Regarding the politicisation of the BBC:
Ex-editor of The Economist Bill Emmott, a well-known and vociferous elite-class lefty and pro-European journalist, was appointed to head the Ofcom content board, which will oversee the BBC’s editorial standards from next spring, and then summarily dismissed after publishing some lefty pro-European articles...
... The affair does seem to reveal startling ineptitude by Hodgson – who hired someone to run the content board because he was a journalist and then forced him out when she discovered he was, er, a journalist. Is she up to the task of invigilating the BBC, especially given her own past as a corporation executive? Or of standing up to the secretary of state? The DCMS select committee will now surely have to investigate further.
In a letter to MPs on the committee two weeks ago, Emmott also drew attention to the political balance of the main Ofcom board, soon to be responsible for the BBC. Since he has been evicted (by a Conservative minister), three of the six non-exec directors “have associations with the Conservative Party”.
One is Tory peer Baroness Noakes, who in the run-up to last year’s election was writing tweets such as “Be very afraid if @Ed_Miliband and #Labour get back into power” and “Must not let Labour back to destroy progress”. After protests, Ofcom conceded that some of the comments were “not appropriate” – but she remains an Ofcom director, and indeed its deputy chair.
“Board members are able to express their opinions publicly on a range of matters,” a spokesman explained at the time, adding that Ofcom “is independent of government… All its decisions are free from political influence”. Karen Bradley may agree, but does anyone else believe a word of it?
http://www.private-eye.co.uk/issue-1433/media-news
