The integration of RNZ’s digital team with the wider news team was meant to take place during the merger with TVNZ that never eventuated, the organisation’s board says.
It comes after an investigation into the inappropriate edits being written into news stories blamed differences between news teams, a lack of supervision and inconsistent editorial standards.
However, a report released on Wednesday also accused RNZ’s leadership of over-reacting, saying it “contributed to public alarm and reputational damage” while the journalist “genuinely believed he was acting appropriately”.
The independent panel was established by the RNZ board after it was revealed in June that some foreign news stories from wire services such as Reuters and the BBC were inappropriately edited.
The panel made 22 recommendations, including merging the radio and digital news teams, a review of staffing levels and workloads, refresher training for journalists, and hiring a new senior editor responsible for editorial integrity and standards. It stressed the creation of a single news team “cannot happen soon enough”.
Speaking to RNZ Morning Report, RNZ board chairperson Dr Jim Mather said the recommendations would be initiated as “promptly as possible”.
Dr Mather accepted RNZ had been slower than other public media entities to integrate its digital team with the wider news team — but it had been endeavouring to do so.
“The potential merger of RNZ and TVNZ that was being considered for a number of years was going to be the catalyst for that occurring. That didn’t go ahead so that issue came directly back onto the board table and it has been a priority.
“I wouldn’t say we took our eye off internal issues, it was in anticipation of that potential merger moving forward and recognising that that would incorporate this, so when that didn’t happen, we as a board and the executive team through the chief executive reverted directly back to that plan and that is a priority.”
An area of improvement
Dr Mather said it had been identified as an area of improvement as RNZ “did want a unified leadership” over its news operation.
Dr Mather accepted the panel’s finding that a lack of access to training had contributed to the editorial breach — and said RNZ needed to create a culture where training was implemented and effective.
“The report did highlight that there was intense level of pressure on staff in the digital news content area and also the training needed to be more effective, ie provided on a regular basis, … noted and there needed to be audit and follow-up on confirmation that the training had been effective.
“Once again, that’s another area of opportunity for the chief executive and our executive team to be looking at.”
Dr Mather said there was a “significant body of work” to be done.
“I think responsibility starts with the board, ultimately we are accountable for everything that occurs within the organisation and we accept that our level of responsibility of what’s occurred and with responsibility and leadership comes a requirement to make the necessary corrective actions.”
Publishing complaints While Dr Mather said he believed RNZ to be a “very transparent organisation”, the report has indicated it could be more “robustly transparent”.
It had noted that other public media entities, such as TVNZ, publish the overall number of editorial complaints and the number they uphold in their annual reports.
“I expect that we will be following suit also,” Dr Mather said.
He said RNZ remained the most trusted media organisation in Aotearoa and it was his “emphatic” objective for that to remain the case.
“We will do whatever we are required to do to remain our country’s most trusted media entity.”
RNZ’s response to breach Dr Mather accepted that RNZ’s trust was eroded to some extent — but the organisation responded very quickly to restore the public’s confidence and took the issue very seriously.
The panel was critical of chief executive Paul Thompson’s initial public response in calling the edits “pro-Kremlin garbage” and said it contributed to the story gaining international attention.
Dr Mather said he understood why Thompson made the comments he did.
“We are all committed to ensuring that the integrity and trust that is held in RNZ is maintained and that was obviously factored into the way we responded.”
The panel had said the issue was contained to a small section of RNZ and Dr Mather emphasised that the “vast majority” of its news output was of an “excellent standard” – which was reinforced by the panel in the report, he said.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
On Sunday 9 July, the ordinarily uncurious Laura Kuenssberg identified the problem with Labour‘s economic policy – namely that it’s just austerity under another name. This week, the presenter actually laughed out loud as Keir Starmer‘s pathological inability to answer a straight question confirmed that yes, Labour’s plan is more of the very thing that got us here in the first place:
"Do you believe public services in this country need more money if they're going to improve?"
It’s tempting to call Starmer a joke. However, it’s hard to laugh when you remember that we’re the ones who’ll get hit by the punchline.
Kuenssberg: just answer the fucking question, Starmer
Starmer’s latest appearance on BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg was another example of his complete inability to answer the most basic questions. As the BBC reported afterwards:
Asked repeatedly if he believed public services needed more money and if a Labour government would offer this, Sir Keir would only say: “A Labour government will always want to invest in its public services.”
Before the third time he robotically repeated this line, Kuenssberg asked:
Do you believe, after years of saying austerity has damaged the public sector [Kuenssberg laughs before continuing]; do you believe that part of the answer has to be more money?
Without registering any sense of shame or emotion, a dead-eyed Starmer repeated the stock response they’d loaded into his mainframe that morning:
A Labour government will always want to invest in its public services.
What does it even mean? Is this how he answers every question? If his wife asks ‘have you done the dishes, Keir?’, does he respond:
Keir Starmer will always want to have done the dishes.
It’s unclear why Starmer is like this. Perhaps a witch cursed him, and he now finds himself unable to present as being trustworthy or honest. Maybe Batman’s archrival the Joker kidnapped his family and put Starmer under strict instructions to act like a boring ham-robot lest the Clown Prince of Crime do something less than mirthful to his auntie.
“Reform” was another phrase Starmer kept getting stuck on. As the BBC noted:
Sir Keir insisted his promise to reform public services was bold.
Presumably this reform will have some sort of cost attached – unless we’re to believe that after 13 years of austerity-driven “efficiency savings”, Starmer has devised a strategy that will enhance performance by 3,000% while simultaneously costing less than we pay now?
Of course he fucking hasn’t.
Not unless he’s invented a device that will allow public sector employees to work in their sleep. Saying that, though, going off how listless he seems in these interviews there’s a chance they’re using such a device on him. There’s an even greater chance that the “reform” he’s talking about is more privatisation, given that Labour’s already made it abundantly clear that’s what the plan is – something these interviewers are criminally failing to press him on.
‘Economic responsibility’
As reported in the Observer some hours before the Kuenssberg interview, Starmer said:
Taking seriously the foundations of economic responsibility may not set people’s pulses racing, but the new country we can build on top of them will do.
Ah yes, so we’re back to throwing around terms like ‘responsibility’ and ‘big boy politics’ and hoping nobody digs deeper than that. Unfortunately for Mr Responsibility, folks have dug a little deeper.
As the Canary covered last week, journalists like Raoul Martinez have reported that far from being a ‘foundation of economic responsibility’, austerity as an ideology has led to the slowest recoveries on record whenever a country has been foolish enough to implement it. He also noted that:
President Herbert Hoover’s austerity response to the 1929 economic crash was followed by the Great Depression.
The historical failure of austerity as a response to economic crises resulted in a widespread consensus among academic economists that, since recessions are caused by a reduction in demand (and when there is no room to offset cuts by reducing interest rates), cutting spending only makes the situation worse. The textbook response to economic downturns, as any student of the subject knows, is to increase spending. By spending more in the short term, a government can reduce public debt faster because smart spending creates jobs, increases tax revenues and releases more people more quickly from dependency on the state.
However, as governments began to embrace austerity, a handful of economists produced research telling them exactly what they wanted to hear.
Ironically, Keir ‘Big Boy Politics’ Starmer also said the following in the Observer piece:
Frankly, the left has to start caring a lot more about growth, about creating wealth, attracting inward investment and kickstarting a spirit of enterprise.
But is Starmer “kickstarting a spirit of enterprise”, or is he flogging what remains of an already well-flogged horse?
We won’t get a response to that question, obviously. If Starmer were to provide a straight answer his head would explode.
For the few
You’d be forgiven for screaming into a pillow at this point. Unless you’re one of 200 rich dudes who’ll benefit from another round of austerity, of course – in which case you’re welcome to take a celebratory trip to wherever the new Epstein Island is. Oh, and speaking of which:
Extent of Jeffrey Epstein’s contact with frmr Minister & Starmer adviser Peter Mandelson is laid bare in newly released report that describes repeated meetings between the disgraced financier & the politician he knew as ‘Petie’ 1/2 https://t.co/QfvufCcqGA
Is it unfair to suggest that Starmer’s key motivation is the betterment of the rich simply because he has connections to the most oily of plutocrats? Oh – and also because he’s worked hard to ensure that wealthy donors primarily fund Labour – donors who notably wanted nothing to do with the party when its aim was to minimise the gap between rich and poor?
No, it’s not unfair at all.
Interestingly, according to Bloomberg, Labour invited several Tory donors to breakfast the other day. It was apparentlyin an effort to woo them. So, it makes you wonder – when these wealthy donors ask a question, does Keir Starmer give them a straight answer?
We think he probably does. Moreover, we all know exactly what that answer will be – namely whatever they want to hear.
It should be called for what it is. The recent apoplectic, lurid coverage of what was, at best, a matter for a corporation’s human resources department dominating several news cycles even as drownings continued in the Mediterranean, war continued being waged in Ukraine and climate change continued issuing ominous reminders of its existence.
The issue at hand? Allegations that a BBC presenter, said to be a “household name”, had paid £35,000 to a youth over a period of several years in return for sexually explicit photos. The payments are said to have started when the young person in question was 17, leading to questions about whether a crime had taken place in the making, sharing or possessing of incident images.
The story made its debut in that king of rags, The Sun. The howls followed. As an article headline read: “Top BBC star who ‘paid child for sex pictures’ could be charged by cops and face years in prison, expert says.”
Within a few days, three issues started to thump and pulsate in the mediascape: whether the as yet unnamed presenter had solicited the images in the first place; whether the BBC had shown indifference in ignoring the complaints of that behaviour by a concerned family member; and whether the entire matter was, according to the lawyer representing the young person, “rubbish”.
The whole affair led to various episodes of sheer terror within the BBC itself, with Jeremy Vine, a colleague of the still unnamed presenter, demanding the identity be revealed in order to stop “yet more vitriol being thrown about at perfectly innocent colleagues at his”, placing the broadcaster “on its knees”.
The BBC found itself in a bizarre, masochistic bind of constantly covering itself, repeatedly running stories on the matter, including a report on July 11 that a second young individual had supposedly received abusive messages from the presenter via a dating app. Much of this was put down to journalistic integrity, not wishing to sweep such matters under the carpet.
More details emerged, even as the NATO summit in Vilnius continued. The unnamed person was outed as BBC anchor Huw Edwards. On July 12, it was revealed by his wife, Vicky Flind, that he had been hospitalised, suffering a mental breakdown – the handiwork, it was claimed, of The Sun’s lurid coverage. But what also emerged was that the police had found no evidence or grounds to suggest that a crime had been committed. The whole matter had been an issue of outing the private life of a public figure.
The excuses and apologias are thickening over the reasons for the coverage, fed by platoons of analysts, journalists, and pundits. The BBC, reasons former president of CBS, Howard Stringer, is “always at the centre of the storm because of its power.” It’s seen, like the monarchy, “as a symbol of continuity in a polarised society.” Edwards, having himself broken the news of Queen Elizabeth II’s death, having led BBC coverage of King Charles III’s coronation, and having been an anchor of BBC News at Ten, “captured that sense of stability.”
A far better reading of this was that the BBC had fallen for the bait crudely laid out by Murdoch’s less savoury publications. In its self-policing zeal, the corporation had effectively done the bidding of a tabloid. In doing so, former editor of The Guardian Alan Rusbridger suggested it had “lost its sense of proportion”. The BBC, he observed, “gets into this mindset where it feels it must make up for sluggishness in handling issues by showing a clean pair of hands in covering them.” Such a mindset was well aided by the conduct of previous employees, such as the late comedian and predatory Jimmy Savile, whose conduct was only exposed after his death in 2011.
While its own management regarding complaints was hardly beyond rebuke – the BBC director-general, Tim Davie, did only involve himself in the matter after The Sun put additional allegations from the mother to the broadcaster on July 6 – the colossal canvas here is obvious. This was a salvo fired by the Murdoch Empire.
Since the 1980s, Murdoch has done venomous battle with public broadcasters through his various press outlets, with the BBC being foremost among his targets. In his own, revealing words, “A monopoly is a terrible thing – until you get one.”
In 1985, a sense of Murdoch’s attitude to the corporation was made clear in a January leader in The Times. “The BBC,” it went, “should not survive this parliament in its present size, in its present form and with its present terms of reference intact.” The implications were all there: cutting, trimming, slimming.
Again, the same view is to be found on July 17, 2015 in the paper’s leader titled “Slimming Auntie,” this time in response to the DCMS Green Paper on BBC Charter renewal. The nub of the issue: the BBC’s boggling power, aided by public funds. “The corporation is a broadcaster, not a publisher. It cannot expect a renewed charter to endorse a status quo that lets it trample on private sector rivals with public funds. Technology has allowed the BBC to expand as if on steroids.”
Such opinions stem from an individual who presided over the now defunct News of the World, a central outlet in the phone-hacking scandal that eventually saw the demise of Britain’s most popular lavatory reading. It catalysed the Leveson Inquiry, which managed to at least get a confession from Murdoch that the paper had been engaged in a cover-up over the extent of the phone hacking.
On May 1, 2012, a UK parliamentary select committee report found that the media mogul “exhibited wilful blindness to what was going on in his companies and publications” and concluded that he was “not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company”. Such an exemplary steward for public interest journalism.
The Sun, for its part, denies ever suggesting the need for a criminal inquiry in the Edwards saga. Just see its journalism as doing a public duty, aiding desperate parents. “From the outset, we have reported a story about two very concerned and frustrated parents who made a complaint to the BBC about the behaviour of a presenter and payments from him that fuelled the drug habit of a young person.” How very noble of them.
Another Sunday, another dismal opinion piece from Laura Kuenssberg. Surprisingly, the subject of this week’s article is actually somehow less politically competent than the writer herself – said subject being Labour‘s Rachel Reeves. Labour is peddling an economic ideology it’s dubbed ‘Securonomics‘. Unfortunately for shadow chancellor Reeves, an uncharacteristically wily Kuenssberg peeled the ‘Securonomics’ sticker off the side of this ideology and revealed the words ‘George Osbourne-Grade Austerity’ written underneath.
Lower your expectations, plebs
Before we get on to Reeves, let’s make it clear that Kuenssberg’s latest piece was – as ever – right-wing propaganda of the highest order (that or the ramblings of an over-promoted political nitwit – your choice tbh). Her latest piece is titled:
Why you should not expect a cheque book election
Her argument for that is:
Voters on the left may be frustrated that Labour is promising less than in recent years, but it is harder to make big promises when there is less to go around – so we shouldn’t expect a cheque book election.
The odd thing about this argument is that there’s this thing called ‘the present world we all fucking live in’ where we tried to boost the economy by spending less on services and it clearly made everything worse. As the Trades Union Congress (TUC) wrote in 2019:
Austerity was supposed to repair the economy and the public finances.
But a decade after it was inflicted on the country by Tory Chancellor George Osborne, the UK economy is in a dire state.
GDP growth has hit a new low, employment is falling and insecure work has mushroomed. The pay crisis goes on and financial hardship has forced too many into debt.
In the same piece, the TUC notes that the standard of living fell, insecure work became more common, and economic growth flatlined. It has a graph showing that although the Tories sold austerity as the solution to the 2008 recession, it actually ended up being one of our slowest recoveries ever:
When the [2010 Conservative-Liberal Democrat] Coalition came to power, neither history nor mainstream economic theory provided any support for the claim that cuts were the only way to reduce the deficit. Cutting spending in a recession has been tried many times and – without exception – failed. For instance, in the aftermath of the First World War, the US, Britain, Sweden, Germany, Japan and France all adopted austerity policies with devastating impacts on their economies. President Herbert Hoover’s austerity response to the 1929 economic crash was followed by the Great Depression.
The historical failure of austerity as a response to economic crises resulted in a widespread consensus among academic economists that, since recessions are caused by a reduction in demand (and when there is no room to offset cuts by reducing interest rates), cutting spending only makes the situation worse. The textbook response to economic downturns, as any student of the subject knows, is to increase spending. By spending more in the short term, a government can reduce public debt faster because smart spending creates jobs, increases tax revenues and releases more people more quickly from dependency on the state.
However, as governments began to embrace austerity, a handful of economists produced research telling them exactly what they wanted to hear.
However, journalists like Kuenssberg are now parroting what the government (and would-be Labour government) ‘want to hear’.
In their book Manufacturing Consent, Edward Herman & Noam Chomsky wrote that “money and power are able to filter out the news fit to print” in order to “to get their messages across to the public”. Back then, of course, there was usually a degree of subtlety to how those in power used the media to change public attitudes.
But now, ‘journalists’ like Kuenssberg simply tell you that “you should not expect” things to improve. The reason she gets away with it is that after decades of manufactured consent, much of the public think that ‘bad to worse’ is the only realistic direction of travel.
And speaking of bad to worse, let’s take a look New-New-Labour’s latest updates to its economic policy.
From the ashes of the old hyper-globalisation, securonomics emerges.
Okay, but what is ‘Securonomics’? She explained:
Building the industries that guarantee Britain’s economic security.
Forging resilience at home, while creating new partnerships abroad.
And bringing together an active state in partnership with a vibrant market.
Securonomics means ensuring that a mum and dad in Worthing… who are doing everything right, no longer feel like they are doing “something wrong”.
But more than that – they can start to take advantage of the enormous opportunities in our economies.
This is the true promise of securonomics.
Okay, but what is ‘Securonomics’? Spoiler alert: the answer is ‘gibberish’ – something that even Kuenssberg noted, as she wrote in her piece:
It is meant to sound radical, but what it means in practice is unclear.
She earlier noted:
Labour are not short of slogans about the state of the economy. You only need to glance at their MPs’ social media, or dip into the House of Commons for a few minutes, to hear one of the economic charges they are levelling against the Conservatives.
But when you look closely at the party’s actual plans, it is not so easy to spot the difference.
In the same article, Kuenssberg quotes an anonymous Labour wonk as saying:
Securonomics is extremely clever because it feels like there is a lot in there but it is not very obvious what is.
Given the stupidity of this statement, you can see why the wonk chose to remain anonymous. Given that even Kuenssberg – the UK’s shallowest political thinker – has identified the vapidity of ‘Securonomics’, it’s hard to believe that anyone will feel like there’s more there besides a subpar slogan. And that isn’t all that Reeves failed to get past Kuenssberg.
Reeves: busted by Kuenssberg (yes, you read that correctly)
In their interview on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, the host noted:
What’s interesting about this, is that the last time we had a government that said fiscal rules/spending limits were at the top of the list, the way they dealt with that was to introduce austerity.
You can’t see the video, but Reeves is wincing at this point (at least we think she is – she arguably just has resting-wince face). Kuenssberg continued, saying to Reeves:
that by your analysis – you’ve written – ‘austerity starved the economy of the investment it needs to grow; austerity failed’. But listening to you today, if spending limits those fiscal rules at the top of your list, by your logic, you might make the same mistake again.
Reeves responded:
No.
She then mumbled unintelligibly for several seconds before claiming outrageously:
This is nothing like what the Conservatives did.
We’re not going to waste time transcribing her explanation as to how the two ideologies differ, because said explanation failed to explain anything.
Arguably, by the end of it, we were even more confused than we were at the start. We suppose this is what makes Securonomics “extremely clever” – namely that when you’re listening to it being described, it makes you feel like you’re a genius in comparison to the person who’s babbling at you.
You can watch Reeves’ explanation below from 30 seconds in if you like. However, the tweet above it essentially tells you everything you need to know:
If you’re inclined to think Kuenssberg skewered Labour for being too close to the Tories, don’t be. The correct way of looking at the situation is that Reeves talked shit about austerity – something the BBC and Kuenssberg helpedsellto the public – and thus she needed taking down a peg.
It doesn’t matter how discredited austerity is; it doesn’t matter how things have demonstrably continued to worsen under it – these freaks are locked in. At this point, it’s like the ship is halfway sunk, and they’re yelling at us to bail more water in. The reason they don’t care is because they’re not on the same ship as us, and they never were. That’s why this use of the word “our” in Kuenssberg’s latest piece troubled us so much:
It’s a well-worn trope that the politicians who look after our wallets are the ones who tend to win.
Did you feel like your wallet was well looked after when the Tories won in 2015? In 2017? In 2019? We didn’t, but clearly some people did, and that’s why they see austerity as a positive.
For the rich at least, things do keep getting better. That’s who Kuenssberg is speaking to; it’s also what Securonomics exists to keep secure. And that’s why in the next election the choice is going to be between Tory Austerity or Off-Brand Labour Austerity Lite.
The BBC has platformed the views of fossil fuel giant Shell’s boss in the latest shocking example of media bias on the climate crisis. In an article titled Oil giant Shell warns cutting production ‘dangerous’, the BBC interviewed Shell chief executive Wael Sawan. At the time of writing on 6 July, the public service broadcaster had the article featured on the front page of its online news site.
The BBC’s bias makes it a fossil fuel industry mouthpiece
The interview with Sawan appears to have come as a result of Shell’s recent announcement of its plans to maintain its oil and gas production levels until 2030. The BBC stated that Sawan had:
angered climate scientists who said Shell’s plan to continue current oil production until 2030 was wrong.
In response to these criticisms, the BBC article uncritically amplified Sawan’s view that:
What would be dangerous and irresponsible is cutting oil and gas production so that the cost of living, as we saw last year, starts to shoot up again.
Of course, the article failed to mention that oil and gas companies have been remorselessly profiteering during the “cost of living” crisis.
As the Canaryreported, Shell raked in record profits of $42.3bn last year alone. The BBC itself broke the story in February with the headline Shell reports highest profits in 115 years.
Given this, campaigners and politicians have been highlighting the incongruity between these record corporate profits and long-marginalised communities in the UK facing starker energy poverty.
A just transition for who?
Then, without a shred of irony, the BBC amplified Sawan’s appeals for a “just transition”.
Commenting on the “international bidding war for gas” in 2022, the outlet noted how:
poorer countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh unable to afford liquefied natural gas (LNG) shipments that were instead diverted to Northern Europe.
The article then quoted Sawan feigning concern for citizens in Pakistan and Bangladesh by saying:
They took away LNG from those countries and children had to work and study by candlelight,
The BBC continued to uplift Sawan’s call for a just transition without challenge, quoting his argument that:
If we’re going to have a transition it needs to be a just transition that doesn’t just work for one part of the world.
As I have previously reported, it was, in fact, the fossil fuel corporations themselves that caused these mass blackouts in places like Pakistan and Bangladesh. Companies such as Italian oil and gas firm Eni purposely defaulted on their energy contracts when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent energy prices soaring. Capitalising on the opportunity, fossil fuel firms broke these contracts so that they could profit from the new demand from higher-paying customers in Europe.
Fossil fuels drive climate chaos
Moreover, this isn’t even to mention fossil fuel companies’ role in driving the climate crisis which has already been causing extreme weather disasters in the Global South. Of course, the BBC allowed Sawan to invoke the blackouts in Pakistan, without even a cursory reference to the climate-exacerbated floods that have devastated those same communities.
Naturally, the BBC also facilitated Sawan’s barefaced ploy to shamelessly invoke marginalised children in these climate-vulnerable nations to bolster his own, unrelated argument for maintaining oil and gas production.
Moreover, fossil fuel companies like Shell have known about climate change for decades but have been engaged in a suite of unscrupulous tactics to delay the transition to greener technologies.
Again, another BBC article from September 2022 detailed a study which found that transitioning to renewable power could save the world $12tn in energy costs. Study author professor Doyne Farmer said that the research:
shows ambitious policies to accelerate dramatically the transition to a clean energy future as quickly as possible are, not only, urgently needed for climate reasons, but can save the world trillions in future energy costs, giving us a cleaner, cheaper and more energy secure future.
Climate bias not a thing of media past
The interview with Sawan showed that BBC bias over the climate crisis is very much alive and well. Journalist Amy Westervelt has extensively documented the corporate press’s weaponisation of ‘false equivalence’ for climate coverage.
‘False equivalence’ refers to the media practice of giving both sides of an argument equal weight. In climate terms, this has often meant platforming the views of deniers against the peer-reviewed research of climate scientists.
For example, a 2019 study in the journal Nature Communicationsfound that American news outlets gave 49% more coverage to climate science deniers than to climate scientists.
Furthermore, back in 2014, even the parliamentary Science and Technology Select Committee criticised the BBC’s blatant bias in its coverage of the climate crisis. It stated that:
BBC News teams continue to make mistakes in their coverage of climate science by giving opinions and scientific fact the same weight.
Nearly a decade later, little has changed. At a time when climate experts have announced the global hottest day ever recorded, and the UN human rights chief declared that the climate crisis threatens a “truly terrifying” future, of course the BBC would shill for the fossil fuel industry.
Feature image via Mike Mozart/Wikimedia, cropped and resized to 1910*1000, licensed under CC BY 2.0
Alt text: Title ‘BBC editorial meetings’. Man wearing a white shirt and blue tie hands a ‘Daily Fail’ newspaper to a colleague. Speech bubble for the man says, “Usual drill… you look through Farage and Laurence Fox’s latest tweets, I’ll flick through the Daily Mail!”
The NHS is fast approaching its 75th Anniversary. So, what better way to celebrate that milestone than with a bone-headed article from the media’s shallowest thinker Laura Kuenssberg? The article in question is titled Love it or hate it, the NHS is here to stay, and somehow the piece only gets worse from there.
What?
Many people’s jaws hit the floor when they read the article’s title:
Who hates it??? It’s a vital public service that has been vilified in the unnecessary and hateful pursuit of profit. No one hates it unless they are in a position to profit from others’ ill health.
The British have a love-hate relationship with the NHS.
Do we? Because no one I’ve ever met has hated it (although, then again, I don’t spend my life surrounded by Oxbridge media freaks and right-wing policy wonks). If you’re worried this opening gambit goes unexplained, fear not. Although the explanation is somehow worse than the statement:
Kuenssberg’s statement is like saying that people have a ‘love-hate relationship’ with boats because they love sailing but they hate being shipwrecked.
It’s like saying people have a ‘love-hate relationship’ with the environment because they love long walks but they hate that Canada is on fire.
It’s like saying people have a ‘love-hate relationship’ with the concept of homes because they like having somewhere warm to sleep but they hate paying their landlord £2,000 a month for the pleasure.
Her statement is so monumentally stupid that it’s forced us to reevaluate our entire operation here at the Canary.
We’ve been reporting on Kuenssberg’s idiocy for years, and if even we didn’t realise she was this colossally vacant, what does that say about us? Before everyone else caught up and saw Kuenssberg for the establishment stooge she is, we were regularly slammed for our strident criticism of her. Now it seems like we were giving her too much credit if anything; that we were overestimating her abilities.
As the NHS approaches its 75th anniversary, politicians are falling over themselves to praise the service.
But when the cameras aren’t rolling, the message you hear can be a very different one. Just like us, politicians have a love-hate relationship with the NHS.
Oh good lord, here we go again.
She can’t be for real, can she?
Anyone with a modicum of common sense understands that the greedy little piggies in charge have nothing but contempt for their golden goose.
Kuenssberg’s statement is like saying that poachers have a ‘love-hate relationship’ with elephants because they love their tusks but they hate them being alive.
It’s like saying fast fashion brands have a ‘love-hate relationship’ with sweatshop workers because they love poverty wages but they hate health and safety laws.
It’s like saying mainstream British journalists have a ‘love-hate relationship’ with the truth because they love selling themselves as truth-tellers but they hate actually telling it:
The NHS has practically universal support in British society.
Only a tiny fringe of right-wing head bangers want to scrap the NHS.
So why does the BBC think it's justified to suggest NHS is like Marmite in public opinion?https://t.co/aVDFqWjJv3
Kuenssberg says “The British have a love-hate relationship with the NHS” – what?!
And then peddles a series of unnamed (mainly Tory) figures expressing their frustration at discussing… alternatives. ie – pitch-rolling privatisation. https://t.co/pQ6JMqRcoq
— Dr Mike Galsworthy (@mikegalsworthy) July 1, 2023
My Mother has worked in the NHS for over thirty years. I know people whose lives have been saved by our NHS.
To a person the majority of people love the NHS & are proud of it
But the Tory mouthpiece Laura Kuenssberg here is trying to persuade you otherwise
— Mirabel:Calling Out Bollocks (@LunaSpencer16) July 1, 2023
The British Bollocks Corporation
Would you believe me if I said the rest of Kuenssberg’s article was just random letters, as if she’d repeatedly banged her head against the keyboard? That’s not true, but it might as well be given that she reported things like this (largely from politicians she afforded the privilege of anonymity, of course):
A former minister says rather than go for bold reforms after the pandemic “we have gone straight back to the voodoo land of heroic pointless commitments that will never get met because as a country we are so ill”.
Another suggests ministers are actually scared of telling the public hard truths about increasing cost pressures in the health service. “The public has unrealistic expectations of what we can deliver – the government is frightened of that,” they say.
The only ‘hard truth’ you need to know is this. The NHS isn’t unaffordable, and neither are public services in general. What’s happening is these vital institutions suffer yearly funding decreases while the wealth of the rich just keeps growing. Ever heard of ‘trickle down economics’? It’s like that, except the wealth is flooding upwards. What’s going down, though, are all the services that said wealth used to fund.
There’s a reason why Kuenssberg’s article is filled with quotes from anonymous politicians but not regular members of the public. That’s because she’s never spoken to the latter. If she had, she’d maybe have a view of the world that wasn’t shaped by the whisperings of the nation’s most notorious bullshitters. Then again, maybe not. She really doesn’t have much going on upstairs.
Really, what we need moving forwards is a ‘love-hate relationship’ with billionaires – one in which we hate the fact they exist, but we love re-directing their undeserved wealth back into the public sector.
Comedy writer Ben Elton was a guest on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg on 25 June. His appearance led to a somewhat enjoyable rant about prime minister Rishi Sunak’s “Orwellian, meaningless, evasive word salad”. While the outburst was fun to watch, it also revealed a depressing truth about why crooked politicians keep getting away with – namely the tendency of media people to simply believe what they’re told.
‘Mendacious, narcisstic sociopath’
Before the rant, the BBC’s senior softball-questioner Kuenssberg interviewed Sunak. During it, he proposed bold and exciting new ideas. These included (wait for it…) training an adequate number of doctors and nurses – a plan he described as something “no government has ever done”:
“It will represent… the largest expansion in training and workforce in NHS history”
Kuenssberg nodded along while Sunak detailed his aim to do the absolute bear minimum. To be fair to the PM, should he follow through on his plan (unlikely), the ‘bear minimum’ would be a shit load more than any 21st century prime minister has committed to; to be fair to the profession of journalism, why didn’t Kuenssberg get into all this?
Well, that was a tough interview! Laura tried to put me off by nodding at everything I said, but I managed to carry on talking bollocks anyway. #BBCLauraK
Don't blame the pandemic for the NHS waiting lists, Sunak. They've been growing under successive Tory PMs. And don't hide behind "only been PM for 6 months" – you were Chancellor before that, in charge of nation's pursestrings. #bbclaurakpic.twitter.com/C7KefMyIw1
Following the interview, Kuenssberg said to Elton:
Now I have to say, Ben, you were looking distinctly unimpressed throughout that interview. Fair to say, I think you’ve never been a fan of the Conservatives, but what did you think of what Mr Sunak said?
Her “fair to say” comment was an interesting one in that you never see this sort of clarification in reverse – i.e. she’d never say to a Tory prime minister, ‘fair to say you’ve never been a fan of poor people’, or ‘you’ve never been a fan of compassion, empathy, or baseline human decency’.
Elton himself wasted no time in explaining exactly what he thought of “Mr Sunak”: “It’s not so much depressed as sad” he began, before saying:
if anybody was still watching after that extraordinary, Orwellian, meaningless, evasive word salad – I mean, I sort of – everybody else wanted to believe – and I sort of believe maybe he’s kind of a bit more decent, you know, and it turns out he’s as much of a mendacious, narcissistic sociopath as his previous boss. I mean, this man literally – he seems to be making a principle of the fact that he resigned from a government that he’d served loyally, and while he was chancellor of the exchequer under Johnson, he seems to act as being born into Downing Street six months ago was a miracle birth. No, he was a part of a 13-year cycle which has got us to this point.
He talks about foreign, other countries having the same problems. He doesn’t admit what he well knows, which is that they’re all doing better under [their own leaders]. … I genuinely wanted to believe that maybe the Tories had made a reset, even though they had elected a man who had loyally served under Johnson – a man who made a mockery of a parliamentary democracy, and clearly was venally motivated by self-interest. The fact that the Tories chose that easy option, for a man now to say ‘we don’t take easy options’, when they took the easy option, which was Johnson, because they thought it would keep them in power. And when they thought for a moment he wouldn’t, they dumped him instantly.
I mean, he’s the prime minister. He owes us honesty, and we got nothing but mendacity, evasion, and vanity.
Comedian Ben Elton describes #BBCLauraK's interview with PM Rishi Sunak as "an extraordinary, Orwellian, meaningless, evasive word salad" pic.twitter.com/5wT2hnSIEX
— The London Economic (@LondonEconomic) June 25, 2023
Fooled again (and again (and again…))
Many people – especially those outside the media – were able to look at Sunak becoming the latest Conservative prime minister and immediately know he’d be terrible. What gave him away? Namely the word ‘Conservative’ in ‘Conservative prime minister’ – a word which is synonymous with derogatory terms such as:
If you can’t judge politicians by their blatantly dishonest promises, though, what can you judge them by? Their actions, actually – something Elton and others only seemed to realise in hindsight.
A new video has emerged showing staffers at Tory HQ dancing their little black hearts out despite the pandemic measures their own party implemented.
While we’re all used to the sight of rule-breaking Tories revelling in their own piss-taking, one thing stands out. Some of those pictured have just received honours – despite the new partygate video. So, enter Michael Gove to defend them, and Laura Kuenssberg to, well, do what she always does.
Two of the Tory revellers will be getting gongs:
Gove: The people who were at the party have been disciplined.
Do they still work for the Conservative party?
Mallett is running a campaign for one of the Tory mayoral candidates in London.
In response to the footage, so-called ‘levelling up’ secretary Gove has slithered out to defend these rule-breakers. He argued they should keep the honours which disgraced former prime minister Boris Johnson recently bestowed upon them.
Laura Kuenssberg, "Two people in this video were given honours by Boris Johnson, Ben Mallett and Shaun Bailey, should they be stripped of them?"
This display would be sickening enough even if they weren’t sticking two fingers up to all those who followed the rules or had to let loved ones die alone – not to mention all those who died as a result of Tory pandemic fuck-ups.
Those honoured include former London mayoral candidate Shaun Bailey, who we already knew had broken the rules from photographic evidence. According to the Independent, Bailey attended an “apparent lockdown Christmas party at Conservative Party headquarters in 2020”. With the release of this latest video, it really couldn’t be much more “apparent”.
Carol Vorderman drew attention to the other man receiving honours. Although it may be optimistic to think the right-leaning groups employing him have a sense of honour she can appeal to:
Ben Mallet in braces has just been awarded OBE in Johnson Honours List #PartygateVideo CCHQ #Gove
So why does Gove think it’s appropriate for these dishonourable partygate elites to retain their elite honours? According to the man himself:
I have to – and I do respect due process – so we’ll all have our personal feelings about who was on [the honours] list. The decision about who was on that list was Boris Johnson’s… that’s the nature of the process.
Rather than digging into this wishy-washy response, Kuenssberg said those five little words that every political interviewee wants to hear:
let’s talk about something else
Despite Kuenssberg’s famous instincts, it seems there’s actually quite a lot to talk about. Firstly, we can’t help but notice that Johnson, the man bestowing the honours, had to resign in disgrace as both PM and an MP. This is the guy who gets to decide who is and is not honourable?
Usually, when you get shit-canned for gross incompetence, you don’t get to retain one of your job’s greatest benefits. To be fair, however, being prime minister isn’t so much a ‘job’ as a ‘hobby’. One that keeps Oxbridge graduates busy for a few years between their various scandals – be they financial, sexual, partygate, or worse.
Secondly, the matter of ‘personal feelings’. While it’s true we all have feelings on the matter, what we don’t all have are seats in government. Are we supposed to believe there’s nothing anyone can do to block this “due process”? If so, where was the due process when these people were partying like it was Covid-1999? Are we to understand the only rules Tories can’t break are the ones which personally benefit them?
Oh, and speaking of due process, would you be surprised to learn that Gove won’t be voting on the Johnson partygate report?
— Anna 3.5% #ResistOrganise (@annyarej) June 18, 2023
You could argue he has every right not to vote. A more enlightened person, however, would argue he’s a slippery little shit who will say and do anything to get ahead. And the only ‘due processes’ he seems interested in are those in which he’s able to wrangle yet more undue power and influence:
"I'm a free speech fundamentalist," says Michael Gove, who supports big new restrictions on the right to protest, the right to strike and the blacklisting from official events of anyone who has publicly criticised the Government #bbclaurakpic.twitter.com/wijadGzUXh
#Ridge – Has Boris Johnson been lobbying you on any weight loss drugs?
Michael Gove – When it comes to weight loss… the most important thing is to follow the advice of the experts#Ridge – Michael Gove now a fan of experts, who'd have thought it.#bbclaurakpic.twitter.com/e7Mju5s7Nd
Arguably, Kuenssberg couldn’t have done more than she did to haul Gove’s feet over the coals on partygate. That isn’t to say anyone couldn’t have – a chimp with a hangover could have done a better job. It’s just that in reality, the BBC doesn’t exist to ask the government hard questions. They may hint at a harder question from time to time, but once the minister being questioned has bullshitted their way through, it’s time to – in Kuenssberg’s own words, “talk about something else”.
A Ukrainian man who complained about an RNZ story last year having Russian propaganda says his concerns are only now being noticed.
It comes after the revelation a staff member altered Reuters copy to include pro-Russian sentiment.
Since Friday, 250 articles published on RNZ back to January last year have been audited.
Of those articles, 15 are now known to have been altered, and an RNZ employee has been placed on leave. Fourteen of the articles were from the Reuters wire service, and one was from BBC.
Lidski said it took some time after the article was published to send the complaint letter to RNZ to make sure everyone who signed it was happy with what it said.
It was received by RNZ on the evening of Labour Day, October 24.
Russian ‘behavior similar to Nazi Germany’
“Obviously Russia is the aggressor and behaving very similar to what the Nazi Germany did in the beginning of the Second World War,” Lidski said.
“Luckily”, he said, Russia was much less “efficient” and “successful on the front” but not so luckily, they were “very efficient” in their propaganda.
Lidski said he also sent the complaint to Broadcasting Minister Willie Jackson and other media outlets – but Jackson was the only one to provide any response.
Lidski said Jackson’s response essentially said the government could not interfere with the press and refrained from “taking sides”.
One of the 15 online articles that have been the subject of RNZ’s audit on coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine . . . originally published on 26 May 2022; it was taken down temporarily this week and then republished with “balancing” comment. Image: RNZ screenshot APR
When Lidski sent his letter, he said he received no response from RNZ.
Awaiting external review
He said he would be waiting to see what comes of the external review.
“I just want to stress that we are not dealing with a situation where someone just made a mistake.
“We are in the war, the enemy is attacking us, it’s very important that, you know, we take it seriously.”
RNZ chief executive Paul Thompson declined to speak with Morning Report today, describing the breaches of editorial standards as extremely serious.
In a statement, Thompson said it was a “very challenging time for RNZ and the organisations focus is on getting to the bottom of what happened and being open and transparent”.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Image caption, Niloufar Hamedi and Elaheh Mohammadi have been detained in Iran for more than 200 days
BBC Persian Service on 5 May 2023 drew attention to the fate of the two journalists who reported first on Mahsa Amini, whose name made headlines around the world when she died in custody last September, sparking waves of protests in Iran. But not many people have heard of Niloufar Hamedi and Elaheh Mohammadi.
The two female journalists helped break the story of Ms Amini’s death and have been detained in two of Iran’s most notorious prisons ever since. On Tuesday, they and the imprisoned Iranian human rights activist Narges Mohammadi were awarded the 2023 Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize by the United Nations’ cultural agency, UNESCO.”They paid a hefty price for their commitment to report on and convey the truth. And for that, we are committed to honouring them and ensuring their voices will continue to echo worldwide until they are safe and free,” said Zainab Salbi, the jury chair. For more on Narges, see; https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/laureates/07C20809-99E2-BDC0-FDC3-E217FF91C126
On 22 September, just six days after she tweeted a photograph of Mahsa’s grieving family, Niloufar Hamedi was arrested. Security forces also raided Elaheh Mohammadi’s home at the same time, seizing her electronic devices. On 29 September, she too was arrested.
Both Ms Hamedi and Ms Mohammadi were already known for hard-hitting news reports and coverage of human rights issues.
“Journalists in Iran are risking their lives on a daily basis to report on the conditions and oppressions there,” the Harvard fellows noted.
Image caption, Mahsa Amini’s death led to a wave of protests in Iran and rallies in solidarity around the world
Ms Hamedi and Ms Mohammadi have meanwhile been kept in harsh conditions at Evin prison in Tehran and Qarchak Women’s Prison, south of the city. Reports from inside Qarchak suggest that the facilities are inhumane, with a lack of medicine, food and even safe drinking water or clean air. Ms Mohammadi lost 10kg (22lbs) in the first three months of her detention, her husband wrote on his Instagram page.
Both women have also struggled to access legal support. The first lawyer appointed to represent the pair said in October that he was unable to communicate with them or access the legal documents surrounding their arrests. Less than a month later, he was himself arrested. The journalists’ families have struggled with the pain of not knowing what is going to happen to them.
“I’m asked, ‘What do the authorities tell you?’ I’m not even sure which institution or person to contact,” Ms Hamedi’s husband, Mohammad Hossein Ajorlou, said in an interview with Sharq.
He too has found it difficult to get information about what his wife is accused of and what is likely to happen to her.
At the end of October, Iran’s ministry of intelligence and the intelligence agency of the Revolutionary Guards issued a statement accusing Ms Hamedi and Ms Mohammadi of being trained by the US Central Intelligence Agency to foment unrest in Iran.
Their newspapers denied the allegations and insisted they had just been doing their jobs.
Last week, after they had both spent more than 200 days in custody, the Iranian judiciary announced that Ms Hamedi and Ms Mohammadi had been indicted and their cases referred to a court.
The late Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a Nobel laureate and tireless campaigner against South African apartheid, once observed: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”
For decades, the BBC’s editorial policy in reporting on Israel and Palestine has consistently chosen the side of the oppressor — and all too often, not even by adopting the impartiality the corporation claims as the bedrock of its journalism.
Instead, the British state broadcaster regularly chooses language and terminology whose effect is to deceive its audience. And it compounds such journalistic malpractice by omitting vital pieces of context when that extra information would present Israel in a bad light.
BBC bias — which entails knee-jerk echoing of the British establishment’s support for Israel as a highly militarised ally projecting Western interests into the oil-rich Middle East – was starkly on show once again this week as the broadcaster reported on the violence at Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Social media was full of videos showing heavily armed Israeli police storming the mosque complex during the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.
Police could be seen pushing peaceful Muslim worshippers, including elderly men, off their prayer mats and forcing them to leave the site. In other scenes, police were filmed beating worshippers inside a darkened Al-Aqsa, while women could be heard screaming in protest.
What is wrong with the British state broadcaster’s approach — and much of the rest of the Western media’s — is distilled in one short BBC headline: “Clashes erupt at contested holy site.”
Into a sentence of just six words, the BBC manages to cram three bogusly “neutral” words, whose function is not to illuminate or even to report, but to trick the audience, as Tutu warned, into siding with the oppressor.
Furious backlash Though video of the beatings was later included on the BBC’s website and the headline changed after a furious online backlash, none of the sense of unprovoked, brutal Israeli state violence, or its malevolent rationale, was captured by the BBC’s reporting.
To call al-Aqsa a ‘contested holy site’, as the BBC does, is simply to repeat a propaganda talking point from Israel, the oppressor state, and dress it up as neutral reporting
The “clashes” at al-Aqsa, in the BBC’s telling, presume a violent encounter between two groups: Palestinians, described by Israel and echoed by the BBC as “agitators”, on one side; and Israeli forces of law and order on the other.
That is the context, according to the BBC, for why unarmed Palestinians at worship need to be beaten. And that message is reinforced by the broadcaster’s description of the seizure of hundreds of Palestinians at worship as “arrests” — as though an unwelcome, occupying, belligerent security force present on another people’s land is neutrally and equitably upholding the law.
“Erupt” continues the theme. It suggests the “clashes” are a natural force, like an earthquake or volcano, over which Israeli police presumably have little, if any, control. They must simply deal with the eruption to bring it to an end.
And the reference to the “contested” holy site of Al-Aqsa provides a spurious context legitimising Israeli state violence: police need to be at Al-Aqsa because their job is to restore calm by keeping the two sides “contesting” the site from harming each other or damaging the holy site itself.
The BBC buttresses this idea by uncritically citing an Israeli police statement accusing Palestinians of being at Al-Aqsa to “disrupt public order and desecrate the mosque”.
Palestinians are thus accused of desecrating their own holy site simply by worshipping there — rather than the desecration committed by Israeli police in storming al-Aqsa and violently disrupting worship.
The History of Al-Aqsa Mosque. Video: Middle East Eye
Israeli provocateurs The BBC’s framing should be obviously preposterous to any rookie journalist in Jerusalem. It assumes that Israeli police are arbiters or mediators at Al-Aqsa, dispassionately enforcing law and order at a Muslim place of worship, rather than the truth: that for decades, the job of Israeli police has been to act as provocateurs, dispatched by a self-declared Jewish state, to undermine the long-established status quo of Muslim control over Al-Aqsa.
Events were repeated for a second night this week when police again raided Al-Aqsa, firing rubber bullets and tear gas as thousands of Palestinians were at prayer. US statements calling for “calm” and “de-escalation” adopted the same bogus evenhandedness as the BBC.
The mosque site is not “contested”, except in the imagination of Jewish religious extremists, some of them in the Israeli government, and the most craven kind of journalists.
True, there are believed to be the remains of two long-destroyed Jewish temples somewhere underneath the raised mount where al-Aqsa is built. According to Jewish religious tradition, the Western Wall — credited with being a retaining wall for one of the disappeared temples – is a place of worship for Jews.
But under that same Jewish rabbinical tradition, the plaza where Al-Aqsa is sited is strictly off-limits to Jews. The idea of Al-Aqsa complex as being “contested” is purely an invention of the Israeli state — now backed by a few extremist settler rabbis — that exploits this supposed “dispute” as the pretext to assert Jewish sovereignty over a critically important piece of occupied Palestinian territory.
Israel’s goal — not Judaism’s — is to strip Palestinians of their most cherished national symbol, the foundation of their religious and emotional attachment to the land of their ancestors, and transfer that symbol to a state claiming to exclusively represent the Jewish people.
To call Al-Aqsa a “contested holy site”, as the BBC does, is simply to repeat a propaganda talking point from Israel, the oppressor state, and dress it up as neutral reporting.
‘Equal rights’ at Al-Aqsa The reality is that there would have been no “clashes”, no “eruption” and no “contest” had Israeli police not chosen to storm Al-Aqsa while Palestinians were worshipping there during the holiest time of the year.
This is not a ‘clash’. It is not a ‘conflict’. Those supposedly ‘neutral’ terms conceal what is really happening: apartheid and ethnic cleansing
There would have been no “clashes” were Israeli police not aggressively enforcing a permanent occupation of Palestinian land in Jerusalem, which has encroached ever more firmly on Muslim access to, and control over, the mosque complex.
There would have been no “clashes” were Israeli police not taking orders from the latest – and most extreme – of a series of police ministers, Itamar Ben Gvir, who does not even bother to hide his view that Al-Aqsa must be under absolute Jewish sovereignty.
There would have been no “clashes” had Israeli police not been actively assisting Jewish religious settlers and bigots to create facts on the ground over many years — facts to bolster an evolving Israeli political agenda that seeks “equal rights” at Al-Aqsa for Jewish extremists, modelled on a similar takeover by settlers of the historic Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron.
And there would have been no “clashes” if Palestinians were not fully aware that, over many years, a tiny, fringe Jewish settler movement plotting to blow up Al-Aqsa Mosque to build a Third Temple in its place has steadily grown, flourishing under the sponsorship of Israeli politicians and ever more sympathetic Israeli media coverage.
Cover story for violence Along with the Israeli army, the paramilitary Israeli police are the main vehicle for the violent subjugation of Palestinians, as the Israeli state and its settler emissaries dispossess Palestinians, driving them into ever smaller enclaves.
This is not a “clash”. It is not a “conflict”. Those supposedly “neutral” terms conceal what is really happening: apartheid andethnic cleansing.
Just as there is a consistent, discernible pattern to Israel’s crimes against Palestinians, there is a parallel, discernible pattern in the Western media’s misleading reporting on Israel and Palestine.
Palestinians in the occupied West Bank are being systematically dispossessed by Israel of their homes and farmlands so they can be herded into overcrowded, resource-starved cities.
Palestinians in Gaza have been dispossessed of their access to the outside world, and even to other Palestinians, by an Israeli siege that encages them in an overcrowded, resourced-starved coastal enclave.
And in the Old City of Jerusalem, Palestinians are being progressively dispossessed by Israel of access to, and control over, their central religious resource: Al-Aqsa Mosque. Their strongest source of religious and emotional attachment to Jerusalem is being actively stolen from them.
To describe as “clashes” any of these violent state processes — carefully calibrated by Israel so they can be rationalised to outsiders as a “security response” — is to commit the very journalistic sin Tutu warned of. In fact, it is not just to side with the oppressor, but to intensify the oppression; to help provide the cover story for it.
That point was made this week by Francesca Albanese, the UN expert on Israel’s occupation. She noted in a tweet about the BBC’s reporting of the Al-Aqsa violence: “Misleading media coverage contributes to enabling Israel’s unchecked occupation & must also be condemned/accounted for.”
Bad journalism There can be reasons for bad journalism. Reporters are human and make mistakes, and they can use language unthinkingly, especially when they are under pressure or events are unexpected.
It is an editorial choice that keeps the BBC skewing its reporting in the same direction: making Israel look like a judicious actor pursuing lawful, rational goals
But that is not the problem faced by those covering Israel and Palestine. Events can be fast-moving, but they are rarely new or unpredictable. The reporter’s task should be to explain and clarify the changing forms of the same, endlessly repeating central story: of Israel’s ongoing dispossession and oppression of Palestinians, and of Palestinian resistance.
The challenge is to make sense of Israel’s variations on a theme, whether it is dispossessing Palestinians through illegal settlement-building and expansion; army-backed settler attacks; building walls and cages for Palestinians; arbitrary arrests and night raids; the murder of Palestinians, including children and prominent figures; house demolitions; resource theft; humiliation; fostering a sense of hopelessness; or desecrating holy sites.
No one, least of all BBC reporters, should have been taken by surprise by this week’s events at Al-Aqsa.
The Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan, when Al-Aqsa is at the heart of Islamic observance for Palestinians, coincided this year with the Jewish Passover holiday, as it did last year.
Passover is when Jewish religious extremists hope to storm Al-Aqsa Mosque complex to make animal sacrifices, recreating some imagined golden age in Judaism. Those extremists tried again this year, as they do every year — except this year, they had a police minister in Ben Gvir, leader of the fascist Jewish Power party, who is privately sympathetic to their cause.
Violent settler and army attacks on Palestinian farmers in the occupied West Bank, especially during the autumn olive harvest, are a staple of news reporting from the region, as is the intermittent bombing of Gaza or snipers shooting Palestinians protesting their mass incarceration by Israel.
It is an endless series of repetitions that the BBC has had decades to make sense of and find better ways to report.
It is not journalistic error or failure that is the problem. It is an editorial choice that keeps the British state broadcaster skewing its reporting in the same direction: making Israel look like a judicious actor pursuing lawful, rational goals, while Palestinian resistance is presented as tantrum-like behaviour, driven by uncontrollable, unintelligible urges that reflect hostility towards Jews rather than towards an oppressor Israeli state.
Tail of a mouse Archbishop Tutu expanded on his point about siding with the oppressor. He added: “If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”
This week, a conversation between Ben Gvir, the far-right, virulently anti-Arab police minister, and his police chief, Kobi Shabtai, was leaked to Israel’s Channel 12 News. Shabtai reportedly told Ben Gvir about his theory of the “Arab mind”, noting: “They murder each other. It’s in their nature. That’s the mentality of the Arabs.”
This conclusion — convenient for a police force that has abjectly failed to solve crimes within Palestinian communities — implies that the Arab mind is so deranged, so bloodthirsty, that brutal repression of the kind seen at Al-Aqsa is all police can do to keep a bare minimum of control.
Ben Gvir, meanwhile, believes a new “national guard” — a private militia he was recently promised by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — can help him to crush Palestinian resistance. Settler street thugs, his political allies, will finally be able to put on uniforms and have official licence for their anti-Arab violence.
This is the real context — the one that cannot be acknowledged by the BBC or other Western outlets — for the police storming of Al-Aqsa complex this week. It is the same context underpinning settlement expansion, night raids, checkpoints, the siege of Gaza, the murder of Palestinian journalists, and much, much more.
Jewish supremacism undergirds every Israeli state action towards Palestinians, tacitly approved by Western states and their media in the service of advancing Western colonialism in the oil-rich Middle East.
The BBC’s coverage this week, as in previous months and years, was not neutral, or even accurate. It was, as Tutu warned, a confidence trick — one meant to lull audiences into accepting Israeli violence as always justified, and Palestinian resistance as always abhorrent.
Jonathan Cook is the author of three books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His website and blog can be found at www.jonathan-cook.net. This article was first published at Middle East Eye and is republished with the permission of the author.
For the last week, Britain has been consumed by drama surrounding ex-soccer superstar Gary Lineker’s temporary removal from his role as a BBC commentator after he took to twitter to attack the government’s new asylum policy. In early March, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s conservative government proposed a new law that would make it impossible for people to claim asylum if they entered the country…
Belarus court sentences Ales Bialiatski to 10-year jail term, The sentencing of the Nobel Peace Prize winner and human rights defender has triggered protests. Media and human rights defenders across the world said that his arrest is ‘politically motivated’. See also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2022/10/08/meet-ales-bialiatski-nobel-peace-prize-2022/
Image caption, Ales Bialiatski pictured in November 2021
Oliver Slow of BBC News reported as follows¨
…Supporters of Mr Bialiatski, 60, say the authoritarian regime of Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko is trying to silence him. He was arrested in 2021 following massive street protests over widely disputed elections the previous year, and accused of smuggling cash into Belarus to fund opposition activity. Demonstrators were met with police brutality and Lukashenko critics were regularly arrested and jailed during the demonstrations, which started in 2020.
Mr Bialiatski was in court alongside two fellow campaigners, Valentin Stefanovich and Vladimir Labkovich.
Mr Stefanovich was sentenced to nine years in prison, while Mr Labkovich received seven years, according to Viasna, the group Mr Bialiatski founded in 1996. All three had pleaded not guilty.
Mr Bialiatski’s wife, Natalya Pinchuk, said the trial was “obviously against human rights defenders for their human rights work”, describing it as a “cruel” verdict.
Referring to her husband’s letters from prison, where he has been held since arrest, she said: “He always writes that everything is fine. He doesn’t complain about his health – he tries not to upset me.”
Kostya Staradubets, a spokesperson for Viasna, said the sentences imposed on the three activists were “breaking our hearts”.
Speaking to the BBC World Service’s Newshour programme, he said: “We knew that our three colleagues would get long prison terms but anyway it’s still a shock, it’s breaking our hearts, not only the [prison] terms are long but the conditions also very horrific.
Belarus’s exiled opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya said the sentencing was “simply appalling”. “We must do everything to fight against this shameful injustice and free them,” she said.
Berit Reiss-Andersen, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee that awards the Nobel Peace Prize, said the verdict was a “tragedy” for Mr Bialiatski and described the charges as “politically motivated”.
In awarding the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize to Mr Bialiatski, Ms Reiss-Anderson said the Belarusian government had “for years tried to silence him”. “He has been harassed, he has been arrested and jailed, and he has been deprived of employment,” she said.
European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell condemned what he described as “sham trials”, adding they were “yet another appalling example of the Lukashenko regime trying to silence those who stand up in defence of human rights and fundamental freedoms of the people in Belarus”.
There are currently 1,458 political prisoners in Belarus, according to Viasna. Authorities claim there are none.
The BBC warned Gary Lineker on 7 March to respect its social media guidelines after the presenter criticised home secretary Suella Braverman‘s use of language. The ex-footballer’s tweet came after Braverman unveiled a new anti-refugee bill. However, Lineker is not the only person slamming the bill.
Then, in response to a now-deleted reply, Lineker noted:
There is no huge influx. We take far fewer refugees than other major European countries. 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, and I’m out of order?
There is no huge influx. We take far fewer refugees than other major European countries. 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, and I’m out of order?
This led to backlash across the right-wing (social) media ecosystem. There were calls for the BBC to sack Lineker for comparing the bill to “Nazi Germany”. Braverman herself responded, telling BBC radio that she is “disappointed” with Lineker’s comparison and that it’s not an “appropriate way” of framing the “debate”.
However, as many on social media highlighted, Lineker compared Braverman’s language – and not the bill – to rhetoric used in 1930s Germany:
Interesting that BBC chose to use 'Nazi' here when Lineker's tweet referred to the 'language of 1930s Germany'. BBC should be challenging the Govt's language not someone who was brave enough to call it out. BBC 'Speaking truth to power'? Sadly and frighteningly, not any more
Gary Lineker called the policy ‘immeasurably cruel’ & likened the language used to 1930s Germany – so he didn’t call anyone a Nazi & he’s also right pic.twitter.com/58jD2vYUeH
Though, as one Guardian writer pointed out, regardless of how much one may agree with Lineker’s sentiment, it’s probably time for different comparisons:
Not strictly true. Lineker compared the language used not the policy to Nazi Germany. Two things can be true. UK gov policy is a shambles, the framing wretched. But it would also be good if people stopped reaching for Nazi Germany as a useful bad-thing emoji https://t.co/icDdCmwLyS
When she presented the draft legislation to parliament, Braverman attached a letter to lawmakers. It conceded that she could not confirm yet whether the plan respected European human rights law. Yet in a round of broadcast interviews, she said the government was within its rights to stop refugees crossing the Channel. Braverman also insisted on highlighting that up to 80,000 people may make the journey in 2023.
This focus on numbers of refugees is also present in the video that Lineker responded to. Braverman did also double-down on demonising language in the video. The statement said refugees are “overwhelming” and “gaming” the UK’s asylum system.
This type of language led some of the UK’s biggest unions to criticise the government. The Guardianreported on 5 March that a joint statement from a number of unions said that the government is “complicit” in attacks on hotels housing refugees. Unison, the National Education Union, the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT), and others said the government’s “rhetoric and demonisation” of refugees is “playing the mood music” for far-right mobs.
Tantamount to an ‘asylum ban’
The Illegal Migration Bill intends to outlaw asylum claims by all people arriving ‘illegally’. The plans would then transfer those people elsewhere, such as Rwanda. It aims to stop thousands of refugees from crossing the Channel on ‘small boats’. Lineker is far from the only person to have criticised the anti-refugee legislation, of course.
Rights groups, including the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), called out the plan. It said the plan would make Britain itself an international outlaw under European and UN conventions on asylum. The UNHCR said it was “profoundly concerned”, adding:
The legislation, if passed, would amount to an asylum ban – extinguishing the right to seek refugee protection in the United Kingdom for those who arrive irregularly, no matter how genuine and compelling their claim may be, and with no consideration of their individual circumstances.
Most people fleeing war and persecution are simply unable to access the required passports and visas. There are no safe and ‘legal’ routes available to them.
Denying them access to asylum on this basis undermines the very purpose for which the Refugee Convention was established.
UNHCR also said that, based on the Home Department’s most recent data, the vast majority of those arriving in Britain in small boats over the Channel would be accepted as refugees if their claims were assessed. The Geneva-based agency urged the UK government “to reconsider the bill and instead pursue more humane and practical policy solutions”.
Tory cruelty
While Lineker could have chosen a less tired metaphor, his underlying message is spot on. The language used by Braverman and the Tories is intended to drum up support amongst their hangers-on for the legislation. It’s also not the first time, but a persistent feature of Tory rule that has grown increasingly toxic.
By pointing towards how Lineker tweeted, rather than what he tweeted, the government and its supporters are creating a smokescreen to avoid criticism of the bill itself. A bill that the UN itself said might break international law. But, with little opposition to the Tories’ disgusting position on refugees in parliament, it seems ‘personalities’ like Lineker are left to flag up the ills of this nationalist, racist, and cruel bill.
Just weeks after the BBC aired a documentary examining Indian prime minister Narendra Modi‘s role in deadly 2002 sectarian riots, tax inspectors descended on the broadcaster’s offices in India.
Modi’s Hindu nationalist party says the two are not connected. However, rights groups say the raids show the parlous state of press freedom in the world’s biggest democracy. Unfavourable reporting has seen outlets and journalists targeted and harassed.
Lockdown
The lockdown of the BBC‘s offices in New Delhi and Mumbai is the latest of several similar “search and survey” operations against the press. Kunal Majumdar of the Committee to Protect Journalists told Agence France-Presse (AFP):
Unfortunately, this is becoming a trend, there is no shying away from that.
Four Indian outlets that had critically reported on the government were raided by tax officers or financial crimes investigators in the past two years, he said.
As with the BBCraids, those outlets said officials took phones and checked computers used by journalists. Majumdar continued:
When you have authorities trying to go through your material, go through your work, that’s intimidation. The international community ought to wake up and start taking this matter seriously.
Damning documentary
Modi was governor of Gujarat province when extremist riots killed at least 1,000 people in 2002 – most of them minority Muslims. Modi’s party favours an extreme form of Hindu nationalism with fascistic tendencies.
Warmest congratulations @RishiSunak! As you become UK PM, I look forward to working closely together on global issues, and implementing Roadmap 2030. Special Diwali wishes to the 'living bridge' of UK Indians, as we transform our historic ties into a modern partnership.
In fact, the BBC documentary on Modi cited a British foreign ministry report claiming that Modi met senior police officers and “ordered them not to intervene” in anti-Muslim violence. The BBC documentary did not air in India. It did, however provoke a furious response from the government, which dismissed its contents as “hostile propaganda”.
Gaurav Bhatia, a Bharatiya Janata Party spokesperson, said this week’s raids on the BBC offices were lawful and the timing had nothing to do with the documentary’s broadcast. Even so, authorities used information technology laws to ban the sharing of links to the programme in an effort to stop its spread on social media. Modi was interviewed in the documentary and was asked whether he could have handled the anti-Muslim atrocity differently. His response was that his main weakness was not knowing “how to handle the media”.
Hartosh Singh Bal, the political editor of India’s Caravan magazine, told AFP:
That’s been something he has been taking care of since. That sums up his attitude.
Freedom in the west?
Journalists have long faced harassment, legal threats and intimidation for their work in India. According to the Free Speech Collective more criminal cases are being lodged against reporters than ever. Criminal complaints were issued against a record 67 journalists in 2020, the latest year for which figures are available, the local civil society group reported. Ten journalists were behind bars in India at the start of the year, according to Reporters Without Borders.
That said, it would be a mistake to suggest attacks on press freedom are an Indian – or ‘developing’ world – issue. The UK itself currently sits at 24th in the Reporters without Borders press freedom index:
Worrisome governmental legislative proposals, extensive restrictions on freedom of information, the prolonged detention of Julian Assange, and threats to the safety of journalists in Northern Ireland have impacted the UK’s press freedom record.
Suppression of press freedom is alive and well across the world. Modi’s attempts to quash free and independent journalism must be resisted at every turn. Here in the UK we’re all too familiar with the very real threat of contempt for public service journalism.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s hints this week that reforms will be pared back in 2023 — and an untidy interview by Broadcasting Minister Willie Jackson — has added to scepticism about the Aotearoa New Zealand government’s public media plan.
But while the media have aired angst about editorial independence, trust and costs, the opportunities have barely been addressed — or the consequences of sticking with the status quo.
“Do you think you’ve got too much on?” Newshub political editor Jenna Lynch asked the prime minister last Wednesday in one of several set-piece sit-downs with the media.
“Yeah, I do. So over the summer, we will be thinking about areas that we can pare back,” Prime Minister Ardern replied.
Lynch reckoned the creation of the new public media entity — Aotearoa New Zealand Public Media (ANZPM) — could be one of them.
“Are you ready for the RNZ/TVNZ merger to be dropped?” she subsequently asked Broadcasting Minister Jackson.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. We’re committed to it and things are going well,” he replied bullishly.
But when asked if he was 100 percent sure, he answered with a question: “Do you know something else?”
Merger ‘not number one’
Ardern told Newsroom this week that “the merger is not number one on the government agenda”.
She also told its political editor Jo Moir a lot of people say they do not have a view on the merger because “there isn’t a lot of information out there about it”.
Yet it is almost three years since her government decided to do this — after which almost all the planning was behind closed doors until this year.
One opportunity to explain it last weekend went begging when Jackson appeared on TVNZ’s Q+A show. It was also the first time any TVNZ programme had addressed the merger outside of brief mentions in daily news bulletins.
It was condemned as a “trainwreck” by pundits and political rivals and added to perceptions the ANZPM plan had gone off the rails.
On The AM Show the next day, Ardern cited the potential collapse of RNZ as a reason for the merger, though as Gordon Campbell pointed out on Scoop.co.nz — RNZ will not collapse unless a government actually decides to collapse it.
But it was public support for the ANZPM project that was collapsing, according to a widely-reported Taxpayers Union-commissioned poll. Stuff reported 54 percent of poll respondents “did not want the state broadcasters to merge”.
(The Taxpayers Union does not want that either and campaigns against it on the grounds that it is wasteful spending).
‘Unsure’ about plan
Stuff also reported a quarter of people polled were “unsure” about the plan – and no wonder, when there has been so little in the media about what it might offer or how it could be improved, but plenty about the opposition to it among media (some with their own vested interests) and opposition political parties’ calls for it to be scrapped.
Stuff political editor Luke Malpass called the plan “a dog of a concept” and Today FM’s Duncan Garner urged the prime minister to suspend the plan immediately.
Newstalk ZB’s HDPA told her listeners “if Labour were smart they’d kill the merger”, while comparing the plan for two media outlets to the one for Three Waters.
She was not the only one.
In the NBR, Brigitte Morton said the RNZ-TVNZ merger was political repeat of Three Waters missteps. (Morten is a director for law firm Franks Ogilvie and has previously disclosed on RNZ the firm has clients taking legal action over Three Waters).
NBR political editor Brent Edwards — formerly political editor at RNZ — told Morten in an online interview that other countries — including Australia — have joined-up multimedia public media networks paid for by the public. So why not us?
“Australia and Britain are much bigger media markets so whilst you might have giants like the BBC, you’ve still got enough space for other big players to be quite influential,” Morten replied.
More complaints about ABC
“And having worked in Australian politics, there are much more complaints about the ABC than I’ve ever seen about TVNZ and RNZ,” Morten said.
The ABC is targeted by some politicians, the hostile Murdoch press and other media rivals — but it has shown it has the power to resist attacks and push back against political interference. And the public that actually pays for it seems to value it.
The ABC tracks public perceptions of its performance and value three times a year across the country and this year’s approval improved on last year’s.
Seventy eight percent of surveyed Australians believed the ABC performed a valuable role; the same proportion said ABC provided good quality TV and two thirds said it provided shows they personally liked to watch and hear.
Nine in 10 said the ABC’s online stuff was good. They were less keen on ABC radio, but it still had the approval of a clear majority.
The ABC 2022 annual report says “it continues to outperform commercial media in the provision of news and information about country and regional Australia” among both city and country and regional populations.
The study also found 77 percent of Australian adults aged 18-75 years trusted the information the ABC provided — significantly higher than the levels of trust recorded for internet search engines, commercial radio, commercial TV, newspaper publishers and Facebook.
But no-one has asked New Zealanders if they would like something like ABC or BBC in place of RNZ and TVNZ.
The government has yet to make a strong case for ANZPM to the public. This week the minster’s office said he was “not available this week” to discuss it on Mediawatch. (Next week he is in Europe).
‘Problem in search of a solution’ Meanwhile, vocal critics like Newstalk ZB’s Heather du Plessis-Allan say the plan “smacks of hidden agendas”.
“There is no plausible explanation for why we need this merger. What is the problem we’re trying to fix?” she asked on ZB.
One problem is we are spending almost as much as public money per capita on public media as Australia now – but getting nothing like as comprehensive a service from it.
The two networks the government plans to replace both attract core audiences that skew older than the national population – not a good sign for the future.
Stuff’s Glenn McConnell noted the Taxpayers Union survey from last month revealed higher levels of support for the media merger among people aged 18 to 39. A third of them supported it, a third opposed it, and the other third were unsure.
But while there has been a lot of media heat about that Willie Jackson TVNZ interview last weekend, one with the National Party leader on Morning Report last Wednesday may prove even more significant. For the first time, Christopher Luxon definitively said he would undo the media merger if his party wins the 2023 election.
“It’s important that TVNZ continues its commercial model. We’ve seen incredibly good media operations – like NZME, a commercial organisation that has done incredibly and TVNZ could continue to do the same,” Luxon told RNZ’s Jane Patterson later that day.
The opposition seems committed not just to preserving the status quo – but even restoring it — even if it is costly to do so.
Next month, it will be three years since an advisory group, including TVNZ and RNZ executives, first declared the status quo was not an option and persuaded Cabinet a new entity was the way to go.
Since then, the government and the existing entities have not found a way — or the willingness – to persuade the public of that — or their political opponents, wedded to a system within which a highly-commercial state-owned TVNZ is already effectively operating on a not-for-profit basis.
TVNZ already overlaps online with the much smaller RNZ — which has sold land, buildings and even grand pianos in recent years to maintain its services, even as government funding across the media swelled to more than $300 million a year currently.
The current government says it is committed to public media but has not committed much to its only real national public broadcaster since 2017 (until Budget 2022 when it allocated ANZPM $109m a year from 2023 to 2026).
Independent of each other, RNZ and TVNZ will also be even more vulnerable in the future to other media picking off their audiences, while hundreds of millions public dollars will still be sunk into various media with — potentially — less and less impact.
Even if merging RNZ and TVNZ is not best solution, the longer-term consequences and cost of that could end up being greater than opponents believe — financially as well as in terms of political risk and public opinion which sway pundits and politicians alike.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The BBC is facing an anti-racism backlash after one of its regional political reporters described the Tory government’s appalling response to the refugee crisis as the UK “defending itself”.
Michael Keohan is BBC Kent‘s political reporter. And one section of a piece-to-camera in Dover seems to be generating serious problems for the BBC:
A BBC reporter talking about the UK 'defending itself on the frontline against migrants' pic.twitter.com/IlOv99rIpH
Many Twitter users were shocked at what they felt was offensive language in the report. The BBC was accused of reporting that was “partial” and plainly “wrong”:
@BBCNews This is partial, wrong (no invasion) and offensive. Some of us in Kent know that it’s not illegal to claim asylum in Britain and that since Tories have closed all safer routes, these desperate souls have no other choice. Please have a word with @michaelkeohanhttps://t.co/UFu6WpGVsV
— Militant Lambchop NHS BLM #StaySafe (@CurlyClareToo) November 4, 2022
— from death to death transfigured (@BODY_W0_WHORGAN) November 4, 2022
There was also a suggestion that the “inflammatory language” helped shore up an “ailing” Suella Braverman:
@BBCNews – is this helpful language? Seems rather more like appalling inflammatory language in support of an ailing Home Secretary. https://t.co/NSAjhS3Ljs
Others said the BBC has clearly lost its way as a public service broadcaster. Tories have long complained that the BBC is too left-wing. So, one person said that this kind of reporting was a result of the BBC‘s efforts to avoid criticism:
The constant framing of the BBC as "left leaning" is to push it toward openly fascistic broadcasting https://t.co/sCleOfFqZj
And the Beeb was accused of Daily Mail-level journalism which clearly veered into openly right-wing, partisan rhetoric:
This is the kind of language I expect to see in the Daily Mail, NOT on the BBC. It is talk like this that perpetuates the racist rhetoric of the far right and normalises such abhorrent attitudes. https://t.co/epTAcyh6EW
A BBC reporter using this language is disturbing. Context is everything around topics as fraught as migration, as we saw recently with a terror attack on a refugee detention centre in Dover.
Anti-migrant feeling of this kind is first and foremost immoral. But it is also dangerous, potentially even lethal. And the state broadcaster, hardly a bastion of virtue at the best of times, covers itself in more shame by allowing this kind of coverage to go to air.
More than that though, we need a media which explains that refugees and migrants are not invaders. They are in many cases, victims of the UK’s own policies – seeking safe haven from the world our own governments have made.
or Off-Brand Labour Austerity Lite.
(@am1874northwich) 
(@kay_c1773) 
(@GaryLineker) 
(@TobyonTV) 
NHS 
BLM #StaySafe (@CurlyClareToo) .jpg){kind=link}
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