Last month your correspondent filed a complaint to the BBC. It was about how the BBC appeared to have predetermined Nigel Farage’s guilt over his “failure” to declare donations in an item of Radio 4’s World At One.
The BBC sent out a fatuous, and probably AI-generated, response refusing to accept that using the word “failure” amounted to misrepresenting Farage’s actions prior to the Parliamentary Commissioner’s decision, replete with a banal citation of the dictionary definition of “failure”.
Your correspondent therefore filed a complaint about the response to the complaint. This was the BBC’s reply:
Thanks for getting back in touch. We are sorry the previous response you received did not address your concerns properly.
We have discussed your complaint with the editorial team in Radio News. They recognise it would have been more appropriate not to have used the world “failure” and to have said instead that Farage was ‘under investigation for not declaring’ the gift.
The wording of the script should have been better, but please be assured there was no intent of bias.
Thank you for taking the time to raise this matter.
A victory then, of sorts. However, the claimed “no intent of bias” masks the fact that it would only have been possible to write the original script if the journalist concerned was operating from the position of assuming Farage is guilty, regardless of the Parliamentary Commissioner’s ongoing investigation.
Discussion
Comments
This week across the site:
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to the Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
The Woke are so brainwashed that they cannot distinguish a lie from the truth. Instead, like any other cult, they try to undermine the whole concept of truth with equivocation, prevarication, convoluted reframing and denial. All you can do is persistently point to rationality and increasing outcomes which undermine their own stance. Cult members should be constantly but calmly challenged with the holes pointed out in their arguments. What we have now is an international kind of cult thought-view spearheaded by politicians and supported by mass media and cranks in NGOs, predicably financed by foreign actors. As woke politicians are in charge of our taxes we find that we are made to finance this rot ourselves too. Unless we resort to war the only thing we can do is constantly challenge until they think for themselves again.
“No intent of bias” – as a flock of pigs flies over BBC Broadcasting House.
Nice to see BBC still making good comedy.
Patronising and insulting non-apology.
Any admittance of wrongdoing or an apology by the BBC is always qualified with an excuse or justification. See Simon Jack’s forced out through gritted teeth apology to Farage or their apology to Trump.
But of course the BBC have yet to face the Trump court case in February where he should win a shedload of money from them for stitching him up.
The same kind of unintentional bias that Emily Maitless displayed when she announced on Newsnight that Dominic Cummings had broken the Rules.
Funny how “journalists” at the BBC continually display such unintentional bias …. and its only ever on display against right of centre politicians.
Glad to see the inverted commas around journalists. Maitless was Witless.
A remarkable victory – well done! But while the first reply may have been constructed by an AI, the second probably wasn’t, given the awkward use of the phrase “no intent of bias” – ‘no bias was intended’ would have been better. There are one or two other grammatical queries in the same reply, but this is the one that stands out.
I’m not a great fan of AIs in some ways, but they are quite refreshing in their almost totally consistent use of good English – which I presume they’re incapable of not producing! A boon to pendants such as myself.
Probably no intent of grammatical ineptitude, either.
One of life’s most futile activities is making a complaint to the BBC and expecting an honest, unbiased answer. Easier to push water up a hill.
All their communications in themselves confirm their guilt absolutely. The problem is that the writers are so ignorant, stupid, badly educated and incapable of the correct use of English that they haven’t the faintest clue concerning their obvious errors.
We expect nothing less from the BBC – the best friend of the political class.
Political class? I know what you mean but there is nothing classy about politics.
No intent of bias – there didn’t need to be because the bias comes naturally to them.
Any trained journalist would know not to do what the BBC did. Alas, with the collapse of local newspapers journalists no longer get proper training in the key qualities of accuracy and impartiality. I doubt the BBC even recognise thry exist.
When you know your job depends on slagging off Reform and Farage and you responded to an advert in The Guardian in the first place, accidents do not happen.
Exactly.
“Publish the inaccuracy, and if we get told off for it then, meh. We got what we wanted to say into the minds of the readers.”
And still the investigation goes on!
Just what are they investigating? He doesn’t deny either the timing or the amount involved, and said he sought advice over what he did.
The only question is whether the advice was wrong or not.
I understand the question is whether he was an active politician at the time. He says he had stepped back from active politics; his opponents claim he was President of Reform and ipso facto active.
On this narrow, technical and subjective point hangs the entire case against him.
We can imagine how promptly and firmly such a question would be decided in the case of a Labour figure.
I am a member of Reform so must I report my Christmas presents? I know a number of branch officers and councillors, must they?
Why could Parliament be interested in transactions between private people who are not MPs snd had never been an MP?
For me, it’s a question of whether he should have accepted the “gift” of 5 million quid. In his position I’d suggest it’s a no.
Let’s all be honest here. It was a donation to Reform, trying to be disguised as something else.
Wrong. It was a personal gift … no strings attached. It was perfectly possible to make a donation to the Reform Party – I did, although in double digits.
“Let’s all be honest here.”
I think you mean: Let’s all take a guess here?
Given the threat level from the lunatic left; which counter terrorism are now investigating following the brutal murder of Ann Widdecombe I’d say the BBC et al are complicit in that threat & all personal security a total necessity. This “non” bias rhetoric using “far right”, “fascist” & “racist” descriptors for anyone truly conservative & patriotic has driven a thoroughly divisive, pernicious narrative around the west & particularly in the UK. It’s a stain on the so called “free world” which is becoming less free minute by minute. The virtue signalling, suicidally empathetic left have zero humanity or truly democratic thoughts.
The length of the ‘investigation’ is part of the punishment.
They are investigating how to get rid of this troublesome priest.