When the future history of the rise in England of hatecrime, antiscience and lietelling comes to be written the finger will be pointed squarely at the BBC for its failure to engage in a thoughtful way with what "impartiality" requires.
The BBC's intellectually flabby conflation of that which is properly contestable with that which is contested by marginal interests both confers legitimacy on the illegitimate and is antithetical to its charter obligation to "act in the public interest."
It shouldn't matter, right? We should be tackling the illegitimate ideas rather than the media that promotes them. However, the BBC's monopolistic voice makes it the only arbiter that matters of legitimacy. And it consistently arbitrates wrongly.
This failure is why so many who the BBC might expect to argue for its survival against the Murdochs and the Dacres and the Barclays of this world no longer feel able to do so.
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So, so grim. Amazing work from the Guardian. But there will be dozens, if not hundreds, of contracts like this that we will never know about. theguardian.com/world/2020/nov…
Huge credit to @lawrencefelic. So difficult landing stories like this - amazing work.
You just know what the Guardian has been able to report is the tip of the iceberg. We will ask our lawyers to take a look and see if we can show you more. But much more difficult when it is a sub-contract.
In which @guyadams takes a long hard look at the men made incredibly wealthy by what look like sweetheart PPE deals granted by this Government. dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8…
Three days after @GoodLawProject broke the story of the $50m payable by a jeweller based in Florida to a Spanish businessman for poorly defined services in connection with a "lucrative" PPE deal granted by the Govt at your expense, the court proceedings in Miami were halted.
"How I was cancelled": read all about it in the Mail, the Telegraph, UnHerd, the Times, the Spectator...
What is indisputable fact is that the Guardian - which repeatedly covered the case brought by the anti-abortionist's and homophobe's lawyer of choice, Paul Conrathe - has not given one inch to @GoodLawProject's attempt to secure trans kids can secure a therapeutic assessment.
Moreover, it appears as though Comment is Free was blocked from carrying a piece in support of the Good Law Project litigation. This is not a comment on its younger staff, but I would say the editorial line of the Guardian is more transphobic than that of the Mail.
I've been on a journey on trans issues - and I have ended up a long way from some or even many in my tribe - and I wanted to set out some things I've learned along the way. THREAD
If you find yourself constantly at odds with younger generations (who as a rule are totally cool with being trans) the thing you swore would never happen probably has. Perhaps the process of becoming your parents - out-of-touch know-it-alls - is subtler than once you credited?
If you are a man and the reality of your engagement with equality issues is that you do little more than default to the views of a significant woman in your life that doesn't make you woke it makes you lazy.