Clarkson sacked by the BBC

[NickFitz]

It is hard not to believe that the Beeb was partly motivated by Clarkeson's political position.

When exactly? When they chose him from the general crowd of motoring journalists to appear regularly on Top Gear between 1988 and 2000? When they brought him back to Top Gear between 2002 and 2015, during which they reputedly ended up paying him a million pounds a year? When they gave him the job of presenting Robot Wars? When they gave him his own talk show? When they let him make a load of other shows and specials, and do things like go for a ride in a jet fighter? When they bought out his stake in Top Gear for over eight million quid?

Or were they only motivated by his political position when they decided not to renew his contract after he verbally abused and violently assaulted a colleague?

Just wondering

[MicrosoftBob]

When exactly? When they chose him from the general crowd of motoring journalists to appear regularly on Top Gear between 1988 and 2000? When they brought him back to Top Gear between 2002 and 2015, during which they reputedly ended up paying him a million pounds a year? When they gave him the job of presenting Robot Wars? When they gave him his own talk show? When they let him make a load of other shows and specials, and do things like go for a ride in a jet fighter? When they bought out his stake in Top Gear for over eight million quid?

Or were they only motivated by his political position when they decided not to renew his contract after he verbally abused and violently assaulted a colleague?

Just wondering

Perhaps they've made enough money off Top Gear to fully fund their feminist jazz hands collective and don't need him

[pjclarke]

Freedom of information requests have exposed the BBC as buying hugely more copies of the Guardian than any other newspaper (proportionally). Several senior (retired) BBC news readers have stated publicly that the BBC news agenda is routinely set by that day's Guardian.

Ahem yourself.

BBC News is “completely obsessed” by the agenda set by newspapers and follows the lead of the Daily Mail and*Daily Telegraph*too much, according to senior journalist Robert Peston.

Link

Assuming you're serious about sales of The Guardian, you need to control for other factors; that paper is perceived as having excellent media coverage, and it carries the vast majority of media job ads. Doubtless there is some blurring of cause and effect however I suspect that has something to do with its popularity in a media organisation. Plus, if you're interested in what the newspaper sales reveal about political affiliations, shouldn't you combine titles with the same inclinations? ISTR combined purchases of the Times + Telegraph easily exceeded the Graun ….

Looking at newspaper sales and individual staff members is all very well, but the Cardiff University study I mention above actually examined output and found

The BBC tends to reproduce a Conservative, Eurosceptic, pro-business version of the world, not a left-wing, anti-business agenda.

[NickFitz]

I see no link to any of these FoI requests about the BBC's Grauniad purchases. Surely they can't be an urban legend?

What I do see a lot of is those on the right decrying the leftist slant of the BBC, while those on the left decry its rightist slant. Quite often, they're each decrying exactly the same report.

This would suggest that the BBC manages to do a pretty good job of being unbiased, but people's tendency to react along the lines of "If you're not for us, you're against us" (which seems to be an unconscious bias built-in to all humanity, not a political thing per se) leads them to see it as actively opposed to their own view simply because it doesn't uncritically endorse it.

[NickFitz]

Perhaps they've made enough money off Top Gear to fully fund their feminist jazz hands collective and don't need him

You mean that was their plan all along when they first put him on air 27 years ago? The cunning devils!

[minestrone]

I have seen some amount of absolute paranoid pish posted on here over the years but the political conspiracy gets close to the summit of Mount Pish.

I therefore refuse to believe the authenticity of the poster with the argument.

[pjclarke]

I see no link to any of these FoI requests about the BBC's Grauniad purchases. Surely they can't be an urban legend? .

Foi

[EternalOptimist]

I like the idea that the lefties think the beeb is biased to the right.
and vice versa.

So it's obvious that we should scrap the licence fee and let the beeb sink or swim in the commercial market.

[SueEllen]

Perhaps they've made enough money off Top Gear to fully fund their feminist jazz hands collective and don't need him

So say the beeb ignored what JC did. So next time he breaks a producer's arm. Would that be fine?

You have to remember the beeb have form in ignoring hints and reports of abuse from workers and members of the public, management pretending they heard nothing and then covering it up even when one of the main perpetrators is dead.

[minestrone]

I do see a level of suspicion formed when BBC Breakfast continually have a platform for people to say "The cuts have ruined my life" and then the follow up question "what would you like the government to do"

Since the newsnight/Saville debacle I think the BBC and the BBC news should be split.