New BBC boss tells ‘opinionated staff’ to quit after leftie bias row as he promises ‘radical change’ - "THE new BBC boss has promised "radical" change and told opinionated staff to quit after the corporation's row over leftie bias. In an address to staff this lunchtime, Tim Davie warned the BBC must change to survive and that it doesn't have a "right to exist". Rallying the troops as he took over from Lord Hall this week, he said that staff should work hard to deliver on the views of the entire nation, not a select elite. The Beeb has faced a string of controversies over recent years - with accusations of left-wing bias and hiring a string of anti-Tory reporters. And it has been accused of only representing the views of the London elite, rather than the people and down the country... The Beeb will "renew our commitment to impartiality" in a bid to win back the trust of the nation, he promised. "I want a radical shift in our focus from the internal to the external, to focus on those we serve: the public." And he added: "Our research shows that too many perceive us to be shaped by a particular perspective...
THE Beeb has come under increasing fire over impartiality after a series of rows. It was forced into a screeching U-turn after initially saying the words Rule Britannia! and Land of Hope and Glory would not be sung at this years Proms over the songs' links to colonialism The Beeb came under massive public pressure - including from the PM - and eventually overturned the decision."
BBC considers left-wing, anti-Brexit journalist for top news job - "Jess Brammar, who ran HuffPost UK until April, has emerged as favourite for the newly created post of executive news editor, despite a promised drive for better impartiality at the corporation... Critics of the BBC last night said the proposed appointment showed the corporation had “learnt nothing” and had a “death wish”."
BBC sparks discrimination row after banning white people from applying for £18,000 trainee job - "The broadcaster is advertising a one-year, £17,810 trainee production management assistant role with its Science Unit in Glasgow, but the position is 'only open to black, Asian and ethnically diverse candidates'. Positive discrimination is unlawful under the Equality Act 2010, but 'positive action' is allowed for trainee and internship roles in areas where there is under-representation."
Bashir saga shows BBC is 'unaccountable', says ex-Mirror Group boss - "“The BBC is unaccountable,” he says when asked about Lord Dyson’s damning report of ex-BBC journalist Martin Bashir. “The BBC’s reliability has now been seriously questioned. “We have got to recognise that if the BBC had been treated like the News of the World, it wouldn’t exist anymore.”... The BBC has long-held a pariah status among regional newspaper executives, who bristle at the power of its national and regional news website. There is a belief the broadcaster is perpetuating an unlevel playing field. While licence fee income keeps its regional newsrooms financially flush, local newspaper groups are forced to endure endless cost cuts as print advertising falls."
Only the Daily Mail gets condemned and dismissed by liberals
BBC journalist exposed for tweeting 'HitlerWasRight' - "BBC journalist Tala Halawa posted a tweet on July 20, 2014, that claimed that "Israel is more Nazi than Hitler" and said that the Israeli Defense Forces should "go to hell," the Daily Mail reported. Also included in Halawa's tweet, who writes in her Twitter bio that she is located in the West Bank city of Ramallah, were the hashtags "PrayForGaza" and "HitlerWasRight.""
BBC’s lack of black game show hosts is a sign of institutional racism, says Repair Shop host - "Jay Blades, host of The Repair Shop, has claimed that the BBC’s lack of black game show hosts is a sign of institutional racism."
How far down are liberals going to dig to grievance monger?
No, the BBC is not institutionally racist - "What words spring to mind when you think of the BBC? Line of Duty, received pronunciation, endemic bias? One word few would reach for is racism. But that is exactly what Auntie has been accused of – and by one of its own presenters, no less... As it happens, Blades’ specific charge, that there are no black primetime game-show hosts, is factually incorrect. Marvin and Rochelle Humes, who are both black, host the BBC primetime game show The Hit List. Previously, Alison Hammond co-hosted another BBC Saturday night game show, The Time It Takes. More broadly, the BBC is incredibly diverse. According to a 2020 report, 14 per cent of its staff are from ethnic-minority backgrounds – roughly reflecting the make-up of the wider population. And according to the latest Creative Diversity Survey, BAME people are overrepresented on screen at the BBC, making up 26.5 per cent of on-screen contributions. Blades’ comments remind us how meaningless the charge of institutional racism has become. It can now be evoked in the absence of any evidence, or in the presence of clear evidence to the contrary. All that matters these days is ‘lived experience’... If even the institutionally woke BBC is guilty, then what does the r-word mean anymore?"
Idris Elba’s Luther Isn’t Black Enough to Be Authentic, Says BBC Exec - ""‘OK, he doesn’t have any Black friends, he doesn’t eat any Caribbean food, this doesn’t feel authentic.”... “Great thing about Luther is that his skin color isn’t the core of his identity. He’s fighting many battles. An example that we’re all human, we all struggle, but our ethnicity doesn’t always play a part in that. That’s diversity, Miranda Wayland. Equality!”
So much for "stereotypes"
Hand-wringing over the ‘diversity’ of BBC dramas is an insult to modern Britain - "Wayland is surely not advocating a sort of reversion to the stereotypes that tainted TV drama for years, in which ethnic-minority characters were often gangsters, or (in the case of Indian representation) intransigent patriarchs. With Luther, the show’s creator Neil Cross has said that Elba was initially attracted to that role precisely because race was not a factor. But Cross has also said that “it would have been an act of tremendous arrogance for me to try to write a black character”. This comment (made prior to Wayland’s) is just as spectacularly unhelpful. It feeds into the new cult of only being allowed to write about your own specific background, siloing the creative mind into the makeshift prison of identity politics. Cross, as a writer, should be allowed to write about whatever sort of character he wants: that is the right of the artist, who for hundreds of years has enjoyed creative freedom. In the prism of modern thinking, would Tolstoy have dared to explore the mind of Anna Karenina, or Shakespeare ventriloquise the words of “the Moor”? But now we have reached a stage at which authors’ flights of fancy (which is their stock-in trade, after all) are under threat. Look at the hatred directed towards the white novelist Jeanine Cummins for daring to imagine herself as a Mexican immigrant worker in her bestseller American Dirt, or the kneejerk criticism directed at the decision to allow the black poet Amanda Gorman’s work to be translated into Dutch by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, a white writer, even though the latter had been approved by Gorman herself. How fascistic, how depressing, how insulting to the very notion of art. Similarly, we now have a situation in which even actors are expected only to play roles that reflect their own ethnicity or sexuality. You can’t “play gay” unless you actually are – a ridiculous view which goes against the very notion of the profession, which is to transform yourself into somebody entirely different... It’s a relief – isn’t it? – that a non-white performer now has the chance to play Hamlet or Hedda Gabler or Estragon, and that they don’t have to bring their own backgrounds into these roles. They can just build their performances on the words of great playwrights and their own abilities. But if we take Wayland’s comment to its logical conclusion, we must assume that black actors will have to ensure that their performances are informed by their own ethnicity. This is not a step towards equality but a step towards a sort of cultural apartheid. Similarly, it’s a patronising limitation to demand the corollary of where Cross’s comment leads – that black writers write only about their own experiences. This is a cultural cul-de-sac. Wouldn’t it be more progressive if black playwrights could write plays featuring mainly white characters, and vice-versa? As the great (if fictional) Atticus Finch said in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird: “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” Without this effort, empathy, perhaps the noblest aim of art, is impossible."
The BBC Commissioner's comments about Luther show how the woke believe ethnic minorities should behave - "41 per cent of black Brits reported that only a few or none of their closest friends shared their racial background. In regard to the workplace, over six in ten – 61 per cent – of black Brits reported that only a few or none of their co-workers were black. Demonstrating a high degree of residential integration, 57 per cent of black Brits reported that only a few or none of the other people in their local neighbourhood were black... To downgrade a black British person’s ‘authenticity’ on the grounds of having little to no co-racial friends, demonstrates the segregationist tendencies of those in supposedly pro-diversity roles, the extent to which they live in a woke, London bubble. It is especially unfair on black British people who live in the predominantly white-British provinces who may take great pride in their cultural heritage and have non-black networks by virtue of local demography. Even so, to provide the insinuation that someone can be considered ‘less black’ depending on their eating habits is incredibly suspect. In a sense, this creates a divisive identitarian framework which essentially decides one’s ‘racial authenticity’ on the basis of behavioural and attitudinal codes. The unfortunate reality of the matter is that, just as the ‘anti-racist movement’ contains elements which indulge in racially-motivated abuse, the ‘diversity lobby’ includes ‘woke’ types who are fundamentally segregationist in their worldview. These people cannot be trusted to help a more cohesive society. To the contrary, empowering them only serves to pave the road towards further division in modern-day Britain."
The BBC is failing the public - "Forty-four percent of respondents said the BBC represents their values ‘fairly badly’ or ‘very badly’, compared with 33 per cent who felt the BBC represents them well. Many people clearly feel the BBC is getting worse in this regard: 33 per cent said the values represented by the BBC had become less like theirs in the past year, with only four per cent arguing the reverse This alienation appears to be higher among older people... The BBC has in recent years pumped out reams of woke material that is much more popular among the young than the old, much of it actively portraying older Brits in a negative light. For instance, last year it infamously released a podcast characterising older white women as racist ‘Karens’ who should ‘get out of the way’. This kind of propaganda has done serious damage to how members of the public view the BBC. Many feel the national broadcaster has contradicted its commitment to impartiality. Last year, Ofcom found the public rated the BBC lower in terms of impartiality than any other major public-service broadcaster. This, too, is unsurprising. After a year in which the BBC neglected to report fairly on everything from Black Lives Matter to Brexit, a decline in public trust was inevitable.
Is the BBC finally coming to terms with its diversity problem? | The Spectator - "There is, on the BBC’s part, a fundamental misunderstanding — or maybe willful blindness — here. The corporation’s problem is not really about the scarcity within its ranks of working-class people; it is more about its absolute refusal to represent people of that class as they really are. Have you ever watched a BBC drama (or news programme come to that) that accurately reflected the way people really think and talk? In the real world, many people privately voice views and opinions that are seen as reprehensible and completely un-broadcastable by the BBC. On issues like Islam, immigration, gender and sex many people have views that the BBC considers wicked and retrogressive and it makes sure these views are never reflected in its output. It seems very likely to me that the real reason that people are drifting away from the national broadcaster is that too often they feel they are being preached at. Their views, their beliefs, their outlook find no favour with the BBC and slowly it dawns on them that the BBC doesn’t actually like them very much. And so, gradually but inevitably, those people come to think that it's not for them. The new director-general, Tim Davie, seems to understand this. In his first utterances in the job a few weeks ago he spoke of the need for a new approach to ‘diversity’ including the idea of ‘diversity of thought’. This, in BBC terms, would be quite revolutionary. For the past few decades, the corporation has interpreted ‘diversity’ in a particular way."
The BBC is already diverse - "The BBC has promised to spend £100million of its TV budget on producing ‘diverse and inclusive content’ in response to the Black Lives Matter protests. It has also set itself new targets for diversity both on- and off-screen... The BBC says its £100million initiative represents ‘the biggest financial investment to on-air inclusion in the industry’. It also insists that ‘the media industry is not changing fast enough’. Leaving aside the obvious question of what British television has to do with a police murder in the US, has anyone at the BBC or in the wider TV industry ever stopped to ask if they actually have a diversity problem? If recent figures are anything to go by, it is hard to understand the BBC’s impassioned plea to ‘accelerate the rate of change’. When it comes to screen appearances, according to the Creative Diversity Network’s most recent survey from earlier this year, ‘those who identify as female, transgender, BAME and lesbian, gay or bisexual (LGB) are all represented at levels comparable with (or above) national population estimates’. The BAME population is actually more prevalent on screen than in the country as a whole – making up nearly 23 per cent of screen contributions but just 14 per cent of the population. It’s a similar story behind the scenes in TV production. According to Ofcom’s report from September last year, 13 per cent of TV workers are BAME, compared to 12 per cent of the broader labour market. The BBC, as the TV industry’s largest employer, reflects these broader trends – 13 per cent of its staff are BAME. Even during the ad breaks, ethnic minorities are well-represented. A 2018 Lloyds Banking Group study into diversity in advertising found that 25 per cent of people appearing in marketing campaigns are BAME. Similarly, 13.8 per cent of workers at UK ad agencies are BAME, in line with the broader labour market and population... There are no doubt many people who vastly overestimate the number of ethnic minorities in Britain. For instance, the liberal press is keen to deride the general public for overestimating the levels of immigration in the UK. Polling shows that Brits believe that migrants make up nearly a quarter of the whole population when the reality is 13 per cent. (Similarly, Brits overestimate the proportion of Muslims by a factor of four.) It is highly likely that the liberal establishment overestimates Britain’s actual diversity to an equally absurd extent. No doubt many in the creative sector would prefer to ‘represent’ an imaginary version of Britain than Britain as it actually exists. But far more significant is the fact that diversity as a goal or outlook has taken on a hallowed status in recent years. Every institution, whatever its actual purpose, proclaims diversity to be one of its overarching goals. The BBC, a long-time cheerleader for diversity, wants diversity and inclusion to be ‘hardwired into everything the BBC does’. And every bank, supermarket, charity and HR department says the same. Diversity has become a moral crusade – seemingly without end. Diversity is not a bad thing in and of itself. But it is a shame that other, far more significant forms of disadvantage, particularly class, are largely overlooked. Ofcom only began collecting figures on what it calls ‘socio-economic diversity’ last year (a very toothless and deliberately depoliticised way of describing social class). The BBC’s class problem is pronounced. Around 17 per cent of its employees went to private schools compared to seven per cent of the population, and 61 per cent have parents from a professional background compared to 33 per cent of the rest of the labour market. Employees from low- and middle-income households make up 39 per cent of BBC staff compared to 67 per cent nationally... Clearly, one of the great benefits of diversity to the liberal elite, who are in charge of all the hiring and firing decisions, is that it gives the appearance of inclusivity, while obscuring class inequalities."
Maybe the population overestimate how "diverse" Britain is because they believe the media's portrayals
Doctor Who: Role was offered to black actor, says Steven Moffat - "Moffat said the show had "no excuse" not to feature a more diverse cast, adding it would be "amazing" for it to have two non-white lead actors... "We decided that the new companion was going to be non-white, and that was an absolute decision, because we need to do better on that. We just have to," Moffat said... "We've kind of got to tell a lie. We'll go back into history and there will be black people where, historically, there wouldn't have been, and we won't dwell on that. "We'll say, 'To hell with it, this is the imaginary, better version of the world. By believing in it, we'll summon it forth'."
So much for the duty to portray history. Social engineering is more important
BBC drama boss defends 'woke' adaptations of classic novels - "The BBC’s head of drama has insisted that ‘woke’ is not a dirty word, as he argued that the corporation must “repurpose” classic novels by giving them female, black and Asian characters. Period dramas based on stories written 100 or more years ago have to be made more diverse for a 21st century British audience, said Piers Wenger, otherwise the BBC would be “in dereliction of our duty”. He was responding to criticism of two recent BBC One adaptations: The War of the Worlds, in which a minor female character from the original HG Wells novel was turned into the heroine of the piece; and A Christmas Carol, in which Bob Cratchit had a mixed-raced family and Ebenezer Scrooge blackmailed Mrs Cratchit for sex."
Apparently the BBC's duty is social engineering
What the BBC really means by ‘diversity' - "Hardly a day goes by without the BBC parading its commitment to ‘diversity and inclusion’. As if the BBC’s employees weren’t already woke enough, Auntie is now providing them with training on how to be a better ‘ally’ to minorities. One of the training resources on the BBC’s Creative Allies website – which can also be accessed by the public – is a game called ‘The Ally Track’. In the game, 10 players answer 20 questions about themselves. Whoever reaches the finish line first wins – but really, they lose, because the winner is the one with the most ‘advantages’ in life (and therefore, the one who is the most privileged). You can probably guess what kind of questions are asked. ‘Is your player a man?’; ‘Does your player identify as white?’; ‘Has your player ever been the only person of their race in a room at work?’. In other words, where do you find yourself in the Oppression Olympics? Trainees learn that there are seven different types of ally you can commit to becoming, including ‘confidant’, ‘champion’ and ‘upstander’. ‘Champions’ voluntarily defer to colleagues from underrepresented groups in meetings, while ‘upstanders’ push back ‘on offensive jokes and inappropriate comments, even if no one’s hurt by them’. June Sarpong, the BBC’s director of creative diversity, introduces the allyship training on the website. She says the BBC wants to ‘build back better to ensure diversity and inclusion is baked into the “new normal” once the [Covid] crisis has passed’. For inspiring comments like these, Sarpong gets paid over £250,000 a year. The BBC has poured considerable resources into its diversity project lately. In response to the Black Lives Matter protests, it promised to spend an astonishing £100million on a drive for diversity and inclusion in its TV shows. The BBC has pledged these vast sums of money despite the fact that there is no evidence the BBC is lacking in diversity. Data from the latest Creative Diversity Network survey show that 26.5 per cent of on-screen contributions on programmes broadcast by the BBC are made by ethnic minorities. This is drastically higher than the proportion of ethnic minorities in the country at large (14 per cent). The BBC is also more ethnically diverse than any of the four other terrestrial broadcasters, according to the survey. The BBC scores highly on other diversity metrics, too. Lesbian, gay and bisexual people (grouped together as LGB) make up 12.5 per cent of on-screen appearances, which is nearly double the proportion of the real-world LGB population. Women are also statistically overrepresented by four percentage points. But while the BBC may score highly on these more superficial metrics of diversity, it has long had a class problem. In 2018, the BBC revealed that 17 per cent of its staff went to private school, compared to seven per cent of the population. The purpose of all this ‘diversity and inclusion’ work is supposedly to make the BBC more representative of the country it serves. But ‘diversity’ is not literally about the colour, sexuality or gender of the people who appear on screen. If it were, the BBC would have considered the job done some time ago. The drive for diversity is really about promoting a woke worldview. That’s why the BBC’s ‘diversity’ efforts go beyond quotas and into things like ‘allyship’ training. It’s why the BBC produced a video explaining white privilege to children last year. And it’s why it has appointed a ‘gender and identity correspondent’ to its news division. To most BBC viewers and licence-fee payers, this talk of ‘allyship’ and ‘white privilege’ is alienating. Outside the BBC, this woke outlook is only shared by a tiny minority of people. Far from making the BBC more ‘representative’, this obsession with diversity is making it even less reflective of the public it is supposed to serve"
I used to defend the BBC. Now I’m switching off - "It has, I believe, played a crucial role in unifying our country and helping to stave off the kind of split society that we see, most conspicuously, in the United States... As our national broadcaster, despite the increasing competition from other outlets including the internet, the BBC can, and should, provide at least a common starting point for a civilised dialogue among those who disagree with each other. As long as the Today programme, for example, is – or was – listened to by a majority of opinion formers, that common starting point was a valuable element in inhibiting the polarisation, or even lack, of debate that has become a feature of American life. But my patience has now come to an end. The Today programme, in particular, has completely crossed the boundary from which it could previously have been regarded as a plausibly authoritative, if biased, guide to the national discourse to a place where it seems to have given up all pretence to an objective point of view. The final straw, for me, was Nick Robinson’s interview with Nadhim Zahawi, the vaccine minister, on Tuesday of this week. Tuesday was, of course, the day when the Government announced its proposals for the reform of social care. But as Mr Robinson well knew, the details had to be announced to Parliament before they could be broadcast. Indeed, had this convention been broken and caused a reprimand from the Speaker, the BBC’s journalists would have been the first, gleefully, to point to the Government’s discomfort. Yet when Mr Zahawi attempted to explain this and said that he had come on to the programme to discuss the £5.4 billion which had just been announced for the NHS, Mr Robinson said that this was a complete waste of time and threatened to end the interview there and then. You and I may think that listeners would have been very interested in how this money was going to be spent but not a single question was addressed to that topic. Instead Mr Robinson spent the whole interview berating the minister for not doing what Mr Robinson knew full well he couldn’t do."
