My blog

Tag: BBC

  • Jon Sopel’s fascinating take on January 6th, the Starmer administration – and why he left the BBC

    Jon Sopel

     

    I am sometimes asked about why I left the BBC. I remember the corporation went through this spasm of asking themselves how to attract the young. If you watch the news, by and large you’re over 60. The same is true of the Today programme.

    The editor of the 6 O’Clock News was thinking about how we get more young people. Do we need younger presenters? Or do we need old people like me talking about young people’s issues? This was at a time when LPs were making a comeback. We sent a young reporter down to Oxford Street, and said to a teenager, holding up an LP: “Hello, I’m from the Six O’Clock News. Do you know what this is?” The teenager replied: “Yes, it’s an LP. What’s the Six O’Clock News?”

     

    Thinking back to January 2021, I can’t forget the day after the inauguration when Joe Biden was finally President. Washington DC that day was less the elegant neoclassical city that most people remember from the Capitol through to the Supreme Court and the great museums that go to down the Mall. It was a garrison town, the place was absolutely sealed off. There were rolls and rolls of barbed wire because of what had happened on January 6th. I will never forget the shock of that.

     

    Jon Sopel book launch in aid of Hospice UK and hosted by Finito at The East India Club, London. 17.9.2024 Photographer Sam Pearce / www.square-image.co.uk

     

    January 6th is also inscribed on my mind. I’ve been in situations where I’ve faced greater personal danger, when you’re in a warzone and you’ve got a flat-jacket one, and there’s incoming fire. But I’ve never seen a day more shocking than January 6th when the peaceful transfer of power hadn’t happened. I went on the 10 o’clock news and the mob still had control of Congress and Joe Biden’s victory still hadn’t been certified. That’s the starting point for my new book Strangeland: I wonder how safe our democracies are. My experiences in America made me realise that we cannot be complacent in the UK.

     

    Another thing happened the day after January 6th. The Capitol had been sealed off by razor wire and I went as close as I could, and went live on the 6 O’Clock News. There were lots of Trump supporters around and they heckled me throughout so that the anchor Sophie Raworth had to apologise.

    It soon morphed into a chant: “You lost, go home! You lost, go home!” I was trying to figure out what that meant. At the end of my live broadcast I said to this guy: “What on earth does this mean?” He poked me in the chest and said: “1776.” I thought: ‘Do I explain that my family was in a Polish shtetl at that stage?”

     

    Peter Hennessey, the great chronicler of government in the UK, talks of the good chap theory of government – you rely on people to do the right thing otherwise the system falls apart. I came back to the UK at the beginning of 2022 after eight years in America. The first election I voted in was 1979. For the next three years I knew three prime ministers: Margaret Thatcher, John Major and Tony Blair. In 2023 we had three in one year – that’s a reminder of the volatility of the times we live in. In many ways in 2016 – with Brexit and with Trump – the world jumped into the unknown.

     

    Jon Sopel book launch in aid of Hospice UK and hosted by Finito at The East India Club, London. 17.9.2024 Photographer Sam Pearce / www.square-image.co.uk

     

    It’s always seemed to me that the Labour Party finds power a really inconvenient thing to happen. They much prefer it when they’re forming Shadow Cabinets and discussing the National Executive. Then you’d get pesky people like Tony Blair who come along and remind them it is about power. The Conservative Party was always the ruthless machine of government: there is an element in which the Conservative Party is in danger of going down the Labour Party route. It was the Conservative Party membership, for instance, who gave us Liz Truss, the patron saint of our podcast The News Agents. We launched in the week she became Prime Minister – and my God, she was good for business.

     

    What would Britain look like if there were 10 years of Starmer? He’s done the doom and gloom, and how everything is the Conservatives’ fault. That’s fine – but so far, he’s not set out what the future is going to look like under him. Is it Rachel Reeves’ vision of the growth economy? Or is it Rayner’s vision of increasing workers’ rights. I think Starmer is an incrementalist and simply doesn’t know. If he has any sense at all he will look at the centre of political gravity in the electorate and go for growth because that’s what the country needs.

     

    Jon Sopel book launch in aid of Hospice UK and hosted by Finito at The East India Club, London. 17.9.2024 Photographer Sam Pearce / www.square-image.co.uk

     

    Hospice UK do the most amazing work. The book I’ve written Strangeland deals with the challenges facing Britain at the moment. Hospice UK do the most amazing work. Strangeland deals with some of the huge challenges facing the . Hospice care is one area where something urgent needs to be done.

     

    Jon Sopel was talking at a Finito event given in aid of Hospice UK. To donate, go to this link: https://www.hospiceuk.org/support-us/donate

     

  • Sign of the times: why the BBC’s online education programme is just the beginning

    Sign of the times: why the BBC’s online education programme is just the beginning

    Georgia Heneage

    On 3rd September 1939, as Great Britain teetered on the precipice of the second world war, the crackling voice of the BBC could be heard across the nation. The great British broadcaster was instrumental in Britain’s fight against fascism, acting (as they put it) as “informant, morale-booster, propaganda weapon”.

    While there are many differences, the past year of pandemic has had its similarities to wartime – a comparison that’s been prompted in part by the tendency to describe our struggle against the virus as a ‘fight’ against an ‘enemy’. Covid-19 has brought about food shortages, the loss of loved ones and infringements on our liberty not seen since the dark days of the 1940s.

    As was the case back then, times like these test the pillars of our democracy: as schoolchildren are plunged into another lockdown and integral years of educational development are compromised yet again, the BBC has stepped up to its role as a trusty national service.

    It’s a good time for it to step up. Last year the validity of the BBC as a national service was called into question by gender pay disputes, issues with the license fee funding model, and grumbles over its political impartiality. Meanwhile, the Department for Education’s handling of the exams fiasco in the summer called into question whether it had young peoples’ futures under control.

    Last week, the BBC promised millions of home-bound children across the country curriculum-based educational videos and resources on TV, online and BBC iPlayer, in what they are calling the “biggest education offer in [the BBC’s] history”. As well as providing essential (and entertaining) education for children in lockdown, the BBC’s decision will also come as a blessing for parents who are struggling to balance remote working with childcare.

    Airing today, these will include content for younger children on CBBC and BBC Live Lesson and popular programmes like Horrible Histories, Celebrity Supply Teacher and Art Ninja for 3 hours every day. BBC Two will support secondary school students through classical drama and Shakespeare adaptations as well as science and history programmes.

    The BBCs Director General Tim Davie said that “ensuring children across the UK have the opportunity to continue to follow the appropriate core parts of their nation’s school curriculum has been a key priority for the BBC throughout this past year.” The move signals the much awaited entrance of the new Director General: lets hope it’s a sign that the BBC is headed for clearer waters.

    The decision to provide thousands of confined children – not to mention exhausted parents – with virtual learning tools remedies part of the damage woven by the government in its handling of school closures and exams. But is it enough? Parents still understandably lament the loss of face-to-face teaching, especially for younger pupils, and many do not welcome the shift to online learning with open arms.

    Is this tech takeover a long term reality for education?

    Like the switch to a remote working culture, however, this transition towards a digital learning environment is inevitable, and the pandemic has merely highlighted this inevitability.

    Technology has begun to infuse most areas of our lives, and education is no exception: before the pandemic struck, age-old principles of education were beginning to change. Many predict that the concept of a physical classroom, whiteboards, and even teachers, will become outmoded as Artificial Intelligence and digital learning landscape play a greater role in education.

    Traditional tools of learning like memorising information, handwriting, spelling and grammar may be irrelevant in the future and replaced by the omnipotent power of the internet. The younger generation will need to harness a whole different set of skills to help them manage new technology, interpret search results and even determine real news from fake news. And, as jobs in tech expand, the need to harness technological skills like coding, ‘Blockchain Technology’ (bitcoin and digital money), Virtual Technology or Data Analysis will be ever greater.

    The digitalisation of education which the BBC has begun is not just a short term solution; it’s the long-term reality of a world governed by technology and online spaces. Just as the war redefined working habits and reformed the education system, the pandemic may be the final push needed for us to recognise the benefits – or, indeed, the inevitability – of an online education.