>ITV News presenter Alastair Stewart is stepping down from his role following what ITN called "errors of judgment in Alastair's use of social media".
>In a statement, the veteran broadcaster, 67, said: "It was a misjudgement which I regret." ITN said he had breached editorial guidelines, but did not elaborate on the reasons for his departure.
>The newsreader's Twitter account has now been deactivated.
GB News attracted zero viewers during some of its broadcasts this week, according to official television audience figures produced by rating agency Barb, after a viewer boycott prompted by one of its presenters taking the knee in solidarity with the England football team.
The channel has now said the decision of Guto Harri to make the on-air gesture on Tuesday in solidarity against the racist abuse suffered by English players was “an unacceptable breach of our standards”. A GB News spokesperson declined to say whether Harri, a former spokesperson for Boris Johnson, was still with the channel.
Business editor Liam Halligan and former Labour MP Gloria De Piero attracted no measurable audience to their show between 1pm and 1.30pm on Wednesday afternoon. During the same timeslot the BBC News channel attracted 62,000 viewers, while Sky News had 50,000 people watching. GB News’ audience again briefly dipped to zero at 5pm, during a late-afternoon programme co-hosted by ex-BBC presenter Simon McCoy and former Ukip spokesperson Alex Phillips.
The figures were recorded the day after Harri’s move, which led to widespread fury on social media from GB News viewers who pledged to stop watching the recently launched rightwing current affairs channel, making accusations that it had sold out and gone “woke”, secretly harboured Marxist values, or was in favour of Black Lives Matter.
Hang on, I thought GB News was a place of pluralism and difficult debate? Now they're sacking folk for not towing the line? This is the biggest since Game of Thrones went too pot, which is to say I saw this coming a mile off.
>>34659 Undoubtedly, the chap who kneeled probably thought he’d become the liberal Piers Morgan, I’m sure he thought he understood the brief,IE, glorified jester. However, this particular king doesn’t stand for bad talk. Not when it gets the peasants rowdy.
Andrew Neil has resigned as lead presenter and chairman of GB News following differences in the direction of the rightwing channel.
The ex-BBC host was the face of GB News before it went on air in June but has left after presenting just eight programmes. He was unhappy with technical mistakes, the loss of key staff and its political direction. Neil was outmanoeuvred by the former Ukip leader Nigel Farage, who is now the face of the channel, along with a number of more stridently rightwing hires who lean into culture war issues.
>>35294 That's interesting. I saw the same story on the BBC website and it didn't have any of that detail. Also, I never got the feeling that GB News was as right-wing as it was meant to be, like they planned it that way but TV regulations prevented it. I wonder if it will go full Fox News now, or if it really isn't allowed to do that in this country and it'll just die quietly.
>>35294 Do you think he was actually enough of a mug to think it wouldn't be Grievance Politics 4 You, or was his ego dented when made his inevitable descent on our screens?
>>35295 They have to have taken token not-right-wing opinions, but their bread and butter is full blown Mail-esque screeching. I think LBC does something similar and that's James O'Brien's role, though I don't listen myself because what kind of sicko bastard listens to talk radio, so I might be misinformed. Not as misinformed as the sicko bastards listening to talk radio though.
I think he thought he would be the big name who was able to call the shots and keep it on the straight and narrow by force of will. Bit of an ego trip I reckon.
He wanted it to be a channel that sticks it up the (supposedly) ninny lefty PC hand-wringers on the other news channels, while remaining credible and impartial, to show them how it's really done and prove a point. Which of course, went rather predictably.
I'm confused now. According to the left, the right are waging a culture war. According to the right, it's the left waging the culture war.
I don't even know what's going on anymore or which one is actually correct. I can see the merits in blaming it on the other side and portraying yourself as righteously defending against it. Maybe it's not black and white and it's more nuanced than that. Maybe 'culture war' is one of those things that's lost all meaning, like 'snowflake'. Maybe it's all just one massive distraction.
>>35299 >Maybe it's all just one massive distraction.
Yes, here let me just -
>According to some media, the right are waging a culture war. According to other media, it's the left waging the culture war.
>>35299 A good chunk of the culture war is just a matter of the economics of news (nobody wants to pay for good news) running into human psychology (particularly: we like to angry at the outgroup and we like to split people into clean ingroups and outgroups.) and the economics of online advertising (angry people click more)
So you quickly get a situation where some teenage furries on Twitter who like the aesthetics of the Soviet Union will do a joke about James Bond being sexist or something and it gets headlined as "Far-left woke mob snowflakes want to CANCEL James Bond for being ""SEXIST""." because that's what will get the most angry people to click on the link. Most people don't even read beyond the headline, let stop and think about whether a few screenshots of Twitter is representative of anything, even the people making those tweets, or whether the interpretation given of the tweets is fair and accurate.
There's this fascinating underlying trend where people are to a large degree angry about people who don't really exist, or who only exist in a very small social circle but are imagined to be a dominant force in society at large. Worse still, when you're in Britain, you have the misfortune of sharing a common language with Americans so there's always a dose of their awful culture spilling into things and further confusing people about the reality of life in the UK today.
>>35299 Of all the people in the media, I find him to be the most loathsome. I hate him so much it's almost irrational - I think I profoundly disagree with every word he says.
>>35299 I'm not saying that the culture wars are being artificially funded by the 1% as a deliberate tactic to divide and rule, but if they were, everything would look exactly as it does now, and also, I definitely am saying that. The 1% orchestrated the culture wars to prevent economic awakening among the people. That is what I am completely and unequivocally saying.
>>35299 I think this actually started when Sturgeon was tweeting about it. Given the SNP's history with tennis people were quick to tell her to fuck off even though she hadn't said anything of note and the tennis player has no link to Scotland outside of being a British citizen.
Sadiq Khan explicitly got on his soapbox to use it to celebrate diversity in London and how anyone can do anything here. As someone who hates living here I think he can fuck off.
>>35302 You've missed mentioning the scary part in how this clickbait ultimately influences what happens in politics and hijacks our national attention. We'd have been in real trouble if, at the start of the pandemic, someone had been filmed shagging a seagull on twitter.
They'd be some debate in Parliament but all that happens is everyone makes a way to get their soundbite in about being pro- or anti- seagull shagging. Our economy might collapses and we respond to it with some signs at the beach saying "no seagull shagging" or "seagull shagging here" depending on who wins the next election.
>So you quickly get a situation where some teenage furries on Twitter who like the aesthetics of the Soviet Union will do a joke about James Bond being sexist or something and it gets headlined as "Far-left woke mob snowflakes want to CANCEL James Bond for being ""SEXIST"
There are actually any kind of honest nut you want if you search twitter enough. I think the problem is that the general public don't really understand that a nutter on the internet is an irrelevant nobody.
>>35305 The only thing I'd really heard about it was people telling Are Nice he can't celebrate her success because he once said he wouldn't want to have a group of Romanian men move in next door.
Rupert Murdoch’s News UK has announced plans to launch a national television station called talkTV, which will be a rival to the floundering rightwing channel GB News and provide a platform for the return of Piers Morgan.
In a U-turn after similar plans were cancelled this year, News UK said it would hire “exceptional talent” for the station. Bosses believe Morgan fits in that category and is the biggest name to have signed up to the project.
>>35327 I don't see how this can possibly work. If it was a good idea, GB News would have done better. Sure, they've had bloopers due to incompetent staff behind the scenes, but BBC News can't spell or done grammer rite in countless onscreen messages and updates, and nobody cares about that. GB News faced boycotts from advertisers; won't talkTV have that too?
And why can't we just have a generic highly-oppositional news channel? Have a few anti-woke stories, but also get ISIS warriors and communists and inc*ls. Let's oppose gay marriage but support sex changes for children. How would that not be exciting? I'm onto a winner here; I guarantee it.
>Andrew Marr is to leave the BBC after 21 years to "get my own voice back", he has announced.
>He joined the broadcaster as political editor in 2000 and has presented a Sunday morning programme since 2005. He will join media company Global, which owns radio stations including LBC, and write for newspapers.
>>35952 Yeah, the Beeb’s really gone down hill since Neil stopped hosting that rubbish political show in the afternoon and the rubbish political show in the evening.
They're all hinting that they have some epic vermilion aspirins to drop that the BBC won't allow, but then they largely fade into obscurity as soon as they're out the door. Maybe they should be applauded for sticking up for what they believe in, but in many cases, when someone leaves the BBC, I barely get a chance to find out what they truly believe. Are these reporters all just trying to sound cool as they quit for another reason? Are they just grumpy geriatrics fed up that they can't go full Daily Express on the telly? Is it money? Or, most radically, are there shadowy interests that torpedo the careers of any journalist who threatens to expose the truth?
A French journalist named Romain Molina, who is supposedly hugely respected, is going HAM on Twitter right now, exposing secrets about football sex crimes and corruption. He's not naming many names, but if this isn't what Andrew Marr is quitting to do, then he can do one.
>>41554 He knows how to get a good picture for the papers I will say that. Although that's probably not working for him right now.
>The man told Edwards the boy was quite young looking, and that he had more images which were illegal, the court was told. Mr Edwards told him not to send any illegal images. No more were sent, and the pair continued to exchange legal pornographic images until April 2022.
>According to the Crown Prosecution Service, making indecent images can have a wide definition in the law and can include receiving them via social media. Edwards's barrister Philip Evans KC told the court: "There’s no suggestion in this case that Mr Edwards has... in the traditional sense of the word, created any image of any sort."
>He added that Edwards "did not keep any images, did not send any to anyone else and did not and has not sought similar images from anywhere else".
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cmj260e54x7o
I'm not sure what he's actually guilty of at this point.
>>41557 He was exchanging images with the other man between December 2020 and April 2022, with most of the child porn sent between December 2020 and February 2021; the last indecent image was sent August 2021.
It was in the August when he said not to send any more illegal images, which isn't going to hold up as a defence when you first received child porn from him nine months ago and were in regular contact with him throughout.
>>41557 >>41558 It certainly doesn't help anyone's case that the offence is still called "making" when for the best part of 30 years it's included possession and mere viewing as a consequence of poor drafting and eager prosecutors.
>Under the law, images can mean both video clips and still pictures. The Crown Prosecution Service said most of the category A images were estimated to show children aged between 13 and 15. Two clips showed a child aged about seven to nine.
>He also had 12 category B pictures, which involve non-penetrative sexual activity, and 22 photographs in category C, which covers other indecent images. The category B and C pictures showed children aged between 12 to 15.
>>41560 Does this include hentai in browser cache? Because if you simply go to the homepage of nhentai, hitomi, or presumably other hentai sites then you'll have the same tally before you even get the chance to search for 'vanilla missionary knotting'.
>>41561 On the one hand, he just received them. On the other, he kept engaging with the guy who was sending them for a year afterwards. If that happened to you, you could probably mount a credible defence if you blocked the git after he sent you a couple.
Another thing to consider here is that Huw is neither abjectly poor nor entirely stupid. He can certainly afford a good solicitor and is smart enough to act on their advice. The solicitor will have seen everything the police had, and also some things they didn't have, and on the basis of that still advised him to cop to it. One theory here is that his defence wouldn't have been too strong and a trial would only make things worse.
Since he's only received it and didn't ask for it, it all came from one guy, and he explicitly told that guy to stop doing it, even with the assessment of the images, he surely isn't going to get any worse than the supplier, who got a suspended sentence. I'm seeing either that or a community order. Prisons are full enough as it is.
>>41563 Oh, it's better than that. Some clever-clogs at the CPS argued in 2000 that someone who viewed but didn't save should be convicted because they "made" the image by copying it into their browser cache. Then when some lads disabled their browser cache, another clever-clogs argued in 2003 that they'd "made" the image by causing it to be displayed on their screen. In what I'm sure is a complete coincidence, POCA was amended in 2003 to insert an exemption for law enforcement and administration purposes.
At least part of this came down to the wording of the offence. It's in the Protection of Children Act 1978, and it originally said you could not "take, or permit to be taken, a photograph". In the mid-90s, with images being distributed online, and potentially manipulated images being distributed, they seemingly intended to add "make a pseudo-pseudophotograph", which makes sense. Unfortunately, the resulting text is "take, or permit to be taken, or to make, any indecent photograph or pseudo-photograph". It's worth noting that there is technically a defence of "legitimate reason" for having them in your possession. If they had instead chosen the word "excuse" rather than "reason", you could fairly easily claim that it was from WhatsApp and AIUI you can't just delete stuff you receive on WhatsApp without archiving and deleting the entire conversation. But that would be an "excuse", not a "reason", and "reason" is what they went with.
If anything, your saving throw comes from the offence covering a "photograph, or pseudo-photograph", and offering the following definition:
> “ Pseudo-photograph ” means an image, whether made by computer-graphics or otherwise howsoever, which appears to be a photograph.
So your defence would be that your Jap loli noncon is not a photograph, a film, a photograph comprised in a film, a negative image thereof, something which appears to be a photograph, or a tracing or other image derived in whole or in part from any of the aforementioned.
But don't go thinking you're home free, because they might still be "prohibited images" under the Coroners and Justice Act 2009, which covers a bunch of things short of "indecent (pseudo-)photograph of a child".
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2009/25/part/2/chapter/2
FWIW, there was a bit of a fuss over "pseudo-photograph" originally, but Paedo Diffusion seems to be vindicating that language. The CPS guidance specifically describes AI-generated images as candidates for "pseudo-photographs".
>you can't just delete stuff you receive on WhatsApp without archiving and deleting the entire conversation.
You can delete individual messages in whatsapp. You have two days after you've sent a message to delete it both for you and the recipient. After that, you can still delete messages you have sent from your own phone. But you'll still have to go into your whatsapp media folder to delete any pictures or clips, because whatsapp doesn't delete those when you delete the corresponding messages.
Another thing that you can do for privacy, not necessarily just if you're a carpet-bagger, is to not let whatsapp backup your conversations. whatsapp will ask you sporadically if you want them to backup all your data, and it's best to decline, because who knows what they'll do with it.
>>41563 e-hentai is a decent alternative which is mostly free of concerning images.
>>41565 I've heard that thumbnails are regarded differently when it comes to illegal digital images, something about how your computer picks up a ton of shit throughout any regular browsing session. Don't know if it's true though. Use [/i]Diskdigger[i], you'll find a load of random crap you'll have had no idea was on your PC.
Probably wouldn't help the BBC's image all that much with the nutters, but Huw's wages of £200,000 that were paid post-arrest are what? A week's worth of Pointless episodes? And they'll spend that much again on lawyers to tell them "actually you can't get this money back because you already gave it away".
>And they'll spend that much again on lawyers to tell them "actually you can't get this money back because you already gave it away".
Employment laws normally state that you cannot claim back paid salaries for as long as somebody has been working for you in good faith under a valid contract. And it doesn't really matter if your employee is secretly a paedo and will go on to be sentenced in a court of law. For public institutions like the BBC, I'm sure there was something in Huw's contract that he could be let go for criminal conduct. But other than that, up to the point where he was working for them, they had to pay him and can't ask any of it back.
The only real way would be if they can prove that they entered an employment contract with him based on false pretense or fundamental deception. But that normally only covers things like forged qualifications. Say you're a tech company and you hire a fake engineer who photoshopped all his qualification documents. In that case you can ask back a certain portion, if not all of the cumulative salaries you've paid them.
