Blogging the Beeb

Cultural Cringe

Too busy to post before, but this can't be missed: former BBC Television MD Will Wyatt has weighed into the BBC's coverage of Islam and Christianity online.

The Beeb is looking into it.

Race and Britain

In the Indie (subscription site), Yasmin Alibhai-Brown comments on the Darcus Howe/Joan Rivers row:

For a couple of days, Britons discussed the state of race relations in this country, a rare foray into a theme that appears to have been buried in a heritage site. We talk incessantly about multiculturalism, faith battles, Islamophobia, integration, assimilation, segregation, immigration, terrorism, the British identity, inner- city problems and ethnic tensions, but not race - even though it colours every one of the above

Empire State

The BBC has an interactive site about the Sceptred Isle series on the British Empire.

Midweek Punch-up

The broadsheets are having a field day over yesterday's encounter between Darcus Howe and Joan Rivers on Radio 4's Midweek - without getting into any of the arguments and their merits themselves of course. Here is the transcript in question:

Darcus Howe: I have been persecuted by everyone. I have to educate my wife about black people.

Joan Rivers: I’m so bored with race.

DH What are you talking about?

JR Race doesn’t mean a damn thing. It’s about people.

DH There are thousands of . . . let’s say “Caribbean” children since “black” offends Joan . . .

JR Just stop right now. Black does not offend me. How dare you? How dare you say that? Black offends me? You know nothing about me, you just sat down here, how dare you?

DH The use of the term black offends you.

JR The use of the term black offends me? Where the hell are you coming from? You’ve got such a chip on your shoulder. I don’t give a damn if you’re black or white.

DH I do.

JR I couldn’t care less, it’s what the person is. Don’t you dare call me a racist. I want an apology.

Libby Purves I don’t think he meant it personally.

JR I think it was.

DH (to Rivers) You have a language problem.

JR No I don’t. You had a child, you left them. Your wife said you weren’t there. You deserted them. Now your son comes back, you got problems. Where were you when he was growing up?

DH May I continue?

JR Don’t you dare call me a racist. How dare you?

LP I have great sympathy with both sides but I’m starting to feel like Oprah.

JR Both sides?! I abhor racists. Don’t you dare call me that . . . son of a bitch. (Pause)

LP Right, Darcus . . .

JR Yes, please continue with this wonderful father who left his children.

LP Darcus, can we just say that you don’t think Joan is a racist?

DH I don’t know whether she is a racist or not. I don’t care. Normally I wouldn’t ever meet you in my life.

JR No, normally I wouldn’t choose to meet you.

DH No, she’s not a racist.

JR Now we can talk about his stupid film.

DH I don’t think you brought me here to be insulted.

JR Nor did I come here to be insulted by someone, to be called a racist.

LP Andrea, shall we talk about plant photography?

Andrea Jones Please.

Here's Libby Purves' own account. Here's the Telegraph leader. This is The Times report. This is the Guardian's. This is the Telegraph's, and their review.

You can listen to the whole show here. Or just the clip, via the Guardian, here.

Later - now BBC News has got in on the act.

Trevor Phillips on Media Diversity

According to the Guardian, Trevor Phillips has returned to the issue of diversity within media organisations, saying:

"Black and Asian reporters are fed up with being assigned stories on Brixton yardies and bling culture".

He said the media had to open up to ethnic minority applicants if it was to reflect the diversity of modern Britain and report on it comprehensively.

"We need to know more about more different kinds of people, we're only going to know that if we have organisations in the media as diverse as our society and communities," Mr Phillips added.

He said the lack of ethnic minority journalism led to mistakes being made by white reporters, pointing to wrong assumptions that were made in some parts of the media about the Asian community after the July bombings in London.

BBC Arabic Channel

The Telegraph says that the BBC is reviewing the World Service with a view to creating an Arab Channel to compete with Al-Jazeera.

This is not in fact a new story. The BBC has been discussing this with the Foreign Office for some time.

The BBC has been down this route before, of course, in the 1990s, when it was involved in partnership with a Saudi company in the BBC Arabic TV channel which had to close in 1996 over editorial control issues - Al-Jazeera launched subsequently, recruiting a number of the former BBC employees. This article by its former Managing Editor Ian Richardson gives more.

The BBC has also shared facilities and stories with Al-Jazeera.

CRE Chief challanges Metropolitan elite

CRE Chair Trevor Phillips has continued his campaign to move the CRE into the mainstream of UK public life in the last few days, with a speech and article, in which he signals themes similar to those of my book:

The metropolitan middle classes can remain in denial for as long as they like. But our job is to confront the reality that most Britons - black, brown, white – face, and change it where that reality weakens our nation’s fabric.

Panorama rejects British Muslim complaint (Updated)

The Editor of Panorama has rejected the complaint against its August programme by the Muslim Council of Britain, who have now submitted another complaint, this time to the BBC Editorial Complaints Unit.

I was away on holiday when the programme went out, and missed a lot of the initial row, though I have now caught up with the transcript. Norman Geras, the king, head of state by acclamation of British bloggers, covered the row between Madeleine Bunting of the Guardian and John Ware, the award-winning journalist who made the programme. So did the excellent Harry's Place. The BBC has conducted a series of online debates following the programme, which you can find here, here, here, here and here.

John Ware was also interviewed on Today about it.

The debate on multiculturalism and its relationship to Britishness has become more acute and more urgent since 7/7. That means difficult questions being asked, including by the BBC.

Later: more credit to Norm for pointing out this.

After 7/7

OpenDemocracy has an article by Tariq Modood, Professor and founding director of the Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Citizenship at Bristol University , reflecting on the complexities of multiculturalism, integration and Britishness post 7/7. Extract:

The argument against multiculturalism and for integration has....an even longer lineage in critiques from both left and right in the 1970s. But its post-2001 manifestation was new in a crucial respect: it came from the pluralistic centre-left, and was articulated by people who previously rejected polarising models of race and class and were sympathetic to the “rainbow”, coalitional politics of identity and the realignment and redefinition of progressive forces that it implied.

By 2004, it was common to read or hear that the cultural separatism and self-segregation of Muslim migrants represented a challenge to Britishness, and that a “politically-correct” multiculturalism had fostered fragmentation rather than integration. Trevor Phillips, then as now chair of the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE), declared that multiculturalism had once been useful but is now out-of-date, for it made a fetish of difference instead of encouraging minorities to be truly British (see Tom Baldwin, “I want an integrated society with a difference”, Times, 3 April 2004).

He criticises many on the left for:

the view that there is something deeply wrong about rallying round the idea of Britain, about defining ourselves in terms of a normative concept of Britishness – that it is too racist, imperialist, militaristic, and elitist – and that the goal of seeking to be British in the present and the future is silly and dangerous, and indeed demeaning to the newly settled groups among the population.

He argues correctly, in my view:

Perhaps one of the lessons of the current crisis is that multiculturalists, and the left in general, have been too hesitant about embracing our national identity and allying it with progressive politics.

Then he says:

The reaffirming of a plural, changing, inclusive British identity, which can be as emotionally and politically meaningful to British Muslims as the appeal of jihadi sentiments, is critical to isolating and defeating extremism.

I hope he actually means that 'a plural, changing inclusive British identity' can be more meaningful than 'the appeal of jihadi sentiments' rather than 'as' meaningful. However, he raises issues many on the left have run away from.