Maxi Powell, Black Information Link, March 7, 2008
Over the last 13 weeks we have seen the BBC London News devote hours of coverage on the issue of Lee Jasper role at the Mayors Office. Researchers have been working round the clock forensically studying acres of material including stolen emails from City Hall as well as contacting hundreds of black Londoners seeking any information about the activities of Lee Jasper. A full team of researchers was employed to undertake the task of ferreting out anything that could be questioned. The objective was clear the BBC wanted to find evidence of corruption, fraud or anything else that could be used to discredit Lee Jasper former Senior Policy Director of the Mayor of London Ken Livingstone.
The BBC London team used its vast resources on line and radio combined with television to engineer a sense of manufactured crisis around Lee Jasper on of the most senior black figures in the United Kingdom and its news reports sought to suggest impropriety and high corruption.
Of course we are in the heated atmosphere of the London Mayoral elections but even taking this account this account the coverage of this story has been deemed excessive. Of course impropriety in public life will always be of interest to the media and wider public and in no way can the right of the BBC to look into these matters be questioned. However what can and should be questioned is the disproportionate time given to this story by the BBC.
In addition to BBC London News, BBC Radio, BBC Radio 4 and the BBC on line pages, the topical Sunday Politics Show programme covered the issues in some depth on a number of occasions. The BBC harassed anyone connected with Lee Jasper including the charity the 1990 Trust whom it recently accused, without a shred of evidence of failing to properly account for project funding received some five years ago. This is despite the fact the 1990 Trust one of the most well regarded black charities in the country has a full set of audited accounts for the year in question filed with the Charity Commission. All those agencies funding the project were happy with the project outcomes and have never raised any issues in relation to the project itself.
Then there was the now infamous Brixton Base working with disaffected black youths in Lambeth much reporting of possible fraud and ‘ inappropriate ‘ interventions by Lee Jasper. The first allegation picked up by the Evening Standard has yet to be proved and increasingly sources close to the inquiry say that serious fraud is unlikely to have taken place. On the issue of Lee Jasper ‘ interventions’ the GLA had looked at this along with the LDA long before the BBC covered the story and determined that Lee Jasper broke no rules.
The Kamp Africa affair did claim the scalp of a female junior member of the Mayors Office for failing to admit to her free jolly to Nigeria. She admitted she lied and she resigned end of story you would think. But whatever the justification of the BBC this matter can hardly be described as significant in news terms except of course in the context of a racially charged atmosphere within the BBC newsroom and that the staff member worked with Lee Jasper.
The sum total of this massive investigative effort funded by the licence payer? Lee Jasper forgot to declare a couple of relatively minor matters and the BBC believes that a project delivered by the Trust was not value for money. Hardly hold the front page stuff and yet the BBC has allowed senior personnel such as Tim Donavan their Senior Political editor who is of course white, as are the all, if not the vast majority of BBC London senior staff. The record of the BBC in employing black people in senior positions is a disgrace and the constant downgrading of black presenters within BBC London, their failure to invest in them and recognise their skills and expertise is evidence of the level of institutional racism at the Beeb. When examining their outputs and employment practices it’s hard to believe they are reporting in one of the world’s most diverse cities.
Insiders at the BBC particularly Black and Ethnic Minority staff are appalled at what they describe as a ‘ racist witch hunt’ with reports that some reporters and presenters being warned for simply raising their concerns about the BBC’s lack of balance in relation to this story. A climate of fear and intimidation has developed at the BBC and many staff feel deeply intimidated by the racism that has been unleashed by the BBC.
This failure to achieve some sort of balance has resulted in the BBC London team no longer being trusted by black Londoners. The team has faced increasing difficulty in attracting black people to appear on its programmes as a direct result. Put plainly the BBC has deeply damaged its reputation for fairness and balance within London’s black communities.
So the question for the Governors at the BBC and senior staff is can you justify this coverage in terms of news values? Can you demonstrate proportionality and balance and is the fact that there is no significant senior personal at BBC London beginning to demonstrate itself in the disproportionate focus on a leading London Black figure? How much has the BBC London spent on this compared with other more important issues?
As on young black man said recently ‘BBC in London is in real danger of being known as the British Broadcaster for Caucasians’
Original article
(Posted on March 20, 2008)
Comments
I thought Britain was “originally” a White country?? A broadcasting system being too White. That is a horrible thing to say about a supposedly White country.
My former job used to be all-White until the last two years I worked there. The work quality went way down with three blacks being hired in within that two years. Plus more black customers started showing up. Blea….MOst were a pain to deal with. My new job only consists of all Whites!! Amen to that. It feels so refreshing to deal with all Whites. Once in a blue moon a black customer comes in. They act halfway normal, but still have the black attitude going on.
Posted by Dixie Land Doll at 6:24 PM on March 20
I’m white and all my relatives, friends, acquaintances, and co-workers are white? Boy will my mom be surprised to hear her son is “hideous.”
Posted by at 6:50 PM on March 20
Hilarious. The BBC falls over itself to please blacks and this is their (semi-literate) response. You cannot win with blacks or Muslims or any other “minority”: any criticism of any member of the group, however well-deserved, is evidence of bigotry, discrimination, racism, genocide, et cetera ad nauseam.
Posted by White Briton at 6:56 PM on March 20
Me: BET is “hideously black.” How do you think that would go over?
Posted by Question Diversity at 7:23 PM on March 20
Why don’t they just move BBC HQ to:
1-Zimbabwe
2-South Africa
3-Liberia
4-Sierra Leone
5-Kenya
6-Sudan
7-etc.etc.
This way their slogan can be “all the news that fits to be Blackout”.
To the bloody ninth circle of the Inferno with all of this PC bovine scatology!
Posted by Professor Whitemeat at 8:55 PM on March 20
The BIG question is, just exactly WHY do Blacks want to exist in a White society? Why don’t Blacks choose the “equality” they are so keen for in a majority-Black country? Is the siren song of free money and technology too much for the Black to leave and even stay away from?
Posted by at 9:16 PM on March 20
It won’t bill long until white British school teachers pick up on this with even more enthusiasm than the race commission, denouncing this or that as ‘regretfully white’. What gets into them? It’s as if their bodies are being taken over like in the movie ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’.
Posted by at 9:47 PM on March 20
The sum total of this massive investigative effort funded by the license payer?
Britain shouldn’t have a public broadcaster at all, especially now that cable and satellite can provide everything that public broadcasting provided in the past.
Posted by Ronduck at 12:00 AM on March 21
This is exactly the opposite of the opinion of growing numbers of white Britons: that the BBC is systematically biased against white people.
The aspect of this bias that makes people most angry is reporting (or non-reporting) of racial crime. Racial attacks on non-whites are given blanket coverage with an enormous amount of lecturing about white racism. Far more common racial attacks on whites are either blanked, given minimal coverage, the racial aspect hidden or reported in a completely different, factual rather than emotional way. In other cases where the crime would not appear to be racist but the criminal is non-white (a very large number of cases), the BBC frequently tries to conceal this fact. This frequently leads to absurdity, such as the criminal who stabbed someone on a bus merely being described as “wearing a red cap” without any further clues, as if that would help in catching him!
However this bias is so systematic that it seeps into the most unlikely places. For example the other night I was watching a programme about gardens in different countries around the world, and this particular episode featured South Africa, so we were duly lectured about the evils of apartheid. Previous episodes had featured China and Japan, yet we were not lectured about China’s ongoing abuses or Japanese wartime atrocities. Of course such a programme is no place to raise such issues in my opinion, yet when it came to South Africa, an anti-apartheid theme had to be brought in.
Posted by Ed at 11:44 AM on March 21
Everything in Britain should be hideously white and it should stay that way! Permanently.
Posted by GetBackJack at 12:18 PM on March 21
As someone who has seen BBC broadcasting first hand, I can say it is God awful. The BBC should investigate why thier shows are terrible. And the BBC news, forget it. It’s Sky News all the way!
Posted by Dc Stanton at 2:19 PM on March 21
Football and other sports, not to mention the music industry are ‘hideously black’. This report is absolute garbage, but typical of black thinking. If the BBC is anti-Ken Livingstone (the London Mayor) and want to undermine him, investigating his personal advisor (Lee Jasper) for corruption has nothing to do with the race of the personal advisor. Blacks are now over-represented on British TV and radio. That they are unable to attain top jobs is a reflection of their abilities. No channel has a top black political interviewer. Channel 4 tried some years ago with a woman called Zainab Badawi but she couldn’t cut it. There are top Asian political interviewers, however. As for this quote:
“…reports that some reporters and presenters being warned for simply raising their concerns about the BBC’s lack of balance in relation to this story.”
I would believe this if it was referring to black/Asian/Muslim violence against whites.
Posted by at 3:02 PM on March 21
Greg Dyke was the first to use the phrase ‘hideously white’ in the media.
However, it was a British educated Asian woman living in Liverpool, England, and who actually resembles a dyke (lesbian, who was the first to use the phrase.
By the same token, black, brown and yellow nations are ‘hideously black’,’hideously brown’ and ‘hideously yellow’. It’s about time all indigenous white people started using those terms in the public arena.
In fact, I will not hesitate to use the phrase ‘grotesquely black’ or ‘grotesquely brown’ in any social situation including coloured company where the subject of immigration might crop up.
I don’t mince words on the subject of my ancestral homeland being invaded and overrun by myriads of nonwhite ethnicities whom I and my indigenous brethren did not invite in nor grant permission to such alien encroachers to swamp our respective white ancestral homelands in the first place.
Posted by A Swain at 10:52 PM on March 26
