Twenty-five years ago, the Holocaust denier David Irving lost a famous libel trial against Deborah Lipstadt, who he sued for libel because she had called him a Holocaust denier.
"Remember that Michael Prescott, the author of this report, was appointed by the BBC as an independent adviser to assist with oversight of its editorial output. He, in turn, relied on reports written by an experienced BBC journalist, David Grossman. Neither of them have a political agenda or an axe to grind: this is not a hatchet-job cobbled together by external enemies of the BBC. And just to be clear, I don’t have an anti-BBC agenda either. The BBC has serious failings in this area, but it has brilliant qualities in others, and remains a unique, trusted media brand. I wouldn’t support the end of public funding for the BBC, and I also think other media organisations get away with the same, or worse, failings, without attracting anything like the same degree of criticism. We would be worse off without it."
One thing to keep in mind about the BBC, is that beyond audiences that watch or listen to its channels around the world, it also significantly influences journalism/current affairs programming and arts & culture programming, elsewhere, especially in the Anglosphere. After being a CBC radio listener for 50 years, in August of this year, I could finally no longer stomach coverage of the Gaza war even for monitoring purposes. I hope that the Prescott Report proves helpful to initiatives here in Canada to hold the CBC to account for its similarly abysmal coverage of the Gaza war, Israel and other topics highlighted by Prescott.
In fact, it was Glassman who spotted the splicing together of the two pieces of Trump film after not one but two BBC editors had missed it - he did his job when the BBC didn't/didn't want to. Do try and keep up.
As for your naive butt hurt about Gibb's former work for the Tory Party (your comically inept suggestion being that this in some way makes him unfit for his/any role at the BBC, “because Tories”) - you remain silent (or more probably ignorant) of the long list of Labour Party donors, MPs, peers, Party advisors and aparatchiks who've held an array of executive roles on the BBC board and in editorial advisory roles at the corporation, you comically inept transparenly partisan hack:
Greg Dyke, Labour donor, appointed DG under a Labour govt;
James Purnell, Lab cabinet minister became senior BBC exec;
Gavyn Davies, Lab donor, became chair of BBC Governors;
Michael Lyons, fomer Lab exec, became chair of BBC Trust;
Caroline Thomson, current Board member, married to a Labour peer
Or is there something else specifically about Gibb's CV you don't like?
Other media outlets aren't criticised as much as the BBC because they aren't public-funded. If you don't like The Guardian's coverage, you don't have to buy it. If you don't use BBC news in any of it's manifestations, but you own a TV, you still have to pay for it (we got rid of our TV to avoid funding blood libels. There's never anything on anyway).
We do criticize NPR here in the US for very much the same biased, cavalier of antisemitism, deeply hostile to Israel ‘coverage’ by a political monoculture of far-leftists in the Free Palestine cult and their cowardly ‘progressive’ enablers. There’s a similar partisan bias against conservatives in a media organization that exists in large part thanks to substantial taxpayer funding.
An error, mistake call it whatever is not an act done on purpose. That is the difference between a mistake and something which is done intentionally, simple! The BBC intentionally doctored the Donald Trump speeches, not to mention the biased Gaza reporting, therefore there was no error or mistake in doing so. Play around with words all you want you lefty politicians, journalists and defenders of the BBC but there was no error or mistake!
Indeed, the despicable Gaza reporting in particular has been grindingly frustrating and depressing. I meet people all the time who without question believe the "Trusted BBC" and clearly consider me to be a stereotypically paranoid Jew if I gainsay it.
If you are Jewish my sympathies are with you, all Jews & Israelis. I worked, as a young boy, for a holocaust survivor. I remember her with fondness and she will forever remain in my heart. I learned a lot from that dear lady. I am now in my mid 70s👍
I wonder what you make of the other main charges against the BBC: that it has been too subservient to trans ideology and that it misrepresented Trump's Jan 6 speech. I think there is some truth to the former accusation. As for the latter, it seems strictly speaking correct. But it is also correct that Trump tried to overthrow the result of the 2020 election. As Ian Dunt says:
"He spent months inventing conspiracy theories about the electoral results and then spread them through social media and supportive journalists. He attempted to coerce the vice president to fraudulently alter the election election results at the January 6th certification proceeding. He organised a mass demonstration of supporters, fired up by months of extremist conspiracy theory rhetoric and set them loose."
Trump's British fans have seized upon one flaw in one BBC programme as a way to distract attention from all this. Probably most of these fans are also endorsing complaints about antisemitism in the BBC. It doesn't follow that they are reliable allies of Jews. Antisemitism is not exactly unheard of on the right. I hope not many Jews will see them as reliable allies.
Do you find Panorama’s editing of Izzy Lenga‘s interview to give the false impression that the daily antisemitic abuse she received as a student occurred when she was a
Conservatives are far more reliable allies of Jews than progressives. That’s been proven fully in the last two years. While the far-left and far-right are both deeply antisemitic garbage, on the left this violent, genocidal antisemitism is heavily supported by progressives who swallow it, repeat it and amplify it. There’s nothing equivalent on the right. Simply put in sheer numbers, thanks to the useful idiot status of progressives for the far-left and Islamists, the number of antisemitic sociopaths on the left is far greater. The same institutional bias toward antisemitic far-leftists in the BBC also exists in the CBC in Canada, ABC in Australia, and NPR in the US. Legacy media organizations such as NYT, WaPo, LA Times, Sky News, CNN, MSNBC are infested with the Free Palestine cult, with support rather than resistance by cowardly progressives in those same biased organizations. Coverage in all of those has been heavily slanted toward Hamas propaganda, subsequently swallowed whole by their dimwitted progressive audience.
Though it's a propaganda technique used by the Nazis and Soviets alike, repeating a lie such as "genocide" doesn't make it real. It's also a fact that progressives are the people engaged the most with antisemitic professional and social discrimination, support for the "free speech" of genocidal Hamas supporters (Khalil Mahmoud and other Hamas fans beloved by progressives), embracing a nepobaby with a $28 million trust fund as mayor of NYC because he prioritizes "Palestine" over poverty. That NYC DSA Mamadani is a member of declared Elias Rodriguez a "political prisoner" - remind us who that is? Progressives support domestic terrorism against diaspora Jews.
Sure, there are sacks of shit like Cucker Qatarlson bough and sold with the same Qatari petrodollars as most of the equivalent leftist shits, but those are the edges. Progressives are the only (allegedly) non-radical group embracing virulent antisemitism.
I consider myself a progressive and as a woman well into her seventh decade I support trans people. They are a tiny minority within a tiny minority and far more likely to be beaten up by violent men than even women like me. I loath Hamas, I have always supported the state of Israel to exist though I am very much at odds with Netanyahu et al. Talking about right and left wing is lazy and way too simplistic. The far right and far left meet in the middle with their hatred of Jewish people and of Israel. I am talking about followers of the far right and far left.
repeeating a lie doens't make it real. Killing tens of thousands of civilians is what makes the accusations of genocide real as well as commiting war crimes, I'm old enough to remember all of two years ago when israeli army spokespeiople claimed that saying Israel attacked hospitals was an antisemitic calumny. Now they glory in it. No doubt you do too.
Another point of view on the BBC failures to report on Gaza - where Israeli forces didn’t let independent journalists in (and imposes huge reporting restrictions on all journalists)
This view is not the one favoured by Hanover Communications or Dr Rich / the CST but is still valid - and shows the notion that Dr Rich’s contention that “everything points in one direction” is an opinion not a fact https://www.equator.org/articles/inside-the-bbc-s-gaza-fiasco
David Aaronovitch analyses the „impartiality“ of Michael Prescott in some detail here. https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/the-prescott-memo-flunks-the-impartiality-test It’s disappointing that Dr Rich ignores much of this evidence- I presume because Prescott is critical of BBC reporting of Gaza for not being sufficiently pro Israeli - a similar position to that taken by Dr Rich
One would have thought Dave Rich would be profoundly grateful for the major role the BBC played in the antisemitism smear against Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party, including the most grotesquely fabricated documentary I've seen on British TV, the Panorama, Is Labour 'antisemitic'.
Then there's the terrible complicity of the BBC and other media in the Gaza genocide, as detailed by principled journalists such as Peter Oborne.
Is Dave happy? No of course not. There's always more lobbying to be done.
Thanks. It's the same line that he took on The News Agents. I'm afraid that he is badly wrong to dismiss the Panorama edit as a "minor editing mishap" and a "mistake". The whole problem is that it was not a mistake, it was done knowingly and deliberately. Samir Shah makes that clear in his response to the Culture, Media & Sport Committee. The fact that Goodall, and others, don't seem to see the problem with manufacturing a fake quote and putting it in the mouth of the US President just shows how far ethics and standards have fallen, or how willing people are to defend the indefensible if they have a political purpose for doing so.
Hi Danny, the genocide allegation is very much disputed. The UK government rejects it, for example. In fact one of the examples the Prescott Report gives involves the BBC misreporting the ICJ’s ruling on the matter.
The UK Government's denial of genocide is historical and geopolitical, rather than truthful, IMO.
Can I ask whether you consider genocide to have been committed anywhere since the end of the second world war? If so, where?
Also, the Labour Party has been found to be systemically Islamophobic. As far as I know, it never received a clean bill of health on that front.
I lost relatives in the Holocaust, but I think we need to recognise atrocities committed by Israel if Never Again is to mean anything in the future. And we need to name genocide whenever and wherever it is committed.
This post is along the lines Prescott argues. Prescott quoted selectively and accused the BBC for quoting selectively. The words the Republican candidate in the US election campaign said about Liz Cheney are quoted selectively by Prescott. He cuts off the end of the remarks. To cut off the end of the remarks has an effect that the quote comes across as an argument while the cut-off end is a threat. To try to shift blame towards the BBC looks to me like trying to shoot the messenger BBC over the mess that condonement of violence in the US is causing.
"One, ex-Sunday Times political editor turned lobbyist Michael Prescott, had worked at PR firm Hanover alongside a former Tory press officer and right-wing hacks. While at the BBC, Prescott raised internal concerns about editorial standards - but after leaving this summer, he went to his old media contacts with a list of the BBC’s failings."
do you think you should revisit this part of your piece Dave Rich "Remember that Michael Prescott, the author of this report, was appointed by the BBC as an independent adviser to assist with oversight of its editorial output. He, in turn, relied on reports written by an experienced BBC journalist, David Grossman. Neither of them have a political agenda or an axe to grind: this is not a hatchet-job cobbled together by external enemies of the BBC."
For full disclousre does the CST have dealings with Hanover, the PR agency where Michael Prescott works?
"Remember that Michael Prescott, the author of this report, was appointed by the BBC as an independent adviser to assist with oversight of its editorial output. He, in turn, relied on reports written by an experienced BBC journalist, David Grossman. Neither of them have a political agenda or an axe to grind: this is not a hatchet-job cobbled together by external enemies of the BBC. And just to be clear, I don’t have an anti-BBC agenda either. The BBC has serious failings in this area, but it has brilliant qualities in others, and remains a unique, trusted media brand. I wouldn’t support the end of public funding for the BBC, and I also think other media organisations get away with the same, or worse, failings, without attracting anything like the same degree of criticism. We would be worse off without it."
One thing to keep in mind about the BBC, is that beyond audiences that watch or listen to its channels around the world, it also significantly influences journalism/current affairs programming and arts & culture programming, elsewhere, especially in the Anglosphere. After being a CBC radio listener for 50 years, in August of this year, I could finally no longer stomach coverage of the Gaza war even for monitoring purposes. I hope that the Prescott Report proves helpful to initiatives here in Canada to hold the CBC to account for its similarly abysmal coverage of the Gaza war, Israel and other topics highlighted by Prescott.
Yes Murtdoch's poltical editor wouldn't have an axe to grind about the BBC. Rupert Murdoch has always wished the BBC well
Oddly enough the BBC officials who sought out Prescott to serve on the oversight committee and file a report never spotted that coming. (sarc)
Lewis Goodall has some interesting thigns to say about what he considered ideological harrassment by David Grossman when he worked at the BBC,
How kind of Dave Rich to share their allegations uncritically. He seems to have lost his research skills
In fact, it was Glassman who spotted the splicing together of the two pieces of Trump film after not one but two BBC editors had missed it - he did his job when the BBC didn't/didn't want to. Do try and keep up.
As for your naive butt hurt about Gibb's former work for the Tory Party (your comically inept suggestion being that this in some way makes him unfit for his/any role at the BBC, “because Tories”) - you remain silent (or more probably ignorant) of the long list of Labour Party donors, MPs, peers, Party advisors and aparatchiks who've held an array of executive roles on the BBC board and in editorial advisory roles at the corporation, you comically inept transparenly partisan hack:
Greg Dyke, Labour donor, appointed DG under a Labour govt;
James Purnell, Lab cabinet minister became senior BBC exec;
Gavyn Davies, Lab donor, became chair of BBC Governors;
Michael Lyons, fomer Lab exec, became chair of BBC Trust;
Caroline Thomson, current Board member, married to a Labour peer
Or is there something else specifically about Gibb's CV you don't like?
*Grossman, not Glassman.
Why, because he disagrees with (and illustrates why) fringe-dwellers like Goodall? Get a grip.
By “A fringe dweller” you mean someone who doesn’t agree with your own far right position
Thanks for illustrating my point.
Other media outlets aren't criticised as much as the BBC because they aren't public-funded. If you don't like The Guardian's coverage, you don't have to buy it. If you don't use BBC news in any of it's manifestations, but you own a TV, you still have to pay for it (we got rid of our TV to avoid funding blood libels. There's never anything on anyway).
We do criticize NPR here in the US for very much the same biased, cavalier of antisemitism, deeply hostile to Israel ‘coverage’ by a political monoculture of far-leftists in the Free Palestine cult and their cowardly ‘progressive’ enablers. There’s a similar partisan bias against conservatives in a media organization that exists in large part thanks to substantial taxpayer funding.
An error, mistake call it whatever is not an act done on purpose. That is the difference between a mistake and something which is done intentionally, simple! The BBC intentionally doctored the Donald Trump speeches, not to mention the biased Gaza reporting, therefore there was no error or mistake in doing so. Play around with words all you want you lefty politicians, journalists and defenders of the BBC but there was no error or mistake!
Indeed, the despicable Gaza reporting in particular has been grindingly frustrating and depressing. I meet people all the time who without question believe the "Trusted BBC" and clearly consider me to be a stereotypically paranoid Jew if I gainsay it.
If you are Jewish my sympathies are with you, all Jews & Israelis. I worked, as a young boy, for a holocaust survivor. I remember her with fondness and she will forever remain in my heart. I learned a lot from that dear lady. I am now in my mid 70s👍
I am Jewish and thank you so much for your kind words!
No need to thank me, just stay safe and well🤗🤗
I wonder what you make of the other main charges against the BBC: that it has been too subservient to trans ideology and that it misrepresented Trump's Jan 6 speech. I think there is some truth to the former accusation. As for the latter, it seems strictly speaking correct. But it is also correct that Trump tried to overthrow the result of the 2020 election. As Ian Dunt says:
"He spent months inventing conspiracy theories about the electoral results and then spread them through social media and supportive journalists. He attempted to coerce the vice president to fraudulently alter the election election results at the January 6th certification proceeding. He organised a mass demonstration of supporters, fired up by months of extremist conspiracy theory rhetoric and set them loose."
https://open.substack.com/pub/iandunt/p/extra-edition-the-populist-assault?r=20gqnr&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Trump's British fans have seized upon one flaw in one BBC programme as a way to distract attention from all this. Probably most of these fans are also endorsing complaints about antisemitism in the BBC. It doesn't follow that they are reliable allies of Jews. Antisemitism is not exactly unheard of on the right. I hope not many Jews will see them as reliable allies.
The editing of Trump's speech is unforgiveable precisely because there is so much other evidence to make the same point about his incitement.
Do you find Panorama’s editing of Izzy Lenga‘s interview to give the false impression that the daily antisemitic abuse she received as a student occurred when she was a
Member of the Labour Party equally reprehensible?
Conservatives are far more reliable allies of Jews than progressives. That’s been proven fully in the last two years. While the far-left and far-right are both deeply antisemitic garbage, on the left this violent, genocidal antisemitism is heavily supported by progressives who swallow it, repeat it and amplify it. There’s nothing equivalent on the right. Simply put in sheer numbers, thanks to the useful idiot status of progressives for the far-left and Islamists, the number of antisemitic sociopaths on the left is far greater. The same institutional bias toward antisemitic far-leftists in the BBC also exists in the CBC in Canada, ABC in Australia, and NPR in the US. Legacy media organizations such as NYT, WaPo, LA Times, Sky News, CNN, MSNBC are infested with the Free Palestine cult, with support rather than resistance by cowardly progressives in those same biased organizations. Coverage in all of those has been heavily slanted toward Hamas propaganda, subsequently swallowed whole by their dimwitted progressive audience.
Your comment is tosh
I don’t know what “tosh” but assume it is a negative. ArrrBee is correct asfar as Canada is concerned he/she is-right on.
Though it's a propaganda technique used by the Nazis and Soviets alike, repeating a lie such as "genocide" doesn't make it real. It's also a fact that progressives are the people engaged the most with antisemitic professional and social discrimination, support for the "free speech" of genocidal Hamas supporters (Khalil Mahmoud and other Hamas fans beloved by progressives), embracing a nepobaby with a $28 million trust fund as mayor of NYC because he prioritizes "Palestine" over poverty. That NYC DSA Mamadani is a member of declared Elias Rodriguez a "political prisoner" - remind us who that is? Progressives support domestic terrorism against diaspora Jews.
Sure, there are sacks of shit like Cucker Qatarlson bough and sold with the same Qatari petrodollars as most of the equivalent leftist shits, but those are the edges. Progressives are the only (allegedly) non-radical group embracing virulent antisemitism.
I consider myself a progressive and as a woman well into her seventh decade I support trans people. They are a tiny minority within a tiny minority and far more likely to be beaten up by violent men than even women like me. I loath Hamas, I have always supported the state of Israel to exist though I am very much at odds with Netanyahu et al. Talking about right and left wing is lazy and way too simplistic. The far right and far left meet in the middle with their hatred of Jewish people and of Israel. I am talking about followers of the far right and far left.
repeeating a lie doens't make it real. Killing tens of thousands of civilians is what makes the accusations of genocide real as well as commiting war crimes, I'm old enough to remember all of two years ago when israeli army spokespeiople claimed that saying Israel attacked hospitals was an antisemitic calumny. Now they glory in it. No doubt you do too.
Another point of view on the BBC failures to report on Gaza - where Israeli forces didn’t let independent journalists in (and imposes huge reporting restrictions on all journalists)
This view is not the one favoured by Hanover Communications or Dr Rich / the CST but is still valid - and shows the notion that Dr Rich’s contention that “everything points in one direction” is an opinion not a fact https://www.equator.org/articles/inside-the-bbc-s-gaza-fiasco
David Aaronovitch analyses the „impartiality“ of Michael Prescott in some detail here. https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/the-prescott-memo-flunks-the-impartiality-test It’s disappointing that Dr Rich ignores much of this evidence- I presume because Prescott is critical of BBC reporting of Gaza for not being sufficiently pro Israeli - a similar position to that taken by Dr Rich
One would have thought Dave Rich would be profoundly grateful for the major role the BBC played in the antisemitism smear against Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party, including the most grotesquely fabricated documentary I've seen on British TV, the Panorama, Is Labour 'antisemitic'.
Then there's the terrible complicity of the BBC and other media in the Gaza genocide, as detailed by principled journalists such as Peter Oborne.
Is Dave happy? No of course not. There's always more lobbying to be done.
More on Gibb's mysterious role at the Jewish Chronicle https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/media/65839/who-really-funds-the-jewish-chronicle-why-its-troubling-that-we-dont-know
Hi Dave,
If you haven't read it already, I think you'll find this piece by Lewis Goodall insightful:
The truth about impartiality at the BBC
And the hysteria of the current "crisis"
https://goodallandgoodluck.substack.com/p/the-truth-about-impartiality-at-the?r=4i04j3&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true
Thanks. It's the same line that he took on The News Agents. I'm afraid that he is badly wrong to dismiss the Panorama edit as a "minor editing mishap" and a "mistake". The whole problem is that it was not a mistake, it was done knowingly and deliberately. Samir Shah makes that clear in his response to the Culture, Media & Sport Committee. The fact that Goodall, and others, don't seem to see the problem with manufacturing a fake quote and putting it in the mouth of the US President just shows how far ethics and standards have fallen, or how willing people are to defend the indefensible if they have a political purpose for doing so.
Hi Dave
I have to say that I'm surprised that the Prescott report found no examples of pro-Israel bias.
I see much more downplaying of Palestine humanity, than Israeli on the BBC news.
I recently heard a presenter challenge a guest who described Israel's actions in Gaza as genocide, saying that the genocide is disputed.
Which is odd, given that most reputable sources have been categorical in describing Israel's actions as genocidal.
Hi Danny, the genocide allegation is very much disputed. The UK government rejects it, for example. In fact one of the examples the Prescott Report gives involves the BBC misreporting the ICJ’s ruling on the matter.
Hi Dave
Thanks for replying.
The UK Government's denial of genocide is historical and geopolitical, rather than truthful, IMO.
Can I ask whether you consider genocide to have been committed anywhere since the end of the second world war? If so, where?
Also, the Labour Party has been found to be systemically Islamophobic. As far as I know, it never received a clean bill of health on that front.
I lost relatives in the Holocaust, but I think we need to recognise atrocities committed by Israel if Never Again is to mean anything in the future. And we need to name genocide whenever and wherever it is committed.
Sudan
Rwandan Tutsi
China's Uyghurs, ethinic cleansing
Both those are far more illustrative of true genocide.
Hi Dave
I have to say that I'm surprised that the Prescott report found no examples of pro-Israel bias.
I see much more downplaying of Palestine humanity, than Israeli on the BBC news.
I recently heard a presenter challenge a guest who described Israel's actions in Gaza as genocide, saying that the genocide is disputed.
Which is odd, given that most reputable sources have been categorical in describing Israel's actions as genocidal.
https://theleftlane2024.substack.com/p/the-craven-bbc-and-starmers-labour
The Guardian is much more dangerous, tbh.
There's a bit more to this than meets the eye:
'BBC bias? The Prescott memo falls well short of the standards of impartiality it demands'
Stephen Cushion
Professor, Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Culture, Cardiff University
https://theconversation.com/bbc-bias-the-prescott-memo-falls-well-short-of-the-standards-of-impartiality-it-demands-269576?utm_source=bluesky&utm_medium=bylineblueskybutton
This post is along the lines Prescott argues. Prescott quoted selectively and accused the BBC for quoting selectively. The words the Republican candidate in the US election campaign said about Liz Cheney are quoted selectively by Prescott. He cuts off the end of the remarks. To cut off the end of the remarks has an effect that the quote comes across as an argument while the cut-off end is a threat. To try to shift blame towards the BBC looks to me like trying to shoot the messenger BBC over the mess that condonement of violence in the US is causing.
From thr latest Private eye
"One, ex-Sunday Times political editor turned lobbyist Michael Prescott, had worked at PR firm Hanover alongside a former Tory press officer and right-wing hacks. While at the BBC, Prescott raised internal concerns about editorial standards - but after leaving this summer, he went to his old media contacts with a list of the BBC’s failings."
do you think you should revisit this part of your piece Dave Rich "Remember that Michael Prescott, the author of this report, was appointed by the BBC as an independent adviser to assist with oversight of its editorial output. He, in turn, relied on reports written by an experienced BBC journalist, David Grossman. Neither of them have a political agenda or an axe to grind: this is not a hatchet-job cobbled together by external enemies of the BBC."
For full disclousre does the CST have dealings with Hanover, the PR agency where Michael Prescott works?