The focus on Trump (a single event) and the utter silence on the other parts of the Prescott report show that too many within the BBC have no intention of addressing their own bias and activism.
For me the Trump fiasco was poor and a subtle attempt to affect the election in the USA. The Labour Party sent helpers to assist the Democrat Biden team. We are a small country and in my opinion should not be meddling in another countries politics. Trump has quite rightly bided his time and will take the BBC for a fortune. For me the worst recent offences of the BBC isn’t even the paedophile presenters, it’s how they reported the war in Gaza. It wasn’t clumsy, it was deliberate and anti Israel. I feel it affected the lives of hostages because they and our govt gave credence to the murderous Hamas. Blood on their hands
How could a programme on iPlayer have affected the election, when iPlayer isn't available in the USA? In any case, it seems incredibly fanciful to suggest that a British TV show would deter Americans from voting for Trump, by showing clips from a speech of which they would already have been aware.
The only way Trump is going to take the BBC for a fortune will be if they settle out of court. He can't sue them here, and the First Amendment would make it very difficult to do so over there.
This isn't about money anyway - it's about intimidation. And frankly, it's quite sad to see people like you cheering it on.
Except that the tories sent helpers to the Republican party, too. It was not some dastardly left-wing plot. Just normal politics. After all, Farage spends most of his time in the US, it seems.
Why is nobody talking about the evisceration of the current affairs department and news over the past 25 years? The withdrawal of funding. Good journalism needs time and people - time to research and verify stories, people to do that work, experienced people. Panorama used to a department it’s now just a couple of people, as was Newsnight etc etc .
It’s hardly surprising that after chasing the under 35 viewer for the past 20 years, taking facts out of programmes and undermining standards for more ‘youf friendly’ programmes that journalistic standards have all but disappeared.
This was not a matter of taking facts out of context- it was splicing to make a ‘fact’ that fitted the agenda. That does not sound like the thing you are forced to do under pressure of time and resources. It may well be that ‘journalistic standards have all but disappeared’ - but the case in point here is they have disappeared because of bias not resourcing.
While I agree with you about the 'yoof' programming (although that was a long time ago), ChatGPT tells me the BBC employed about 2,000 journalists in 2002 and about 5,500 now. Maybe quality has gone down, and there seems to be more "community" news (about 1,000 of those hacks are needed to write the important stories about drag queens we couldn't live without), but they're not short of people.
I've stopped watching the BBC, because I no longer have a licence to do so, but when I did, the news always opened with this great open plan space full of journalists. What did they all do? They can't all be Woodward and Bernstein.
Except that Bowen, Simpson, Doucet, Donnison, Guerin do not chase under-35s and have been there all the way through - and are part of the systematic bias. So that argument doesn’t wash.
They’re news , nit current affairs. The panorama was made by the remnants left of current affairs. Read the Times today - much better explained as most people don’t understand how programmes are made and make assumptions based on that
I spoke to several BBC staff members today. On the one hand, many bemoaned the quality of management. But most still stuck the idea that apart from THAT edit, the BBC has very little to apologise for. And when I made some random suggestions as possible successors, I heard the same "are they one of us?" type comments. There are two core problems with BBC journalism, and the first will be met with incredulity by journalists outside the organisation. It's not got enough money. "You wanna try our newsroom" is their response, but that's no response at all. All that really means is that competition's journalism is even more denuded of cash that the BBC shouldn't complain. But the reality is that without money, journalism is forced to seek controversy for ratings, or cheap lame shite as filler. The second problem, which is related but separate to the first, is that the BBC management is full of cowards. They've had their fingers burned on Brexit and Cliff Richard and Huw Edwards to name a few. They're surrounded by kids who think that their "lived experiences" count for as much as real experiences. That's what led to the failure to tell the trans lobby that their opinion is not the only one that counts. And Gaza is too terrifying for words. Again the kids love to think that the war only began 100 years ago, or the day that Israel began its retaliation. While the Israeli lobby like to pretend they were best of neighbours to Palestinians until Oct 7th. Honest reporting has been attempted by lots of hard working journalists, but then it's undermined by reportage of the politically biased. BBC Arabic isn't the first foreign language service to go rogue on BBC values, but it should have been the most carefully watched of all over the past 2 years. The fact that it dragged BBC journalism into a dangerously partisan arena is down to management failing to hold its journalists to the identical standards that we should expect from all BBC journalists. The loss of Mark and Stephen Sackur from the BBC is such a waste. In the old days, the older guys helped shape the future of BBC journalism. Now it's being shaped by kids who know too little and noise partisans on the outside who know how to put pressure on the BBC.
I agree with the thrust of your comment, but am a bit bemused at your statement that lived experiences aren’t real experiences. Of course they’re real experiences, they’re just biased rather than part of a valid evidence base. And that is the crux of the problem - increasing cultural polarisation has lead to sets of people who sincerely believe their own “lived experience” trumps any actual facts. That also includes the anti-woke numpties who once saw a foreign-looking guy nick a choccy bar and now think all settled immigrants should be deported.
A "lived experience" is short hand for what you describe. People taking one personal perspective and believing that is sufficient to understand. And young people have been told consistently that their "lived experiences" are as valid as any expert's. When in reality, expertise is slowly gained and understood. That's not to say that younger journalists don't bring new and important context to stories, but for too long we've given them more respect than they've earned. Just as in the past we probably asked to give too much respect to our elders. Impartiality involves being prepared to listen to a whole host of opinions and conclude that there may not be an answer than satifies anyone really.
It’s an error in how to use qualitative research data. A representative sample should contain “lived experiences” from a variety of groups, not just the ones viewed as vulnerable or oppressed. Combined with quantitative data and analysis (trends, weighting, etc) qual can be really powerful, but collected according to a pre-slanted sample makes it easy to misuse.
This should be the end of the license fee. The BBC has been producing propaganda for decades across media and it has all come to a head together. If you want to behave like MSNBC then you can do so without menacing the public.
I don't believe that the BBC is rescuable given how embedded is the rot. It is a racist organisation that wouldn't know impartiality if it bit them on the backside. Enough now. Let the market decide on its worth.
Should the BBC be broken up into two (or more) components; News & current affairs and everything else. The former would still be tax payer funded (at a reduced level to the current license fee) and the latter would be a Netflix style subscription. It wouldn't surprise me that such an option has already been considered (by the consultants that the BBC employs). Also the potential litigation with the US has the potential to escalate rapidly unless handled with care.
Surely the other way round. Spin off the News and Current Affairs to a subscription service so those who appreciate their so called "balance" can pay for it. The money saved can then go towards the things the BBC is actually good at.
Agree that such an approach would be logical but the new CEO of BBC news would be very conscious of a declining subscriber base and would argue accordingly.
The only thing I worry about is the BBC might be on a slippery slope to extinction. Its enemies, of whatever colour, must hate an organisation that actually tries to avoid the sectarianism of the gutter press. Ditto other parts of the media pushing questionable agendas. The current mess is a massive gift to them. If the BBC is lost what media can we trust? I do not want UK broadcasting to mimic the USA or Russia.
Considering the riot-incitement video about Trump not just fabricated by the BBC, but condoned in two separate senior meetings 6 months apart when reviewed, I'd encourage you to reconsider your opinion that the BBC is not part of the gutter press.
The whole scandal speaks of systemic issues, all the way from production to board level, such that they feel it is justified to splice separate comments made an hour apart together to incriminate a politician they personally oppose.
Although there is not such a blatant example of intentional bias and dishonesty about race, transgenderism and party politics in general, many feel the same systemic bias and willingness to bend the truth sadly permeate much of the content in the modern era.
I write this as a former BBC aficionado who would listen to R4 Today and watch Newsnight most days of the week. The generation of Mark Urban, Jeremy Paxman and John Humphreys are long gone, as has the sense of probity that was once a feature of the BBC as an institution.
The best we can do in the modern era is to read a bit of both left and right, with the knowledge that they're both omitting parts of the story to suit their partisan agenda, and in reading both we might find the truth in between. I go for the Guardian and Telegraph or Mail. It's not easy.
The BBC is subject to the news values of its staff like any media outlet. The Trump fiasco proves this. I hope robust action is taken by BBC management to avert any more sliding towards the gutter. I take my news from a variety of sources to hear what others are saying even if I don’t agree with them. The BBC is still my first port of call.
Gotta love the constant use of terms like "mistakes" or "editing error" in the past days. You don't splice together two sentences separated by an hour that have the effect that edit did without clear, and malicious, intent. It was anything but accidental.
Then release it... the week before the election? You've got to be kidding.
The big question is: whose idea was that edit, who supervised it? It certainly wasn't Davie or Turness directly. Their resignations in some ways are a cover for a problem that exists at a lower level, and is far more widespread and therefore insidious.
Because the rest of the letter, as many have mentioned, is being largely ignored: partly because many media organizations that WOULD report on it have identical deeply rooted bias problems.
It speaks to a fundamental problem at the BBC that goes far beyond symbolic resignations, laughably obvious attempts to signal "problem fixed, nothing more to see here!"
The only thing the BBC news and current affairs had that justified their public funding was credibility. But now it's blindingly obvious to anyone outside the BBC bubble that it has a major, and deeply entrenched, bias problem. So, in not protecting its credibility the leadership of the BBC has totally failed. They have literally wrecked the institution because, if folks can't trust what it says, then BBC's news and current affairs have no argument for being funded by the community at large. They themselves have made the case for cutting BBC news and current affairs loose from the public purse.
The ‘mishap’ at Glastonbury? FFS - that posh cunt ‘rapper’ was allowed to spew his filthy, Jew-hating slogans with impunity. Did the executive producer of Glastonbury resign? No. Alison Howe is still there. Sack her
Going out on a limb here but I'm happy to have a universal fee so long as the BBC is accountable to the fee payers. That means the Board elected, and having them decide the fee, the scope and size. I'd be voting for a candidate promising to end daytime TV, schools excepted, and a 15% fee reduction, but if the elected board wanted to double it I couldn't argue, I had my vote.
At present it's a State broadcaster accountable to a Ministry, not to us punters. Everyone working there has been appointed by someone appointed by someone appointed by government. The ethos is government is good, more of it better. So a guy who came from business to be Pres isn't like them. Classical liberals, minarchists, SHI health advocates get fewer debating slots. And not being formally accountable to the people who pay for it is a sepsis in the corporations blood.
I wonder how many people weighing in on the so-called doctored Trump speech actually watched the documentary. It doesn't seem to be available on iPlayer anymore, but according to reviews it was giving a voice to the people that follow Trump (and not at all making the case that Trump was trying to engineer a coup). I find this generally believable, since this question didn't cause a stir when the programme was actually aired. In other words, it was only after it was leaked to a right-wing rag that this footage turned out to be a problem. What is more, it showed things that Trump actually said, and it was consistent with the facts of what then happened (1000s of people storming the Capitol to demand the election result be overturned and then being pardoned by the person in whose name they did it). I don't know about the Arab and trans stuff, but on Trump the BBC did NOTHING wrong.
Except they edited a series of clips to present a MORE negative narrative than non Trump supporters suspected anyway, Bias by definition. Now Trump will be bought off by British taxpayers.
Were you able to see the documentary? (I wasn't). Was it about Trump starting a coup or, as the reviews I found said, about how Trump's supporters (including the ones who stormed the Capitol) see him. If it is the latter - isn't it pro-Trump bias... giving a sensitive hearing to a bunch of yahoos prepared to overturn democracy?
The old mission model cannot survive in the current hyper-polarised climate where the damage is done long before any 'facts' are checked.
We now have one of the least capable ministers (Nandy) in what is actually a pretty talented government, making decisions about The BBC, whose higher echelons were deliberately packed with Tory sympathies placements in the Johnson era. Robbie Gibb should never have been let into the building but those RCP weirdos in Downing Street (Munira Mirza and Dougie Smith) got their way. Davie has all the charm of a supermarket executive, while Shah is positively creepy. He probably thinks he's safe but my sources at the former newspaper called The Telegraph say they are coming for him like a royal flush (out).The non execs are just filler material for any non executive board. Speaking of which, can't any of the 6000 news journals at the BBC investigate a) the fact that every right-wing newspaper is edited by a Daily Mail reject, and b) having been owned by two lots of crooks, the current proprietor-less Telegraph aka the Daily Torahgraph, is like an anarchist collective, running ludicrous scare stories about Arabs or Chinese-connected share holders. A lot of the Telegraph comment pieces read as if they are dictated from within a padded cell. In the past I would have defended the BBC, but its cravenness towards Reform and indulgence of Israel mean that I won't be sorry if it falls. What a pity it can't take much of the print press with it.
I hate to say it but most of us have had enough of you. If ever there was a time we needed the BBC of 30 years ago its now and youre tragically missing in action. Goodbye.
The focus on Trump (a single event) and the utter silence on the other parts of the Prescott report show that too many within the BBC have no intention of addressing their own bias and activism.
For me the Trump fiasco was poor and a subtle attempt to affect the election in the USA. The Labour Party sent helpers to assist the Democrat Biden team. We are a small country and in my opinion should not be meddling in another countries politics. Trump has quite rightly bided his time and will take the BBC for a fortune. For me the worst recent offences of the BBC isn’t even the paedophile presenters, it’s how they reported the war in Gaza. It wasn’t clumsy, it was deliberate and anti Israel. I feel it affected the lives of hostages because they and our govt gave credence to the murderous Hamas. Blood on their hands
How could a programme on iPlayer have affected the election, when iPlayer isn't available in the USA? In any case, it seems incredibly fanciful to suggest that a British TV show would deter Americans from voting for Trump, by showing clips from a speech of which they would already have been aware.
The only way Trump is going to take the BBC for a fortune will be if they settle out of court. He can't sue them here, and the First Amendment would make it very difficult to do so over there.
This isn't about money anyway - it's about intimidation. And frankly, it's quite sad to see people like you cheering it on.
Except that the tories sent helpers to the Republican party, too. It was not some dastardly left-wing plot. Just normal politics. After all, Farage spends most of his time in the US, it seems.
Putinist appeasement.
The tone on R4 Today this morning was very surreal… Thanks for the context and I largely agree
Why is nobody talking about the evisceration of the current affairs department and news over the past 25 years? The withdrawal of funding. Good journalism needs time and people - time to research and verify stories, people to do that work, experienced people. Panorama used to a department it’s now just a couple of people, as was Newsnight etc etc .
It’s hardly surprising that after chasing the under 35 viewer for the past 20 years, taking facts out of programmes and undermining standards for more ‘youf friendly’ programmes that journalistic standards have all but disappeared.
This was not a matter of taking facts out of context- it was splicing to make a ‘fact’ that fitted the agenda. That does not sound like the thing you are forced to do under pressure of time and resources. It may well be that ‘journalistic standards have all but disappeared’ - but the case in point here is they have disappeared because of bias not resourcing.
While I agree with you about the 'yoof' programming (although that was a long time ago), ChatGPT tells me the BBC employed about 2,000 journalists in 2002 and about 5,500 now. Maybe quality has gone down, and there seems to be more "community" news (about 1,000 of those hacks are needed to write the important stories about drag queens we couldn't live without), but they're not short of people.
I've stopped watching the BBC, because I no longer have a licence to do so, but when I did, the news always opened with this great open plan space full of journalists. What did they all do? They can't all be Woodward and Bernstein.
Except that Bowen, Simpson, Doucet, Donnison, Guerin do not chase under-35s and have been there all the way through - and are part of the systematic bias. So that argument doesn’t wash.
They’re news , nit current affairs. The panorama was made by the remnants left of current affairs. Read the Times today - much better explained as most people don’t understand how programmes are made and make assumptions based on that
I spoke to several BBC staff members today. On the one hand, many bemoaned the quality of management. But most still stuck the idea that apart from THAT edit, the BBC has very little to apologise for. And when I made some random suggestions as possible successors, I heard the same "are they one of us?" type comments. There are two core problems with BBC journalism, and the first will be met with incredulity by journalists outside the organisation. It's not got enough money. "You wanna try our newsroom" is their response, but that's no response at all. All that really means is that competition's journalism is even more denuded of cash that the BBC shouldn't complain. But the reality is that without money, journalism is forced to seek controversy for ratings, or cheap lame shite as filler. The second problem, which is related but separate to the first, is that the BBC management is full of cowards. They've had their fingers burned on Brexit and Cliff Richard and Huw Edwards to name a few. They're surrounded by kids who think that their "lived experiences" count for as much as real experiences. That's what led to the failure to tell the trans lobby that their opinion is not the only one that counts. And Gaza is too terrifying for words. Again the kids love to think that the war only began 100 years ago, or the day that Israel began its retaliation. While the Israeli lobby like to pretend they were best of neighbours to Palestinians until Oct 7th. Honest reporting has been attempted by lots of hard working journalists, but then it's undermined by reportage of the politically biased. BBC Arabic isn't the first foreign language service to go rogue on BBC values, but it should have been the most carefully watched of all over the past 2 years. The fact that it dragged BBC journalism into a dangerously partisan arena is down to management failing to hold its journalists to the identical standards that we should expect from all BBC journalists. The loss of Mark and Stephen Sackur from the BBC is such a waste. In the old days, the older guys helped shape the future of BBC journalism. Now it's being shaped by kids who know too little and noise partisans on the outside who know how to put pressure on the BBC.
I agree with that except that it wasn’t only older GUYS who shaped the values of BBC journalism.
Definitely didn't mean to imply that. Old gits would be a better phrase.
I agree with the thrust of your comment, but am a bit bemused at your statement that lived experiences aren’t real experiences. Of course they’re real experiences, they’re just biased rather than part of a valid evidence base. And that is the crux of the problem - increasing cultural polarisation has lead to sets of people who sincerely believe their own “lived experience” trumps any actual facts. That also includes the anti-woke numpties who once saw a foreign-looking guy nick a choccy bar and now think all settled immigrants should be deported.
A "lived experience" is short hand for what you describe. People taking one personal perspective and believing that is sufficient to understand. And young people have been told consistently that their "lived experiences" are as valid as any expert's. When in reality, expertise is slowly gained and understood. That's not to say that younger journalists don't bring new and important context to stories, but for too long we've given them more respect than they've earned. Just as in the past we probably asked to give too much respect to our elders. Impartiality involves being prepared to listen to a whole host of opinions and conclude that there may not be an answer than satifies anyone really.
It’s an error in how to use qualitative research data. A representative sample should contain “lived experiences” from a variety of groups, not just the ones viewed as vulnerable or oppressed. Combined with quantitative data and analysis (trends, weighting, etc) qual can be really powerful, but collected according to a pre-slanted sample makes it easy to misuse.
This should be the end of the license fee. The BBC has been producing propaganda for decades across media and it has all come to a head together. If you want to behave like MSNBC then you can do so without menacing the public.
I don't believe that the BBC is rescuable given how embedded is the rot. It is a racist organisation that wouldn't know impartiality if it bit them on the backside. Enough now. Let the market decide on its worth.
Where is the culture secretary in all of this? Missing in action?
Should the BBC be broken up into two (or more) components; News & current affairs and everything else. The former would still be tax payer funded (at a reduced level to the current license fee) and the latter would be a Netflix style subscription. It wouldn't surprise me that such an option has already been considered (by the consultants that the BBC employs). Also the potential litigation with the US has the potential to escalate rapidly unless handled with care.
Surely the other way round. Spin off the News and Current Affairs to a subscription service so those who appreciate their so called "balance" can pay for it. The money saved can then go towards the things the BBC is actually good at.
Agree that such an approach would be logical but the new CEO of BBC news would be very conscious of a declining subscriber base and would argue accordingly.
The only thing I worry about is the BBC might be on a slippery slope to extinction. Its enemies, of whatever colour, must hate an organisation that actually tries to avoid the sectarianism of the gutter press. Ditto other parts of the media pushing questionable agendas. The current mess is a massive gift to them. If the BBC is lost what media can we trust? I do not want UK broadcasting to mimic the USA or Russia.
Considering the riot-incitement video about Trump not just fabricated by the BBC, but condoned in two separate senior meetings 6 months apart when reviewed, I'd encourage you to reconsider your opinion that the BBC is not part of the gutter press.
The whole scandal speaks of systemic issues, all the way from production to board level, such that they feel it is justified to splice separate comments made an hour apart together to incriminate a politician they personally oppose.
Although there is not such a blatant example of intentional bias and dishonesty about race, transgenderism and party politics in general, many feel the same systemic bias and willingness to bend the truth sadly permeate much of the content in the modern era.
I write this as a former BBC aficionado who would listen to R4 Today and watch Newsnight most days of the week. The generation of Mark Urban, Jeremy Paxman and John Humphreys are long gone, as has the sense of probity that was once a feature of the BBC as an institution.
The best we can do in the modern era is to read a bit of both left and right, with the knowledge that they're both omitting parts of the story to suit their partisan agenda, and in reading both we might find the truth in between. I go for the Guardian and Telegraph or Mail. It's not easy.
Why do you assume you can trust any media organisation?
Trust is a relative term. I prefer to put more trust in the BBC than other similar organisations.
The BBC is subject to the news values of its staff like any media outlet. The Trump fiasco proves this. I hope robust action is taken by BBC management to avert any more sliding towards the gutter. I take my news from a variety of sources to hear what others are saying even if I don’t agree with them. The BBC is still my first port of call.
So Russiagate was false but BBCgate is true?
Gotta love the constant use of terms like "mistakes" or "editing error" in the past days. You don't splice together two sentences separated by an hour that have the effect that edit did without clear, and malicious, intent. It was anything but accidental.
Then release it... the week before the election? You've got to be kidding.
The big question is: whose idea was that edit, who supervised it? It certainly wasn't Davie or Turness directly. Their resignations in some ways are a cover for a problem that exists at a lower level, and is far more widespread and therefore insidious.
Because the rest of the letter, as many have mentioned, is being largely ignored: partly because many media organizations that WOULD report on it have identical deeply rooted bias problems.
It speaks to a fundamental problem at the BBC that goes far beyond symbolic resignations, laughably obvious attempts to signal "problem fixed, nothing more to see here!"
The only thing the BBC news and current affairs had that justified their public funding was credibility. But now it's blindingly obvious to anyone outside the BBC bubble that it has a major, and deeply entrenched, bias problem. So, in not protecting its credibility the leadership of the BBC has totally failed. They have literally wrecked the institution because, if folks can't trust what it says, then BBC's news and current affairs have no argument for being funded by the community at large. They themselves have made the case for cutting BBC news and current affairs loose from the public purse.
The ‘mishap’ at Glastonbury? FFS - that posh cunt ‘rapper’ was allowed to spew his filthy, Jew-hating slogans with impunity. Did the executive producer of Glastonbury resign? No. Alison Howe is still there. Sack her
Going out on a limb here but I'm happy to have a universal fee so long as the BBC is accountable to the fee payers. That means the Board elected, and having them decide the fee, the scope and size. I'd be voting for a candidate promising to end daytime TV, schools excepted, and a 15% fee reduction, but if the elected board wanted to double it I couldn't argue, I had my vote.
At present it's a State broadcaster accountable to a Ministry, not to us punters. Everyone working there has been appointed by someone appointed by someone appointed by government. The ethos is government is good, more of it better. So a guy who came from business to be Pres isn't like them. Classical liberals, minarchists, SHI health advocates get fewer debating slots. And not being formally accountable to the people who pay for it is a sepsis in the corporations blood.
I wonder how many people weighing in on the so-called doctored Trump speech actually watched the documentary. It doesn't seem to be available on iPlayer anymore, but according to reviews it was giving a voice to the people that follow Trump (and not at all making the case that Trump was trying to engineer a coup). I find this generally believable, since this question didn't cause a stir when the programme was actually aired. In other words, it was only after it was leaked to a right-wing rag that this footage turned out to be a problem. What is more, it showed things that Trump actually said, and it was consistent with the facts of what then happened (1000s of people storming the Capitol to demand the election result be overturned and then being pardoned by the person in whose name they did it). I don't know about the Arab and trans stuff, but on Trump the BBC did NOTHING wrong.
Except they edited a series of clips to present a MORE negative narrative than non Trump supporters suspected anyway, Bias by definition. Now Trump will be bought off by British taxpayers.
Were you able to see the documentary? (I wasn't). Was it about Trump starting a coup or, as the reviews I found said, about how Trump's supporters (including the ones who stormed the Capitol) see him. If it is the latter - isn't it pro-Trump bias... giving a sensitive hearing to a bunch of yahoos prepared to overturn democracy?
The old mission model cannot survive in the current hyper-polarised climate where the damage is done long before any 'facts' are checked.
We now have one of the least capable ministers (Nandy) in what is actually a pretty talented government, making decisions about The BBC, whose higher echelons were deliberately packed with Tory sympathies placements in the Johnson era. Robbie Gibb should never have been let into the building but those RCP weirdos in Downing Street (Munira Mirza and Dougie Smith) got their way. Davie has all the charm of a supermarket executive, while Shah is positively creepy. He probably thinks he's safe but my sources at the former newspaper called The Telegraph say they are coming for him like a royal flush (out).The non execs are just filler material for any non executive board. Speaking of which, can't any of the 6000 news journals at the BBC investigate a) the fact that every right-wing newspaper is edited by a Daily Mail reject, and b) having been owned by two lots of crooks, the current proprietor-less Telegraph aka the Daily Torahgraph, is like an anarchist collective, running ludicrous scare stories about Arabs or Chinese-connected share holders. A lot of the Telegraph comment pieces read as if they are dictated from within a padded cell. In the past I would have defended the BBC, but its cravenness towards Reform and indulgence of Israel mean that I won't be sorry if it falls. What a pity it can't take much of the print press with it.
I hate to say it but most of us have had enough of you. If ever there was a time we needed the BBC of 30 years ago its now and youre tragically missing in action. Goodbye.