BBC discrimination
The BBC discriminate, we're told today in two different stories - but what sort of discrimination is it? If you're Harriet Harman, it's ageist and sexist discrimination against older women; if you're Lynda La Plante, who's an older woman and who could use that very justification if she wanted, it's discrimination against anyone who isn't a young male Muslim.
They could conceivably both be right. Harman's assertion comes from anecdotal evidence - she says she spoke to an unnamed former BBC executive who told her there was prejudice against older female newsreaders. But we don't know how long ago that policy was in place - and as the article itself points out (as you'd imagine it would, given that the BBC are doing the usual sackcloth-and-ashes "Oh look it's a story about how shit we are, we've got to cover it, unlike every other media outlet ever, otherwise people will think we're somehow evil and they'll want to get rid of the licence fee" self-flagellation) some changes have been put in place recently because of previous criticism:
Following the row the corporation announced it would be recruiting more older women presenters.
Veteran newsreader Julia Somerville is due to return to the BBC as a TV news presenter after an absence of of nearly 23 years.
She will join Westminster correspondent Carole Walker, former ITN newsreader Fiona Armstrong and BBC World presenter Zeinab Badawi on the TV news service.
It's not clear in the article whether the 'row' in question is one involving Moira Stewart or Arlene Phillips. Phillips, of course, now has a primetime BBC show almost all to herself now, so you could say she hasn't done badly at the hands of the 'ageists' - although you could also argue that she might not have been first in the queue to host such a programme if there hadn't been such a furore in the first place over her departure from the other show.
The truth is, we don't know. All corporations have slightly opaque hiring and firing procedures, which doesn't necessarily mean they're hotbeds of discrimination. Harman, perhaps, has come to this story a bit late, with possibly outdated information from someone who no longer works fot the BBC, who may well have described to her a prevailing view some time ago. But there's no way of knowing. All you can say is that it's another "BBC ageism" story all over the other media outlets, who always take particular relish in attacking their state-funded rival.
Which brings me to the Mail and Lynda La Plante. It's not just the Mail who have carried the Lynda La Plante "Poor me, a Muslim would probably have more chance of getting a script accepted, wouldn't they, somehow?" story, but their treatment of it is very different from the Independent, for example, who did it this way:
"If my name were Usafi Iqbadal and I was 19, then they'd probably bring me in and talk," the scriptwriter, who has mainly worked for ITV, told The Daily Telegraph.
But Muslim writers hit back, accusing La Plante of "old-style racism" for reinforcing stereotypes. Max Malik, a novelist and playwright, called her comments "divisive, unhelpful and discouraging for young writers". Mr Malik, who won the Muslim Writers' Award two years ago, added: "She's trying to force me and my ilk into a corner. I don't call her a ginger-haired, middle-aged, female writer. That would be insulting."
Sarfraz Manzoor, journalist, broadcaster and author of the memoir Greetings from Bury Park, said Ms La Plante should "get that chip off her shoulder and return to the real world rather than playing the misunderstood victim in the fantasy world in which she is currently residing." He added: "I would love to meet the Muslim writers whose output is currently clogging up the television schedules: can she name any of these mythical individual,s or are her comments simply a headline- grabbing way to yet again bash the BBC and blame Muslims?"
That's one way of covering it, isn't it - getting both sides of the argument. Or you could just put La Plante's views in unchallenged and then carry on with a bit of BBC-bashing to fill up the space. That's what the Mail does, with a series of unconnected attacks on the BBC in the space of the same story:
PD James criticised the BBC over its 'extraordinarily large' salaries for managers.
the BBC has a target that 12.5 per cent of employees should be from ethnic minorities by December 2012.
In October, BBC Director General Mark Thompson admitted that programme-makers tackle Islam differently from Christianity.
comedian Ben Elton, who accused the BBC of being scared to make jokes about Islam
This week Thompson was also given an unexpected drubbing by P.D. James, the 89-year-old crime writer and former BBC governor.
The Conservative peer likened the BBC to a 'large unwieldy ship' and grilled him over the fact that 375 executives at the corporation earn more than £100,000 a year, and 37 of them more than the Prime Minister's salary of £198,000.
What a shame that the Mail didn't have the space to tell its readers where Thompson got given that 'unexpected drubbing' - was it in the privately-owned media? On a commercial channel? On TalkSport perhaps? No, of course not, it was Radio 4. (and hang on a minute, PD James appears to be an older woman - don't tell Harriet Harman!) Hands up who thinks we'll see James Murdoch get crucified on Sky News primetime... anybody... no...?
The Mail have simply re-hashed the Telegraph article, and can't be bothered to find a new angle, since that might require picking up a telephone and speaking to another human being, wasting valuable C&Ving time. Not that that matters to their readers - any mention of positive discrimination, even if it's anecdotal and totally unproven - why didn't La Plante simply submit a script under an assumed Muslim-sounding name to test out her theory? Or would it then mean she'd have nowhere to hide? - brings out the roars of disapproval against the evil Stalinist BBC:
All these anti-Beeb stories are good news for those commercial operations which would like to see them blown out of the water - and for those politicians who would like to dismantle the licence fee. If there are genuine concerns, beyond an anecdotal level, then these of course need to be investigated.
But what would the reaction be if a freelance made a big song and dance about not getting articles submitted to the Telegraph because they're not a hoary old Tory? Or to the Mail because they write accurate stories about immigration? Do you think we'd see their cause valiantly taken up by the rest of the media, with the publications in question happy to report on their own attacks? I think not. Which to me is one good argument for why we need the BBC.
I know I’m supposed to be angry, but I’m not sure why
This story over at the Mail today
has the unfortunate effect of not being direct enough with its readers about what they should be outraged about. Sure, they know they should be angry: it's about the BBC, for goodness' sake. So they know the BBC has done something wrong. But what have they done wrong - attempting to show the programme in the first place, or not showing it?
Bonus points for slagging off NuLabour as well as the BBC, and implying they have a joint agenda with Auntie. Maybe they don't have an agenda at all, which is why they can drop things? But then, it might just be Labour's fault entirely:
No wait, it's the BBC:
Ron gets voted down for this:
while this provocative comment
draws a furious response
which appears to be saying: "I hate the principle of the BBC and therefore everything they do, regardless of whether I find those decisions positive or negative". Which is ideal for this kind of story, where it's not obvious whether you're meant to be outraged by the BBC or the ballet company. This is the problem the Mail encounters when it's that little bit too subtle for the commenting chumps.
But here is an occasion where the Mail and its friends have won. The BBC has dropped something controversial for fear of having just this kind of story being trotted out by the usual suspects, you can't help feeling. And yet even that isn't good enough to escape the condemnation.
Pointlessless beyond belief
A couple have separated. The husband claims to have been arrested a couple of times. The end.
Hardly what you'd call a sparkling story, is it? Then why is it even being covered by our friends at the Mail?
It seems the only reason is that they're employed by the BBC. It's a type of story you see every now and then and which strikes this reader as being particularly pointless. The Mail likes to blether on about all kinds of minor celebrities, of course, and journalists (not just BBC ones, to be fair) when they get into scrapes appear to fall within that category for the purposes of news ballast - but really. Who gives a fuck about these two people?
The estranged husband of BBC arts correspondent Razia Iqbal has boasted of being arrested three times in two weeks during a series of bitter messages on Twitter.
George Arney, host of The World Today bulletin on the World Service, has also used the social networking site to describe Ms Iqbal as his 'witchy ex-wife' and the 'Punjabi controller'.
Interesting hierarchical considerations in both the headline and story - George Arney only merits the description of 'husband' because his role as an international broadcaster (on radio) is deemed less important than Razi Iqbal's role as BBC TV reporter. So it's nice to know that it's not just women the Mail can obliterate into the role of 'spouse' when it's their other half that we should apparently really be interested in reading about.
But the story takes a decisive turn for the banal when it reports:
Not all of Mr Arney's tweets have been about his estrangement from Ms Iqbal. On November 10, at 9.42pm, he was concentrating on work-related matters and wrote: 'Just listened to very illuminating interview with Ecuador's splendid pro-people president, conducted by the ever-excellent Fergus Nicholl.'
BUT WHAT DID HE HAVE FOR LUNCH? AND WHEN DID HE GO FOR A SHIT? I MUST KNOW THESE THINGS.
It's a disappointing type of journalism, miserable and tedious, reminiscent of an old tramp scrabbling round in the bins and emerging triumphant with a half-eaten kebab with a fag stubbed out in it. Is this what Twitter has become - a dredging ground for crap journalists to harvest boring gossip about people you've hardly even heard about, who aren't being exposed as hypocrites or liars but just people who have relatively normal lives? Who gives a crap about all this? And what's the point of this tragic little bit of bathos?
A spokesman for the BBC refused to comment.
Of course a spokesman for the BBC refused to comment. What the fuck did you think anyone was going to say about this? Was an official spokesman really going to come out and say: "Actually, isn't it? Ooh. The cow! And he's no better! I mean, really..." or even "We deplore people having private lives and would prefer it if every single pitiful ruddy detail of everything they ever did was reported to the wider world, like anyone even cares." Or maybe they were hoping for "Yes, we've sacked them both. Bastards. How dare they do this, whatever it is that they're supposed to have done, either of them."
So in one sense it's a pointless journo story, not of any interest to anyone other than fellow pros - and even then I should imagine it's fairly tedious. In another, there's a whiff of the anti-BBC agenda, though I probably wouldn't make too much of that in this instance. And in another, you could see it as exactly the kind of waste of time and money the Mail so often rails against. What if that BBC spokesman had to be contacted out of hours, for example, costing the Beeb - and us - valuable overtime? I do hope the Tax Payers Alliance have been informed.
*Addendum* I can understand the accusation, if it's brought out here, that by posting about something so pointless, I'm being as - if not more - pointless by doing so. I don't really have a defence to that, except to say that I hope at the very least I don't give any trace of legitimisation to this kind of pointlessness by being pointless myself. Not that that counts for anything anyway. But I just wanted you to know, yes, I had thought that myself. And rejected it and thought, no fuck it, I'll write about it anyway.
Mail and the BBC, sitting in a tree…
Well not quite, but there's been a rather interesting development in what has become a somewhat frosty relationship. As a bastion of the evil money-grabbing public sector (and completely irrelevantly a direct competitor to DMGT) the Beeb often gets a bad press from the Mail.
Sure, there are those, such as certain lamentably pisspoor blogs I could mention, who'd maintain that Auntie is actually a secret Socialist plot to brainwash our kids with things like disabled presenters and black people on programmes, but they're twats. Nevertheless, the BBC = pinkoes nonsense is something that dimwitted Mail pundits like Peter Hitchens are happy to regurgitate every now and then.
So when I saw today that our tax pounds were being used by the British Bolshevik Corporation to prop up some struggling private-sector firms by giving them stuff for nothing, I wondered if our friends at the Mail would complain about this scandalous use of public money. I looked and looked on the website, but... no. The story hasn't been mentioned at all.
But then, when one of those companies is the Mail, it's a whole different pair of trousers. They suddenly drop their ideological objections to the state-funded broadcaster and leftie troublemakers. They've even got a relatively positive story (at least a not entirely negative one, anyway) about the Beeb in the paper today!
Whatever next - demanding a rise in the licence fee?
Handy copy-and-paste guide to writing BBC scandal for the screamsheets
The BBC faced fresh criticism last night after it emerged that (someone had done something / someone had said something / someone had done nothing / someone had said nothing / someone had neither done nor said anything).
Coming just (hours / days / minutes / seconds) after (the last load of old toss we cooked up about them) it led to (some Tories wanting to scrap the licence fee / someone from Mediawatch getting irate, though they didn't actually understand the story / someone from Christian Voice barking into a telephone) and calls for (whoever we don't like this week) to (resign / be sacked / be baconslicered and then their raw flesh sprinkled with pepper in front of a baying mob of taxpayers / unless its the daughter of a much loved former Prime Minister saying something racist about a mixed-race tennis player, in which case they're entirely misunderstood, they meant well, they merely meant to say that the person in question was full of custard and jam and nice things and got a little confused under intense torture and interrogation by that well-known leftie troublemaker Trotskyite bastard Adrian Chiles).
(Whichever rentaquote gobshite Tory MP we can find to say this bullshit) said: "This will raise new concerns about the role of the state broadcaster in the 21st century. I mean, what were they thinking? This Stalinist bunch of lunatic totalitarian bureaucratic tax-funded hippies should all be burnt alive, and I'll bring the fucking petrol! Oh, you don't want me to go that far...? Well just cobble the usual shit together, you'll be fine. All right then. Bye bye, byeeeeeee!"
Critics have questioned the role of the BBC in doing everything which competes with our commercial interests and therefore affecting our share price this latest affair, prompting questions in Parliament and ten billion billion billion complaints to flood into the BBC from people who didn't actually give a shit about the the thing in the first place, but who suddenly creaked into life in order to say what we want them to so long as it gets their name in print concerned viewers and listeners.
Mother Brenda Madeupnayme, from Nowherethatreallyexists, was one of the billion billion billion who launched petrol bombs at Television Centre in protest at the latest disgraceful behaviour. She said: "My 14-week-old embryo was watching that programme. There was no warning, no nothing. Now I've got to try and explain to it what black people are. What am I supposed to do? My whole life has been ruined and the BBC are to blame. They also give you cancer and make your children go feral. And kill you."
- What do YOU think? Do you think the BBC are a bunch of bastards? (Yes, you do). Why not write your thoughts on the story below and we'll only print them if they agree with what we want you to say?
This is the last time I ever watch the BBC. First Ross and Brand, then that episode of the Tweenies where they spunked over each other's faces and smeared shit into a puppy's eyeball, it's just got to stop!!
Roger Bastard, ENGLAND NOT EU
The Beeb are long past their sell-by date. Why should we be threatened by the courts for not paying for their programmes? Come to think of it, why should we be threatened with prosecution for shoplifting from Morrisons?
Matilda Bastard, UK NOT EU!!!111!!
I am not paying my licence any more. The BBC have nothing worth watching any more and just spend our money on the likes of Ross and Brand and all that. It's time the Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation got closed down for good!
John Bastard, Daventry NOT EU!!!
About time these leftie-liberal scum at the BBC got a good beating. Bring back the Black & White Minstrels but oh no that's not good enough for the PC Brigade is it?!?!?!!? Why am I paying my taxes for this?
Jeremy Bastard, expat, Spain NOT EU!!!!!
I’m no fan of Clarkson, but…
...he certainly shouldn't be booted out for a relatively amusing description of Gordon Brown as a 'one-eyed idiot'.
I have a feeling Jeremy and I wouldn't see eye to eye on a great deal of things, but I still do think he can be pretty funny sometimes. And so what if he slagged off the Prime Minister? Isn't that allowed any more? Is Gordy too much of a weakling to take a bit of abuse? In the name of all that is good and decent in the world, it's just some bloke off the telly making fun of the most powerful person in Britain. Do we really think that the Prime Minister can't fight his own battles? And if he can't, why the bloody hell is he Prime Minister in the first place?
But then the problem is that it all comes back to the BBC - they've become such a scapegoat, such an outlet for people's outrage and dissatisfaction with almost anything, that I wouldn't be surprised if the duty log at Shepherd's Bush were full of complaints about the snow. Jesus Christ, it's just the BBC. Yes, they're tax-funded and therefore we, as "stakeholders" (*vomits*) have a right to challenge them when they do bad stuff or have a say in what they broadcast.
Yet it's thickness beyond belief, and so typical of New Labour, to try and lump Clarkson in with the Carol Thatcher business. They're entirely different things. Clarkson slagged off the PM; Thatcher called a mixed-race person a 'golliwog'. That's nowhere near the same thing in the slightest. You can't just try and force the BBC not to have people on telly that you don't like; otherwise I'd be ringing them up every five minutes to complain about the dreary shower of fuckwits who keep turning up on News 24. And besides, don't MPs have anything better to do than go bleating on about some bloke off the TV? Seriously, aren't there more vital things for them to be spending their time on at the moment, given that the country's going down the toilet pretty sharpish?
Or perhaps that's the point - regrettably, it's been shown that if you combine a bit of outrage with a tablespoon of Auntie, and stir vigorously, you can knock almost anything off the top of the news. I'm sure the usual suspects will be crawling out of their caves to grumble and whine about the fact that the Beeb accidentally broadcast a bit of that jumped-up shit actor Christian Bale having a sweary rant. Now as you can probably tell I don't mind a bit of swearing, but I understand there are those who don't want it over their Ready Brek. Fair enough. It was a clear mistake - let's say sorry, make the necessary changes to try and investigate how it happened and why it can't be allowed to happen again, and let's move on. Same with the fuckwittery of ITV over the footy the other night, though as I pointed out at the time, they really can't be trusted with our national game.
The trouble is, there are genuine issues going on in the world right now - the UK has been implicated in torture this week, for one. And the economy's heading into the slushy brown stuff as fast as the bloke in the beaten-up Volvo I saw on the M4 this morning. Yet what are the media obsessed about? Someone being a bit upset with the BBC. For fuck's sake, let's grow up a bit, shall we? And let's not let those who have a vested interest in us not discussing the torture, the economy and so forth, get away with distracting us at this crucial time.
So let Clarkson get on with it. Otherwise the phrase 'one-eyed' could be applied a little bit more metaphorically to our media.
*little update* I can understand some people being annoyed with Clarkson using the term 'Scottish' but on the other hand, I really don't think that it's in the same racial category as golliwogs.
Buy my book, it’s great
Switch site
Donate
Recent Posts
- Workbrain
- So Solid Wiki fun
- Quentin Letts killed by a woodchipper
- I just sent Robin round
- Kim Jong Ill
Most Commented On
Recent Comments
- Maeva on Tarts and hookers
- Merrick on Workbrain
- Maxine on Workbrain
- Sirenofbrixton on Workbrain
- Katie on Workbrain
About Me
Hello. I'm a Bristol-based writer and soon-to-be-redundant journalist. You can read more about me and the Enemies site here, or follow me on Twitter. Email me if you like - antonvowl at live dot co dot uk
If you're struggling to read the site please use the drop down box below to increase the text size.