The audacity of Newsnight Emily Maitlis talking about media accountability and propaganda goes beyond Orwellian… Maitlis is literally an agent of the Oligarchy.
In her keynote lecture at the Edinburgh TV Festival, ex-BBC journalist Emily Maitlis warns of the perils of fake news and the consequences when the agenda is highjacked by people in powerful positions.
Hitting out at the BBC – her former employer – claiming its board has been infiltrated by a Conservative Party agent and former Downing Street spin doctor whom she claims is now an ‘arbiter of BBC impartiality’.
Delivering the MacTaggart Memorial Lecture at the Edinburgh TV Festival, the ex-Newsnight presenter referred to “Tory cronyism at the heart of the BBC”, as she spoke about her own perceived impartiality while working for the broadcaster.
Maitlis said the media shows its impartiality when it reports “without fear or favour” and “when we are not scared to hold power to account, even when it feels uncomfortable to do so”.
She added: “When we understand that if we’ve covered rule-breaking by a Scottish chief medical officer or an English government scientist then journalistic rigour should be applied to those who make policy within Number 10.
Maitlis was twice accused by her boss the BBC of showing bias against Boris Johnson’s government, the first when she discussed ex-chief adviser Dominic Cummings’ lockdown trip to Barnard Castle, and the second after she retweeted Piers Morgan, who was questioning the government’s response to the pandemic.
Maitlis, who quit the corporation earlier this year, gave a provocative speech on Wednesday in which she described Sir Robbie Gibb, the former Number 10 spin doctor, as “an active agent of the Conservative Party” sitting on the BBC board.
She suggested that BBC management had caved in to pressure from Downing Street by making a public apology for the Newsnight monologue, in which she declared that Dominic Cummings had broken lockdown rules.
Probably every word Maitlis said in that speech was true. Of course not only did Emily Maitlis know these things while she was working at @BBCNews she participated in the deflection and smears on behalf of the Tories.
What was not mentioned in her speech was how she sat in front of an oversized screen with a backdrop showing features of a Moscow skyline with particular emphasis on the Kremlin, a red and pink candy-stripe sky, and a recoloured photo of Jeremy Corbyn.
This backdrop in the Newsnight studio where Emily Maitlis decided not to be impartial showed her and her team had made Corbyn’s hat darker and taller – apparently to look more like a traditional “Russian hat”.
The combination of these effects was to create, a “blatant visual association between Vladimir Putin’s ‘red’ Russia and Corbyn’s ‘red’ Labour.”
Maitlis claimed that the BBC editorial output is being unduly influenced by the Government, but let’s be fair, it was Maitlis and her Newsweek collages fronting that propaganda and in the main doing it extremely well.
This is no epiphany, this is self-promotion after her big-money move.
Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
― George Orwell
Of course, Emily Maitlis wasn’t clever enough to use spin even without the BBC prompting her when it comes to Dennis Skinner.
Remember the time when Emily Maitlis was a class enemy of the left?🤔 #EmilyMaitlis pic.twitter.com/ZsupPLB0OV
— Chris M (@DopeyNortherner) August 25, 2022
Another Newsnight BBC Journalist turned whistleblower called for an Ofcom probe
It wasn’t so long ago Emily Maitlis collage and Newsnight presenter also attacked the BBC after leaving the company, just like her college John Sweeney they never thought twice about impartiality while making fake news especially when it came to attacks on left-wing politicians.
John Sweeney, the journalist behind the Newsnight programmes that attacked Left-wing Labour MPs such as Ian Lavery and the former Labour MP and activist Chris Williamson, has admitted the BBC programmes are FAKE NEWS.
John Sweeney, now whistleblower said the BBC broadcaster had become so “risk-averse” that its impartiality was being undermined and investigative journalism “endangered” has sent a batch of scripts to regulator Ofcom to back up his claims.
Sweeney’s admittance leaves millions of BBC viewers guessing which programmes have been manipulated and edited.
The questions being asked over the BBC’s supposed impartiality include Peter Oborne calling out Conservative bias in the BBC’s election coverage (In this election, the BBC has let down those who believe in it, Journal, 3 December) and is likely to be right too in his assessment that the reasons for the bias are institutional, beyond the prejudices of a few well-known reporters. Put simply, the BBC tends to be more sympathetic to the status quo and the government of the day than political change.
John Sweeney, who worked for the corporation for 17 years, listed ‘Newsnight, Panorama’ and BBC News investigations which he said were either not broadcast or were weakened by management.
He told Ofcom he wanted it to investigate BBC News and Current Affairs over films relating to a number of issues from the far-right, Russia and Brexit which were not aired, including an investigation into Lord Mandelson which caused him to change his House of Lords’ register recording money he got from a Russian company connected to the mafia. After a direction intervention by Mandelson’s friend, then BBC Head of News, James Harding, the investigation was stopped, not broadcast. Sweeny lists a number of broadcasts that were aired but were “improperly compromised”, and senior journalists who had “been allowed to compromise BBC editorial values by taking financial inducements or benefits in kind”.
He goes on to claim in his letter to Ofcom: “Separately, I fear that BBC values have been undermined by the following senior editors and presenters. Jon Sopel, BBC North America, doing a paid corporate gig for US tobacco giant Philip Morris this year. Justin Webb, Today programme presenter, doing a paid corporate gig for Henley & Partners on two separate occasions.”
“Sarah Sands, editor of the Today programme and Amol Rajan, BBC Media Editor, receiving benefits in kind from their former employer, Russian oligarch Evgeny Lebedev. They attended parties thrown by Lebedev in his Italian palazzo. A third guest was Boris Johnson, now prime minister. It seems impossible for any reporter on the Today programme to fully investigate widely reported stories that as Foreign Secretary Mr Johnson was seen as a “security risk” because of his attendance at Mr Lebedev’s parties if their editor was also a beneficiary of Mr Lebedev’s generosity. Amol Rajan as BBC Media Editor has reported on Mr Lebedev’s business affairs and he too has been a beneficiary of the oligarch’s generosity.”
“None of this non-BBC work or benefits are for the public good.”
For many on the left this just confirmed what we already know, ‘the BBC is biased’, it goes beyond not screening current events and footage that can give a balanced view. The BBC actually manipulates footage to give a better perspective of the Tory Party and the Tory Leader, this manipulation can only be termed state propaganda.
Two recent examples of BBC media manipulation both include Boris Johnson.
The BBC has admitted to making a “mistake” when it edited footage of Boris Johnson to remove the sound of an audience laughing at him.
During the Question Time special in which each of the main party leaders were questioned by the public, some of those watching in the studio could be heard laughing after the PM was asked whether he thought the “truth matters”.
But in the later video of the same event shown on BBC News, the laughter was removed. The edit gave rise to suggestions the video had been changed to make it less embarrassing to the Conservative leader.
The BBC said there was “absolutely no intention to mislead”. But the question must stand if not to mislead then to do what?
Statement on the BBC’s use of an edited clip from the Question Time Leaders’ special: pic.twitter.com/OiBcidy3ZH
— BBC News Press Team (@BBCNewsPR) November 25, 2019
The upside-down poppy wreath as the nation watched
On Remembrance Day at the cenotaph, the BBC edited out and exchanged the actual footage for an old clip of Boris Johnson at the cenotaph laying a wreath when he was Lord Mayor of London instead of a video of the real event with his wreath gaffe showing the Tory leader actually placed a poppy wreath upside down as the nation watched.
The broadcaster said: “This morning on the programme we incorrectly used footage from a Remembrance Day service that was not filmed yesterday.
“This was a production mistake and we apologise for the error”.
The PM was accused of being disrespectful for placing a wreath upside down.
But this error wasn’t shown on the BBC this morning – with 2016 cenotaph footage being aired instead.
After the old footage was broadcast on the BBC this morning, many Twitter users accused the broadcaster of ‘deliberate manipulation’.
One person wrote: “You spliced the footage using clips from two different years.”Not something you can do by ‘mistake’. It was Conservative propaganda, pure and simple.”
Another also said it couldn’t have been a mistake, adding: “It’s a process.
The State propaganda machine
George Orwell said: “useful lies were preferred to harmful truths”. He went further, declaring that history stopped in 1936; after that, there was only propaganda.
This was a characteristic exaggeration but it points to the universality of state deception. The very term Depression aimed to mislead
Anyone could choose to ignore these editorial changes however the fact is we know for certain someone is there within the editing booths of the BBC ready to manipulate and change footage to suit an agenda.
John Sweeney is another BBC journalist that has been seen to express biased views and screening Labour MP and activists. In September 2018 Sweeney and his BBC Newsnight team made a programme entitled ‘How united is the Labour Party?’ the main focus of the programme was featured around the then Labour MP Chris Williamson’s and an event being held in Chesterfield ‘Chris Williamson’s Democracy Roadshow’ as a Chesterfield CLP Labour Party member and a friend of Chris Williamson I attended the event.
The event was filmed by John Sweeney and his team for the BBC Newsnight show, many people that attended the event looked forward to the TV broadcast however when the broadcast was shown it presented the entire Democracy Roadshow as a hostile event and promoted disunity within the Labour Party. Party members and other socialists that attended the event only recognised they were at the actual event that was broadcast when the camera would edit back to the audience the Newsnight broadcast had been edited so much it did not reflect the reality or the event. Now John Sweeney has admitted his BBC shows were in fact manipulated, which brings all his shows and those of the BBC into question.
Attacks on the left and the so-called ‘Ian Lavery scandal’ John Sweeney the BBC and Newsnight deliberately misrepresented Ian Lavery
Typical of the now admitted Newsnight modus operandi the interview and entire story on Ian Lavery was chopped and changed to give a negative effect.
March the Sunday Times and BBC2’s Newsnight have run an “investigation” into Ian Lavery MP, the chair of the Labour Party.
The Murdoch press-led gang says Lavery got “a lot of dosh” (Newsnight) from his former job as a National Union of Mineworkers leader, and this is a “scandal.”
The “scandal” involves adding up all that Lavery received from the NUM over the years, including housing and redundancy money, and saying it’s “a bob or two in anyone’s money” again a quote from (Newsnight).
The Newsnight-Sunday Times stories prompted two official investigations by the parliamentary standards commissioner and the certification officer, the latter of whom regulates trade unions.
As Newsnight admitted: “The parliamentary watchdog cleared him” while the certification officer decided that “no further action” was necessary. That should have been the end of the story, except some sections of the media are obsessed with the salaries of miners’ leaders, just as they were with Arthur Scargill.
The Newsnight-Sunday Times story deliberately misses the very basic way all unions work. They all take money from their members and use that cash to pay salaries to officials. Nobody can work for nothing as the saying goes.
Ian Lavery did his job and that’s what the right wing doesn’t like. Good Unions and union leaders
British union officials are typically paid more than their members, and if union members wanted to debate that, well OK. But that is not what is happening here.
The press is really just repeating the message anti-union consultants always suggest as the first point to stop people from joining unions: “They’ll just spend your union contributions on salaries for the leaders.” This argument only works if you deliberately ignore what unions actually do.
The NUM, for historic reasons, has a federal structure. Lavery was secretary of the Northumberland NUM from 1992-2010. From 2002 to 2010 he was also president of the national union.
These were difficult years for the pits, as the post-strike closure programme took away jobs. The last Northumberland pit, Ellington, closed in 2005.
Before that closure, the Northumberland NUM, under Lavery, was involved in tough but defensive fights over safety and keeping the pits open.
But it’s what the NUM did for ex-miners that deserves attention. The NUM won millions in compensation for ex-miners, which brought money into very hard-pressed homes and communities that would otherwise be in even tougher times.
In 2008 a NUM case won £2 million to share between the last 300 miners who worked at Ellington pit because, under Lavery, the union found their employer had broken the law on redundancy when they shut the mine.
This sum alone is more than any amount the Newsnight-Sunday Times team complains about going to all Northumberland NUM staff.
There were also much bigger sums. Thanks to a historic 1991 case brought by the NUM, ex-miners were able to win personal injury compensation for the emphysema and bronchitis they got from pit work.
In a 1997 test case, the NUM won the chance to get compensation for an “industrial white finger” — that’s a mix of numbness and pain, a “dead man’s finger” you get from too much working with drills and other vibrating machinery. Read more here.
Sweeney claims to be A “RELUCTANT” BBC whistleblower but what he is, is part of the whole propaganda machine
Sweeney, who left the BBC in October, said he passionately believed in the BBC’s mission and many of his colleagues who did “great work for the public good”.
He added: “It is exactly because of that belief that I feel compelled to share what I know from the inside of BBC News and Current Affairs.
“BBC management, led by director-general Tony Hall, has become so risk-averse in the face of threats from the far-right and the Russian state and its proxies that due impartiality is being undermined and investigative journalism is being endangered.
Films have been not broadcast or enfeebled. Senior journalists have taken money or benefits in kind from big tobacco, a dodgy passport-selling company, and proxies for the Russian state.”
Sweeney also claimed that among his concerns were a Panorama programme on far-right activist Tommy Robinson, which was to be aired in February or March. He said it contained fresh information on Robinson’s links with German far-right sources and had the potential to explore how he was being indirectly funded by Kremlin money. He said: “Robinson set out to intimidate the BBC. Not broadcast.
investigation into Lord Mandelson stopped
“Our Newsnight investigation into Lord Mandelson which caused him to change his House of Lords’ register recording money he got from a Russian company connected to the mafia.
“After direct intervention by Mandelson’s friend, then BBC head of news, James Harding, the investigation stopped. Not broadcast.”
Another concern was over a Newsnight investigation into Henley and Partners, which he said was a “dodgy passport-selling firm” which had tried to silence Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia before she was assassinated.
Sweeney told The National: “I do not want to overstate the significance of my complaints. Ofcom has been in touch and says they will get back to me in the new year.”
The BBC has been approached for comment, but Ofcom would not comment on an ongoing investigation.
Fabrication in BBC Panorama ‘Saving Syria’s Children’
Analysis of the 30 September 2013 BBC Panorama documentary ‘Saving Syria’s Children’ and related BBC News reports, contending that sequences filmed by BBC personnel and others at Atareb Hospital, Aleppo on 26 August 2013 purporting to show the aftermath of an incendiary bomb attack on a nearby school are largely, if not entirely, staged.
Here is some more info on the BBC provided by Russ Jackson see more here.
When Boris Johnson completely messed up Remembrance day by setting off to early then laying a wreath upside-down, the @BBC *accidentally* showed footage from the previous year.
Also, Fiona Bruce on @bbcquestiontime saying Vote Leave did NOT break the law – when they DID.
When criticising @UKLabour‘s ‘Race & Faith’ manifesto, the @BBC‘s Victoria Derbyshire *accidentally* said there was NO mention of Islam, when it made explicit mentions of both Muslims and Islamophobia.
Also extremely concerning is the fact that there are numerous senior & high profile known right wing presenters & editors on (combined with the complete absence of ANY known left wing presenters or editors on ANY) national @BBCNews or @BBCPolitics shows.
In June 2019, more than half of all guests who appeared on the @BBCPolitics flagship political shows were Tories:
Tories 50.17%
Labour 14.03%
LibDems 2.85%
Brexit 2.46%
SNP 1.75%
Why has our @BBC faciltated a hard-right takeover of Britain?
Speaking at the same event BBC’s chief content officer, Charlotte Moore, pushed back and said due impartiality is “particularly important for the BBC”.
She insisted the BBC was not reacting to a call from Downing Street when it issued an apology for Maitlis’s comments: “In no way was there any influence from the government or from the board … Due process was followed and the BBC decided there was a breach of editorial standards. We hold everyone to account on editorial standards.”
Maitlis, who left the broadcaster this year to launch a forthcoming news podcast, used the annual MacTaggart lecture to argue the BBC and other broadcasters can be guilty of “both sides-ism” and seeking false balance in debates.
Moore said BBC viewers “expect our journalists to leave their personal agenda at the door – we’re not here to campaign” and it is important for the BBC to show “due impartiality on every subject”.
She also backed a series of impartiality reviews that are looking at all aspects of the BBC’s output for potential bias, saying it is “right we should constantly review and check ourselves”.
A BBC spokesperson said: “As we have made clear previously, in relation to Newsnight we did not take action as a result of any pressure from No 10 or government and to suggest otherwise is wrong. The BBC found the programme breached its editorial standards and that decision still stands.”
Support Independent Journalism Today
Our unwavering dedication is to provide you with unbiased news, diverse perspectives, and insightful opinions. We're on a mission to ensure that those in positions of power are held accountable for their actions, but we can't do it alone. Labour Heartlands is primarily funded by me, Paul Knaggs, and by the generous contributions of readers like you. Your donations keep us going and help us uphold the principles of independent journalism. Join us in our quest for truth, transparency, and accountability – donate today and be a part of our mission!
Like everyone else, we're facing challenges, and we need your help to stay online and continue providing crucial journalism. Every contribution, no matter how small, goes a long way in helping us thrive. By becoming one of our donors, you become a vital part of our mission to uncover the truth and uphold the values of democracy.
While we maintain our independence from political affiliations, we stand united against corruption, injustice, and the erosion of free speech, truth, and democracy. We believe in the power of accurate information in a democracy, and we consider facts non-negotiable.
Your support, no matter the amount, can make a significant impact. Together, we can make a difference and continue our journey toward a more informed and just society.
Thank you for supporting Labour Heartlands
