Relatively new BBC Director General Tim Davie stated that presenters on the state-funded broadcaster are “activists for impartiality” and that he would be prepared to sack those who breach impartiality guidelines on social media. On that basis, Breakfast TV star Naga Munchetty should be fired in the morning but why bother? She would merely be replaced by someone who acted in the same way, thought the same way and polluted the BBC with woke bias. The issue here is a culture that runs through the DNA of the wretched BBC.
Munchetty’s offence was two fold. She and co presenter Charlie Stayt appeared to ridicule the Union Flag and portrait of the Queen in the office of some Tory minister, giggling on camera as they derided it. You could interpret that in many ways and I would not have chanced my arm in an industrial tribunal trying to sack either.
But Munchetty then went onto twitter after the show and endorsed folks who were flag bashing. She liked two tweets which read:
“What has Charlie done? The flag shaggers will be up in arms. Tell him we love him,”
“Top marks for calling out the flag waving government this morning! Should be done every time the Tories roll out one of their talking head ministers,”
Does this show bias? It probably does but enough to sack? No.
But what it does reveal is that Munchetty is very much of the Metropolitan elite mindset that has no time for the flag, for the Queen, that is actually rather embarrassed when folks profess any sense of patriotism or love for this country or its traditions. Although the same sort of folk tend to have no problems with folks waving the Scottish flag or the EU one or indeed almost any flag other than the Union Flag or the Cross of St George.
I do not identify as English so don’t get too excited about these flags either and I am a Republican but the liberal, “modernist” and metropolitan mindset of Ms Munchetty is that which almost all BBC staff seem to possess. It is wholly out of keeping with how most folks in Britain feel which is why the BBC can so often misjudge the national mood so badly as we saw with Rule Britannia and the Last Night of the Proms last year. There is no-one at the BBC there to challenge that woke GroupThink, no diversity of thought which might come if the BBC employed a lot more working class folks and the odd Tory.
The BBC pretends otherwise and that it is impartial. This week, Naga let that mask slip and the truth was soon across social media. By the end of the day, she “unliked” the tweets which she clearly had endorsed and tweeted an apology which read:
“I ‘liked’ tweets today that were offensive in nature about the use of the British flag as a backdrop in a government interview this morning. I have since removed these ‘likes’.
“This do [sic] not represent the views of me or the BBC. I apologise for any offence taken.”
Ends.
It is a good job she is not writing the script for the autocue which she is paid £250,000 a year to read.
Whatever Naga now says, the original tweets she liked clearly do represent Naga’s views. Her apology is a lie designed to get her off the hook. And while the BBC does not have a view on this matter, nearly all of its staff would have agreed with Naga’s original likes not her subsequent “unlikes”.
The BBC is hopelessly out of touch and its problems are endemic and cultural. Sacking one person will not change that. The answer is just to #DefundtheBBC.