Bbc

Dame Janet Smith’s draft report into Jimmy Savile’s sexual abuse at the BBC has leaked to ExaroNews, and her words are pretty explosive. She condemns the BBC’s ‘above the law’ managers and ‘untouchable stars’ she says. Girls at Top of the Pops were exposed to moral danger. But, perhaps most worryingly, she finds that the culture of fear persists today. In this vast bureaucracy, employees are still afraid to speak up against wrongdoing. She says:  ‘It is still clear from the evidence that there is still a widespread reluctance to complain about anything or even for it to be known that one has complained to a third party. I found that employee witnesses who were about to say

We’re closing 2015 by republishing our ten most-read articles of the year. Here’s No10: Douglas Murray’s piece about Islam and violence, first written in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks but read most (and shared most widely) after the Bataclan atrocity.  The West’s movement towards the truth is remarkably slow. We drag ourselves towards it painfully, inch by inch, after each bloody Islamist assault. In France, Britain, Germany, America and nearly every other country in the world it remains government policy to say that any and all attacks carried out in the name of Mohammed have ‘nothing to do with Islam’. It was said by George W. Bush after 9/11, Tony

If you saw the BBC Ten O’Clock News last night you will have witnessed Nick Bryant’s dispassionate, even-handed treatment of Republican candidate Donald Trump. Trump had called for an end to Muslim immigration into the United States. Bryant’s face was puffed up with outrage; he almost spat out the words of the story and ended by saying that ‘this is the gutter’. https://soundcloud.com/spectator1828/nick-bryant-discusses-donald-trumps-comments-about-muslims-on-bbc-ten-oclock-news It does not matter how often they are told, it does not matter how many complaints they receive: the BBC continues to pursue its own political agenda at every possible opportunity. If it addressed this problem it might find that fewer people wished to see the licence

The BBC’s spin doctors will be broadly happy at the coverage Alan Yentob’s ‘resignation’ as BBC Creative Director has generated, but licence fee payers should not be so pleased. For, on closer inspection, the whole thing is a gigantic swizz. Yentob may have relinquished his £183,000 salary, and his executive status, but it is now obvious that he will remain a very well paid fixture at the BBC for some time yet – and an even less accountable one. Firstly, it is important to note that as the Daily Telegraph reported today, by standing down from this job, Yentob escaped an internal BBC inquiry into allegations that he interfered with BBC News’s