Woman's Hour today on Camila Batmanghelidjh

[PursuingProxemicExactitude]

I honestly have no words.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000sjxy

Relentless hostility and suspicion. Not one single positive word in half an hour. So tired of this. Woman's Hour is a travesty of itself now.

(I glimpsed another thread but can't find it.)

@VinylDetective

Emma Barnett is such a bad fit with WH. She’s so aggressive and so rude. I’m really hoping she won’t last long. Fridays are so much better with Anita Rani.

Agreed. I was really disappointed when the announced it would be Emma Barnett, she's so bloody aggressive. Haven't listened much since she took over but the bits I have heard have been as I expected. Fridays are far better with Anita Rani.

EB is very rude, she has however been thoroughly unpleasant to guests who are not white.

The BBC are refusing to release the video where she swore at Kelechi Okafor, called her anti-semitic and used the old ‘aggressive black woman’ tropes, she also confused her with Reggie Yates and attempted to hold her responsible for the views of Reggie Yates. Members of end violence against women witnessed the treatment and spoke out about it on twitter. Yet the BBC still refuse to release the video.

She also recently bullied Zara Mohammed and attempted to blame her for the actions of men. She also continually spoke over Zara and completely ignored Zara when Zara attempted to clarify questions.

On two occasions she has treated women who are not white very poorly, on those two occasions she has also blamed those non-white women for the actions of men.

@Runwithtorches - I couldn't agree more. It felt like EB was trying to land punches at the expense of talking about the true victims - the children helped by KC. Instead, we got the same story we've all already heard - that CB 'wasted' money.

You had 2 established women at the helm of WH for a long time. You need to give anyone new time to settle in.

[quote Tankflybosswalkjam]@Nith - it should have been run better? It went bust!!!![/quote]
After helping thousands of people who had no other source of help. Is all that to be forgotten?

Completely agree. I don’t listen to it much any more. I get enough self righteousness and I know best ness from my teenage daughter, I really really don’t need any more.
Grow up Emma Barnett. In private please.

I agree with SimonJT I stopped short of calling Emma a racist on my previous post. She is very hostile towards non white women & she comes across as an intolerant, prejudiced bully. Her style is dressed up as hard hitting, Liberal journalism but it just disguises her prejudices very well.

God EB is a terrible replacement. I've stopped watching which is sad as used to love Woman's Hour. Feel like she's trying to bring a more 'journalistic' tone which WH didn't need

Listening not watching!!

I'd love to see WH do a piece on human trafficking and sexual exploitation and see how EB handles it.

You are only fighting yourself love. She is so TEENAGE

@SnackSizeRaisin

I thought she was a convicted felon and fraudster and am amazed the BBC gave her airtime

Well you thought wrong. She was completely exonerated following lengthy investigation and not only was not convicted, but was praised by the judge for the "enormous dedication she showed to vulnerable young people over many years"

It's very sad that the financial shenanigans are completely overshadowing the enormous achievements of Kids Company over the years. They did a massive amount of good work, some of it truly lifechanging for those young people.

Says a lot about the priorities of our society imo.

I have not heard the interview. If those who listened to it have described it accurately, my additional concern is the style and nature of the interview may provide an excuse for others to decline to be on Women's Hour. Government ministers for example, who have form for refusing to be on some programmes. I'd like to see or hear an interview with the minister who thought it OK to have a bill referring to 'pregnant persons' not 'pregnant mothers' (thank you House of Lords for changing that).

She may not be guilty of financial problems but what about the other accusations, is there any truth in them?
I can't remember them all but it included renting a massive house with pool for her sole use, using funds to pay a seamstress who made her clothes, keeping service users in a state of dependency, handing out cash to service users

I stopped listening to Woman's Hour because I loathed Jenni Murray (who is now writing for the Daily Mail!). I'll have to try listening again, although I'm not a fan of Emma Barnett.

Yes there was financial mismanagement but Kids Company was fantastic for many disadvantaged kids. CB’s heart was in the right place but she’s a poor business owner. Nevertheless she has never been found guilty of criminality.

It’s interesting that people like her helping vulnerable children and going bankrupt is worthy of more scorn than companies like Serco who’ve made £100s of millions of ‘profit’ from the failure of track and trace and are essentially handing out bonuses using tax payers money.

I knew a woman living in central Africa who could tell you how much money major charities waste on the ground but I guess they’re better at covering this up than amateurs like CB who made mistakes but is treated like a modern day Al Capone.

People like EB are there to protect the status quo. How dare a non white woman put her head above the parapet? They will come down hard. I also think EB has a few not so unconscious biases but I guess the new DG wants the BBC to be more rightwing so here we are.

Thanks to this thread I will listen to the interview. I also worked for a company who supported Kids Company in many ways. I was aware of their work for many years. The number of kids impacted by them was vast. She was trying to do exactly what people like Marcus Rushford is being praised for doing now- make sure kids weren't starving and suffering from poverty.
She (The Charity) was also doing masses of work around stopping knife crime - working with vulnerable kids individually.
It would be interesting to see the stats on the increase in knife crime in the areas she was stopped from working....

Obviously - it all fell apart. And that's a shame. But let's not pretend that they didn't do good.

The interview with Zara Mohammed was one of the worst I've ever heard.

The problem for me is that EB does not adapt to her interviewees. You get far more out of people by figuring them out than you do by having an agenda and going in for the attack. It doesn't at all mean being cuddly, but it does mean using nuance and being able to read people.

There are definitely people who need to have the EB style interview because of how they behave towards interviewers, or just their nature, but a great many don't, and would give a far better interview if they didn't feel backed into a corner.

CB wasn’t exonerated. The Official Receiver attempted to show she was a de facto director and was no longer fit to be a director, but couldnt. The judge said that they had misunderstood the nature of charities and had presented their case badly. CB took a rinsing though, the notes are here. She wasn’t exonerated, they just couldn’t get the charge to stick.

www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Official-Receiver-v-Batmanghelidjh-judgment-120221.pdf

Emma Barnett is bloody awful on WH. I don't listen anymore. She really seems to be adopting the John Humphrey's style of aggressive interviewing, but for what? It doesn't lead to more insight, normally it leads to less. I can't shake the feeling that most interviews are about Emma, and her profile, not the guest or the subject. I went on WH once. I am not a shrinking violet but would hesitate to do so again because I would assume Emma Barnett would want an argument not a conversation.

@WonderWomansPants

I was happy to hear CB held to account as she deserves.

I like EB and think that a gutsy woman presenter is a good thing. The contrast with Anita on Fridays works for balance. Not all female presenters need to be cuddly.

'Gutsy' - think there's a line between gutsy and being so aggressive you're failing to do your job. Listening to someone doesn't make you 'cuddly'.

No matter how I felt about an interviewee on the show, I'd still want to hear why they made certain decisions.

I’ve hardly listened to Woman’s Hour for years - to me, it’s become more and more irrelevant - but I drop in occasionally, mostly by accident, have heard EB a couple of times she seems to be one of the standard gobby know-nothings the Beeb favours currently.
For really good, respectful, well-informed and incisive radio journalism from women, look no further than Farming Today: Anna Hill, Charlotte Smith, Caz Graham, Sybil Ruscoe. Any of these would be great on WH.

Unfortunately talking over and shouting down interview guests generates column inches. Paxman, Humphrey et al became famous off of the back of it. The trouble is they were very poor interviewers when you looked at what information they actually gleaned from their subjects.

Compare the aggressive interviews with someone like David Frost who was firm but respectful and was well briefed on his subject. He’d get far more information.

Unfortunately the aggressive American style interview where it’s more about the interviewers opinions than the interviewee is the road WH wants to go down. I’m sure it will be all good for EB profile though even if the only guests who’ll agree to appear will be those who are also looking for a Twitter war generating row.

IMO this thread is led by CB's promoters. Or possibly CB is here herself.

Exactly it's interesting isn't it how the subject of the children are never at the heart of these interviews when that is the whole point! It's an outrage that so many of them were left without adequate mh educational and financial provision. Why are no interviewers or politicians outraged by that?

I did think what CB said about Michael Gove was fascinating though. Awarding her a CBE and praising her in 2014 and then him and Oliver Letwin briefing against her in 2015 as part of Dominic Cummings strategy to discredit David Cameron during the Brexit campaign (when CB had never wanted to be part of his big society idea in the first place). Politicians playing games with children's lives. Disgusting.