[Tubby Isaacs]

From The Observer. Paper who makes it clear it thinks the BBC is shit criticises Lisa Nandy for not being over supportive of Tim Davie.

This is a critical moment for the BBC. It is rightly held to higher standards than other media organisations, but the departure of Davie and Turness is not about standards. It is a result of a political attack that exposes structural flaws in the BBC’s independence. A process of intimidation that the BBC’s supporters have long feared has been playing out behind closed doors is now unfolding in plain sight. Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, has not helped. For months, she has made it clear that she has misgivings about Davie’s leadership. The effect has been to make it open season on the BBC for politicians on the left and right. Respect for its independence has been lost.

You think the people attacking the BBC cared about signals from Lisa Nandy?

[Youngian]

The comrades have weighed in as to how they're the real victims of biased BBC editing. Exhibits include doctored news footage at Orgreave over 40 years ago and of course Jeremy Corbyn's Russian hat.

[Tubby Isaacs]

A BBC board member with links to the Conservative party “led the charge” in pressuring the corporation’s leadership over claims of systemic bias in coverage of Donald Trump, Gaza and transgender rights, the Guardian has been told.

Sources said that Robbie Gibb, Theresa May’s former communications chief who was appointed to the BBC’s board during Boris Johnson’s administration, amplified the criticisms in key board meetings that preceded the shock resignation of the director general, Tim Davie, and the head of BBC News, Deborah Turness.

I'm not surprised that this is how Gibb behaves. But it was the slow response that did for Davie. I'm rather fed up with this characterization of the rest of the Board as powerless in the face of Gibb, and anyway, one thing he couldn't do is stop the Chair/DG responding quickly and effectively.

[Abernathy]

Just turned the radio on while I was having a pish, to hear Iain Dale recounting how his cabbie bringing him to LBC this evening told him that even though he owns a TV, he (the cabbie) never watches the BBC, so he doesn’t pay the TV licence fee. Dale of course told his driver that that’s not the way the system works, and that if you own a TV you need to pay the licence fee. Cabbie reckoned he keeps on getting reminders, which he just ignores.

Dale is on the right of politics, of course, so this may well be a part (albeit small) of a concerted undermining of the very institution of the BBC itself.

Call me paranoid if you like, but there’s more to this.

[Abernathy]

From Jack Dart :

They want to destroy the BBC. That is what this is all about.
Behind the noise of outrage and the talk of reform sits a single goal, to break one of the last institutions in Britain that still answers to the public rather than private power. The BBC has reported wars, exposed corruption, told the country’s story and connected it to the world. For generations it has been trusted as a voice that belongs to everyone. That tradition still matters, which is precisely why they want it gone.
This campaign has nothing to do with accuracy or bias. It is a deliberate attempt to weaken public broadcasting itself. The far right has long understood that influence over information brings political control. When they fail to shape events, they work to discredit those who describe them. Once trust collapses, truth becomes negotiable and manipulation thrives.
Trump’s press secretary, Caroline Leavitt, declared this week that the BBC is “dying because they are anti-Trump fake news” and urged people to “watch GB News.” That was no coincidence. GB News has modelled itself on Fox News in the United States, built to inflame rather than inform and to protect those it should be questioning. It is the most biased news outlet in Britain, a political project disguised as journalism, and it exists to make the BBC look obsolete.
The BBC’s Panorama programme did make a serious mistake. It edited Trump’s January 6 speech in a way that gave a misleading impression of his words. The full version shows he did call for a peaceful protest before repeating his familiar line about “fighting like hell.” It was poor editing, but it was not fabrication. The speech still fanned resentment and rage in a crowd already convinced the election was stolen. Trump’s own words brought people to that rally, even if the BBC compressed them too tightly.
Yet this small error has become the pretext for an extraordinary act of intimidation. Trump’s billion-dollar lawsuit is not about setting the record straight but about frightening journalists everywhere. His lawyers claim defamation, but what they really want is submission. The goal is to bleed the BBC dry, to prove that political bullying works, and to warn every broadcaster what happens when they challenge him. The resignations that followed were forced by fear of that pressure, not by a concern for accuracy. The BBC should never shape its decisions around the ego of an authoritarian.
The same playbook is now at work here. Farage and his allies on GB News echo Trump’s rhetoric, repeating every BBC mistake as proof of corruption and urging boycotts of the licence fee. They want the public to lose faith in impartial journalism so that the only voices left belong to them. What follows is not reform but a US-style hellhole where power writes the headlines and truth is whatever the loudest man in the room says it is.
Across the world, this pattern is spreading. Billionaires buy newspapers, social media rewards outrage, and public broadcasters are left to defend themselves against endless political attack. Each surrender weakens democracy and strengthens those who depend on distortion to survive.
The BBC must face its mistakes honestly but it must also defend its independence without apology. Its duty is to the public, not to politicians or presidents. If it yields to this pressure, Britain will lose far more than a broadcaster. It will lose one of the last places where truth still answers to people rather than power.
I stand with the BBC.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Was Tim Davie up to the this task though? I've not seen any evidence that he is. One of the first things he did was take aim at people telling jokes about Bozo's Government.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Michael Prescott, who's apparently a sage on accuracy, seems to have been inaccurate on his CV here. Looks like he's rolled 3 jobs at The Sunday Times together and claimed he spent the whole time doing the last (and most senior) of them.

[Boiler]

From Jack Dart :

[...] It is a deliberate attempt to weaken public broadcasting itself.

A process that started with Thatcher when she removed the 'Public Service' requirement from ITV franchise submissions.

I do sometimes wonder, but I can predict what would happen if one of those high-profile "TV Licence refuseniks" was prosecuted for evasion.

[kreuzberger]

So, issuing an edict to fellate Farage has landed them with the thick end of fuck all and a couple of P45s.

The Corporation needs a plan B, B, and C, and they can start with booting that frog-faced virus off their platforms.

(I remember growing up in Luton. The maxim was, "if you get jumped in a pub fight, make sure that at least one of them wishes they hadn't started it.)

I'll be having an early night, partly because I need one and also because I want a good run at the Today Programme tomorrow, to see which way the mail's bag-carriers will lean, knowing that their 400k salaries are anything but safe.

[Spoonman]

Let him sue the BBC in an English court with an English jury. Democracy on trial and all that. If Trump lost and the judge ordered him to pay costs, how much would he stump up?
Murdoch's been aiming his fire power at the BBC for 50 years but it still stands. Fuck Trump.

He's likely to sue in Florida.

Would be interesting to see how a Florida court tries to claim jurisdiction over a UK based broadcaster/company. And yes the Beeb has a presence in the USA but it sub licences its name to AMC whom handle transmission & output. It doesn't operate independently there.

Conversely, if he's otherwise forced to sue in the UK, no way is he getting anywhere close to an award of US$1 billion as the courts here don't do punitive damages - there'd be a much better chance of him getting compo of £1 and having to pay his own costs if he won.

[Killer Whale]

He was impeached in his own country for encouraging violent insurrection, so there's no question over whether the broad meaning of the BBC 'quote' was incorrect or not.

You don't get a billion dollars anywhere in the world for being clumsily but nevertheless mildly mis-quoted.

[kreuzberger]

The net result is that he would have neutered a fairly independent broadcaster, if you can allow words like Justin, Webb, and Sarah fucking Smith in to that sentence.

[Tubby Isaacs]

A process that started with Thatcher when she removed the 'Public Service' requirement from ITV franchise submissions.

Not quite true. Those were the initial proposals, but David Mellor (as minister) got a quality threshold into the final bill, after some internal Tory opposition. These were

Sufficient news and current affairs programming dealing with national and international matters;
Sufficient high-quality programming in non-news areas;
Sufficient regional programming, which should be made predominantly within the region;
Sufficient children's and religious programming;
Programming with a wide range of appeal;
Sufficient programming made in Europe;
At least a quarter of its programming made by independent production companies.

You'd think that was enough for the Independent Television Commission (the new regulator, taking over from the IBA) to have eg ruled in favour of Thames over Carlton, but it didn't. Perhaps it might have if Thames had bid more (annoyingly, I can't find what Thames and Carlton had bid). One of the big problems of the process was that it was carried out in the depths of the early 90s recession, where people could only make very pessimistic forecasts of revenue. The only one who didn't, TVS, was actually rejected by the ITC for being unrealistic, and lost its franchise.

Mad time.