BBC Complaints: The link you need!

Monday 26 April 2010

GOVING AS GOOD AS HE GETS

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B-BBC readers will be up on this story already (and there have been some excellents comments there about this already), but a few more things can be said.
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Today this morning decided that the biggest story of the day was some criticism of Conservative education policy made by a Conservative council leader, Paul Carter from Kent. As the programme began, John Humprhys read "The news headlines this morning. A Conservative council leader has said that Tory plans to allow parents in England to set up their own schools could damage state schools."
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As the newsreader read out the gist of the story I immediately spotted some misreporting: "Free schools, as they are known, would be established outside local authority control, using money that would have been allocated to the state sector." My understanding, based on a little reading on the subject and from watching an otherwise incredibly biased Newsnight report on the subject a couple of months ago, was that 'free schools' were state schools - albeit state schools outside local authority control. That's what the Conservatives have always said. That's what Michael Gove went on to repeat to John Humphrys.
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Gillian Hargreaves, the BBC's education(al establishment) correspondent, then reported, saying "this intervention is embarrassing." She emphasized that Mr Carter "isn't against choice in education but he thinks the funding of free schools could be unfair to councils because money will be diverted from local education authorities". She continued, "He's not alone in his unease. The head of Hampshire's children's services, who is also a Conservative, says local councils must have the chance to turn a school around rather than give parents and charities the immediate right to set up a new school."
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Gillian's full report can be read here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8640576.stm
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It details the concerns of both men at some length. Several things quickly become clear from reading the men's carefully filleted words (rather than merely attending to the BBC reporter's framing of them). Both men's concerns are nuanced, even in the excerpts we get (and, unsurprisingly, their support for the concept of free schools is skirted over very briefly in indirect quotation while their reservations are dwelt on across several paragraphs in direct quotation. (I wish we could hear the full interviews with both men). Also Cllr Carter is just as concerned about Labour's academies as he is about Conservative free schools. You wouldn't have got any sense of that from just listening to the Today programme.
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Then we here from that trusty stand-by in times of need - the unnamed man, who goes a lot further than either of the named councillors:
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Another Conservative councillor who runs education services in one of England's cities, but who does not want to be named, says he "is not a fan of the free schools policy".

He points out
(which makes it sound as if he is just stating the fact of the matter) if parents were able to set up free schools in his area - a city with a growing population - it would make strategic planning a nightmare.

What of Michael Gove's rejection of the story? It gets one short paragraph!!!!
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What follows in the rest of the article, which still leads the BBC's Education page and, amazingly, which still hasn't been updated since 7:05 GMT? We hear a steam of criticism of the Conservative plans.
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There are two paragraphs from The Institute for Fiscal Studies then, under the sub-heading 'Privilege the few', we get four paragraphs of pure Ballsian Tory-bashing bile from Ed Balls. Next come two 'attack paragraphs' from Lib Dem Sarah Teather. Then two more from head NUTter Christine Blower.
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UPDATE (even before I've published this post!). Gillian has now updated her article (18.16 GMT). Michael Gove now gets two short paragraphs to defend his position (and a short video clip)!!! WOW!!!. Generous eh?!

Why hasn't she outlined the robust defence Mr Gove gave on the Today programme? What happened to the idea of a right to reply? Surely a half dozen paragraphs at the very least from Michael Gove would only have been fair, given the length of the article and the sheer amount of criticism contained in it - all of which remains from this morning, except that Ed Balls loses one of his four paragraphs (he still has one more than Michael Gove!!!) - and given the scope of Mr Gove's case as made (under fire) this morning.
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Just from reading this article (in both versions) you can tell that Gillian Hargreaves might not be the most impartial of reporters.

Gillian Hargreaves had a little chat with Justin Webb at 6.36am, giving only the criticisms without the nuances. The chat ended with Justin saying "Briefly Gillian. A bit of a blow?" "Yes", she replied. "It is embarrassing for the Conservatives and privately several councillors have told me this policy has not been thought out properly, certainly not when it comes to funding ".
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The Daily Mail's take on this includes these points - which (if they are all true!) raise yet more questions about the BBC's behaviour:
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The BBC was criticised today for claiming senior Tory council figures have reservations about plans to let parents and charities set up their own schools.
With just 10 days to go before polling day, leader of Kent County Council Paul Carter accused the broadcaster of attempting to create division in Conservative ranks.
It contacted Tory council chiefs in an apparent bid to drum up any criticism about the party's education scheme and then, to the delight of Labour, led with Mr Carter's comments in its news bulletins this morning.
The BBC leapt on comments from Mr Carter, which simply repeated concerns he had already raised earlier this year, to argue that he was calling into question Tory plans.
Mr Gove insisted that existing schools' budgets will be untouched because the plans would be funded by slashing waste in the Department for Children, Schools and Families.
And other council chiefs, including Leader of Kensington and Chelsea Merrick Cockell, and Stephen Castle from Essex County Council, also fully backed them.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/election/article-1268885/General-Election-2010-BBC-claiming-Tories-divided-flagship-schools-plan.html


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Well, didn't Michael Gove do well! We are in what Hippiepooter would call 'Attaboy!' territory! Trouncing John Humphrys (I.C. of 2.2), correcting the BBC's distortions and getting the message across about BBC bias with force, intelligence and good humour, he showed his colleagues the right way to deal with the Beeb. It has given me hope that the Conservative leadership isn't as sanguine about BBC bias as we (with ample justification) thought. Listen again here, and enjoy:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8643000/8643459.stm
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5 comments:

  1. First of all Craig 'attaboy' to you for such a concise, comprehensive piece.

    Listening to John Humphrys is like listening to someone having an on air love affair with themselves. One interesting statistic to glean from interviews would be how long the interviewer speaks and how long the interviewee speaks. No. Not looking to further burden you Craig, just ‘throwing it out there’. I’m sure Humphrys would win the Award for ‘Interviewer Who Most Loves the Sound of His own Voice’. Strewth, why not just call it ‘The John Humphrys’ Award’? I can see the prize now, a love heart with Humphrys face both sides looking lovingly at himself. I wonder if he’d come to a ‘Biased BBC Awards Ceremony’ to collect it?

    As per usual with Conservative interviewees, Humphrys wasn’t at all interested in hearing the answers he was getting, he just wanted to rubbish anything that came out of Michael Gove’s mouth and prevent the listener from hearing the end of what he had to say, which is of course all so crucial in someone being able to get their point across.

    I thought Michael Gove did well, and at points very well under the circumstances. The times when he was doing very well were the times Humphrys moved quickly to cut him off. I thought though that Gove was too ingratiating with Humphrys at one point when he said something on the lines of ‘I expect better than that from someone like you’, it really went against the grain of what he was inferring previously about Humphrys and the BBC and undermined it. But then, when you know you have a leader like Cameron who is so craven towards the BBC and you can have no expectation he’ll back you if you stand-up to it, it must leave you with the sensation of standing in mid-air.

    No, all in all, way to go MG – ‘Gove’s the Guv!’.

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  2. how good was michael gove? towards the end humphreys was really struggling with his smug patronising questioning and had to back off. more tories need to be as assertive (although i doubt whether they can be as incisive as him) and calm like him in the face of the bbc bias

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  3. A separate post for this observation. Does anyone remember a BBC late night election programme on Radio 4 called 'The Hustings' that ran for a at least a couple of elections in the early 80's if memory serves? It was great. I think it lasted a couple of hours (it was the days - if they no longer exist - when you could tune in to R4 on long wave or medium wave to choose your programme) and it would feature 10, 15, 20 minute excerpts of the most important speeches of the day. It felt like living in a free country where the BBC was there to let people make there own minds up. The presenter was completely unbiased, which was a joy to listen to in itself. He just said what was necessary to take the listener from one speech to the next and left the politicians to set out their stall. Of course, this programme was when the Conservatives won elections, so it was obviously decided unfettered free speech was far to dangerous a concept to expose the poor public to, they might make the wrong decisions! I mean, letting the public hear politicians speak without a BBC intermediary to 'filter things in the right direction'. A 'mission to explain' as I think John Birt called it, while he maintained his Labour Party membership while Director General at the BBC. Now, instead of having the joys of listening to oratory and knowing what vision politicians have for the country and the direction they wish to take it and being able to compare, we have to endure opinionated correspondents chopping people up and trying to shape public perception of what a politician is saying to serve the correspondents agenda.

    If Cameron wanted to do something popular he would pledge bring back 'The Hustings'. I have seen the past, and it works!

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  4. Now that you mention it Hippiepooter...

    There was a terrible interview once between Jim Naughtie and Tory Theresa Villiers which made me count up exactly how long the interviewer and the interviewee spoke for, with these results:

    James Naughtie - 2m 31s
    Theresa Villiers - 2m 38s

    http://beebbiascraig.blogspot.com/2010/02/no-gentleman-jim.html

    It's certainly time-consuming but it can be very revealing.

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  5. James Naughtie is the obvious winnner of the award.
    Invariably his questions are so long they can be described as diatribes, and then he cuts of the answers with further comment or questions, or "we are now running out of time"
    In reply to one of my many complaints of him to the bbc they heaped praise on Naughty as a professional of long standing - long winded more likely.

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