Bbc

Thursday

Steerpike

Did the BBC take David Dimbleby’s right-wing bias criticism to heart?

This week, David Dimbleby set the cat among the pigeons when he used an interview with the Radio Times to complain of right-wing media bias against Jeremy Corbyn: ‘I don’t think anyone could say that Corbyn has had a fair deal at the hands of the press, in a way that the Labour party did when it was more to the centre, but then we generally have a rightwing press.’ But has Dimbleby’s employer taken his comments a bit too literally? Mr S only asks after last night’s BBC Election Debate appeared to have such a left-wing audience that even left-wing pundits took to social media to query whether it really had

Thursday

James Delingpole

The great rock’n’roll swindles

Birds have been giving me a lot of grief of late. There’s Tappy — the blue tit who has built his nest just underneath my bedroom window and makes rat-like scuffling noises that bother me at night and wake me early in the morning. And Hoppy, a mistle thrush fledgling who can’t quite fly yet, which means we have to keep the cat indoors, which means I have to deal with its horrible shit in the litter tray every day before breakfast. And the rookery in the big ash, whose inhabitants are very vocal, especially when one of their babies falls out of the nest and gets devoured by the

Thursday

James Walton

Police force

I’ve often thought that a good idea for an authentic TV cop show would be to portray the police as neither dazzlingly brilliant (the traditional approach) nor horrifically corrupt (the traditionally subversive one) — but just a bit hopeless at solving crimes. There is, though, one thing that prevents the idea from being as original as I’d like: this is how the police already come across in many true-life dramas. Take, for instance, the harrowing and — given its high-profile scheduling — extremely brave Three Girls (BBC1, Tuesday to Thursday), which provided an unsparing and wholly believable account of the Rochdale child-grooming scandal. The first episode opened in 2008 with

Kate Chisholm

Moment of truth | 18 May 2017

Two extremes of the listening experience were available on Monday on Radio 4. The day began conventionally enough with Start the Week, chaired by the deceptively genial Amol Rajan (now in charge of The Media Show), whose warm, inviting voice fronts a keen, intense intelligence. He guided his guests through a conversation about our post-truth world which, apart from the subject-matter, could have graced the airwaves in the 1950s. This was a masterclass in elevated discussion, so graceful were the exchanges, so theoretical the ideas, yet so clear the meaning. Chief among Rajan’s guests was our former editor Matthew d’Ancona, who has just published a book about post-truth and why

Thursday

Kate Chisholm

Teenage kicks | 11 May 2017

Imagine living in a country where the average age is under 16 (in the UK it’s currently 40 and increasing) so that everywhere you go you’re surrounded by teenagers. It sounds exhilarating. Such optimism and energy; the sheer vitality of young blood coursing through the streets. How brilliant, too, for a country to be unfettered by how things have always been done, no elders to restrain them, hold them back, warn against change. But nothing is that simple. For The Compass: A Young World (Wednesday) on the World Service (produced by Mike Gallagher), Alan Kasujja took us to his native Uganda to find out what it’s like to walk down

Thursday

Kate Chisholm

Discovery channels

Bashing the BBC often becomes a popular blood sport in times of political instability, and especially if the left is weak and un-able to defend itself. You only have to think back to the period when Margaret Thatcher was leading the Tories and lambasting Auntie to recognise that there is some truth in this aphorism. It’s not surprising, then, that we’re going through another phase of repeated attacks on the BBC’s impartiality, the unfair advantage provided by the licence fee, its ‘dumbing down’ to satisfy a broad audience. Those of us who rely on listening to the radio to keep us sane in a mad, mad world need to rally

James Walton

Arms race | 4 May 2017

Like most documentaries, Britain’s Nuclear Bomb: The Inside Story (BBC4, Wednesday) began by boasting about all the exclusives it would be serving up. Unlike most, it was as good as its word. What followed did indeed contain much previously unseen footage and interviews with people — including ‘this country’s bomb-maker in chief’ — who’ve never before spoken about the part they played in Britain becoming a nuclear power. It also did a neat job of fitting the story to our favoured national myth: the one about old-fashioned British pluck and know-how triumphing over both the odds and the shamefully professional ways of other countries. In the 1930s, for example, the

Thursday

Kate Chisholm

A square dance in Heaven

It’s 500 years since Martin Luther pinned his 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, sparking what would come to be known as the Protestant Reformation. His superficial complaint was against the corrupt practice of indulgences, the Catholic Church teasing money out of the gullible and persuading them that they could buy their way into Heaven. But what Luther, a professor of theology, really wanted was for God to be made accessible to everyone and for worship to be more intimate, more direct, and in the vernacular, not Latin. We think of him now as a man of the text, who believed that faith was so

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 20 April 2017

Benedictine engagement Sir: Matthew Parris has missed the point (‘Give me the Anglican option’, 15 April). He compares Rod Dreher’s suggestion that modern Christians emulate the Benedictines with the retreat into self-imposed exile of groups like ultra-Orthodox Jews and the Beni Isguen community. The Benedictines did not withdraw from the world. They engaged with the fractured society of the Dark Ages, showing a better way through their schools, almsgiving and prayer. A number of recent books, including Tom Holland’s Millennium, have charted the astonishing role the monasteries played in dragging Europe out of barbarism. In Britain, the Church and its monastic orders set up many of the institutions on which

Saturday

Nick Robinson & Charles Moore

Bias and the BBC: A discussion

Last week, Nick Robinson wrote an article in the Radio Times saying Radio 4’s Today programme no longer has an obligation to balance its coverage of Brexit. This led to criticism from Charles Moore that he was, in effect, admitting to BBC bias. The two met for a discussion in The Spectator offices. Nick Robinson: As you’re so fond of pointing out, Charles, most economists, business organisations, trade unions and FTSE 100 chief executives were Remainers. The BBC’s difficulty is that news tends to be about interviewing people in power: scrutinising them, asking tough questions. It’s right that we should go and look for other voices, look for critics. But

Douglas Murray

The BBC’s adaptation of Decline and Fall was near-perfect

A politician once told me ‘You should try to remember to try to encourage us when we get things right and not just scold us when we get things wrong.’ I’m not sure anyone could keep to that civil piece of advice when it comes to politicians. But it should certainly apply to broadcasters. The BBC comes in for plenty of stick, and rightly so at times. But in recent weeks it has done something wonderful. Its adaptation of Decline and Fall – the third and last episode of which aired on Friday night – was a triumph. I had always assumed that this earliest of Evelyn Waugh’s novels was

Thursday

Steerpike

Spot the difference: BBC’s varying approaches to IndyRef2

Although Nick Robinson claims the BBC no longer has a duty to be balanced over Brexit now the referendum has been won, what about Scottish independence? With ‘IndyRef2’ on the horizon indefinitely, Mr S was curious to note the approach Andrew Marr took to interviewing the SNP’s Alex Salmond compared with unionist Ruth Davidson. When Davidson — the leader of the Scottish Conservatives — appeared on the Andrew Marr show last month, the BBC presenter gave her a grilling on her objections to the SNP’s call for ‘IndyRef2’. As Davidson tried to argue that there was no appetite for a second referendum in Scotland, Marr interrupted her at several points: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZElNjDldh4 Among

Wednesday

Nick Robinson & Charles Moore

Bias and the BBC

Last week, Nick Robinson wrote an article in the Radio Times saying Radio 4’s Today programme no longer has an obligation to balance its coverage of Brexit. This led to criticism from Charles Moore that he was, in effect, admitting to BBC bias. The two met for a discussion in The Spectator offices. Nick Robinson: As you’re so fond of pointing out, Charles, most economists, business organisations, trade unions and FTSE 100 chief executives were Remainers. The BBC’s difficulty is that news tends to be about interviewing people in power: scrutinising them, asking tough questions. It’s right that we should go and look for other voices, look for critics. But

Kate Chisholm

Tales of the unexpected | 12 April 2017

It’s the oddest place to find a profound meditation on the death of Christ, but there it is on Radio 2 every year on the night of Good Friday, on the ‘light music’ station, and not on Radio 3 or Radio 4, where you might expect to find it. This year At the Foot of the Cross was sandwiched between Desmond Carrington — All Time Great and Sara Cox’s disco beats, the uncompromising reflections on the nature of belief adding a certain bite to the evening. Diane Louise Jordan and her host of guests at the Watford Colosseum (including the Bach Choir and the tenor Wynne Evans) created a sequence

Tuesday

Steerpike

Watch: Corbyn turns on BBC journalist over Syria questioning

Oh dear. Today Jeremy Corbyn launched his new small business policy with a press conference at the Federation of Small Businesses. Alas things took a turn for the worse when the BBC’s Mark Lobel attempted to ask the Labour leader about the situation in Syria: .@jeremycorbyn refused to answer a question on Syria at a business conference pic.twitter.com/AhLamVC7eC — Sky News (@SkyNews) April 11, 2017 To dramatic effect, Corbyn walked out from behind his podium toward the reporter and snapped: ‘I’m really sorry, this is a Federation of Small Business conference’ — before going on to claim his media team had let it be known there would be no questions on the issue

Sunday

Matthew Taylor

Sunday political interviews round-up: Salmond claims May ‘will crumble’ over IndyRef2

Alex Salmond – Theresa May ‘will crumble’ over Scottish referendum Despite Parliament having retired this week, the political debate rages on. Alex Salmond appeared on the Andrew Marr show to offer his take on the circumstances of a second referendum on Scottish independence. He remained defiant that it would still take place despite Theresa May’s statement that ‘now is not the time’. ‘The Theresa May line… “Now is not the time” is not going to stand. Back in the day I remember David Cameron telling me there wasn’t going to be a Scottish referendum, but that didn’t last against the democratic wishes of the Scottish people and the Scottish Parliament

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Even in Manchester, the BBC’s culture is purely and achingly London

An American woman started a website called ‘People I Want to Punch in the Throat’, in which she listed the people she wanted to punch in the throat. It was enormously successful and spawned a book called People I Want to Punch in the Throat, which sold very well. This is the heartening thing about the internet; the level of visceral loathing harboured by all of us for other people, which otherwise would remain hidden. I have thought about getting in on the action by starting a website called ‘People I Want to Stab to Death with a Bradawl’, or perhaps ‘People I Want to Dissolve in a Vat of

Saturday

Rod Liddle

Here’s what Sarah Sands should do with the Today programme

I wonder what Sarah Sands will do to Radio 4’s Today programme? She is the first editor in more than 30 years to come from outside the BBC, having previously run Evgeny Lebedev’s London Evening Standard. One assumes, then, that the BBC feels that the old war horse needs a bit of shaking up, and perhaps a slight tilting on the political rudder. Sands is, almost uniquely for the boss class of the BBC, Conservative inclined, even if she was a Remainer and is of a somewhat liberal disposition. I was rather cheered by her appointment — and said so in print — as I think she is an excellent

Thursday

Steerpike

Simon Jenkins lifts the lid on BBC chief’s ‘dinner circle wailing’ over Brexit

This week Nick Robinson set the cat among the pigeons when he claimed that the BBC no longer has a duty to ‘broadly balance’ the views of Remain and Leave in its Brexit reports now that the EU referendum is over. However, many have questioned Robinson’s so-called  ‘due impartiality’ — with 70 Eurosceptic MPs previously signing a letter accusing the BBC of a biased and ‘pessimistic’ view. But could the gloomy tone really be down to a sense of Brexit guilt? Mr S only asks after coming across Simon Jenkins’ column in the Guardian on the monoculture at the BBC. Discussing Robinson’s comments on Brexit reporting, Jenkins claims that after the Leave vote, Lord Hall — the BBC

James Walton

Age as allegory

Sky Atlantic — available only to Sky customers — has the cunning/infuriating policy of broadcasting the kind of programmes most likely to appeal to people who pride themselves on not being Sky customers. (Basically, the liberal, metropolitan you-know-what.) Now, to a list that includes Veep, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Girls and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, we can add The Trip, whose third series Sky has poached from the BBC. Like the first two — set in the Lake District and Italy — The Trip to Spain (Thursday) is directed by Michael Winterbottom and features Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan playing versions of themselves that feel teasingly close to the