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Tom Mills Profile picture
Tom Mills
@ta_mills
Public sociologist & socialist. Interested in elites, knowledge & communication. Author of 'The BBC: Myth of a Public Service'.
May 23 • 13 tweets • 2 min read
One objection to our proposal that the public should be actively & directly involved in the BBC is they, we, lack the necessary expertise to exercise such judgement.

A few points from me on this.🧵

Report here for context: common-wealth.org/publications/o… Of course common sense is not always good sense. But a major reason why people are so often misinformed on significant public issues is precisely because of our broken media system, which very much includes the BBC, as currently constituted.
Mar 19 • 8 tweets • 1 min read
Wanted to determine how often the ICC or ICJ is mentioned by the BBC in its routine reporting on Israel-Palestine. The answer (based on this admittedly crude analysis) seems to be: almost never.🧵 I used Nexis UK to search for a month of BBC1 TV news reports mentioning either Israel or Gaza between 20 February and 19 March this year. This returned a total of 216 (computer automated) news transcripts.
Mar 3, 2024 • 16 tweets • 3 min read
Was the Rochdale by-election divisive? What the papers said – a thread: Image Mr Danczuk said the election on February 29 is a two-horse race between him and bookies’ favourite, George Galloway… Mr Danczuk claims Mr Galloway’s campaign is divisive and ‘stoking up trouble’ – a claim dismissed by his rival. (Independent, 19 Feb)
Jul 8, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
After calling me an antisemite last night Frankie Boyle sent me two DMs. I told him I'd reply today & drafted a response just now only to find he'd unfollowed & presumably muted me.🤷‍♂️ Oh well. We all like to get last word I guess. Might write something more general on the dynamics of this sort of thing. The way the insular nature of the media creates these huge tensions for those left insiders that spill out on social media.
Jul 8, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Fred Block has a strange definition of class consciousness in 'The Ruling Class Does Not Rule'. Seems to mean the ability to see past your individual/sectoral interests to a class-wide perspective. Obviously, this is based in those state theory debates, but also think it’s shaped by a certain conception of how a ‘class for itself’ should act that’s based in the historical experience of labour, not capital.
Jun 14, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
I wasn’t feeling very well yesterday, so probably not at my most lucid, but what I was trying to get at was the way I think capitalist power has given rise to skewed & mutually reinforcing conservative & liberal interpretations of social crisis. Conservatives leverage social discontent with appeals to social hierarchies. This is at odds with the rationalism & putative universalism of liberalism, so a lot of political energy goes into attacking liberal epistemic institutions (public media, universities)
Apr 28, 2022 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
Government announced its Broadcasting white paper today. Lots to say, but I’ll focus here on the proposed privatisation of Channel 4, for which the gov has no democratic mandate & has presented no reasonable case. Gov’s statement (which you can read here) is hugely misleading. Seeking to justify its policy, it draws attention to a series of issues which either would not be rectified, or alternatively would be worsened, under private ownership. gov.uk/government/new…
Mar 3, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
I've always seen Corbynism as a chance opening that allowed for an official representation of broadly popular political preferences & sentiments previously locked out of formal politics. That's largely what accounts for its successes in 2017 & the hysterical response that followed. What we've seen since 2019 is a ruthless reassertion of political control.
Dec 31, 2021 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
Even longstanding critics of the BBC were shocked by its decision to interview Alan Dershowitz following the Ghislaine Maxwell verdict. What does this tell us about the state of the organisation? (Thread) Notably, Rob Burley, probably the BBC’s most indefatigable & intellectually incurious apologist, declined to defend the decision, & the next morning the BBC put out a statement saying that the interview didn’t meet its editorial standards.
Oct 4, 2021 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
Seen quite a lot of centrist types asking how Sun readers can be reached if a Labour Leader doesn't write for the paper. Well let's look at some Ofcom data (thread I'm afraid). In Ofcom’s 2021 News Consumption survey, 269 of those surveyed listed ‘The Sun’ among the newspapers they ‘use for news nowadays’. That’s 24%, so a big chunk of respondents & therefore a big chunk of voters.
Jun 3, 2021 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Agreed with most of this (I usually do). Not convinced on the strategic calculation around anti-imperialism though which is discussed at the end. Attitudes data suggests public's knowledge of historical imperialism very poor - & support very high. But there’s a broadly pragmatic position on foreign policy which is pretty amenable to a left ‘national-popular’ project - see e.g. response to Corbyn's counter-terrorism speech.
Jan 6, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Reported that Richard Sharp will be the new BBC chair. Very significant in terms of the future of public media. Short thread on his background. Sharp’s late father, Lord Eric Sharp, was a civil servant turned corporate executive who was appointed by Keith Joseph in 1980 to oversee the privatisation of Cable & Wireless. He also headed a Centre for Policy Studies Working Group & wrote for the IEA.
Dec 4, 2020 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
One response to (one finding in) our BBC Twitter paper is to say: 'So what? Of course BBC reporters follow the ruling party. They are newsworthy because they are the decision makers.' To some extent this is a fair point, because we already know from content studies (as we note in the paper) that the BBC reflects the Government’s perspective most of all in its news reporting (though this is rarely acknowledged in public debates).
Dec 2, 2020 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
New research out today co-authored with my @astonSSH colleagues Killian Mullan & @GaryJFooks in which we examine the Twitter networks of @BBCNews journalists. Accompanying Guardian article here: theguardian.com/commentisfree/… We look at the MPs 90 BBC journalists follow & interact with on Twitter based on data extracted in early 2019, if you can remember that far back. Some headline findings...
Sep 27, 2020 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
Proposed appointment of Charles Moore as BBC chair (& Dacre to Ofcom) is obviously ‘kite flying’ given the timing, but that’s not to say it won’t happen, & it would be very damaging. They’ll be some hack takes portraying all this as a Trumpian move & an aberration from the traditions of British conservatism etc. It’s not really. Very similar to the erosion of the BBC's public service ethos from the 1980s.
Sep 3, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Here’s where we are with the BBC atm. There’s a new DG from its commercial wing who’s a former corporate executive & active Conservative Party member. Davie’s said to be open to changes to funding. Statements suggest he’s most keen on restoring reputation for impartiality. Neither would be a bad thing IMO. Reform to the licence fee system is long overdue. Impartiality has never been achieved on key issues, & in recent years political reporting has been very poor & often completely unprofessional.
Aug 27, 2020 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
This Tweet seems to have annoyed a few people, so let me expand/clarify a few things. 1. Yes there are reasons people may need a car to *regularly* travel within or from London for work or caring responsibilities. But this goes nowhere near accounting for the prevalence of car ownership in a city well serviced by public transport.
Jun 23, 2020 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
A lot of chat lately about how shockingly dishonest the Tories are. There's a sociological reason for this. It's not (just) a moral failing on the part of conservatives. Conservativism is basically a political project of popularising inequality. This is structurally dishonest. It means deceiving people about reality & about their interests.
May 13, 2020 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
Good that this is being discussed. But while I appreciate this is Twitter, imo this is the kind of crude summation of what’s at stake that we should really try to avoid (thread I'm afraid). (1) Poulantzas & Miliband agree that the class nature of capitalist societies account for capitalist states. What was in dispute was casual mechanisms. (2) Miliband did not moralise about the motivations of politicians. He was a sociologist.
Apr 26, 2020 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
As your political subconscious correspondent I'm starting a new Dreams About Keir thread:
Apr 22, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
That pic of Luke Akehurst at 20 reminded me of something I've noticed about the sorts of people involved in the Labour party. I’m going to crudely generalise. The right are much more interested in politics in the narrow sense. Really they're grown up politics nerds. In my experience, this isn't true of a lot of the left. People were drawn into (or back into) Politics (by Corbyn) because of the possibility of a more humane future. Not out of any interest in, let alone love of, the political game.