The Afterword

Musings on the byways of popular culture

Menu

Navigation

You are here: Home / Forum / Brillo pads off

Comments

  2. It’s all going very well isn’t it? I might even follow Neil on Twitter again now. As soon as How signed up to GBeebies his tweets became very mannered attacks on ‘woke’ and his heart didn’t seem to be in it.

    To be honest, if it wasn’t for occasional outrage at it in my own little Twitter bubble I wouldn’t even now the channel (programme? App? Non fungible token?) existed.

  3. He seemed to think he could run a news station which was fair and balanced but just a a little bit right wing because, you know, the BBC is so biased to the left. Now, I sadly have a few relatives who actually do believe that, but this whole enterprise was bound to end up in tears because the premise is basically false – it wholly depends on where you define the centre to be and what constitutes bias. The head bangers were bound to take over.

    • The BBC that is so biased to the left it gave him is own programmes for years?
      That BBC?

      To be fair, he does occassionally remember he is supposed to be a journalist – which Farage obviously is not.

      Problem is that he has been trying to straddle his obvious support for far right politics (Trump, Farage, The Spectator) with journalism and has fallen into the gap. He is part of the media elite so I am sure we shall see him commuting into studies from his mansion in France pretty soon. When no one will take him to task for supporting Brexit whilst living in France married to a Swede nor attacking elites whilst being chairman of several media organisations. Nor discuss his pro-Iraq war, climate change denialism, nor his HIV/Aids views.

      He is part of the problem.

  4. Right wingers say the Beeb is too left leaning, while left wingers say it leans too far to the right.

    Sounds to me as though the broadcaster is doing OK on the balance front.

    On the Brillo front, I hope The fat fuck is back ripping sleazy and incompetent pols well-deserved new ones on terrestrial TV very soon.

    • I don’t know about the editorial balance of the BBC, but I will say this: I have known a ton of people who worked at the Beeb down the years, and not one of them has ever been right of centre.

      Could be that my friends and acquaintances are self-selectingly left wing. Could be that Tories aren’t so keen to publicly announce their politics (in fact, that’s highly likely), but I would be absolutely stunned to learn that BBC employees are representative of the country as a whole in how they vote.

      Not entirely sure what you do about that, given that Media is traditionally left leaning and the types of people the BBC tends to recruit (educated, city-dwelling, etc) are typically likewise, but I do think the criticism holds a little bit of water, on that basis at least.

      I feel like a lot of people were blind-sided by Brexit because a gap developed between the papers/TV and what the company at large was actually thinking. I’m not surprised we’re seeing entrants looking to fill that gap; if it isn’t a GB News-type TV station it’ll be the Internet that continues to fill the void. Take your pick.

      • @Bingo-Little

        The internet being exactly the same rock that the US’s odious Alex Jones crawls out from under every time he has some fresh bile to spew;

        Interesting that, aside from conspiracy theorists like Icke, etc – no political figure seems to have gained any traction for his/her more extremist views on this side of the pond.

      • Well apart from Brillo Pad? Paxman is right wing too, probably Jeremy Vine. What about Dimbleby? I think there are many, especially as just about all went to private schools

            • I wouldn’t describe myself as left of centre these days, but I agree there is definitely some selection bias involved.

              However, I grew up in South West London, surrounded by mates with parents who worked at the BBC. Then worked for a media law firm at which I counted the BBC as a client, and alongside plenty of colleagues who went on to work there. Then lived with two BBC employees in a house which was consistently full of their colleagues (including, memorably, Tim Westwood – yikes).

              Doesn’t mean my observation isn’t totally anecdotal, but on the above experience I don’t get the impression that circa 45% of BBC employees vote Tory. Far from it.

              I’ve had this discussion with numerous mates who work/have worked for the Beeb. Their consensus is that editorial is well balanced, but staffing is clearly left of centre, albeit a long way from being some sort of dangerous nest of Marxists.

              The latter doesn’t have to be arrived at as part of some grand plot by the HR team. As we’ve seen re; numerous other characteristics, unconscious bias and the pool you recruit from will get you there passively.

              What I can say with a relatively high degree of confidence, having spent my entire career in media across multiple organisations and territories, is that the sector as a whole leans left in terms of the people you meet and what’s a socially acceptable political opinion. No surprise if the BBC fits the pattern.

              • Re the unconscious bias, I’d say that’s exactly what happens. To correct the point that’s come up here a couple of times – HR don’t have the final say on appointments in my experience (as an HR person). It’s the recruiting line manager that does. And they are highly likely to recruit peopel of similar background, ethnicity, experience and outlook. There’s supporting data out there a mile wide and two miles deep.

        • Paxman seems to view anyone who isn’t him with utter contempt, so I’m not sure.

          Not sure about Jezza Vine – he seems fairly liberal/modern man to me.

      • I think you’re correct that most BBC employees are more likely to be left-leaning in their politics and that there’s little to be done about changing it, but I see no real evidence that personal political preference is allowed to be expressed in the BBC’s news reporting.
        I’m sure there is and always has been government interference in what the BBC and other news outlets are allowed to report on and how, but that’s a different thing. Not just this government but all the way back to when the BBC first started airing news bulletins.
        There is a worrying tendency to equate equivalence with balance, allowing uninformed opinion and outright lies to be aired unchallenged as alternatives to proven facts. This sort of thing is all over our printed news media and the internet but it needs to be kept out of television and radio news when possible.
        I don’t mean that false information should necessarily be censored or those who espouse it should be de-platformed. But viewers and listeners shouldn’t need to request fact-checking of statements and claims made on news programmes, it should be done automatically.

        • I don’t watch that much TV these days, so I can’t really speak to the BBC’s editorial position/quality.

          What I will say is that anyone seeking to present balance is on a hiding to nothing in the current climate. Noisy people on both ends of the political spectrum have been acting like world class bellends for a good half decade now, and nothing fares well when hauled before the court of social media.

          Personally think just about everyone has lost their shit at this stage, and we’ll probably look back on this period either as a regrettable interlude during which reason temporarily vacated her throne, or the point at which we crested the rollercoaster and first began to feel the warning tug of gravity. Hopefully the former.

          On the point of equivalence, the issue we’re facing is that the political consensus all but collapsed a few years back (to much cheering), and now there’s no real point of authority to help determine what is/isn’t a legitimate counterpoint. Plus, everything is now immediately turned into a political shitfight, for the benefit of those on what used to be the fringes. Just look at what happens when a teenager wins an important tennis match. I’ve no idea how you present actual balance in the middle of all that.

      • The BBC is a huge organisation with over 22,000 staff spread across sites around the country and across the globe.

        To suggest it has a left-of-centre recruitment or editorial policy is utter drivel. The HR team would be permanently in employment tribunals were that so. Left-leaning candidates might feel more like applying, but that is defintely not my experience of BBC staffers.

        Yes, I am BBC-trained although not technically an ex-BBC employee.

    • News & Current Affairs at the BBC is absolutely anything but left leaning these days.
      The quality of news reporting is astonishingly poor, and the slime masquerading as a government are frequently not even cross examined with any vigour or called to account when they are clearly lying. Yes, that’s lying – not waffling or poorly briefed, just old fashioned porkies.
      Never mind the virtual mouthpiece roles of Keunsberg & Robinson, the whole tone these days is closer to Pravda than the institution most people used to be justifiably quite proud of.
      This is cemented as much by the stories it chooses to lead with on its main 10 o’clock broadcast – 15 minutes on the passing of ‘Major Tom’ the beloved veteran? – as on the stories it determines not to run with at all. There was almost no coverage whatsoever of Israel bombing the crap out of Gaza a couple of months back, despite it being a major global story.
      Such decisions are not made by accident but obviously have no connection to the fact that the current Chairman has donated £400,000 to the Conservative Party.

      • This of course has nothing whatsoever with any political bias one or the other that employees may have, but they are in effect civil servants & don’t make policy, they just carry it out.

      • Unfair on Newsnight, who have induced apoplexy in Tory ranks on numerous occasions in the last 18 months. And as someone who used to read The Times each day until I couldn’t stand it any more, Kuenssberg and the BBC generally were excoriated pretty much daily for their apparently overwhelming wokeness. If there is any TV outlet regulalry calling the Tory’s to account for their lies I’ve no idea who it is. Channel 4 had a go and see where it’s got them.

        Easy to see why they now play it safe. There’s been a Tory strategy to hobble them financially since Osborne’s day, and it’s really strarting to bite. Aunty knows full well each and every perecived offence (let alone the gaffes she still engineers for herself) will be used to “justify” more cuts.

      • I don’t think the BBC’s DG has much say in anything apart from what they can and cannot afford to do with the money they get. The real power is vested in the heads of the various departments, with the head of news and current affairs particularly important at the moment. As I said up above, there has always been pressure on the BBC over what they can and cannot report on. And the way they can report on the stories they can cover. The pressure might be more intense right now, under this government, but it wasn’t absent under any of the previous ones, just different.

          • I am a freelance media wanker who occasionally works for the BBC. I can assure you that there are plenty of Tories there. They tend to be the well paid people. Robbie Gibb used to work for Theresa May. His brother is Tory MP Nick Gibb. The DG, Tim Davie was the actual chairman of the tories in Fulham and Hammersmith. Nick Robinson was in the Young Conservatives at University. Evan Davis was, according to the LRB, part of the group of people who came up with the actual Poll Tax. There are plenty of editors I have met, who none of you will have heard of, who I suspect to be complete tories. It’s utter shit to claim that the ultra establishment BBC is anti tory. But it looks like it is because so much of the BBC is made up of poorly paid, well meaning, well spoken people, who do believe in public service, and they are who most of us meet. But trust me, go up a few paygrades and it’s a different story.

    • I used to like Question Time, but it’s descended into a cheap tandem of people talking over each other/ Fiona Bruce saying, “Quickly, as we’re running out of time.” Why not have fewer panelists (the smug comedian/actor isn’t needed) or extend the show by fifteen minutes?

  7. So, in this thread, we’ve seen equally certain views that the BBC is left wing and gives the Tories an easy ride. And it’s because they’re staffed exclusively by left leaning people who all went to private or even public schools which presumably means they can’t imagine any other means of existence.

    Sounds like they’re about right to me.

    As for Brillo, he’s a great journalist, but I’m astonished how naive he’s been over GBeebies. It hasn’t changed at all since it’s inception, it seems the only person who didn’t know what it’s editorial policy was was Brillo.

  9. Big piece on Shaun Ryder in today’s Times Magazine in which it says our kid either is appearing (or shortly going to appear) on GB News. Can wait.

    NEWSFLASH

    Just checked to see if this was a joke and he seems to have been on it loads of times already.

    Mental or what!

Leave a Reply