BBC Watch

Trevor Phillips has attacked the BBC for censoring the word 'nigger' in Bob Dylan's anti-racism protest song Hurricane .

The former race equality chief said it was incredibly patronising of the BBC to let black artists on urban radio station 1Xtra use the word, but then censor other musicians. He described the decision of Radio 6 Music bosses to edit out a line of the Dylan song featuring the word as absurd and insulting.

Bob Dylan's anti-racism protest song Hurricane is about the boxer Rubin Carter, who was wrongly convicted of murder. It had the line:

And for the black folks he was just a crazy nigger

removed when it was broadcast on Tom Robinson's 6 Music show, Now Playing, on April 24. T

A listener pointed out that the song itself was an impassioned anti-racist account of a notorious miscarriage of justice and that the line you fellows deleted is very much a key moment in the story. Phillips appeared on a Radio 4 show to discuss the issue and was scathing about the way the BBC had behaved. He told the programme:

Bob Dylan has used that word for a particular reason in one of his most powerful pieces of work --which by the way is a profoundly anti-racist piece of work and for somebody, who frankly shouldn't be there to judge a genius, to tell me I'm too fragile to listen to what Bob Dylan has done with his work of art -- I think this is both absurd and insulting and actually not what the BBC is there to do.

Graham Norton joked about Prime Minister Boris Johnson's trip to Kyiv in Ukraine on his Friday night programme, saying:

This week, he flew off to Ukraine -- or if you're watching on catchup TV, he flew off to southwest Russia.

The BBC responded to 130 whinges:

We received complaints from people unhappy with a joke Graham Norton made about Russia and Ukraine.

Our response

Each week the programme begins with a monologue from Graham in which he makes reference to the latest news stories. On this occasion these concerned Boris Johnson's recent trip to Ukraine. We appreciate the seriousness of the current situation there and can assure you there was no intention to cause any offence with these remarks. Comedy is one of the most subjective areas of programming and while no subject is off limits we appreciate that some jokes may resonate differently for those with personal experience of a particular situation.

The Thin Blue Line is a 1995 UK crime comedy by Ben Elton
Starring Rowan Atkinson, Mina Anwar and James Dreyfus

Various mishaps at a police station in an English town. The main character is the anachronistic, yet charming and funny Inspector Fowler.

There are no film censor issues with this film but showings on BBC's iPlayer were cut when it was made available for streaming in 2021

The episode Ism Ism Ism has two scenes missing possibly due to political correctness.

• The first scene cut is where Melvyn Hayes' character (appearing very effeminate) meets Inspector Grim and Grim mentions he's married with kids just show he's not homosexual.
• The second cut occurs right at the end, again with Melvyn Hayes' character being removed.

Other episodes  in the series feature racist language (within context) which is not cut. Also the BBC doesn't seem to have an issue with the camp Constable Goody character. So perhaps it is the notion that it is somehow preferable to be seen as straight that has had to be censored by the BBC.

The BBC has admitted flagging several Twitter accounts posting President Trump's statements. Some would say it is rather weird for a supposedly politically neutral global media house to take it upon itself to flag Twitter accounts for merely sharing what Trump said instead of just reporting the news.

In a recent report, covering the removal of the @DJTDesk account, which claimed to have been posting Trump's statement on behalf of his office, the BBC said that a spokesperson for Twitter said that the account was banned for posting content affiliated with a banned account. However, as noted in BBC's report, Trump adviser Jason Miller told NBC News that the @DJTDesk account was not set up by, or with permission of, anyone affiliated with the former president, meaning that it was just Trump supporters wanting to share what the former President said.

The report further claimed that the BBC had flagged four other accounts posting similar content.