Tim Davies Resigns - Can Gender Critical Movement take some credit?

[YouCantProveIt]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15274537/Tim-Davie-RESIGNS-BBC-director-general.html

Is it the BBC Trans desk that constantly ensures that TQIA+ is force teamed with LGB in news reports?

Nandy’s changing her tune pretty sharpish….

The Culture Secretary has attacked the BBC’s “entirely inconsistent” reporting standards amid the bias scandal engulfing the broadcaster.

On Sunday, Lisa Nandy claimed the BBC’s editorial decisions were not always “well thought through” and fell short of the “highest” expectations.

You can draw a clear line connecting political hot potatoes of the past decade like the Post Office Scandal, Grooming Scandal, Grenfell to the same sort of problem. All have similar features about why these issues continued - it was about the institution being more concerned about the institution and protecting itself rather than addressing problems and dealing with how it was impacting on those it had a duty of case to - it's about powerful people versus the people. It's about institutional power being used against grassroots.

This - there was lot else in that post I agreed with but this the constant silencing and dissmissing of concerns to protect instutions has now been a thing for decades and it errodes trust just as widely which is frankly danergous for society.

I also wonder if it's why there seems such disconnect between poltcians and people - we are in a better state than USA mainly thanks to our current constituency system - welsh Senedd reforms around proportional closed list system and reducing the number of constituencies to 16 worry me as that link with voters is erroded and seem obvious way of group think taking hold.

I used to care passionately about having the BBC - now much less bothered currently.

Times Radio are leading their news bulletins with this discussion, highlighting trans bias as much as other issues.

Worth repeating.

The leaked memo that sparked last night’s resignations was not only critical of one edit in a Panorama documentary about Donald Trump.
In the full dossier, published by the Telegraph, former independent adviser Michael Prescott highlights several - in his words - "troubling matters".

Here’s a summary of the main claims written by Prescott in the memo:

• "Anti-Trump" bias: Prescott says the BBC’s coverage of the 2024 US election was more critical of Donald Trump than of his opponent, Kamala Harris - including a misleading edit of a speech Trump delivered on 6 January 2021
• "Ill-researched" stories on racism: He says the BBC had published "ill-researched material that suggested issues of racism when there were none", including in a now-removed BBC Verify story about car insurance
• Too few push alerts on migration and asylum seekers: There was a "selection bias" against sending stories about migration and asylum seekers to BBC News app users as push notifications, Prescott says
• "One-sided" transgender coverage: He says the BBC had often published stories "celebrating the trans experience without adequate balance or objectivity" and had ignored certain voices
• Anti-Israel bias in BBC Arabic: Several contributors to the BBC’s Arabic service selectively covered stories that were critical of Israel, Prescott writes
• Broader issues in Gaza coverage: His other criticisms include misrepresenting the percentage of Palestinian women and children who have been killed by Israel’s military, and misrepresenting the likelihood of children starving under Israel's aid blockade

The BBC has not yet responded directly to the publication of this memo, but outgoing CEO of News Deborah Turness has said this morning the organisation "is not institutionally biased".

Anthony Browne raises the problem of centralised editorial control, which is important - the BBC's size would be less of an issue if it didn't have a single editorial line across the whole organisation.

Why the BBC keeps getting it wrong | The Spectator

Interesting article, @SionnachRuadh- thank you.

Cath Deng has done a great interview with the times this morning.

She mentions an update last week from Turness on trans rights before she resigned at the weekend.

However, she unexpectedly received an email from Turness last week informing her: “I am happy to assure you that we fully agree that biological sex is real and that is reflected in our editorial approach.”

https://www.thetimes.com/article/256ff6c3-cbea-4416-b4e5-fa4fc8aa9e26?shareToken=426ffa04283d20b2358c26bf1f6e0ee2

thanks to @shinyhappytits for share token

Woman’s Hour mentioned the resignations at the top of the show today - and asked for listeners’ opinions!

Unless I missed it they did not return to the subject today so may revisit in the week. In case anyone thinks it worthwhile making a contribution…

I live in the Republic of Ireland which has always used PR. Like yourself I am totally opposed to any " closed list ' system. They sound very opaque and a recipe for corruption. We have multi member constituencies. Members are elected by a single Transferable Vote. It is very simple and proportionate. The Senedd should avoid this banana skin at all costs.

It sounds like Nick knows an awful lot about all of this

https://x.com/nickwallis/status/1987857528064024777?s=46&t=A2fpFNgDRyXF2d6ye97wEA

but outgoing CEO of News Deborah Turness has said this morning the organisation "is not institutionally biased".

What a surprise. This is yet another example of the BBC just denying and dismissing any criticism.

The "not institutionally biased" line is also present in the apology given by the Chairman to the Culture, Media, and Sports select committee and is being backed by No.10.

I think the BBC needs a Come To Jesus moment, but for that to happen, there has to be a critical mass of people who recognise there's a problem.

Tim Davie was appointed by Boris Johnson. This was 2020 vintage Boris Johnson, while Dominic Cummings was still in No10 and before Boris surrendered to the Blob. Part of Tim's remit was to reduce the bias. That proved to be impossible. Any time there was a move to reduce the bias, the newsroom went apeshit, so the path of least resistance was to let things carry on as they were.

They were discussing this on the Today programme with former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger, which kind of illustrates the problem. Rusbridger is not the ideal person to have on here, partly because he will reliably say the BBC doesn't have a serious bias problem, partly because of the revolving door of staff between the BBC and the Guardian, and partly because, when it comes to journalistic standards, Rusbridger was the editor who allowed Roy Greenslade to smear a rape survivor to do a favour for Greenslade's pals in Sinn Fein.

An organisation that thinks it needs to hear the wisdom of Alan Rusbridger at this moment is an organisation that doesn't want to reform.

outgoing CEO of News Deborah Turness has said this morning the organisation "is not institutionally biased".

and is therefore delusional and identifying as a river in Egypt.

Worth listening to World at 1 on radio 4; there’s a lot more about the trans and Gaza bias. Trump seems to be “mistake” but wasn’t sorted out quickly enough.

the rest of the issues Prescott raised are clear bias

someone interviewed is claiming they’ve taken action on the latter

According to Katie Razzle (BBC media correspondent) on News At One, the problem is news wasn’t allowed to respond to the Trump claims (although they wanted to!) and it’s all been bundled together. No bias really! Nothing to see here.

Yes she’s pissing me off; talk about spin

Oh and apparently “sources” are saying the problem is the Board playing politics and the BBC is impartial. 🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄

I imagine the Beeb knows the British public doesn’t like Trump so make it a “mistake” about coverage of him.

THey desperately want ti to be about the Trump video

as then the anti women stuff can carry on

The stuff about the Board is also mostly a smokescreen.

Robbie Gibb is not to everyone's taste, and that's fine, but he worked as a journalist at the BBC for many years, including on Newsnight which was not known at the time for any particular right wing bias. He's entirely qualified to be on the Board, unless you think he should be disqualified because he's not left wing.

There's been moaning for several years from BBC insiders (hello Emily Maitlis; you know him and should know better) that Gibb exercises some kind of reign of terror enforcing pro-Tory bias in BBC News. If so, he's doing a really bad job at it.

The reason Gibb is a lightning rod is because there are lots of people at the BBC who don't believe there should be anyone on the Board who asks difficult questions. That is how you got into this mess you absolute muppets.

but outgoing CEO of News Deborah Turness has said this morning the organisation "is not institutionally biased".

Someone needs to ask her how many trans identified people are employed by the BBC.

I think the fundamental problem is that the BBC thinks the GC stance is immoral. The Beeb needs to take its fingers out of its ears, do some research on the trans/women’s rights issue, talk to BOTH sides (not just drag queens, Stonewall and its successors) and apply critical reasoning skills. Act as journalists not activists basically.

Oh and stop routing its relevant stories through the LGBT desk/Ministry of GI Truth.