Bbc

In the last decade or so, a sinister group of individuals from a range of organisations have spent their energies trying to rein in the free press. Specifically they try to stop the reporting of stories that might portray any follower of Islam in a negative light. So, for instance, when someone goes full ‘Allahu Akbar’ during an attack, the press is likely to report the fact and conclude that the attacker might have been inspired by a certain religion. At which point the army of anti-media mujahideen get to work to complain to Ofcom, Ipso and whatever other regulators they can find. In time, their work has an effect.

Climate change is once again dominating the news agenda. A report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that even if emissions are cut rapidly, the effects of global warming will be felt across the world. The report – which Boris Johnson has declared sobering reading – leads the news today, with the BBC dedicating seven stories on its homepage today to climate change. So just as well then that BBC staffers were recently treated to an internal audience research briefing telling them how best to convey messages about climate change to different audiences. The briefing – which one insider described as being more reminiscent of ‘a campaigning organisation’ – identifies seven different groups

Anyone who thinks Boris Johnson lacks statecraft should pay attention to Dominic Cummings’s attacks on him. They often to seem to show the opposite of what Dom intends. Cummings now reveals that, in January 2020, he and his allies were saying: ‘By the summer, either we’ll all have gone from here or we’ll be in the process of trying to get rid of [Johnson] and get someone else in as prime minister.’ In fact, neither happened. By November, however, Cummings was (to use Mr Pooter’s joke) going; Boris stayed. The winner of the then still recent landslide election victory presumably discovered his adviser’s seditious conversations and, reasonably, did not like

British TV viewers have never had so many channels to watch, yet they’ve also never had so little choice. The Brexit referendum exposed this lack of political diversity all too clearly. As a panellist on Radio 4’s The Moral Maze for 20 years, I suppose I was something of a BBC luvvie. No doubt I was still seen as a bit of a maverick by some, but I was accepted on the media scene. However, when I casually mentioned back in 2016 that I was going to vote Leave, things changed.  ‘But you’re an intelligent, well-educated person, Claire’, said one senior producer. From that moment on, in studios and green rooms, I was

Tala Halawa, the BBC journalist who was found to have tweeted ‘Hitler was right’, is out at the Corporation. Almost three weeks ago, Steerpike highlighted how media watchdog organisation Honest Reporting and others had uncovered a string of tweets posted on Halawa’s Twitter account from 2014. These included pronouncing that ‘Israel is more Nazi than Hitler’ and ‘Hitler was right’. Halawa had also declared ‘ur media is controlled by ur zionist government’ and tweeted a graphic of a child being burned on a menorah, the Jewish ritual candelabrum. On Facebook, she shared the same meme that got Naz Shah suspended as a Labour MP in 2016, a graphic proposing the ‘transportation’ of

The BBC is still investigating one of its journalists almost one week after it emerged she had tweeted ‘Hitler was right’. Tala Halawa, who is based in the West Bank city of Ramallah, is the ‘Palestine specialist’ for BBC Monitoring and was part of the reporting team which covered the recent fighting between Israel and Hamas and the reactions to the conflict. As The Spectator reported last Sunday, watchdog group Honest Reporting and a number of British Jews who campaign against antisemitism uncovered a series of tweets and Facebook posts from Halawa. These included assertions such as ‘Israel is more Nazi than Hitler’ and ‘Hitler was right’, as well as

It has been a bruising afternoon for the BBC in the House of Commons. An urgent question was granted on the findings of the Dyson report into the Martin Bashir affair and the subsequent cover up of how Panorama obtained its Princess Diana interview in 1995. Tory MP after Tory MP has queued up to lambast the Beeb for its failings. Memorable moments included John Redwood asking, ‘How can someone who supports Brexit, believes in the Union and loves England be persuaded that the BBC’s views of public service broadcasting in future be fair to their views?’ and Iain Duncan Smith calling for BBC bosses and Bashir to be referred to the