[kreuzberger]

Spin the bottle-of-blame and it must point to the enthusiastically-nourished wee KKKaroline stamping those lyin' feet, which doubtlessly spill out over her navy-blue court shoes.

Upshot: the ambassador's Sunday lunch was ruined, Tim Davie is history, and the News CEO has also taken the bath. A shabby do, about which few care, such are the depths to which the BBC has fallen - or was pushed.

[kreuzberger]

I shall be tuned in to LBC tomorrow at 10.59, just as the bloated Swiss tory hands over to a decent journalist who, as recently as last week, trained his sights on R4 Today.

Even considering his history with the Corporation, my guess is that the BBC is the hill he would die on.

[Boiler]

Tim Davie has resigned.

Do fucking WHAT?!

[Boiler]

Well, you have to say that the BBC’s directors general are pretty good at carrying the can and resigning when something goes wrong. A dmned sight better than Tory ministers, Prime or otherwise.

They don't always get to resign though - IMO Milne was pushed and there are possibly others.

Robbie Gibb remains though.

[kreuzberger]

If Gibb is ha-ha-stayin'-alive, you can bet 10 shekels that Trump's mobsters have been taking wider soundings.

[kreuzberger]

If Gibb is ha-ha-stayin'-alive, you can bet 10 shekels that Trump's mobsters have been taking wider soundings.

Right on cue;

[satnav]

I wonder what stories Panorama are currently working on that somebody wanted closing down? Perhaps they have been doing some digging into Nigel Farage or Richard Tice. Or may be an investigation into the IDF.

[Oboogie]

Trump seems pleased with progress so far, I wonder who his pick for DG is? Laurence Fox is not swamped with work at the moment - just a thought.

[davidjay]

It's like a reading the works of a hyperactive child, off their face on e numbers and fruit shoots.

[mattomac]

Why they hell do you even have to doctor his speeches mind.

Unless you want them to make sense and even then you would struggle.

My dad watches the 6pm news every day so I have to when I visit. And we had two asylum articles sandwiched with a story about reform and then oddly an Ukraine story, then several other stories and then another Ukrainian story. The latter as someone who studied this would be an attempt to skewer framing, the former would be framing Der Stürmer would suggest was possibly being laid on too thick.

Also in the piece they referred to the “coalition of the willing” as the “so called coalition of the willing”.

Which is frankly appalling for what prides itself as an independent public service broadcaster.

Whole thing was baffling, the local news wasn’t too bad but seemed to rely too much on nimbies.

[Youngian]

The new DG needs to order a new down the line Reithian edit of the offending Panorama documentary.
This is reminiscent of Andrew Gilligan's Dr Kelly story which was in essence true but was guilty of cutting corners.

[Boiler]

Hmm. I wonder who Yelland was pointing the finger at? I heard this interview (and sadly, the one with "Lord" Charles Moore afterwards).

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/ ... id-yelland

[Bones McCoy]

If Gibb is ha-ha-stayin'-alive, you can bet 10 shekels that Trump's mobsters have been taking wider soundings.

Right on cue;

All we need is the Russian ambassador for a full house.

There's a new axis in town kids.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Bluesky's living up to its recent standards. Lots of people think "Starmer" or "Nandy" appoint the DG.

[Abernathy]

The story has become *massive* on news media and outlets like LBC (and no doubt on GBeebies too, but I'm not fucking going there). An extended rumination on the BBC's impartiality and/or the lack thereof.
The overwhelming impression I'm getting is that the BBC has been the victim of a deliberate and concerted stitch-up, a coup, by the Telegraph and Robbie Gibb, and the malign influences of Tufton Street.

As ever, O'Brien is in the right place. Yes, the edit of Trump's insurrection-inciting speech in January 2021 was a stupid mistake. But it was emphatically not "fake news". Trump said what he said. It was recorded, and Trump was impeached by Congress for it. It cannot have misled many, if any at all, viewers.

The BBC's DG and News chief should have been fighting back, not resigning (though I am gratified to note that Deborah Turness has defended BBC journalists this morning.)

Now, Trump has been given the space further to propagate his lie that he did not incite violent insurrection in an attempt to overturn a legitimate election result.

I do think the repercussions of this are potentially huge. The future of the BBC is at stake, though arguably, it always has been. Is the BBC institutionally biased? I really don't think so. I sometimes detect left-wing bias in the BBC's output, but more often, I detect what seems to me to be right-wing bias. I've often thought that an indicator that broadly speaking, the corporation is getting things right. There is surely no such thing as absolute, pure down the line impartiality - but the BBC makes a pretty good fist of it.

The other thing that this might have brought about and made more urgent is the debate - that was always going to have to be had - about the BBC's future funding model as our national public broadcaster. There is almost consensus that the TV licence fee model is no longer sustainable in a multi-channel, multi-media, streaming 21st century media environment .

We have a Labour government that I hope can add the active defence and preservation of our national broadcaster to the long list of things that need repair. - and get to it.

[Youngian]

There is almost consensus that the TV licence fee model is no longer sustainable in a multi-channel, multi-media, streaming 21st century media environment .

The licence fee is the worst funding system apart from all the others. Maybe partial subscription and a small broadband tax which could fund public service projects on other channels as well.
I'd be lost without BBC radio output's stunning breadth and depth. Although I was informed by a Farage gammon dickhead that it is all rubbish since Ken Bruce left R2.

[Tubby Isaacs]

It's possible that Tim Davie walked because he couldn't be arsed with Robbie Gibb any more, but Gibb is one member of the Board. However assertive he is, he's got the same voting power as Muriel Gray. The failure goes wider, across the Board, among whom Gibb stands out as a loon, who've allowed themselves to think that Twitter is a lot more representative than it is.

Looks hubristic on the part of The Telegraph and all. BBC News was doing all they could reasonably want of it. Now it's lost 2 Board members who'll be nominated by Lisa Nandy, which isn't obviously to their advantage. There's no clear candidate for DG.

[Bones McCoy]

[Youngian]

There's no clear candidate for DG.

Does Rory Stewart fancy it? Badenoch and Jenrick slagging off one of their own as a Labour plant would be most amusing.

[Andy McDandy]

I'd suggest that upper class nonentities who drift from one well paid sinecure to another, apparently on the basis of who they know, be barred from these sorts of job. That or post an actual JD and let anyone apply, with shortlisting and appointment done on merit.