It's a pity, because in my ninja-shaped 10yo brain, that was my favourite of the Connery Bond films.

A reskeet you'll never get back again.

An incredible song. And recorded in one take - Lightfoot hadn't even rehearsed it with his band, but he would fiddle with it at the end of their rehearsals. They had spare studio time at the end of the Summertime Dream sessions and went for it. Drummer tells it here. scottkfish.com/2022/01/15/b...

But I'm not ready to "let's all agree" that the Panorama edit was "unprofessional and indefensible". Overstepping, yes, but they may well have felt Trump's complicity was a commonly held view, especially from a transAtlantic perch. Should have been done differently, but "indefensible" is too strong.

Indeed. And I think the joint resignation of the DG and head of News in the wake of pressure from the US president, which seems to have opened the doors to a billion dollar lawsuit threat, is a story worth covering.

It is inconvenient for me to accept this message.

Definitely feeling this. Solidarity for existing as a thoughtful human in a challenging world.

Okay. Enough posting in some vain attempt to stick up for the embattled BBC today. It matters for little: those with power are doing what they like, whatever we say. But people like Greg Jenner show the enduring value of the corporation and what is at risk. bsky.app/profile/greg...

But for Michael Prescott to portray concern from Jewish org's over BBC coverage of the conflict and ignore concerns from the Muslim org the Centre for Media Monitoring shows the selectivity that characterises his criticisms more broadly. (Report here, for the curious: cfmm.org.uk/cfmm-report-...)

Scholarship such as that from Greg Philo & Mike Barry and from Ivor Gaber & Lisa Thomas show this contested picture. Better still, I would refer anyone back to Neil Kressel's 1987 piece on how judgements of media bias are biased and weaponised. www.jstor.org/stable/37913...

Just on the specific point about BBC bias in Israel/Gaza. It is ludicrous to say BBC is biased against Israel and pretend that is a statement of fact rather than an interpretation based on a particular perspective on the situation. This most overdetermined of issues has been spun from all sides.

I stupidly, naively, in a totally captured and well-of-course-you'd-say-that way, feel that this independence matters. That the quality of journalism matters, and its ability to say what's going on matters for society. I signed up for it, I studied four years and worked eight years in the biz.

Other things on my shelf were already down and about my desk as I work on this #AcWriMo book text (haha to today's productivity...) Just thinking about the enterprise of journalism more broadly, and apologies for the heavy US tilt of these thinking-through texts. What *is* journalism for in 2025?

On the historical point, see this thread from George Monbiot. It's nothing like the first time BBC DGs have had to resign due to political dissatisfaction. I would say the current moment (Trump's attack on int'l enemies) & its coincidence w CEO of News makes it exceptional. bsky.app/profile/geor...

A glimpse of a few texts from my shelf. I know scholarly critiques of media are not accessible to or interesting for everyone, but they give context: Schlesinger from 1978/87; Born more recently; Mills from a very critical angle that still repudiates the "liberal metropolitan elite" bias argument.

Private media aren't treated this way, and they won the case against regulation at the time of Leveson. Yet their sanctimony and even disingenuous presentation of BBC "failures" makes the case for intervention they would not tolerate in their own organisations.