Alan White
@aljwhite.bsky.social
Editor in Chief of @politicshome.bsky.social and @thehousemag.bsky.social. Exhausted.
One should not be getting the inside track on this situation from John Sopel's Twitter feed x.com/jonsopel/sta...
Jon Sopel on X: "Astonishing scenes from the @BBCNews meeting with Tim Davie and Samir Shah. * Chairman sait it was disrespectful to suggest board wasn’t upholding BBC values, causing widespread fury * Explained the week long delay in commenting on @Telegraph leak was because of need to check" / X
Astonishing scenes from the @BBCNews meeting with Tim Davie and Samir Shah. * Chairman sait it was disrespectful to suggest board wasn’t upholding BBC values, causing widespread fury * Explained the week long delay in commenting on @Telegraph leak was because of need to check
x.com
November 11, 2025 at 2:59 PM
One should not be getting the inside track on this situation from John Sopel's Twitter feed x.com/jonsopel/sta...
I fear that there is a line between omitting elements of the story for space / relevance and "not reporting that the chair of the BBC board had to respond to allegations from staff of a political coup taking place"
November 11, 2025 at 2:51 PM
I fear that there is a line between omitting elements of the story for space / relevance and "not reporting that the chair of the BBC board had to respond to allegations from staff of a political coup taking place"
It's always nice as a journalist to have your reporting rubber stamped by the BBC. Last week it happened a mere three days after we'd broken the story.
November 10, 2025 at 3:01 PM
It's always nice as a journalist to have your reporting rubber stamped by the BBC. Last week it happened a mere three days after we'd broken the story.
it's GB News I'm afraid
November 10, 2025 at 2:29 PM
it's GB News I'm afraid
I’m a big fan of this take, and am adding it to this thread with the corollary that it has, throughout the BBC’s histry, been wilfully weaponised by politicians who understand it al too well bsky.app/profile/tom-...
Objectivity, impartiality and balance are all *different things*, and the lazy tendency to treat them as synonyms, and to use partisan balance alone as a proxy for the others, is the root cause of a vast amount of nonsense.
Robbie Gibb once suggested that reporters should reflect if they were getting more retweets from one side than the other - a braindead analysis that ignores that fair and impartial reporting of education might get more Tory retweets than say, criminal justice.
November 10, 2025 at 11:28 AM
I’m a big fan of this take, and am adding it to this thread with the corollary that it has, throughout the BBC’s histry, been wilfully weaponised by politicians who understand it al too well bsky.app/profile/tom-...
The only people that really suffer from the ongoing Punch and Judy show are commercial rivals, and, arguably, the public as consumers of news, who might want more aggressive coverage of the govt of the day. And who cares about them?
November 10, 2025 at 9:04 AM
The only people that really suffer from the ongoing Punch and Judy show are commercial rivals, and, arguably, the public as consumers of news, who might want more aggressive coverage of the govt of the day. And who cares about them?
1986. Time is a flat circle www.theguardian.com/media/2013/j...
How BBC director general Alasdair Milne was hustled out by Hussey
Maggie Brown: Coup came after chairman Marmaduke Hussey brutally reasserted the power of the Corporation's governors
www.theguardian.com
November 10, 2025 at 9:02 AM
1986. Time is a flat circle www.theguardian.com/media/2013/j...