{"id":88565,"date":"2016-05-13T13:38:28","date_gmt":"2016-05-13T13:38:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/?p=88565"},"modified":"2016-05-13T13:38:28","modified_gmt":"2016-05-13T13:38:28","slug":"real-life-drama-at-the-bbc-white-papers-petitions-and-partisan-reporting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/blog\/real-life-drama-at-the-bbc-white-papers-petitions-and-partisan-reporting\/","title":{"rendered":"Real life drama at the BBC: white papers, petitions and partisan reporting"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s been a turbulent week for the BBC. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has released its <\/strong>long awaited white paper on the BBC, outlining Culture Secretary John Whittingdale\u2019s intentions for the future of the corporation. Alongside the white paper, a petition from campaign website 38 Degrees on the\u00a0impartiality of the BBC\u2019s political editor Laura Kuenssberg, has exploded into a sexism row. Described by 38 Degree\u2019s executive director as \u2018\u2019a launch pad for sexist hate speech towards her on other platforms such as Twitter\u2019\u2019, the petition has now been removed, prompting both applause and criticism from the public. Has it shut down sexist abuse or silenced a debate, no matter how ugly?<\/strong><\/p>\n

David Cameron has claimed people should be \u2018\u2019ashamed\u2019\u2019 of themselves over the \u2018\u2019sexist bullying\u2019\u2019, Jeremy Corbyn has condemned the comments, and Lucy Allan, the Conservative MP for Telford, has said that there \u2018\u2019appears to be a sexist witch hunt to silence her\u2019\u2019. Mentions of Kuenssberg and 38 Degrees shot up on Twitter, the platform on which the abuse is alleged to have taken place.<\/p>\n

\"Laura<\/a>

Laura Kuenssberg Twitter mentions<\/p><\/div>\n

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\"38<\/a>

38 Degrees Twitter mentions<\/p><\/div>\n

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While some Twitter users and mainstream media commentators, such as the Guardian\u2019s Laura Bates<\/a>, have applauded the swift action\u00a0from 38 Degrees, there have been questions over the implications of its removal. Political blogger Craig Murray has published a transcript from a conversation<\/a> with 38 Degrees\u2019 Press Spokesman in which the organisation refuses to publish\u00a0evidence of the tweets. While this is by no means suggests that the abuse didn\u2019t take place, there is a reasonable argument to be made in favour of publishing\u00a0the evidence which caused the petition to be shut down. On Wednesday, Murray also published the comments from the petition<\/a>, and while this itself contains few abusive comments, the row centres on the commentary on the petition on social media sites such as Twitter.<\/p>\n

In another twist,\u00a0Sir\u00a0Michael Lyons, the former chair of the BBC Trust, has come forward\u00a0suggesting\u00a0that political pressure has led the BBC to be biased against Labour. In a week of drama for the BBC, this was probably an unwelcome intervention into a debate which doesn’t look like it will quickly subside.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s been a turbulent week for the BBC. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has released its long awaited white paper on the BBC, outlining Culture Secretary John Whittingdale\u2019s intentions for the future …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":423,"featured_media":88586,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3729],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88565"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/423"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88565\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}