newspapers and Feedback and 'Feedback'newspapers

We are very much into 'complaints from both sides' territory here, but...

On this week's 'historic' Feedback 'EU referendum coverage special' all of the featured callers criticised the BBC's coverage from an anti-Brexit position.

Most of their complaints were so silly and demonstrably untrue that I ended up agreeing with the robust knock-downs delivered by the BBC's Ric Bailey - the usual 'we got it about right'-spouting senior BBC editor put up to appear on this edition Feedback.

For example, one caller complained that the BBC had failed to challenge Brexit campaigners over that '�350m a week to the EU' claim. 

His complaint is absolutely absurd. That's something I've heard BBC reporters and interviewers doing endlessly, literally since Day One of the campaign. Evan Davis alone must have furiously challenged Leave supporters dozens of times on Newsnight. Today also kept on challenging Brexiteers over it. (It was still doing it last week). Mark Mardell kept on snapping at pro-Brexit interviewees over it too. When the BBC editors gathered for a mass debunking of stats on Today and a similar one on BBC One, that �350 figure was first up for debunking. More or Less kept on debunking it (on various re-incarnations of the same programme). The BBC website's Reality Check started with it. 

And yet this Radio 4 listener failed to hear or read or see any of that, by the sounds of it.

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Why did Feedback only invite anti-Brexit listeners to complain about the BBC, given that doing so might in itself bring down obvious charges of anti-Brexit bias against Feedback?

An obvious possible line of defence for Feedback here (not that I can imagine either the folk at Feedback or the average Feedback listener ever quite putting it like this!) might run as follows: "Well, that's only evidence that Feedback is faithfully reflected the views of its audience: the Radio 4 audience. That's a well-heeled, largely metropolitan audience even more removed from the general popular mood than most politicians at Westminster!".

That line of defence (dreamed up my me) may have some truth in it (if I say so myself), but how does it explain this bizarre section from presenter Roger Bolton (beginning at 7.47)?

I should, by the way, point out at this time also we have had some people - Stephen Luscombe and Elaine Langham, for example - saying just that they thought the BBC coverage was (now adopting a slightly incredulous tone of voice) biased towards the Remain campaign. I suppose that's an example of Feedback trying to be balanced.

That 'attempt at balance' took all of 13 seconds. Why didn't we hear what Stephen and Elaine actually said? Were the pro-Remain listeners who did appear really representative of the feedback received by Feedback?

Was "I suppose that's an example of Feedback trying to be balanced" simply a two-fingered salute from Roger Bolton to 'people like us'?

newspapers and On the BBC's coverage of the death of Muhammad Alinewspapers

Both Newswatch on BBC One/the BBC New Channel and Radio 4's Feedback tackled viewer/listener complaints about the BBC's heavily extensive coverage of the death of Muhammad Ali. 

Both programmes, to their credit, aired complaints that the BBC had gone considerably over the top in the amount of its coverage. And both programmes hauled in a senior BBC editor (Gavin Allen. Controller, Daily News Programmes, on Feedback and Toby Castle, Deputy News Editor, BBC News, on Newswatch) to respond. 

Both senior BBC editors said that the BBC had not only got it 'about right' but had got it 'completely right'. Plus �a change. 

For myself, however, I think Gavin Allen - a highly-practised BBC defender - put the case for the defence rather well while Toby Castle came across as the worst kind of arrogant BBC editor. His performance on Newswatch really need to be watched to be witnessed in all its gory 'glory'. 'Arrogant' really is the word for it. 

(His viewer critics in the studio - especially the young lady - 'rescued' him somewhat though by making eyebrow-raisingly wrong-headed comments).

I have to say though that I bought most of the BBC's arguments about the rightness of their coverage of Ali's death, despite hearing very little of it myself. That 'very little' bit was possibly enough. The bit I particularly remember - last Sunday's Sunday - gave a decent review of The Greatest's involvement with the Nation of Islam and the out-and-out racism (from him) which followed in its wake. But it suggested - as many others have suggested - that his racism softened over time. 

(I was going to recommend an absolutely fascinating comments thread at Harry's Place on the subject that made me think in a far more nuanced way about this aspect of the great man's life {not that I've reflected that here} but, alas, as ever, after seven days, all comments are wiped off the face of the earth).

The main target of criticism was the BBC One early evening news bulletin last Saturday. I saw it at the time and the complaints confirmed my eye-witness impression (which I felt I needed to check, somehow, as I couldn't quite trust my own eyes): that the BBC One had included no other story than Muhammad Ali's death on that bulletin. Not one other story. It, indeed, hadn't.

That would be my only quibble about this. Obviously Ali's death merited massive coverage but to exclude every other story from a major BBC One news bulletin is unusual, and possibly unprecedented (at a guess). 

The arrogant Toby Castle annoyed a good number of people - if Twitter's anything to go by (and it usually isn't). He certainly annoyed me. His defence was flimsy. Even I (I think) could have done better. My defence would have been: Short weekend bulletin, less than half the length of a weekday bulletin, therefore Ali actually got considerably less time than, say, Bowie, who died during the week and got - if I recall correctly - a good eight minutes or so more than Ali.

I don't entirely buy my own unimpeachable argument though. Surely the BBC could have spared a minute or so of that bulletin to give the rest of the news - Fallujah, the floods in Paris, the EU referendum - in brief, and referred viewers to the BBC One tribute to the greatest boxer of all time later that evening.

Why was everything else ignored? Wasn't it a misjudgement?