The UK Broadcasting Regulator Ofcom has released its annual report on the BBC. I like the fact that the BBC exists. But it is an incredibly out of touch organisation.
Even when it appears to be polished, neutral, & honest the BBC is far from impartial.
The report itself contains the word disinformation only three times.
This is highly disappointing because it is well known that the corporation worked with the government to control the coronavirus narrative.
Instead of using simple language to describe the extent to which this took place, when it happened, and why – Ofcom has let the BBC and the government off the hook by effectively saying nothing.
third-bbc-annual-reportSo the UK population was repeatedly lied to and gaslit by the BBC and the government over Covid, lockdowns, and the number of deaths up and down the country, but Ofcom, the so-called regulator, has decided it is best to behave as though this myriad of lies and deception, in which it is now complicit, simply never occurred. There’s a word for this.
Ofcom’s boss Melanie Dawes’ starting salary is £315, 000 a year. She started her new job in February. Before that she had been Britain’s most senior female civil servant – permanent secretary at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, which she took over from Bob Kerslake in 2015.
The Housing and Local Government Ministry saw savage cuts during that time.
Dawes’ husband Benjamin Brogan was Deputy Editor of The Telegraph from 2009 till 2014 before becoming Head of Public Affairs at Lloyds Bank. Lloyds received substantial state aid after the financial crisis but the Government finally sold its stake in 2017.
There are some who would say that being married to a right wing former newspaper editor turned banking lobbyist should automatically exclude anyone from running Ofcom, the national broadcast regulator. I share that view. But clearly Ms Dawes, Mr Brogan, and the corrupt former Chair of the Treasury Select Committee and Media Minister who should have known better, Baroness Morgan, saw things differently.
Morgan is a rule onto herself. She flipped from Remainer to Brexiteer in a heartbeat. One of the first things she did when Boris Johnson appointed her Media Minister in summer 2019 was to end all government pressure on Evening Standard and Independent owner Evgeny Lebedev for having sold 30% of Lebedev Holdings to the Saudi State.
Of course Lebedev had always backed Boris and a year later was rewarded with a peerage. Lord Lebedev of Hampton in Richmond Upon Thames and Siberia in the Russian Federation.
I have never previously heard of a Lord of the Russian Federation before – though Lord Barker and Lord Peter Mandelson do lobby for Oleg Deripaska.
Back to Dawes and Brogan . . .
Here are some words from Public Affairs Networking on what it means to work in “Public Affairs”
One of Brogan’s colleagues when he was at the Telegraph was Peter Oborne.
When Oborne resigned from the Telegraph in 2015 he made it clear that the paper did not report honestly when it came to covering the notorious British Bank HSBC.
Even though it was well known that much money laundering had happened through the bank, Telegraph journalists were discouraged from reporting on the bank’s activities due to fears HSBC would pull its advertising from the paper.
But Lloyds Bank, where Ofcom Boss Dawes’ husband Brogan runs Public Affairs has also been up to no good:
Not only has Lloyds defrauded its Reading business customers of hundreds of millions of pounds, but it has so far got away with compensating only 5 victims.
And who, pray, is responsible for ensuring that the government doesn’t get involved in this affair and that as little as possible of this information is communicated to the public? Benjamin Brogan, Melanie Dawes’ husband.
How Corrupt is Britain?
So not only is she being paid upwards of £300k to police broadcasters, but her husband is being paid to keep his own bank’s scandals out of the news.
Now that’s another Great British Power couple. Not sure if they have any ethics though.
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