BBC Archives | MelaniePhillips.com

My appearance on BBC TV Politics Live

March 6, 2020March 6, 2020 MelanieBBC, Labour antisemitism, Politics Live

I made an appearance on BBC TV’s Politics Live, discussing among other things the coronavirus outbreak, the Labour party leadership election and the collapse of the Flybe airline. My fellow guests were Conservative MP Damian Green, Labour’s shadow housing minister, Sarah Jones, and Sienna Rodgers, editor of the LabourList website. If you can access BBC iPlayer, you can watch the show here. You can also see a tweeted clip here where I suggest that even the decent Sir Keir Starmer won’t be able to get on top of Labour party…

Audio Britain

The moral maze that is the BBC

February 14, 2020February 14, 2020 MelanieBBC, Moral Maze

On BBC Radio’s Moral Maze this week, we discussed the moral purpose of the BBC. Does it even have one? With the government boycotting Radio Four’s Today programme in protest at its perceived bias, and now threatening to destroy it altogether through a fundamental change to its funding structure, we asked whether the Beeb’s original aim of uniting the nation has now become impossible in such an era of technological and cultural fragmentation. Can it or should it compete with Netflix, or does it still have a unique role to…

Culture wars

The extinction of reason

September 20, 2019September 21, 2019 MelanieBBC, climate change, Extinction Rebellion

On a day like today, when there are protests and demonstrations in country after country against governments’ alleged failure to tackle “climate change”, you feel as if you have stepped into a looking-glass world in which people have collectively taken leave of their senses. If, that is, you are someone like me for whom the whole climate change hypothesis is a mad, nightmarish cult in which an infantile (literally) view of the world, peddling ludicrous theories of imminent apocalypse which owe more to medieval millenarian sects than modern science, is…

Britain

The BBC’s hilarious new comedy production

July 16, 2019July 16, 2019 MelanieBBC, Editorial Guidelines, journalism

The BBC has produced a new comedy which is an absolute roll-on-the-floor, laugh-out-loud side-splitter. It’s called the revised Editorial Guidelines. Here are some comic highlights. “In our journalism in particular, we seek to establish the truth and use the highest reporting standards to provide coverage that is fair and accurate… We are impartial, seeking to reflect the views and experiences of our audiences – so that our output as a whole includes a breadth and diversity of opinion and no significant strand of thought is under-represented or omitted. We are independent of outside interests and…

Audio

In the Moral Maze with art and the transgressive artist

March 8, 2019March 8, 2019 Melanieart, BBC, Michael Jackson, Moral Maze

On BBC RAdio’s The Moral Maze this week, Claire Fox, Matthew Taylor, Anne McElvoy and I discussed art and the artist. Can their moral worth be separated? Our peg was “Leaving Neverland”, a two-part TV documentary which detailed child sex abuse claims against the singer Michael Jackson (whether Jackson’s music can be termed “art” is debatable, but anyway). The renewed allegations have prompted a debate about whether we should stop listening to his music. Some believe a boycott takes an important moral stand against the late singer’s alleged crimes. To…

Israel

Once again into the fray in TV’s gladiatorial circus

January 11, 2019January 22, 2019 MelanieBBC, Fiona Bruce, Politics Live, Question Time

I did two TV appearances in one day yesterday – the first on the BBC’s daily Politics Live, and the second on the BBC’s flagship political debate show, Question Time. It was the first edition of Question Time with Fiona Bruce in the chair after the retirement of its venerable anchor David Dimbleby who had become something of a national institution. So it was a show that attracted much attention and considerable comment in today’s newspapers. All eyes were on Fiona and whether she could fill Dimbleby’s patrician shoes. You…

Culture wars

BBC censorship and the man-made global warming scam

October 8, 2018October 10, 2018 MelanieBBC, censorship, global warming, IPCC

This evening, an important lecture is being delivered in London on the subject of man-made or anthropogenic global warming (AGW) theory. If you follow BBC news programmes, you are extremely unlikely to hear anything about this important lecture. That is because the scientist delivering it is saying that man-made global warming theory is a scam. BBC policy is to report no challenge to AGW theory at all. The explicit statement of this policy was set out in a four-page memo by Fran Unsworth, the BBC’s Director of News and Current Affairs,…

Britain

How the Question Time bear-pit changed me

June 19, 2018 MelanieBBC, Dimbleby, Question Time

As a regular panellist over the years on BBC TV’s Question Time, I’m sorry to see that David Dimbleby is stepping down from the show after a mere quarter-century in the chair. He says he wants to return to his first love, reporting. Maybe so. Or maybe he’s just had enough of the trivialisation of the show that he has anchored for so long. Nowadays there’s almost invariably at least one comedian among the five-strong panel — and that’s just the politicians. I have come to realise that the audience…