The BBC

Good. Let someone else do BBCQT for a bit too.

it would take a lot more than a presenter change to make QT redeemable

It is weird how hard it is to imagine a good version of QT. But yes excellent news from Refuge.

it's a weird throwback to another era even tho i think it started in the 70s? that idea that the opinions of the great and the good are of value simply because they are great and good

i guess before social media people needed opportunities to squawk their favourite received opinions outside of newspaper letters pages

Tracer Hand: "And the BBC has lost Eddie Mair, Maitlis, Sopel, J O’B, Lewis Goodall, Fi and Jane, etc all at least in part because they felt hamstrung by this stuff"

I didn't even know that James O'Brien was on the BBC! Thought he was just a radio shock jock of some kind.

And I don't know who Fi and Jane are.

Mair and Goodall are quite good (even very good?). Sopel has been OK at times. Maitlis is a great example of someone that liberals think is a great broadcasting talent, who is dire.

Andrew Marr made a big deal of leaving the BBC to speak his mind, but I don't know what new views he has thus spouted.

Forgot about Marr, you're right. Yes the irony is that, with a couple of exceptions, after these people leave they never seem to offer many opinions of their own at all. Sopel and Maitlis on the News Agents, for instance, are indistinguishable from what they did on their BBC podcast.

Fi and Jane = Fiona Glover and Jane Garvey, who did Woman's Hour and the Fortunately podcast and many other things on Radio 4. They now have a show on Times Radio.

Maitlis is also on the GC spectrum, bleh.

I have some sympathy with her because she’s had a stalker up in her business virtually her entire adult life.

Marr is a right deeply nasty little fucker, as seen that time the mask slipped right off him when Shami Chakrabarti was a guest, she should have advised him to not have a stroke, dearie!

Xp a trans stalker?

Really disliked this as well, total nonsense. Regardless of how I feel about Barry G’s rambling! You can be assured the government never got 1% of that derision.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNZZS7GFRz0

rolling her eyes at democractic processes

It is weird how hard it is to imagine a good version of QT. But yes excellent news from Refuge.

― Tracer Hand, Monday, 13 March 2023 14:32 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

After Dark, kinda

Xp a trans stalker?

― giant bat fucker (gyac), Monday, 13 March 2023 15:30

There’s this thing called Google where you can type in the words ‘Maitlis’ and ‘stalker’…

Yeah I know, it was a rhetorical question. I didn’t realise being subject to abuse from cis men was a good reason to hold those views now (if that is in fact her reason).

Tracer, you also forgot this top talent.

5/ I left BBC not because I disagreed with impartiality but because I didn't want to do that kind of journalism, and I didn't want to push the boundaries of their rules. It's galling to see inherent bias to the status quo, and normalisation of racism (eg QT)...

— Paul Mason (@paulmasonnews) March 13, 2023

surprised he didn't mention all the pro-Putin enemies of the state running the BBC

And the Pope’s fifth columnists!

I felt bad for her for having a stalker but think she’s a GC dumbass. Was that so difficult to parse that it was worth a post?

The two aren’t related. Not sure why it was worth mentioning otherwise.

I've got no memory of Mason's involvement with newsnight at all and associate him more with ch4 news, Stoya, shitting in a fountain and repeatedly not making the shortlist in Labour MP selections.

you forgot "being Welsh"

What a week.

remarkable to read this leaked letter from the acting co-directors of the BBC Singers, Jonathan Manners and Rob Johnston. the situation they outline is absolutely scandalous#WeAreTheBBCSingers pic.twitter.com/40Ee7zfchx

— lawrence dunn (@l_dunn1) March 13, 2023

i heard some chat about that on Radio 3 last week but obv no details were discussed

(the leave thing i can understand - holiday year finishes on march 31st and it gets very quiet with people using up their last days)

Wow, Singers dishing dirt. I am not surprised by anything in there unfortunately.

Diane giving Bruce some much needed payback for that gaslighting about the polls (she’s right ofc, but even better to see knowing the history)

Fiona Bruce could have redrafted the statement to make it clear that she did not think that only hitting a woman once was not domestic violence. Just an extra sentence https://t.co/ulihWE6g8v

— Diane Abbott MP (@HackneyAbbott) March 13, 2023

passing the buck to the production staff is some craven shit as well, she didn't look uncomfortably scripted when she said it.

That is true, she really leaned into it. Hard to say where the breakdown started but that “point” should never have made it to air unless it came from the mouths of these Johnson backers themselves. Taking their explanation at face value, the point of this sort journalistic devil’s advocacy is to get each side to make their strongest possible argument. If you’ve done some research with Stanley Johnson’s friends in order to have some ammo in your back pocket for the show, and the best they can come up with was “it was a one-off” you don’t just run with that you ask them politely if they have a counterargument that isn’t completely appalling!

the statement "he was a wife-beater" is a matter of record, it didn't require any clarification, and if Bruce had any integrity she would've refused to respond whether she was "ordered to" or not

Yep, all correct. I don’t think I’d seen the initial Refuge defence of her but honestly it really sours me on the organisation - you cannot square the circle of “She didn’t mean it” (how many times does the fucking intention argument need to be had) vs the point actually made, which was muddying the waters on behalf of an uncontested claim because…?

The 'patting down' gestures she uses when saying it, clearly trying to downplay it.

Bruce did not appear to be 'reading a statement', but talking spontaneously, albeit with reference to legal frameworks (ie: 'we must avoid libel'). To say she was 'reading a statement' is misleading. If she had to do that, she could have stated that she was going to do that.

What she said was dire.

Tracer Hand is OTM.

There are also some ‘like father, like son’ stories floating around but none of the victims are prepared to go on record.

Lol what a piece.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2023/mar/13/gary-linekers-treatment-exposes-fact-that-image-of-warm-fuzzy-bbc-was-always-a-lie

Liew is one of the very few writers worth reading in The Guardian.

Pretty good!

i enjoyed that

Maybe it was just me, but Liew's piece felt pretty pointed in light of Barney Ronay's ongoing meltery - thought they were amigos?

if i had previously been a pal of Ronay's i think this week might've made me reconsider

Ronay and Liew have had quite a different set of political views for quite a while? No chaff in the writing from Liew either, whereas Ronay tries to be a stylist in the most painful of ways.

talking of the Christmas tree files, Michael Rosen got one put on his file and is still at liberty to be posting about Tories being nazi scumbags, albeit in a more faux polite and satirical style than your average lefty shitposter or in this case, Lineker.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/mar/14/bbc-editors-asked-journalists-to-avoid-using-lockdown-at-start-of-pandemic

In another WhatsApp message from Sunday 24 October 2021, a senior editor asked journalists to make coverage more critical of Labour after a complaint from No 10.

The message reads: “D St complaining that we’re not reflecting Labour’s mess of plan b online. ie Ashworth said it earlier this week, then reversed. Can we turn up the scepticism a bit on this?”

A third leaked message from 2022 shows a senior editor circulated a message to BBC political journalists from the then No 10 director of communications the day after a speech by Johnson in which he compared Ukraine’s struggle against Russia to the British people’s vote for Brexit.

The message from the No 10 aide included a tweet from the Ukrainian embassy and read: “Hi, worth sharing with any reporter misinterpreting the PM’s speech. I travelled home with the ambassador. He most definitely did NOT think the PM was equating Brexit with Ukraine. He heard him say v clearly nothing like this since the 1940s.”

Turn up the scepticism.

ironic to see that phrase on Budget Day, where every BBC journo will rotely repeat their economic orthodoxies without a trace of examination

It's pathetic. They all seem to be doing it though. Even the Guardian is running with all the "goodies" above the fold.

i shouldn't really single out the Beeb for the paucity of economic journalism but y'know, that's the stuff i listen to

https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7bgej/afghan-footballers-bbc-taliban

I heard that report the other day, it deeply horrible and vindictive - wtf are they trying to achieve here? Other than shitting up their international rep some more.

Saving the licence fee.