Tim Davie resigns as Director-General of the BBC

Benedict XVI

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123989729#Comment_123989729

But it adds a tanker load of fuel to the conspiracy fire that is "the mainstream media are lying to us".

That's the problem here.

Forget about who in the BBC did it, the fact is is the BBC did it.

brickster69

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123989729#Comment_123989729

Newsnight is broadcast live and all of the program is done in house. So you can argue someone else produced it in that instance but not the other one.

The guest on newsnight actually pointed out live that the clip was edited yet they did nothing about it. If they never did the same thing again, then did nothing again when officially warned, probably no one would of uncovered it and dug further.

Not impossible it was a coincidence, but very hard to actually defend them. Telegraph did a great job and should be applauded for actually doing what a journalist should do.

Regardless of anyone's position on Trump, he is the victim of this fiasco. It could of been anyone, still the same.

magicbastarder

i'll say it again - if this is the worst the BBC could manage - supposedly deliberately, based on institutional bias against trump, i'm amazed.

they manage to create a misleading edit in a speech which didn't actually change the tone or intent of the speech. this is 4D chess; their bias against trump is so pernicious and subtle it took months for someone to notice not a lot at all.

media organisations issue corrections and apologise for mistakes all the time; the issue here is that the BBC is being held to an impossible standard that none of the people or institutions who are holding their feet to the fire on it, would feel comes close to applying to themselves.

eightieschewbaccy

Referring to Trump as a victim is genuinely hilarious tbh.

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123989753#Comment_123989753

Not at all. This will all have been forgotten about in a week or so.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123989755#Comment_123989755

Which was already ablaze. People who believe in conspiracy theories have no regard for facts. Nothing has changed in that regard.

What fact? All I see is a mistake which turned Trump's speech into what it actually was. He did incite a coup.

Tell me how

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123989755#Comment_123989755

I agree the BBC did it, I don't agree that it was significant enough to warrant the resignations it has done or to fuel the narrative that the media is lying to us.

I think the resignations are fueling that narrative more than the act itself. They paint a picture of it having been a severe and impactful event, it was neither.

CPTM

What's strange to me is this didn't blow up immediately at the time. It's almost like it was uncovered or something. Surely it would have been easy to highlight by the pro-trumpers at the time?

Tell me how

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123989849#Comment_123989849

Because they knew that it didn't really show Trump in a different light to how everyone was seeing him anyway. The Telegraph reporting on it now was done with the knowledge that Trump has been suing anyone who he can accuse of showing a bias against him.

The UK media, outside of the BBC is eternally jealous of the funding that organisation has in the TV license. This was an opportunity for them to sic a dog on them.

Quantum Erasure

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123989729#Comment_123989729

to suggest the organization was doing this would imply it was a deliberate known strategy of a significant group of people.

Good article here on how the BBC moved from factual reporting to more a 'narrative' based model, (back when baby boomers started getting into positions of power in the 90s)

It concludes:

...As a consequence of these developments, modern BBC journalism now suffers from two major defects. The first of these is the reliance on narrative. Once it has worked out which causes it thinks are good and which are bad, these moral narratives quickly become unchallengeable articles of faith to which group members must adhere. In the context of a newsroom, this makes journalists tribal. They will adopt the same worldview, journalistic groupthink will dominate, and journalism will start to feel like a quasi-religious calling. Questioning the core beliefs of the group will not be permitted.

The BBC’s second major defect is that the need to protect the narrative pushes truth-telling into second place. The implications of this shift are profound. The idea that it is acceptable to mislead people if your motive is pure is called pro-social lying and it is well-understood by cognitive psychologists. In modern journalism, pro-social lying means using journalism to influence and persuade audiences to behave in ways that are deemed ethically correct.

In practice, this is indistinguishable from propaganda, and it turns journalists into de facto media activists. In this one-sided journalistic culture, impartiality is dismissed by celebrity journalists as “both-sides-ism.” The result is a journalism of deception

https://quillette.com/2025/11/14/a-journalism-of-deception-bbc-deborah-turness-tim-davie/

volchitsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123989849#Comment_123989849

But it also happened on Newsnight, and WAS called out by someone on the show, and what happened? Nothing.

And also, Prescott didn’t apparently know about the Newsnight incident. That came back up only because of the talk about the Prescott report. So it seems more like this sort of thing was happening all the time and nobody at the BBC cared. Including when called out on it - because the narrative was all about “evil Trump” and the BBC, in particular, had so much credibility (much of it self-attributed TBF) that anything that made him look even worse was seen as a virtuous act. Even doctoring a video.

Tell me how

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123989865#Comment_123989865

I've wondered a lot over the last couple of years as to how a narrative propagates through an organisation. We got some sort of an insight in to this with the release of texts from Fox News screen personnel and management after the 2020 election but ordinarily I think people wouldn't document the fact that they want the organisation to push a particular narrative. Although maybe Fox isn't a great example in this respect given it claims itself that it is an entertainment outlet more than a news one.

In many cases, such as with newspapers, they wear their bias on their sleeve (though not calling it as such) and so they hire wanting their employees to speak from a particular viewpoint. The BBC of course cannot be perceived as behaving in this way given its public funding.

With respect to the article you posted.

Once it has worked out which causes it thinks are good and which are bad, these moral narratives quickly become unchallengeable articles of faith to which group members must adhere.

Is this describing the occurrence of group think which might develop within an organisation over time, or is it describing a more formal process of selecting an opinion and then rolling it out. I can understand the former happening giving human nature but also it should be something every news organisation, and individual is on the look out for. But if it was the latter I feel we would hear more examples of it happening from the opposing voices which inevitably will exist.

I feel what is likely to happen is that a narrative develops based on editorial and managerial direction. The BBC's reporting on Gaza is one that has attracted a lot of detractors as to how they have seemingly been hesitant to point the finger at Israel for its actions. And if that is the case, then it is certainly hard to argue that it is as an outcome of adopting a good moral position. I've long wondered how was it communicated to BBC staff to report in a consistent manner and have felt that there had to have been editorial/managerial input for that to have occurred.

Does this mean it is biased or a stringent adherence to objectivity, only the individuals involved know for sure.

There are some who would say that if an organisation is being accused of being biased from both sides of a topic, then that must surely indicate that they are unbiased. That I feel is both wishful thinking and also somewhat true. I feel the organisation may be unbiased, but that there can still be cases of individuals pushing a biased narrative within that organisation and that in the instance where 2 opposing biases are perceived, it neither convicts or absolves the organisation from accusations of bias.

Hamsterchops

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123989849#Comment_123989849

Apparently it all kicked off after the Trump splice was highlighted by the release of the Prescott memo, then Martine Croxall was reprimanded, which only added fuel to the fire, leading to what someone described as being like open warfare in the newsroom. Trump is just the tip of the iceberg of issues at the Beeb.

brickster69

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123989880#Comment_123989880

I wonder when BBC verify are going to do a show on it ?

volchitsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123989836#Comment_123989836

Yet again: Trump making it all about himself does not mean that the resignations were because of Trump. They were because of the Prescott report, of which Trump took up fewer than two pages out of 19.

Basically the BBC has been accused of having an ideological bias on a number of issues, which, given that they are funded by the taxpayer to provide an objective coverage is a massive issue.

The irony is that their political allies such as Alastair Campbell (he of the dodgy dossier that led to literally thousands of deaths), immediately began making this out to be a shadowy rightwing conspiracy, so that even after Tory party member Tim Davies resigned, they began looking for the head of one of the few other openly rightwing public figures at the top of the organisation (namely Robbie Gibbs). That’s why they too want it to be about Trump, and not about women’s rights for instance.

IOW the reaction to evidence of political bias at the BBC is to root out the few who might have an opposing opinion. So it’s not surprising to hear genuinely far right people like Tommy Robinson (or indeed Trump) express scepticism about the BBC’s ability to become less biased? It seems more like doubling down from the guilty parties and those who benefited from that bias.

volchitsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123989905#Comment_123989905

Marianna Spring is probably too busy re editing her embellished CV to have the time.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/bbc-disinformation-correspondent-accused-of-lying-on-her-cv/

That information was known a year ago. Nobody (important) cared about it at the time.

Given that she was presenting herself as a scrupulous seeker after truth, it’s kind of obvious now that only certain kinds of truth were ever going to be worthy of BBC Verify’s eagle eye.

plodder

So, what is the evidence against Trump? I found the page below written by some kind of fact checking organisation.

Probably the most damning point in it is the fact that most of the rioters believed themselves they were incited by Trump.

So, what did Trump say to create that belief?

On Dec 20 he tweeted “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!” which was certainly highly irresponsible, but is it incitement?

Interestingly, the second and more damning thing quoted in the page is the exact same quote that the BBC faked.

.. by his direct appeals to the crowd at his Stop the Steal rally on the morning of January 6th. During that speech, Trump went off script to tell the massive crowd, many of whom he knew were armed and prepared for violence, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol” to “fight like hell.”

The two statements are quoted separately, rather than slickly joined as the BBC did, but you certainly wouldn't know how much work the word "to" is doing given the two statements were made over 30 minutes apart.

That seems to be it. While no reasonable person would say Donald Trump doesn't bear enormous responsibility for what happened on Jan 6th, the fact that the direct evidence which might have reached a legal justification for incitement had to be faked, is telling.

As is the fact that a few posters here seem to be not too bothered that it was faked.

https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/crew-reports/trump-incited-january-6-defendants/

volchitsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123989771#Comment_123989771

From the Scotsman:

Why BBC owes a bigger apology to women like JK Rowling than to Donald Trump

And, of course, women are now being blamed for the failure to hold the BBC to account: concerning Jenni Murray, the main presenter at BBC Woman’s Hour who left the programme in 2020 after 33 years because she’d been given an official warning and banned from discussing trans issues on air when she said that men who undergo sex-change operations are still not real women, some of the most senior journalists are still trying to say it was her own fault really:

the former political editor of the Guardian, Michael White, (…) employed the infamous reverse blame tactic favoured by men across the generations when he inferred that Dame Jenni Murray was partly responsible for the BBC’s one-sided handling of the gender debate. “… why didn’t famous Murray make a stink about her trans ‘cancel’ row at the time? Could have made a difference,” he wrote.

Of course if she’d been more vocal about it, she’d have got the rape and death threats that JK Rowling got, and she’d have been blamed for that too. And she certainly wouldn’t have got her job back.

plodder

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123990073#Comment_123990073

That is shocking and is way worse than the Trump spat.

Ash.J.Williams

I just watched videos of Trump felating a microphone and discussing golfers walking out of a locker room saying wow have you seen Arnold Palmers penis. Its magnificent...

So why on earth does a massive media organisation have to edit anything 😀😀

brickster69

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123990073#Comment_123990073

This was a good one back in the day with a biologist and world renowned expert on fertility. He has never been on the channel after it was aired.

https://twitter.com/treesey/status/1987573972930830639

volchitsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123990196#Comment_123990196

Well exactly. As you say, Lord Winston has not been back on the BBC since, for the crime of knowing as a biologist that humans are mammals and come in the same two varieties, male and female, same as all mammals.

But hey let’s make it all about a thin-skinned egotist. Because that makes people more sympathetic to the BBC. Add in a smidgeon of “Rightwing conspiracy theory” and we’ll all be back to “The BBC is the best, most objective media institution in the world and only evil far rightists could possibly have any doubts about them” before you know it.

Sudden Valley

BBC at its best is better than most of the media in the UK who are shamefully biased one way or the other, with most being right wing. I think it will take a few years for its reputation to be restored.

brickster69

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123990386#Comment_123990386

Who exactly is right wing in the UK media as you say ? Besides, what if they were right wing, is that not allowed or something ?

Sudden Valley

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123990420#Comment_123990420

I would say ita a bad thing that one side is more represented than the other. You dont know who is right wing im the UK? I would say daily express, mail, sun, talk tv, gbnews, the spectator with the Sunday times being centre right. I think most of these publications pushed for Brexit and really drowned out the Remain side.

Tell me how

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123990420#Comment_123990420

The Daily Mail, The Telegraph, The Spectator, GBNews, TalkTV, The Express, The Sun.

I would say all these outlets have a clear right-wing wing philosophy emanating from their ownership.

Sudden Valley

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123990462#Comment_123990462

The UK has a free press but it is owned by billionaires who push their agenda and control the narrative. They will love that the BBC has damaged itself this way.