MPs question key figures in BBC crisis over bias

Shah's position is looking increasingly untenable.

From the little I heard (I'll accept it wasn't much!) and the news updates I've seen, Shah is no leader. I suspect the tech job applicant who accidentally ended up being interviewed Iive on TV as an expert would do just as good as job in the role.

What an utter shit show this is.

Edited to add: link below for anyone who wants a comedy distraction with some lower level BBC incompetence. By contrast, this top level shit show has far reaching consequences where we're still supposed to pretend that we all believe in gender identity (through coercion and obfuscation) and apparently there were plausible reasons for the BBC to create what can surely only be described as disinformation re the Trump clip. In what world is there ever a plausible explanation for doing this?! What an utter fuckwit that man is. Rant over.

.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GuyGomaBBCinterview#:~:text=On%208%20May%202006%2C%20Congolese%2DFrench%20Guy%20Goma,in%20place%20of%20technology%20journalist%20Guy%20Kewney.

New article on the Beeb

'Shumeet Banerji resigned on Friday, citing "governance issues" but the full reasons were not known until now.
In his damning letter, he said news boss Deborah Turness was told that "she did not have the confidence of a majority of the board".
But, Banerji wrote, he was "not invited to any meeting where a matter of such importance was to be discussed".'

www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y9rz7eggko

And presumably it would then take even longer to issue an apology statement that could be agreed upon 🤦‍♀️

Ostensibly, it gives the impression of greater accountability but in reality, it's more likely just more wiggle room to avoid it, as you say.

ETA, I meant to quote @HildegardP

The reason the professional managerial class like to keep splitting up jobs like DG isn't just more jobs for the boys but the diffusion of responsibility it brings. "Such a shame that [x] went wrong but it was administratively unclear whether DG1 or DG2 should be briefed so the report on [x] remained pending while the team consulted on the appropriate chain of command, nobody's fault, nothing to see here..."

Totally agree with your assessment Nauticant

I only saw bits of this. Prescott was most impressive, Shah and the MPs? Not at all. I had to stop watching Shah, he was annoying me so much.

The way I read it was that the politicians were worse. The BBC were largely hand-wringing with "we're trying our best!", "what else could we do?", with the heretic Prescott as an outlier. The Labour and Lib Dems members were often coddling of the BBC in terms of the corporation being a victim or having had the right instincts in how they edited the programme.

The Committee was acting in an oversight role but largely failed in that.

How bad is that. I remember seeing a good quote on here about institutions respond to threat.

I can’t find it though, it was close

The first hour and a half was more instructive with the Labour and Lib Dem members of the panel grilling Prescott and making clear their "shoot the messenger" approach.

Anyone at the BBC who watched this would get the message that whistle blowing would not be a wise course of action.

Managed to catch about 25 mins of Shah yesterday before being subsumed into evening family conversations.... which were far more interesting than Shah's soporific waffle.

From the small snippet I saw, he was positively glowing with love for the BBC (good to see from a Chair but irrelevant in the context) and felt the job of DG was too big for one person.

The latter point simply came across as "there was nothing he could have done". I ended up imagining a similar committee hearing in the wake of Savile, where plenty of people clearly raised concerns but... what could the leadership do? FFS. Listen to the concerns and act on them. That's what.

I'm annoyed that the sex/gender bias issue didn't really feature, given its huge impact on society and devastating impact on the children and young adults who are being irrerversibly harmed, but it seems mad that the board knew about the Trump clip splicing 6 months ago.. and presumably sat on their hands, hoping it would go away. That's not an effective board. That's a bunch of people who might well love the BBC but haven't a clue how to run it.

I think this is really important and key.

If these people knew their job at all, they wouldn't be trying to imply that anyone is problematic because they have a conservative bias, any more than they are problematic because they have a left bias.

Trying to shut differernt viewpoints out is the problem.

Ha ha ha.

"When he called you before he sent the memo..."

"No, I called him. Checking in."

"Splutter"

Another smear.

Shah has spent the last hour saying same thing on repeat. Mistakes were made, we'll look into them.
But that's the fault of the questions

At last, a decent question

I went into this not thinking much of Shah. But now I think he feels like a steady hand.

WHAT IS YOUR QUESTION WOMAN

There's that word 'mistake' again, as if somebody hit the wrong key or something - the matters in question are thought-through editorial decisions, not 'mistakes'.

The BBC's decision to refer to trans-identifying men as if they were women - whether or not they have a GRC, so they can't even defend it by saying 'Well legally they are women... ' - is a blatant example of bias:
they clearly picked one side in a highly contested ideological/social/political issue and their reporting reflects that, and is clearly not impartial.

As WarriorN says, where's the analysis of that obvious lack of impartiality?

She seems to think she's Sherlock Holmes

If Rupa Huq was on the Board would it not be fair to say she would be 'known to be quite Labour' in her views?

This trying to smear Gibb is getting tedious.

It's tiresome that the questioning from the Committee has mostly focussed on Trump, I would have liked the other issues, on which the BBC coverage has been lacking, to be discussed but I think those would have drawn just as much posturing from the MPs so perhaps it's just as well they weren't raised.