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Thursday, 21 March 2024

There's no greater failure



Cath Walton has a useful Critic piece on the BBC, Director General Tim Davie and his abject unwillingness to challenge even the most ludicrous examples of progressive nonsense.


Davie, Davie, give us some answers do

Why the BBC keeps obscuring the truth of sex and gender

Thanks to the final straining filaments of the public remit, we now know that BBC News has an Editor-in-Chief who believes his duty is to be nice to middle-aged men who imagine themselves to be women.

It’s not to tell the truth about them — that they’re men. Heaven forfend anyone tries to tell certain people what they do not want to hear. “We have to be kind, and caring, and nice,” says Tim. His emphasis.

This was the Director General’s evidence to the Culture and Media Select Committee yesterday morning: part of his duty as DG, which means he’d actually prepared for an answer for the inevitable question about impartiality on sex and gender, making it all the more depressing.



The whole piece is well worth reading as another example of how absurd BBC bias has become.


I met Tim a couple of years ago to discuss this, and to ask that the Style Guide be updated to remove self-identification. Self-ID was installed in the Guide in 2013 after friendly meetings with trans activists, and is the root and source of most of the BBC’s biased reporting.

The ink was barely dry on the Equality Act before the BBC helped fund a group that became All About Trans, which subsequently had multiple meetings with BBC journalists, editorial policy executives and — crucially — the then Head of Online. The phrasing inserted into the Style Guide in late 2013 was almost word for word a quote from activist Leng Montgomery — “use the pronouns they prefer” — and it’s survived a number of updates, the latest in December last year...


It’s clear now, however, that gender theory capture has crept up to the top of the BBC. We have an Editor-in-Chief who thinks that telling the truth isn’t nice. There’s no greater failure.

2 comments:

Sam Vega said...

This bit was significant and made me think for a bit:

"Citing your own guidelines as an authority is deeply circular. They aren’t conclusive neutral sources. They aren’t Moses’ tablets. They can be wrong, and they can be changed."

We are dealing here with people who don't think; they merely apply standardised formulations to real life. They have dispensed with humanity and common sense, and hide behind a position that is defensible because they know others will back them up. A decision has been reached - in this case on the basis of a couple of meetings with trans activists - and providing everyone sticks to the script, nobody can be picked off for making a wrong decision. In a society where few ideas get expressed, it's probably quite a safe strategy. It's how religion used to work. Now, though, the likes of Davie are revealed to be hollow nonentities.

A K Haart said...

Sam - that jumped out at me too and you are spot on - the likes of Davie are revealed to be hollow nonentities.

It's almost a surprise to have it confirmed in this way, because although he's BBC Director General I'm familiar with this kind of defensive outlook and can't quite square it with his position. I'd expect at least some awareness of these games and some desire not to play them at his level of seniority.