The letter that the BBC should send in reply to Trump's lawyers according to the Empty City blog...... Dear Sirs We refer to your letter. As a preliminary point, it is accepted that the edited video in the Panorama programme was an error which should not have been made by the production company or approved by us for broadcast. We apologise for that error both to our viewers generally and to your client in particular. It was a failure of commissioning, journalistic and editorial standards. The programme has been removed from our iPlayer online platform and it will not be broadcast again with the error. But failures of commissioning, journalistic and editorial standards do not by themselves give rise to a legal claim. We have looked carefully at your client’s claim as set out in your letter, and for the reasons below that claim is denied. Your letter provides no evidence that your client was aware of the programme when it was broadcast or for at least a year afterwards. If your client maintains this claim please disclose evidence for our pre-action inspection that your client was aware of the broadcast before the press coverage of the last two weeks. Please also inform us when you were first instructed in respect of this complaint. In your letter you are anxious that we retain relevant documents, and so we presume you also have relevant documents about your client’s awareness of the programme. If you do have such evidence, please confirm that is the case. The programme was not broadcast in the United States generally or Florida in particular. Our programmes on iPlayer are not available in the United States. Please provide any evidence for our pre-action inspection that the programme was watched by any person in your jurisdiction. Again, given the document retention requirements you set out in your letter, you presumably have retained such documents. And again, if you do have such evidence, please confirm this is the case. You state in your letter three times that your client has suffered “overwhelming financial and reputational harm”. This is presumably on the Beetlejuice principle that if you say something three times it somehow appears. But your letter contains no evidence of either financial or reputational harm, let alone both. And your letter certainly fails to provide evidence of any harm being “overwhelming”. Given that your client was actually re-elected to the presidency within days of this programme being shown (in the United Kingdom but not the United States) there is no obvious harm that was suffered by your client. If you do have any evidence of the alleged harm, either “overwhelming” or at all , and if your client continues with this claim, please provide that for our pre-action inspection. Please also provide evidence that the programme was “widely disseminated throughout various digital mediums, which have reached tens of millions of people worldwide”. Talking of “tens of millions” you provided no basis whatsoever for the figure of one billion dollars. Please confirm whether this is a billion in an English or an American sense. As the figure seems arbitrary, please provide your workings out of the quantum. As it stands, the figure has no more meaning than a demand for one trillion dollars, or for one dollar. Both your client and the BBC believe in the value of freedom of expression. Your client benefits from the constitutional and other legal protections for free speech in the United States. The BBC also should have the benefit of the same protections. We made a mistake for which we have apologised and undertaken not to broadcast again. But this should not be a matter for the courts. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Yours faithfully
It wasn’t a mistake though nor have the various other things they’ve had to apologise for recently with far less fanfare. Just report what’s going on in the world, show Match of the Day and Strictly or whatever bollocks people like now and **** off. We don’t need BBC Arabic employing frothing Hamas fans, BBC Verify spending fortunes verifying **** all, protecting wealthy nonces, Radio 1.
Seems you really can make it up. Turns out the 'independent' advisor to the BBC, Michael Prescott, himself used selective editing of Trump's words in his report to portray them as less threatening than they acually were.... EXCLUSIVE: Michael Prescott himself doctored Trump quote in his anti-BBC report - The New World It's a witch hunt.
A bit of background for you on Michael Prescott..... The Pro-Trump Bias of the 'Neutral' Sources in the Leaked BBC 'Prescott Dossier' – Byline Times UK Lawyers for Israel These people aren't gunning for the BBC because it's institutionally biased against Trump and Israel - despite some well-catalogued lapses, it categorically isn't. They want to destroy it because they consider it to be insufficently biased in favour of Trump, Israel and sundry right-wing causes.They want to replace it with something less independent and more easily dictated to. Deliberately exposing the BBC to a potentially catastrophic law suit is an act of wilful sabotage. The Beeb should offer Trump a Blue Peter badge in settlement and tell him that if he doesn't accept, he can **** off. He couldn't possibly win his case.
Despite all the massive examples where it is, it categorically isn’t then. They choose to employ Jeremy Bowen as head of Hamas cheerleading.
Pointless arguing, the BBC says it isn't biased and you have to accept it, they know best and anyone who says differently is a swivel-eyed far right thug. BBC Verify will confirm it. Their bunker mentality is the same as Starmer's in Downing St. As long as mugs like me continue to cough up £180 a year for channels I very rarely watch they'll carry on in their own bubble regardless, the entire funding needs radical change...
The BBC has admitted to lapses of judgment, but that doesn't mean that the whole corporation is institutionally biased. The more I think about the whole Trump fiasco, the less of a scandal for the BBC I see in it. So somebody selectively edited Trump's own words to make even more obvious what everybody already knew - that he incited an insurrection. So what? The US House Select Committe confirmed what Panorama sought to portray. If Trump hadn't won in 2024 he'd be in jail now and so, still, would be all the rioters he subsequently pardoned. Michael Prescott also selectively edited Trump's words to make his case against the BBC - would you say he's biased? Or Robbie Gibb?
Back to Lewis Goodall.... I've written before about impartiality, and that of course, as an individual I wasn’t impartial at the BBC. I had views which I can now more freely express. I had biases- but I actively worked against them in my work, as I was required to do. How many of these people, self appointed guardians of impartiality, actually do the same? They often can’t- in my view because they don’t recognise their inherent partiality in the first place. Yes, everyone has biases, but BBC employees are required to work against them so that the corporation as a whole can't be seen to be biased. Those attacking the BBC have no such controls placed upon them and do so out of their own biases.
Do you think they worked against their biases effectively? It doesn’t feel like they put too much effort into it.
Plainly some didn't always work effectively enough against their biases, but I'd say that the vast majority did and do. The point is, surely, that no other news broadcaster is held to such high standards of impartiality. The BBC's critics certainly aren't.
How exciting, income tax might not go up after all, because of ‘unexpected good economic news’. What could this be? Not economic growth, that’s even lower than expected at 0.1%, even though it’s the government’s prime target. Not inflation, that’s nearly twice the target level and going in the wrong direction Not unemployment, that’s going up as well and is now nearly 5%, even though there are record numbers of people who have simply given up and have left the jobs market entirely which should mean there are more vacancies Not government borrowing, that’s gone up by billions, much of it to pay the interest on the existing debts and to pay ever increasing numbers of people dependent on benefits Not exports, the trade deficit is growing Not consumer spending, that’s frozen. Not inward investment, company after company are choosing to invest elsewhere. Certainly not productivity, as always near the bottom of the league table, even below the French who only work 8 hours a week and retire at 28. The single economic indicator that could be construed as positive that I am aware of is wage growth, which is just above inflation. But nowhere near enough for the increased tax take to close the budget ‘black hole’, partly because a lot of the rises have been for public sector workers (deserved) which is just taxpayers money going round in circles. Bit of a head scratcher. What am I missing? Or have Starmer and Reeve just lost whatever bottle they had?
The non-party party currently known as Your Party having a completely normal day with one of the sectarians walking out and everyone bickering on Twitter.
I'm afraid they never had any bottle at all. I'd thought that the frustrating caution they'd shown in the run-up to the election was just to get them across the line and that they'd be different in government. Sadly not. Only a wealth tax could get me back onside now.
Why not just launch as the Islamist Party of GB given that's effectively what it is? Nothing wrong with that
Essentially Reeves and Starmer have bottled it again as they fear losing their jobs in the backlash from their own party should they up headline income tax rates Politicians just won't make difficult decisions if it risks their own re-election. Which is why most would never survive in the corporate world
