Former Downing Street communications director to join BBC board

[Fambo Number Mive]

The revolving door revolves both ways, with the former Downing Street communications director between 2017 and 2019 joining the BBC board as the board member for England.

Prior to working in No 10 for the Conservative Party between 2017 and 2019, Gibb had a successful 25-year career at the BBC, culminating in his role as head of Westminster. Before that, he was deputy editor of Newsnight and editor of The Daily Politics and This Week.

It was in those latter capacities that Gibb worked closely with Andrew Neil, the broadcaster and publisher who is chairman of GB News - a new British news network due to launch in the coming months. Gibb played an important role in the early stages of that project, but stood down as editorial adviser in October...

In one of these articles, he said the election coverage on Radio 4's Today programme was "a masterclass in why the BBC is losing the trust of its audience". He said he thought the programme was "trapped by its own 'woke' group think", and that his friends had dubbed it "Radio Misery".

In an article for The Daily Telegraph, he wrote: "The BBC has been culturally captured by the woke-dominated group think of some of its own staff. There is a default left-leaning attitude from a metropolitan workforce mostly drawn from a similar social and economic background..."

In the same piece, he continued: "Almost as soon as Britain's verdict [in the EU referendum] was delivered, the rigorous rules were relaxed and anti-Brexit bias and metropolitan 'group think' crept back into the corporation's coverage."

In another article for the Telegraph, Sir Robbie made clear that the "endemic" bias he sees at the corporation extended beyond news coverage to entertainment, and especially comedy.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-56929982

I'm sure this won't make the BBC even more biased towards the Conservative Party and the right.

Remember this "mistake" from 2019?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Qy2ZBNDK2E

[Pink Gregory]

fucking hell it's just dogwhistles all the way down

[Zetetic]

It's called democracy and freedom of speech, Fambo.

[lipsink]

Remember this "mistake" from 2019?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Qy2ZBNDK2E

And remember the footage of Question Time Leaders Special in 2019 when they edited the audience laughter when someone asked Boris about honesty. I still laugh when I think about how out of their depth Johnson and Swinson were with that audience. What actually happened? How did they get an audience like that? Johnson knew he was in trouble when his "Get Brexit Done" mantra got a huge groan.

[steveh]

Think a Conservative think tank had a report a while back about how the right was losing out because public bodies were putting people on their boards who were from those specific sectors but tended to be more left leaning. So now the government's policy is to override the recommendations of those bodies and always put in their cronies instead of people with actual relevant experience. It's happened already I think with the Charity Commission, Channel 4, the Arts Council and possibly some others.

Gibb also led the initial fundraising for GB News.