was so pleasing here was that Nana didn't just let him talk but was clearly happy to let him do so, despite her not sharing his point of view. He wasn't interrupted or belittled. He was simply listened to. And he listened to her in return. And Nana left it up to GB News viewers to listen and decide too. 

It was all about listening to open-minded people with strong views listening with an open mind to each other.

Then came Kevin Saunders, former Chief Immigration Officer at UK Border Force, who was pro-tagging and, with caveats, pro-Rwanda option echoed Nana's sentiments. Nana didn't disguise the fact that she agreed with him. It was all in the open.

And Kevin quoted the Full-Fact approved stat that some 70 per cent of those crossing the Channel are fighting-aged men aged 18-40. Newsnight's Lewis Goodall, in contrast, ignored that and made more of the the Full-Fact approved stat that the large majority of 'asylum seekers' crossing the Channel are given asylum in the UK, thus showing that they aren't mere economic migrants.

Then on GB News came a discussion on the issue featuring comedian Leo Kearse and broadcaser Lois Perry. Nana continued to make plain her own views to viewers, but kept outlining both sides. Lois and Leo aired their views, sometimes disagreeing, sometimes agreeing, though they broadly agreed with Nana.

Standing back and judging, this was clearly a debate with a bias - a bias in favour of tagging and the Rwanda plan. But the bias was openly presented and the dissenting voice was treated no differently to the agreeing voices and given full freedom to make his points uninterrupted and in just as friendly a spirit.

Compare that to last night's Newsnight and you'll find yourself in a very different place.

The starting point here was a report from Newsnight policy editor Lewis Goodall. It used Lucy Halliday from Care4Calais, an opponent of the government's Rwanda plan, as a 'talking head'. Next came a sympathetic 'asylum seeker' who says he fled the Taliban in Afghanistan. And then a lawyer working for the 'asylum seekers', Jacqueline McKenzie of Leigh Day solicitors. 

It was one of those BBC reports that spoke with one voice on one side of the argument.

And then it was back to the Newsnight studio for Lubna Shuja of the Law Society, who sounded unsympathetic to the Rwanda plan, and former Labour home secretary David Blunkett, who also disagreed with it.

Watching Newsnight again, after a few months' abstinence, brought it home to me just how one-sided the BBC can be when it really puts its mind to it.

Though Mark Urban, presenting, struck a detached tone, everything else felt like a campaign video.

Lewis Goodall, reporting, came across as a man on a mission, a campaigner telling you what you must believe if you're a good person like him.

And that's what's so galling. Lewis Goodall, someone who uses long threads on Twitter to garner 'likes' from left-leaning types, gets to play the righteous voice of impartial BBC authority on Newsnight and Twitter. 

And Newsnight gets away with presenting the most one-sided airing of a matter of public controversy imaginable with no dissenting voices whatsoever. 

All at the public's expense.

Seriously, give me the honest bias and openness to other points of view of GB News any day over the narrow, preachy 'curating' of stories and opinions by the 'impartial' BBC.

Clarifying and Correcting, featuring friends of China and Lewis Goodall

 

Qing dynasty art, attributed to Ma Quan [no relation to Ma Barker]

Regular readers will know that we value those vanishingly rare 'BBC corrections and clarifications'.

They are like the most endangered species of butterfly - almost never seen and extremely hard to capture.

The latest pair are particularly intriguing. 

The first is unusually fulsome and concerns a China expert who writes nice things about communist China's influence in the world - winning plaudits from pro-CCP types in the process. 

She complained that the BBC edited her Today interview and removed a key bit of what she wanted to say:

Today

BBC Radio 4, 1 December 2021

In an item about Chinese ‘debt trap’ diplomacy we interviewed Professor Deborah Brautigan, who explained that this ‘is the idea that China is deliberately luring countries into borrowing more money than they can afford with the goal of using that debt for strategic leverage, to seize assets of some kind or otherwise push the country to do China’s bidding.’ She went on to give an example of the Sri Lankan port of Hambantota, saying it was used by the Trump administration to promote this theory.

However Professor Brautigan’s further point, that these ideas have little basis in fact, was edited out of the broadcast interview. In fact Professor Brautigan’s research shows that Chinese banks are willing to restructure the terms of existing loans and have never actually seized an asset from any country, much less the port of Hambantota.

We apologise for the error.

7/2/2022

Googling around, it turns out that the BBC also wrote directly to the China-defending professor and blamed an editing error by an inexperienced producer.

Guess what though? The BBC's 'correction and clarification' misspelt her name. She's Professor Brautigam, not Professor Brautigan. 

Standards really are slipping at the BBC.

Talking of which, the other new 'correction and clarification' concerned yet another botched Newsnight report, and what looks like a particularly slipshod example:

Newsnight

BBC Two, 13 July 2021

A graphic attributed the following statement to the Government Race and Disparities Report 2021:

Not a single police force in England and Wales registered an arrest rate of less than 20 for every 1000 black people.

By contrast not a single police force in England and Wales registered an arrest rate of more than 20 for every 1000 white people

We should have made it clear that this conclusion had been carried by The Independent newspaper the previous year in a wider survey of social and economic data on disparities between different ethnicities in the UK and reflected statistics from a different Government website which was now out of date.

The most recent figures show there are four police forces with an arrest rate of below 20 for every 1000 black people.
4/2/2022

As I've moaned before, it's hard to track the guilty BBC party after these BBC statements about poor BBC reporting, as the BBC keeps its mouth shut and rarely names names, most likely in order to spare their people's blushes. So it often takes a lot of patient digging to track down the culprit and the context. 

'Advanced searching' on Twitter reveals however that it was my favourite Newsnight reporter, shiny-faced Lewis Goodall, who bungled it here.

Pleasingly, a retired police officer called him out on it for 'pedalling dodgy statistics' at the time - and for BBC-style race-baiting too:

As so often, it took over six months for the BBC to post that 'correction/clarification' on a page hardly anyone other than me reads. 

I think Lewis should correct it publicly on Newsnight and explain what he did wrong.

[Chances of that happening = Zero].

A Saturday Selection

I've been a bit out-of-action recently, but here are a few things I noted down this week:

I

Never mind Partygate. Sue Gray and Dame Dick need to investigate the Foreign Office for blowing lots of licence fee payers' money on a sparkling farewell party for departing BBC North America editor Jon Sopel. 

That's reported by Steerpike at the Spectator. 

You'll find beneath his piece this comment from former Harry's Place regular Lamia which will doubtless strike a chord with many of us:

Sopel spent the four years of Donald Trump's presidency Tweeting his disapproval of Trump and his Tweets, helping keep the humble folk of Broadcasting House and North London in a permanent state of gratified superior outrage. Once Joe Biden got into power, Sopel and the BBC simply lost interest in reporting about the US President, except what flavour of ice cream he likes. Sopel is a worthless journalist, let alone a journalist for a supposedly impartial broadcaster, because his personal and political biases have infected and dictated everything he reports (and everything he doesn't report about). Not only should he not be the BBC's political editor - if the BBC had any standards (yes, we know it doesn't...) then he would have been sacked years ago. So obviously he's a shoe-in as BBC political editor.

II

Rod Liddle probably ought to hang up his satirical spurs because BBC reality is outpacing him faster than the winner of the Kentucky Derby. A Guardian exclusive reports that the BBC is preparing to broadcast a new take on Dickens's Oliver Twist that will “make a conscious effort” to put food poverty “to the fore” and echo footballer Marcus Rashford’s campaign to reduce child hunger. Very BBC.

III

The BBC is celebrating what they call “a hundred years of our BBC” and they've released a two-minute campaign video - in response to Nadine Dorries - about how the “BBC belongs to all of us”. As you'd expect,  the last word - “every one of us” - goes to Sir David Attenborough and the whole party political broadcast on behalf of the BBC ends with the caption, “This is our BBC.”

The estimable Lance Forman responded:

If the BBC belongs to me - Please can they release the Balen Report which examined anti-Israel bias at the BBC. The BBC have spent circa £500,000 to keep this covered up. With antisemitism rampant there is a public interest in releasing this. Transparency belongs to us all!

IV

The BBC's world affairs editor John Simpson pompously gives us “a reminder”:

Just a quick constitutional reminder for the BBC’s 100th anniversary: it belongs to the people of the UK. It doesn’t belong to the government. And, contrary to what the current Culture Secretary seems to think, it isn’t state-funded.

It may not be, but it still drags thousands of reluctant viewers through the courts.

V

As Paul Homewood notes, BBC Future has a piece by some white woke guy called Jeremy Williams headlined Climate change divides along racial lines. Could tackling it help address longstanding injustices? The pasty-faced gentleman in question has a book out too, Climate Change is Racist: Race, Privilege and the Struggle for Climate Justice, thereby evidently making him absolutely irresistible to the BBC. I'm not sure I was even aware of BBC Future. The BBC has no many tentacles it's hard to keep track.

VI(a)

I see some people on Twitter have been complaining that BBC One's main new bulletins gave mere seconds to the jailing of former Labour peer Lord Ahmed of Rotherham for paedophilia last night. Indeed, News at Six gave the story 17 seconds and News at Ten gave the story 13 seconds. It beggars belief.

VI(b)

It remains a telling fact that Newsnight has still never covered the Barry Gardiner/Chinese Communist Party influence story or that their policy editor Lewis Goodall, despite being a hyperactive Twitterer, has never tweeted about it either - despite the CCP's influence on the UK being one of the biggest new stories out there. I put it down to bias. 

VII

Wagner's Ring cycle lasts 17 hours and runs for over four days. In it the bronzed Valkyrie Brünnhilde disobeys the Director-General of the gods Wotan, ensconced in Valhalla House. The weak Wotan, despite Brünnhilde's flagrant disregard of Valhalla editorial guidelines, merely slaps her wrist by giving her a talking-to and then sentences her to a good night's sleep on a luxury bed surrounded by fire. The dragon-slaying idiot Siegfried awakens her with a kiss and an embittered, self-righteous Brünnhilde then - after various twists and turns - mounts her mighty steed Grane and, immolating herself in the process too, brings about the fiery destruction of Valhalla House and the godly board. Similarly long-lasting is the BBC's Monologue cycle. In this saga the bronzed Emily Maitlis disobeys pasty-faced chief god of the BBC Tim Davie. Tim Davie weakly slaps her wrist by mildly saying she might, possibly, not have been quite entirely right - and then does nothing more. She disobeys him again. And again. And again. Always playing throughout to her main audience, her fellow Valkyries on Twitter. The Trump-slaying Jon Sopel awakens her with a kiss and she mounts her mighty stallion Twitter and disobeys Tim Davie yet again. So what happens next? Well, if my tortuous Wagner analogy runs on, Emily's biased behaviour will help precipitate BBCdämmerung, The Twilight of the BBC, as Tim Davie sits forlorn in Broadcasting House as everything around him goes up in flames and, amid floodwaters, the Thamesmaidens swim in to take back the BBC licence fee. So is Tim Davie ever going to do something about her? She's making a mockery of 'BBC impartiality' and sneering at her BBC bosses, but I doubt he'll do anything. He doesn't seem the type to tackle BBC bias full on. As BBC TV sitcom Valkyrie Mrs Slocombe was wont to say, he's ''weak as water''. 

VIII

BBC disinformation reporter Marianna Spring has been busy promoting a new 10-part podcast series “investigating the human cost of pandemic conspiracies online in one town, who believes them - and why” for Radio 4 and BBC Sounds. She “will share more details soon!” This drew a sarcastic reply from Peter Hitchens: “Looking forward to this, Marianna Spring. Obviously this is the most urgent lack in BBC coverage of the last two years. But will a mere ten episodes be enough?”

IX

The BBC's diplomatic correspondent James Landale followed UK PM Boris Johnson to a press conference in Ukraine with the Ukrainian president and provoked criticism in some quarters for “making the UK look like a joke” by asking Boris about Partygate rather than Russia-Ukraine. I suspect that as extraterrestrials first emerge from their twenty-mile-long mothership to make contact with humanity for the first time BBC types will be there at the front of the press pack asking about the Sue Gray report. 

BBC - Why Iraqi Kurds risk their lives to reach the West

A 24-year-old Kurdish woman from northern Iraq, Maryam Nuri Mohamed Amin, has been named as the first victim of Wednesday's tragedy in the English Channel. The poor lady was hoping to join her fiancé, who is already here in the UK.

One oddity about the BBC report about her is the links added to the piece: 

• What's being done to stop Channel crossings?
• Why do migrants leave France for the UK?
• The migrant debate can't escape European politics
• Channel deaths: What do we know so far?

It misses, a highly relevant BBC report that was published overnight headlined Why Iraqi Kurds risk their lives to reach the West. 

The piece isn't even on the BBC News homepage either.

What's so striking about this buried-away piece is that it makes it plain that Iraqi Kurds come from a relatively secure, stable and prosperous area of the world and are essentially risking their lives to reach the West for economic reasons, to build better lives. 

In other words, they are economic migrants.

This runs counter to much of what the BBC has been telling us in recent days. You remember Lewis Goodall saying, “There's much discussion in Britain about whether these people are genuine asylum seekers. It's a fair question. But also fair to consider whether many or most would credibly take these sort of risks if they weren't”? Clearly they would, alas.

It isn't impartial broadcasting

 

 

As we've been discussing on the open thread...

This morning's BBC Breakfast included an interview with the French MP for Calais and a former Chief Immigration Officer for UK Border Force in light of the tragedy in the Channel yesterday.

In a very BBC moment, BBC Breakfast presenter Naga Munchetty decided to interrupt when the latter, Kevin Saunders, said something that, however factual, was clearly unpalatable to her. 

She then took umbrage with him when he reacted with bemusement to her interruption. 

And, not letting it go, she then went on to try and shame him by playing the time-honoured 'please think of the children' card. 

It was all rather aggressive from the BBC presenter. 

Here's a transcript of that section:

Kevin Saunders, Former Chief Immigration Officer for the UK Border Force: In the longer term, we have got to have offshore reception centres for these people. The draw to the UK is phenomenal. They want to come here because basically everything is free. And that's the attraction. That's why they wants to come. They are going to get housing, education, money, everything. That's why they are wanting to come...

Naga Munchetty, BBC: [interrupting] Because they are seeking asylum.

Kevin Saunders: Ah, er...um...

Naga Munchetty: Sorry, what do you mean by...what does that gesture mean?

Kevin Saunders: I was in France for 16 years pulling people out of the back of lorries and such like. Most of the people that I dealt with were not asylum seekers, they were economic migrants. And I do think it's a little bit disingenuous of some of the people who've never met a migrant in their life to say that they are all asylum seekers. They are not all asylum seekers. A lot of them are just plain economic migrants.

Naga Munchetty: What about those who aren't like the child that died on that boat yesterday?

Kevin Saunders: I mean, I'm not saying that everybody is an economic migrant. But a lot of them are.

And then came a report from the BBC's Lewis Goodall which contradicted the lived testimony of Mr Saunders, former Chief Immigration Officer for the UK Border Force. 

Here are some quotes from that:  

• Some of those have made that journey two, three, four or five times to try and make it to the UK. Why? Well for some of them at least they feel they have already risked everything coming from countries where they have been persecuted perhaps, or where their family have been imprisoned, and so it's merely the latest in a series of risks. 
• And of course some people say, well, why don't they just stay in France? There are a few reasons for that. Sometimes it's about family connections, their last family in the world might be in the UK. Sometimes it's about language, they can speak English, they don't speak French. One of the other reasons is they feel they have been treated badly in France and I don't think people necessarily appreciate just how poor conditions are in the camps, and I call them 'camps' charitably. They are basically really just woods and roadsides where people with kids - women, men and children - are living. 
• To understand that, we spent some time in some camps in Calais and Dunkirk and here is a sense of what we found there. When you think of Dunkirk, this almost certainly is not the escape you think of. But in 2021, this is what Dunkirk is. Thousands of people from around the world, men, women, children too, living in the woods, wondering the motorway, waiting for the call to flee at dawn across the sea from France to Britain.
• We should remember, too, that in terms of numbers at least, compared to other European countries, or indeed elsewhere, we are not talking about that many people. It's just more visible.   
• There's much discussion in Britain about whether these people are genuine asylum seekers. It's a fair question. But also fair to consider whether many or most would credibly take these sort of risks if they weren't.

Now, who would you trust to know whether the bulk of the people crossing the Channel are migrants or refugees: the former Chief Immigration Officer for the UK Border Force who has dealt with these people for 16 years or a BBC 'instant expert' Newsnight reporter who has just popped over to France for a couple of days and talked to a few people?

And this isn't just any old BBC journalist. Lewis has a reputation. 

And, as per an earlier post, both Mark Easton and Newsnight were on a concerted mission to try to defuse this as a story before yesterday's tragedy struck and Lewis Goodall was obviously despatched to help advance that mission. 'Defusing the story' is now impossible, so deflecting it seems to be the new approach. 

Watching a Lewis Goodall report is like watching a university debating society in action. Note, as ever, how Lewis uses the tricks of rhetoric to advance it further - that last quote in particular.

Lewis just can't imagine that people who have travelled so far and are trying so hard can be economic migrants. For him, 'it stands to reason' that they must be asylum seekers. Well, it doesn't for me, and I think that's an absolutely ridiculous thing to say.

Note also his 'we should remember' in the fourth quote. Should we really? Why is a BBC reporter telling us what we should think?

As for the Dunkirk references [and there were images from the war], it crossed my mind that Mark Easton was playing the 'little ships' card. Lewis Goodall, unlike the very canny Mark Easton, was less discreet about using that analogy.

And he really hammers home the 'women and children' angle - despite everything we've seen with our own eyes from video after video over the past couple of year [something the full report heavily reinforces]. 

It's a one-sided argument disguised as a report, loaded in both its content and language.

The whole report also goes out of its way to tug at the heart strings, and - in typical Lewis Goodall style - features talk of what he calls ''this political purgatory''. This gets him into familiar territory, and he negotiates the UK-French angle by putting the emphasis on the French side's criticisms of the UK government. 

Even while he's emphasising his own fears for the lives of the migrants he's spoken to he can't but advance his own position on matters of controversy, and do it with a partisan politician's way of winning an argument. 

Whatever this is, it certainly isn't impartial broadcasting.

Bonkers

I was going to write something about the madness of this week's #SackLauraK, but I think ex-BBC journalist Giles Dilnot put it sufficiently crisply yesterday:

Wait, so a hashtag calling for the sacking of a journalist is trending today over a suggestion in a 2 day old tweet from another journalist that wasn't true, uncorroborated by anybody, deleted, withdrawn, apologised for...BS. Sheesh this place is an utter tribal madhouse at times. Said hashtag has had 7000 tweets associated. Seven thousands calls to sack someone for something that never happened. Bonkers.

As for the Daily Telegraph journalist who started it off, and then merely linked to his own newspaper's rebuttal while refusing to let anyone reply to his correcting tweet, Giles added:

Dominic Penna, you ok with all this? I wouldn’t have been.

If you missed it all, Mr Penna tweeted that Laura Kuenssberg had a 'dance battle' and 'rap-off' at the Conservative Party conference. And the far-left and the pro-EU #FBPE then piled in, assuming it was real, and #SackLauraK went wild. The BBC Press Office put out a statement saying there was no truth in it, as did the Telegraph.

The other part of his tweet, however, was that Lewis Goodall did 'a Theresa May' and performed Dancing Queen after asking if there were any 'Tory scum' in the audience - which I assumed was a joke, except that he most definitely did sing Dancing Queen at the Conservative Party conference [badly]:

I note, in passing, that #SackLewisG didn't trend, even despite that performance.

Give that man an award!

Wonder what Newsnight's Lewis Goodall is after here?

Well, whatever it is, I think Adrian Hilton captures it rather well:

I'm pleased to learn of this project from Lewis Goodall at BBC Newsnight. Please send directly to him your harrowing tales of grief, anxiety, depression, exasperation, desperation, and thoughts of suicide over the intolerable (/impossible) costs of the #claddingscandal.

BBC management makes Lewis Goodall delete a tweet

     

Just to recall a comment of mine from 10 July concerning the mooted appointment of former Huff Post editor Jess Brammar to the post of the BBC's executive news editor, despite her history of left-wing tweets:

An interesting part of this story is that Robbie Gibb communicated his reservations about Jess Brammar in a message to Fran Unsworth. Someone at the BBC has obviously leaked this.

Jess Brammar is part of the old Newsnight circle of friends on Twitter that includes my old favourite Lewis Goodall. Lewis and Robbie Gibb, as you'll probably remember, had a bitter Twitter spat over impartiality after Sir Robbie laid out a long list of reasons why Lewis's reporting wasn't impartial. I suspect Robbie Gibb was aware of her being in that circle when warning Fran Unsworth about appointing her to a senior BBC news management role.

Well, there's been a development on that latter front today. The BBC has made Lewis Goodall delete a tweet about Jess Brammar, attacking the Mail on Sunday:

The deleted tweet said:

You can read the Mail on Sunday's ''unhinged, simply misogynist'' article by Glen Owen and Katie Hind here.

Lewis has un-spoken

 

Lewis Goodall has done  it again. He's deleted his controversial tweets about how how cancel culture doesn't really exist on university campuses, plus his impartiality-free "reminder" of what the real education problems are. He's making quite a habit of deleting tweets.

Lewis has spoken

 

Spiked has very recently tweeted a link to a new article, introducing it with these words:

Critics say campus censorship is a myth. Well tell that to Selina Todd, Tim Hunt, Felix Ngole, Rosa Freedman, Jo Phoenix, Noah Carl, Kathleen Stock, Jenni Murray and many more academics, journalists and speakers hounded off campus for their views. 

I saw that tweet - and read that article - after reading a take on the matter from Newsnight's Lewis Goodall, who's very much in the 'critics' camp:  

Rachel Schraer from BBC Reality Check very good on University freedom of speech on World at One just now. Makes clear there’s very little elimination of freedom of speech or censorship taking place institutionally. A few examples of student groups no platform but even there often the examples “taken out of context” or exaggerated.

"Former" Labour activist Lewis has spoken: Stop talking about campus cancellation culture. Nothing to see here. It barely exists. 

And Lewis (as ever) has more. He then tells us what we SHOULD be talking about:

Reminder of education problems for which there is incontrovertible evidence:

- no plan yet for exams this summer 

- no comprehensive plan yet to deal with attainment gap caused by lockdown 

- still hundreds of thousands of tablets short for remote learning

In other words: Focus, people, on my agenda - attacking the Tory government from every conceivable angle!

Reminder: It's far from just Emily Maitlis.

P.S. Some estimable people don't agree with Lewis, including Prof. Vernon Bogdanor, Prof. Kathleen Stock, Sir Anthony Seldon and Prof. Matthew Goodwin. 

Now, who to believe, Newsnight's Lewis Goodall or that eminence of many decades of BBC election nights, Prof. Vernon Bogdanor? I think I'll go with the Argument from Authority after all.

Bad News Day

 

After Donald Trump's acquittal by the US Senate tonight, I saw a tweet saying "Cue: wailing and gnashing of teeth at the BBC". 

We critics of the BBC often predict such BBC behaviour, but Newsnight's off-the-leash twitterers are making such predictions come true. In spades.

Emily Maitlis's Twitter feed in particular is wall-to-wall wailing and teeth-gnashing at the moment. She's seriously not happy with Senator Mitch McConnell. (If ever he agrees to be interviewed by her he should seriously consider wearing body armour from now on). 

And her Newsnight colleague Lewis Goodall is spitting the dummy too. He's positively aghast. All his monocles have plopped into his champagne glass in one go today.

You'd have to have a heart of stone not to laugh. 

That said

Talking about Lewis Goodall (as I always seem to be), his Twitter feed last night was characteristic: 

• Absolutely extraordinary. A trade border on the island of Ireland has been created at the stroke of a pen in Brussels - and yet no-one there thought to tell anyone in Belfast or Dublin. 
• Throughout the Brexit process there was (justifiable) criticism from Dublin and Brussels that the British government seemed insensitive to the particular problems of Northern Ireland and the problems around the border. Now the shoe is firmly on the other foot. 
• That said, it is possible to think that the EU is behaving very badly but also recognise that the post-Brexit relationship (and how new it is) does build in a certain instability in the EU/UK relationship and (as many of us have pointed out) an especially perilous position for NI, as it is, betwixt and between the two. We’re [seeing] some of those dynamic play out. 
• The fact is, this is going to happen a lot. Northern Ireland’s status is now deeply uncertain. The new order post-Brexit hasn’t even been completed, let alone embedded. Every crisis is going to stress test them and the players involved. It’s inherently quite unpredictable. 
• In amongst all of the vaccine news and the EU/UK/NI discord it’s been easy to miss the news yet another appalling day of deaths. 1,245 added to the official tally. 104,371 now. The 7 day average only just beginning to edge down. 
• We’ve become part-inured to these numbers. They’ve become part of the background noise to the day, save for the big thresholds like 100k. But they remain exceptionally high. Profound questions to be answered about whether sorrow could have been prevented.
• I didn’t think It’s a Sin could be a more sublime bit of TV making but the nod to the Resurrection of the Daleks has made me giddy.

I wrote this last night: 

Even by Lewis's standards this is extraordinary. Concede a tiny bit, suggest equivalence, then put in a 'but' ("That said...") and shift the blame away from the EU onto our Brexit settlement, and tie it all into what you've previous said (thus 'showing' yourself to have been far-seeing along). And then swiftly change the subject and try to re-shift the focus onto your main theme: how bad the UK government is. Then move on...

Was that fair?

Others saw it the same way:

Laura Kuenssberg: EU sources describing decision as an 'oversight'. 

Paul Williams: Even Lewis Goodall wouldn't come up with an excuse for them as bad as that. Even though he is trying to do that right now.

Manchester Man: Nice try at diversion Lewis, tugging at heart strings, but YOU KNOW the big story today is the EU’s vaccine debacle. We don’t need reminding by hacks of the human toll of this pandemic. Your job is to report the big news of the day.

Recurrent themes

 

Going back to Tuesday...

One conspicuous feature of the BBC's reporting of the moment when UK deaths from/with Covid-19 passed the 100,000 mark was how its high-profiel reporters managed to make it 'about' their pet subjects. 

On BBC One's News at Ten, for example, Mark Easton made it about his perennial theme: how unequal the UK is. 

And, over on Newsnight the same night, Lewis Goodall made it about his perennial theme: how bad the Government is. 

Here are the transcripts: 

"At times the way government comms have attempted to publicly shame individual journalists during this crisis for simply doing their jobs has been deeply sinister. I’d hoped we’d seen the last of it"

Here's a story you may have missed yesterday (understandably)...

The government's black, female equalities minister took umbrage at a black, female journalist journalist yesterday and all hell broke loose on Twitter. 

(When is all hell not breaking loose on Twitter?)

Here was minister Kemi Badenoch's Twitter thread denouncing HuffPost journalist Nadine White:

• A sad insight into how some journalists operate...On Wednesday, I shared our positive, well-received cross-party video to increase vaccine confidence in the midst of so much disinformation. Last night we heard great news about the Novavax Vaccine which I’ve been trialling.
• Today, an unfortunate reminder of why there is so much confusion and mistrust. Was in meetings all day yesterday and been made aware of 2 emails received from HuffPost journalist, Nadine White.

• Disinformation is on the rise, yet HuffPost are looking to sow distrust by making up claims I refused to take part in a video campaign…(which I suggested and promoted!) Even when Labour and Tory MPs work together, some in the media will still look for conflict. 
• And the main reason I didn’t appear in the video? Because I’m taking part in and promoting vaccine trials.  Given the worst disinformation is that the virus is being “tested first” on black people, I thought it better to avoid mixed messages about volunteering to be tested.
• I’ve been working with the Government Equalities Office on improving govt communications across all communities especially those disproportionately impacted by COVID-19.  The ”important matter” isn’t who is or is not in a video. 
• It’s that Huffpost publish numerous articles about how Covid impacts black people, yet are quite happy to undermine our efforts to build trust in the vaccine by making absurd claims. Chasing clicks like this is irresponsible.
• It’s also creepy and bizarre to fixate on who didn’t participate in a video and demand they explain themselves. As a govt minister I have a platform, but it worries me that other people with less of a voice can be smeared in this way.

• I hope more people will share our cross-party video and help improve vaccine confidence.  It’s about protecting and saving lives not petty politics.

Nadine White's boss at HuffPost, ex-Newnsight Jess Brammar, rode to her journalist's defence:

• One of my reporters has had to make her Twitter profile private today because a *government minister* tweeted out screenshots of a completely standard request for comment on a story, and accused her of spreading disinformation. Absolutely extraordinary.
• Young, female, Black journalists receive some of the worst abuse on Twitter, and to behave in this way is extremely disappointing - even before you consider that the person involved is the minister for equalities. We stand by Nadine for doing her job correctly, as she always does.
• We’re now into the second day of Kemi Badenoch’s feed having an 8-tweet thread alleging that HuffPost and our reporter were “looking to sow distrust” or being ”creepy and bizarre” by asking standard questions of a govt minister. We reject this in the strongest possible terms.
• Yesterday I wrote to the cabinet office to make a complaint, asking for these allegations to be withdrawn, and for an apology for Nadine, who is an excellent reporter who was doing her job. I had hoped to resolve this quickly to minimise the impact on her.
• I know Nadine is grateful for the outpouring of support (and common sense!) on here, as am I. Reporters should be able to go about their jobs without fear of something like this happening to them, particularly where a government minister is concerned.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the matter here, what struck me was how certain of the BBC's most activist journalists couldn't resist entering the fray, all guns blazing:

Rianna Croxford: Solidarity with Nadine White, a brilliant journalist who is getting trolled and piled on today simply for doing her job. Her coverage of the impact of covid-19 on ethnic minority communities has been excellent throughout the pandemic. 

Lewis Goodall: Absolute solidarity with you and Nadine. At times the way government comms have attempted to publicly shame individual journalists during this crisis for simply doing their jobs has been deeply sinister. I’d hoped we’d seen the last of it.

Shifting the goalposts

  

Blog favourite Lewis Goodall has, as ever, been in the thick of the Twitter action today.

It all began with John Stevens of the Daily Mail tweeting (following the Andrew Marr show): 

Hancock: UK has vaccinated more people in past three days than France has in total.

Enter Lewis, stage left:

Lewis Goodall, Newsnight: No doubt the UK is doing well on the vaccines front but long term we probably need to realise that the “World Cup of Vaccines” prism isn’t very helpful. Our biggest neighbour not vaccinating people quickly isn’t just their problem, it’s ours too.

That goes for the whole world. If we can see anything at the moment it’s the danger of variants arising where prevalence is high. Those variants may prove resistant or semi-resistant to vaccines. We’re not truly out of this until the planet is, or at least has it under control.

Moreover we might need to revisit how we’re talking about this and say “given one dose” rather than “vaccinated”. Behavioural scientists I’ve spoken to are concerned that the word “vaccinated” while we’re primarily giving one dose risks giving people a false sense of security.

Here's what happened next - with a special callout to Mr Whelk for spotting a particularly sly move by Lewis:

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Iain Lees: Ffs grow up, you whiny little man.

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redfeathers: Given the flack they took for not participating in the EU procurement scheme, can't really blame them for comparisons with EU.

Lewis Goodall: Think entirely fair for them to point out NHS is doing very well at rolling out and to praise the Vaccine Task Force which has done a great job. But as I say, long term this isn’t going to be solved through one or even several national roll outs. It’s got to global action.

Billy Whelk: Going well... it’s the NHS wot done it. Going badly it’s Boris personally at fault. Is that how journalism works now? This is very poor analysis.

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Jill: Why is it? Can’t you for once acknowledge how well we’re doing. Husband had his jab this morning and hasn’t stopped praising the slickness, speed and competence of the people involved. Take a day off from running our country down there’s a good boy.

LGB: He really is an overpaid activist.

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Emma Lercy: True. But can you imagine the storm of criticism from press and public if France was doing so many more jabs than UK?  It’s all pretty unproductive commentary but when the media bang on about “worst this, slowest that”, with little analysis and context, it’s inevitable.

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David Woodley: So it is no competition? Why then do you in the MSM keep comparing death rates?

Phil: Very much doubt you will get an answer - really does show the underlying narrative that is being pushed.

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And my favourite:

Chris Merchant: From the reporter who last year reveled in the "World Cup of PPE" and the "World Cup of Ventilators" and this year is "helpfully" giving us the "World Cup of Cases" and the "World Cup of Deaths".

Lewis is certainly one for shifting the goalposts, when it suits.

Another of our stories is missing

  

The extraordinary civil war in the SNP between supporters of Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon is proving gripping if nothing else, and now has the potential to bring down the previously all-conquering Scottish First Minister. 

As my favourite commenter on Scottish politics, Effie Deans, notes today though:

If the Salmond Scandal had happened in England it would be headline news on the BBC every day.

So far this year, it's made BBC news bulletins just twice - once on 8 January (when it got less than 2 minutes) and once last night (where it got 25 seconds) and - Newsnight hasn't covered it at all. 

Indeed, Lewis Goodall, who hyperactively tweets about every possible hint of scandal involving the Westminster government, remains resolutely uninterested in the story. He's tweeted nothing specifically about Mr Salmond since 24 Jan 2019: 

Wow. 14 counts against Alex Salmond. 9 sexual assaults. 2 attempted rapes. 1 breach of the peace. 2 indecent assaults. If these prove to be true, there are huge questions about how much, if anything, was to known to his SNP colleagues and those in the wider Scottish govt.

If those questions were "huge" then, now they're surely even bigger, given that "how much, if anything, was known" to Nicola Sturgeon is only the starting point. An even bigger question is: What there a conspiracy against Mr Salmond? And: Has there been a cover-up? Given that Lewis regularly travels up to the Scotland to report for Newsnight, why isn't he reporting on them now?

(Just to add to my point, he's retweeting stuff today about the Welsh Tory leader resigning after a Covid-busting booze-up). 

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UPDATE: Blimey, even Nick Robinson seems to see there's an issue here: 

Was there a cover up of what was known about sexual harassment allegations ? This is an extraordinary story about a war between the two leading figures in the drive for Scottish independence. Imagine how big it would be if it was about, say, Johnson & May. 

The top-rated reply reads:

This is a much bigger story about government corruption on an unprecedented scale Nick. Scottish media outlets silenced, pro indy quangos all over the place, misuse of data, grant based organisations government criticism bought off, Covid politicised. You guys have gone AWOL.  

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P.S. More from Effie Deans: 

We pay top BBC journalists hundreds of thousands of pounds to find out things. Not one of them has contributed to the revelations about Salmond and Sturgeon.

Praise from the SNP

 

It's striking I think, in terms of 'bias by omission', that Newsnight's Lewis Goodall, though tweeting as hyperactively as ever on all manner of aspects of UK and US politics, is avoiding the remarkable goings-in in Scottish politics at the moment. His one act of recognition that something big is going on up there  - the explosive charges against Nicola Sturgeon from Alex Salmond - was a lone retweet of his BBC colleague Nick Eardley on Thursday.

Rechecking Lewis's feed to make sure I hadn't missed anything I did spot, ironically, someone called Erik Geddes saying, "Lewis Goodall's reporting of Scotland is as fair and as strong as anyone on the BBC network".

When I clicked on the man's name to see who he was it turns out he's head of broadcast media for the SNP.

No greater love

Mr Addict has a point, doesn't he?