Munchetty breached BBC guidelines by describing Donald Trump as a racist.

[R.P.L]

This is all correct, however it isn't the end of the debate.

If the rules are such that what she said isn't allowed, then are the rules fit for purpose? Who sets those rules, and who interprets those rules? Because they've got it wrong on this occasion - whatever pathway lead to the decision, action should be taken to make sure adjustments are made.

They would appear to be so, yes.

 

[TheMightyTen]

This is all correct, however it isn't the end of the debate.

If the rules are such that what she said isn't allowed, then are the rules fit for purpose? Who sets those rules, and who interprets those rules? Because they've got it wrong on this occasion - whatever pathway lead to the decision, action should be taken to make sure adjustments are made.

I agree but in reference to the Munchetty judgement she has breached the rules as they stand, and that is not reflected in stockhausen's ego trip trolling post. I hope it does lead to a modicum of change but nothing to drastic because the last thing I want to see is the news become a constant tirade of opinion pieces, the BBC's reportage standard is on shaky ground in many peoples eyes as it is with it's perceived left/liberal bias (in my opinion this is more propaganda than fact.)

 

[Lord-Jaffa]

It seems that some geriatric white men in the BBC's Editorial Complaints Unit are.

Ageist racist and sexist in the same post, just another stockhausen thread.

 

[CosmicClown]

Usual stockhausen junk............ The facts are a complaint against Munchetty was upheld because as a BBC news journalist she is not supposed to offer opinion just report the facts, she even admitted this before she stated her opinion, as much of the fault lies with Dan Walker who goaded her into giving said opinion.

I agree wholeheartedly with her stated opinion but the fact of the matter is in her role she can not air it publicly.

Exactly....


The people coming in here defending her....
Whats wrong with you?

She shouldnt be giving her worthless personal opinions on anything in the job shes in.

Jesus...

 

[Blackjack Davy]

I agree but in reference to the Munchetty judgement she has breached the rules as they stand, and that is not reflected in stockhausen's ego trip trolling post. I hope it does lead to a modicum of change but nothing to drastic because the last thing I want to see is the news become a constant tirade of opinion pieces, the BBC's reportage standard is on shaky ground in many peoples eyes as it is with it's perceived left/liberal bias (in my opinion this is more propaganda than fact.)

Nothing perceived about it, I've given up watching BBC current affairs and most of the junior reporters especially are so leftie biased they barely even bother to conceal it, the more experienced ones are more tactful.

 

[stockhausen]

No message.

 

[BowdonUK]

I wouldn't allow any presenter to be expressing their personal opinion on air.

But it's obvious that the bbc bosses have been bending the rules themselves over the years, but have now chosen to enforce them on Munchetty, which is unfair.

 

[Angilion]

A number of aged white men at the BBC have criticised Naga Munchetty for entirely reasonably describing the POTUS as a racist after receiving a single complaint by some anonymous "person". [..]

That's excellent hypocrisy even for you - in the same sentence as complaiing about racism, you showcase your own racism, sexism and ageism all in one go.

She broke her employer's rules a bit and was told off for it. Tiny woo. Nothing much happened.

 

[Malevolence]

How can Agent Orange be racist? It's a chemical defoliant, it isn't sentient.

 

[stockhausen]

No message.

 

[Sutters]

racism is like the new religion or something, its truly bizarre

 

[R.P.L]

Coming from someone who declares himself to be fairly chilled about murdering climate protesters I think I can handle your shock

As well as being comfortable with being a bigot, one assumes...

 

[Angilion]

Coming from someone who declares himself to be fairly chilled about murdering climate protesters I think I can handle your shock

I'm not shocked - you are devout in your irrational prejudices and take every opportunity to air them. It would be more shocking if you ever spoke in favour of equality. Everywhere here knows that - you're mildly and locally famous. Or infamous.

Equally obviously, I have not declared myself to be fairly chilled about murdering climate protesters. I made a silly post in a silly thread and even then I said nothing about murdering anyone.

 

[RDM]

This is all correct, however it isn't the end of the debate.

If the rules are such that what she said isn't allowed, then are the rules fit for purpose? Who sets those rules, and who interprets those rules? Because they've got it wrong on this occasion - whatever pathway lead to the decision, action should be taken to make sure adjustments are made.

I don't think they did get it wrong.

She wasn't censured for saying Trump's tweets were racist. That was fine and completely accurate. She was censured for stating her opinion that Trump himself was racist. Which, while it is probably true, is opinion and therefore not what a BBC journalist should be doing.

 

[cheesyboy]

She was censured for stating her opinion that Trump himself was racist

She can't have been, because she didn't say that.

Walker: It's the president. That was the most telling quote for me last night. I can't remember who said it, but she said, 'I've been told to go home many times to go back to where I've come from many times in my life, but never by the man sitting in the Oval Office'.

Munchetty: Every time I have been told, as a woman of colour, to go back to where I came from, that was embedded in racism. Now I'm not accusing anyone of anything here but you know what certain phrases mean.

Walker: Do you hear that quite regularly?

Munchetty: Yes. Not regularly, but I've been told it.

Walker: You're sitting here not giving an opinion, but how do you feel as someone when you've been told that before, and when you hear that from him?

Munchetty: Furious. Absolutely furious. And I imagine a lot of people in this country will be feeling absolutely furious that a man in that position feels it's OK to skirt the lines with using language like that.

Walker: Do you feel his use of that then legitimises other people to use this…

Munchetty: Yes. Yes.

Walker: As our guest was saying there, it feels like a thought-out strategy to strengthen his position.

Munchetty: And it is not enough to do it just to get attention. He's in a responsible position. Anyway I'm not here to give my opinion.

 

[Rotty]

I don't think they did get it wrong.
is opinion and therefore not what a BBC journalist should be doing.

how does Nihal Arthanayake on Radio 5 constantly get away with it? he is politically extremely biased and doesn't hide his views on politics and particularly Brexit

 

[FoxEye]

Without even mentioning the "r" word, telling anyone to go back to where they came from is pretty awful.

The "r" word is being made meaningless by mis-use and over-use, but again, telling someone to go back to where they came from is not really cricket.

But as others have said, "race" is now so weaponised that anti-racism is now becoming pretty racist too. Ie, the concept that "Whites should lose their privilege/be punished/be silenced" and all that jazz.

It's a messed up world and there are bad-faith actors everywhere, in every faction, colour and tribe.

 

[TheVoice]

Exactly....


The people coming in here defending her....
Whats wrong with you?

She shouldnt be giving her worthless personal opinions on anything in the job shes in.

Jesus...

She didn't provide an opinion, she shared her experience of being told the same words the racist president said.

It sounds like you'd be better-off having your news delivered to you via a text-to-speech engine.

 

[Hotwired]

Without even mentioning the "r" word, telling anyone to go back to where they came from is pretty awful.

I got that one the other day.

Was walking through town the wrong side of midnight and a drunk young man asked me for money to buy chips.

I said no and it was suggested to me that I went back to where I came from.

Considered telling him to go **** himself seeing as I was exactly where I came from. Settled for being content knowing I wasn't him.

You need training to grow up a bigoted piece of trash and if its not discouraged when you're small it carries on.

I still remember little kids practising their racism in primary school in scotland. It was geographically incorrect but they were making the effort. Racism and getting an early start on the chip on their shoulder about the english. Doesn't come out of nowhere, you need role models and encouragement in all behaviours you eventually display as an adult.

 

[NVP]

Just a refresher:

Trump has a long history of racist controversies

Here’s a breakdown of Trump’s history, taken largely from Dara Lind’s list for Vox and an op-ed by Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times:

1973: The US Department of Justice — under the Nixon administration, out of all administrations — sued the Trump Management Corporation for violating the Fair Housing Act. Federal officials found evidence that Trump had refused to rent to black tenants and lied to black applicants about whether apartments were available, among other accusations. Trump said the federal government was trying to get him to rent to welfare recipients. In the aftermath, he signed an agreement in 1975 agreeing not to discriminate to renters of color without admitting to discriminating before.

1980s: Kip Brown, a former employee at Trump’s Castle, accused another one of Trump’s businesses of discrimination. “When Donald and Ivana came to the casino, the bosses would order all the black people off the floor,” Brown said. “It was the eighties, I was a teenager, but I remember it: They put us all in the back.”

1988: In a commencement speech at Lehigh University, Trump spent much of his speechaccusing countries like Japan of “stripping the United States of economic dignity.” This matches much of his current rhetoric on China.

1989: In a controversial case that’s been characterized as a modern-day lynching, four black teenagers and one Latino teenager — the “Central Park Five” — were accused of attacking and raping a jogger in New York City. Trump immediately took charge in the case, running an ad in local papers demanding, “BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY. BRING BACK OUR POLICE!” The teens’ convictions were later vacated after they spent seven to 13 years in prison, and the city paid $41 million in a settlement to the teens. But Trump in October 2016 said he still believes they’re guilty, despite the DNA evidence to the contrary.

1991: A book by John O’Donnell, former president of Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, quoted Trump’s criticism of a black accountant: “Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day. … I think that the guy is lazy. And it’s probably not his fault, because laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is, I believe that. It’s not anything they can control.” Trump at first denied the remarks, but later said in a 1997 Playboy interviewthat “the stuff O’Donnell wrote about me is probably true.”

1992: The Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino had to pay a $200,000 fine because it transferred black and women dealers off tables to accommodate a big-time gambler’s prejudices.

1993: In congressional testimony, Trump saidthat some Native American reservations operating casinos shouldn’t be allowed because “they don’t look like Indians to me.”

2000: In opposition to a casino proposed by the St. Regis Mohawk tribe, which he saw as a financial threat to his casinos in Atlantic City, Trump secretly ran a series of ads suggesting the tribe had a “record of criminal activity [that] is well documented.”

2004: In season two of The Apprentice, Trump fired Kevin Allen, a black contestant, for being overeducated. “You’re an unbelievably talented guy in terms of education, and you haven’t done anything,” Trump said on the show. “At some point you have to say, ‘That’s enough.’”

2005: Trump publicly pitched what was essentially The Apprentice: White People vs. Black People. He said he “wasn’t particularly happy” with the most recent season of his show, so he was considering “an idea that is fairly controversial — creating a team of successful African Americans versus a team of successful whites. Whether people like that idea or not, it is somewhat reflective of our very vicious world.”

2010: In 2010, there was a huge national controversy over the “Ground Zero Mosque” — a proposal to build a Muslim community center in Lower Manhattan, near the site of the 9/11 attacks. Trump opposed the project, calling it “insensitive,” and offered to buy outone of the investors in the project. On The Late Show With David Letterman, Trump argued, referring to Muslims, “Well, somebody’s blowing us up. Somebody’s blowing up buildings, and somebody’s doing lots of bad stuff.”

2011: Trump played a big role in pushing false rumors that Obama — the country’s first black president — was not born in the US. He even sent investigators to Hawaii to look into Obama’s birth certificate. Obama later released his birth certificate, calling Trump a ”carnival barker.” (The research has found a strong correlation between “birtherism,” as this conspiracy theory is called, and racism.) Trump has reportedly continued pushing this conspiracy theory in private.

2011: While Trump suggested that Obama wasn’t born in the US, he also argued that maybe Obama wasn’t a good enough student to have gotten into Columbia or Harvard Law School, and demanded Obama release his university transcripts. Trump claimed, “I heard he was a terrible student. Terrible. How does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard?”

As a candidate and president, Trump has made many more racist comments
On top of all that history, Trump has repeatedly made racist — often explicitly so — remarks on the campaign trail and as president:

• Trump launched his campaign in 2015 by calling Mexican immigrants “rapists” who are “bringing crime” and “bringing drugs” to the US. His campaign was largely built on building a wall to keep these immigrants out of the US.
• As a candidate in 2015, Trump called for a ban on all Muslims coming into the US. His administration eventually implemented a significantly watered-down version of the policy.
• When asked at a 2016 Republican debate whether all 1.6 billion Muslims hate the US, Trump said, “I mean a lot of them. I mean a lot of them.”
• He argued in 2016 that Judge Gonzalo Curiel — who was overseeing the Trump University lawsuit — should recuse himself from the case because of his Mexican heritage and membership in a Latino lawyers association. House Speaker Paul Ryan, who endorsed Trump, later called such comments “the textbook definition of a racist comment.”
• Trump has been repeatedly slow to condemn white supremacists who endorse him, and he regularly retweeted messages from white supremacists and neo-Nazis during his presidential campaign.
• He tweeted and later deleted an image that showed Hillary Clinton in front of a pile of money and by a Jewish Star of David that said, “Most Corrupt Candidate Ever!” The tweet had some very obvious anti-Semitic imagery, but Trump insisted that the star was a sheriff’s badge, and said his campaign shouldn’t have deleted it.
• Trump has repeatedly referred to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) as “Pocahontas,” using her controversial — and later walked-back — claims to Native American heritage as a punchline.
• At the 2016 Republican convention, Trump officially seized the mantle of the “law and order” candidate — an obvious dog whistleplaying to white fears of black crime, even though crime in the US is historically low. His speeches, comments, and executive actions after he took office have continued this line of messaging.
• In a pitch to black voters in 2016, Trump said, “You’re living in poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58 percent of your youth is unemployed. What the hell do you have to lose?”
• Trump stereotyped a black reporter at a press conference in February 2017. When April Ryan asked him if he plans to meet and work with the Congressional Black Caucus, he repeatedly asked her to set up the meeting — even as she insisted that she’s “just a reporter.”
• In the week after white supremacist protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, Trump repeatedly said that “many sides” and “both sides” were to blame for the violence and chaos that ensued — suggesting that the white supremacist protesters were morally equivalent to counterprotesters that stood against racism. He also said that there were “some very fine people” among the white supremacists. All of this seemed like a dog whistle to white supremacists — and many of them took it as one, with white nationalist Richard Spencer praising Trump for “defending the truth.”
• Throughout 2017, Trump repeatedly attacked NFL players who, by kneeling or otherwise silently protesting during the national anthem, demonstrated against systemic racism in America.
• Trump reportedly said in 2017 that people who came to the US from Haiti “all have AIDS,” and he lamented that people who came to the US from Nigeria would never “go back to their huts” once they saw America. The White House denied that Trump ever made these comments.
• Speaking about immigration in a bipartisan meeting in January 2018, Trump reportedly asked, in reference to Haiti and African countries, “Why are we having all these people from ******** countries come here?” He then reportedly suggested that the US should take more people from countries like Norway. The implication: Immigrants from predominantly white countries are good, while immigrants from predominantly black countries are bad.
• Trump denied making the “********” comments, although some senators present at the meeting said they happened. The White House, meanwhile, suggested that the comments, like Trump’s remarks about the NFL protests, will play well to his base. The only connection between Trump’s remarks about the NFL protests and his “********” comments is race.
• Trump mocked Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign, again calling her “Pocahontas” in a tweet before adding, “See you on the campaign TRAIL, Liz!” The capitalized “TRAIL” is seemingly a referenceto the Trail of Tears — a horrific act of ethnic cleansing in the 19th century in which Native Americans were forcibly relocated, causing thousands of deaths.
• Trump tweeted that several black and brown members of Congress — Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) — are “from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe” and that they should “go back” to those countries. It’s a common racist trope to say that black and brown people, particularly immigrants, should go back to their countries of origin. Three of four of the members of Congress whom Trump targeted were born in the US