BBC will not broadcast Attenborough episode over fear of rightwing backlash
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Talk about burying the lede! This is the last line of the article!
“In a statement provided after the story was first published, the BBC said: “This is totally inaccurate, there is no ‘sixth episode’. Wild Isles is – and always was – a five part series and does not shy away from environmental content. We have acquired a separate film for iPlayer from the RSPB and WWF and Silverback Films about people working to preserve and restore the biodiversity of the British Isles.””
Here’s the thing - they’ve shot their credibility so badly that I don’t actually believe them any more.
My second reaction is "assuming the BBC is not just lying, do they have reason to think some groups would oppose it, or did they just magically come up with the idea? The only entity that this article names as objecting is the Telegraph. That doesn't seem like enough all by itself. Is there anyone else specific who objected?
My third reaction is "assuming that that's true too, on what grounds did the groups object?" Neither the BBC nor the Grauniad gives any details about their objections. Just "it's right-wingers". The Telegraph link says that the episode was funded by political groups, and that doing so is not standard procedure--if so, this sounds like a completely reasonable objection.
Just like I could say: Programmer stops publishing a book on Java out of fear for HN.
A sixth episode has also been filmed, which is understood to be a stark look at the losses of nature in the UK and what has caused the declines. It is also understood to include some examples of rewilding, a concept that has been controversial in some rightwing circles.
The documentary, which was part-funded by nature charities the WWF and RSPB, will not be broadcast along with the others and will instead be available only on the BBC’s iPlayer service. . . .
. . . This week the Telegraph newspaper attacked the BBC for creating the series and for taking funding from “two charities previously criticised for their political lobbying” – the WWF and RSPB.
[...]
The charities involved in the programme are already using it to launch a campaign – unaffiliated with the BBC – called Save Our Wild Isles. They have also gained the support of the National Trust, the Guardian understands.
Corrupt BBC managers decided this on their own.
BBC often prides itself of having "both sides" of an argument in a debate (as if there are only 2 sides). Not all subjects need to a counter point of view. For example, if the BBC produce a document about black holes I don't to hear from a flat earther who denies gravity exists.
And for all the good both these charities do, the BBC should not be broadcasting programs made by what are, in effect, political lobbying organizations (and I say that as someone who agrees with their aims).
Look at the last paragraph in the article, where they've put the real reason it isn't being broadcast.
Lineker compared the Home Secretary to the Nazis. He's entitled to his personal opinions, but he's a very prominent and massively over-paid BBC employee, so he should know better than to air his views on Twitter.
Apart from the statement by the BBC spokesman do you have any evidence of that?
Gary Lineker, who presents on the BBC, responded with hysterical comment "This is just an immeasurably cruel policy directed at the most vulnerable people in language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the ’30s'".
Tim Davie, a director at the BBC, said "If you want to be an opinionated columnist or a partisan campaigner on social media then that is a valid choice, but you should not be working at the BBC."
If this is the BBC "moving right", it's hard to imagine that such a change is a bad thing.
[0] https://twitter.com/ukhomeoffice/status/1633022905628884992
Honestly, the asylum issue is a right-wing dog whistle and it's not actually a big problem with the UK.
> If people are crossing the channel to apply for asylum, then I don't see how it can be determined that they are illegal.
Intentionally circumventing legal entry points when entering a given country is generally illegal.
> It's not possible to apply for asylum from outside of the UK, so they can only apply once they hit our shores and yet Braverman is branding them all as "illegal"?
The UK doesn't grant asylum to people who travel to the UK through a 'safe third country'[0]. Why would sneaking across the channel be made any less illegal by making an invalid asylum claim?
> The immigration services have been completely stripped back by the Tories, so a lot of the statements are a result of their toxic-environment policy on immigration.
Tories were elected to implement immigration reform. What makes it toxic?
> Honestly, the asylum issue is a right-wing dog whistle and it's not actually a big problem with the UK.
The Tories are in power and this issue matters to their constituents. Waving it off as a "dog whistle" assumes bad faith which is, in my experience, a poor substitute for understanding the other side's arguments.
Also, "It's not that big of a problem" is an odd formulation. You acknowledge that there's a problem, but don't want it solved? Help me understand this mindset.
The asylum "issue" is being exaggerated by right-wing media to distract from the many bigger problems that have either been caused by or exacerbated by the Tories mis-management of the UK.
Personally, I think that refugees need to be shown some empathy and kindness. In terms of solving problems, I'd much prefer that the financial crimes were prosecuted more harshly and that tax loopholes were closed.
This is a distinction without a difference, as you well know.
> a comparison which is justified.
And yet you're unable to actually make such an argument. The argument, of course, isn't the point. The point is associating your political opponents with Nazis.
> The asylum "issue" is being exaggerated by right-wing media to distract from the many bigger problems that have either been caused by or exacerbated by the Tories mis-management of the UK.
The Tories were elected in large part to address immigration issues, remember? Who convinced you that enacting their platform is somehow nefarious?
> Personally, I think that refugees need to be shown some empathy and kindness.
The ones who are safe and sound in France or Germany, who're affected by this new law? Why do they need your empathy when they're in a safe third country? Is this refusal of empathy sufficient to brand someone a Nazi?
I don't want them to be adjusting their position one way or another politically - I want them to be reporting and investigating facts as far as possible without using loaded language.
However, I do have an axe to grind against the BBC as they are institutionally anti-cyclist and I've made many complaints to them over their cycling/active transport coverage. Usually they sit on the complaint for weeks/months and then adjust the original article which no-one will ever see as it's then too old.
New Labour was a centre-right party, just like Labour today.
The ex-director general of the BBC Mark Thompson joined that hotbed of right wing activism, the New York Times. You also have ex-Labour minister James Purnell who had a senior role in the BBC.
Frankly if you think the BBC is anything other than the broadcast media wing of the Guardian you are severely deluded.
The extensive airtime given to Nigel Farage on BBC Question Time (> 30 appearances) contradicts this statement.
Just this year, it has featured the following left-wing politicians and journalists: Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Bridget Phillipson, Ash Sarkar (a libertarian communist), Wes Streeting, Tracy Brabin, Jenny Gilruth, Ian Murray, India Willoughby, Lisa Nandy, Stephen Kinnock, Thangam Debbonaire, and Sarah Jones.
I think perhaps your issue is with right-wing people getting any airtime at all.
particularly: "there is a clear and well-evidenced bias toward panellists from right-leaning media organisations"
Citation needed. Is the BBC run by ex-Guardian people?
No: "the controversial appointment of Rishi Sunak’s ex-boss and Conservative Party donor Richard Sharp to the influential role of BBC chair. ... There are also concerns about the appointment of BBC director general Tim Davie, who stood as a councillor for the Conservative Party in 1993 and 1994 and was deputy chairman of the Hammersmith and Fulham Conservative Party in the 1990s."
https://yorkshirebylines.co.uk/politics/an-open-letter-to-th...
So, what part of your opinion is grounded in fact?
However, my point wasn't that there is a sharing of employees between the Guardian and the BBC, more that they both reflect the same bien pensant North London left wing orthodoxy - Brexit bad, immigration good, climate change an apocalypse etc etc.
That's factual. The rest "not a great article", "North London left wing orthodoxy", and "BBC is insufficiently pro-Brexit" is vague, feelings-based not fact-based.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavyn_Davies
So this ended 19 years ago. I'm sorry, I don't see the relevance of this historical anecdote to what's currently true?
10 results.
>allintitle: "leftwing backlash" site:theguardian.com
0 results.
In my experience, the left-leaning people I know tend to protest and organize a lot more than the right-leaning. In fact the right-leaning mostly seem to whine and grumble and then return to their regularly scheduled programming.
Reminds me of an email I had from the home office recently - “we welcome all positive feedback”.
“If you don’t have approving comments to make, keep your mouth shut” is the ethos of Britain in 2023. It’s rather like Germany in the 1930s.
...so while all this is lamentable from a political perspective, I find it coincidentally quite agreeable from an entertainment value perspective.
And at some point in the 90s, it seems to me that someone decided that the narrative for all nature documentaries was going to be: Man is destroying nature.
It's all this same weird psychology, where man loves to set up systems to keep reminding him that he's a sinner. The political right, in the U.S., gets their weekly fix in church. The political left works the message into nature documentaries instead. I wish both sides would stop evangelizing. I really kind of want to just say "No, thank you" in the same way I would say "No, thank you" to a Jehovah's witness knocking at my door.
It's also a fact that the universe is vast, violent, and indifferent, with our planet being nothing but an insignificantly tiny spec in the fabric of the galaxy. It's also a fact that our planet has seen many epochs come and gone before the anthropocene, and will produce many more epochs after it, bringing forward new and different kinds of life after humanity is long gone.
To make it look like we, humanity, are big and mighty in relation to nature, and nature is fragile and timid and needs the good ones among the humans to protect it from the bad ones among the humans: This is not facts. It's spin.
Now don't get me wrong: I think every single one of the sustainable development goals [1], including the environmental ones, is a no brainer, and something I can get behind. But it's also a normal function of the human psyche that one doesn't want to be bombarded with cognitive dissonance-inducing messaging all the time, and I want creators of mass media to respect that. Now, it's difficult to make a newscast reporting on the war in Ukraine without inducing cognitive dissonance. But it would be perfectly possible to make a nature documentary that way, and, somehow, mass media aren't doing it.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Development_Goals