'The so-called journalist' (Raymond Briggs) 'Gripping stories' (@UKWritingAwards) Freelance: @nytimes @theipaper @Telegraph @Guardian @DailyMail @latimes @FT
All good newsagents / London
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If only the BBC had a multi-million-pound unit called something like Verify so that it could, er, verify a claim – by using the extraordinary journalistic practice of actually asking the person making it for evidence (after she had gone on the record to speak about it)
It was good to see @newswatchbbc cover my story this morning and thank you @SamiraAhmedUK for presenting it. The piece focused in particular on the headline the BBC News website put on its report of my settlement, which appeared to question its size.
Watching, though, I was surprised to hear the BBC's statement that BBC News "cannot independently verify" the amount of the payment to "Ms Kon" (that's me).
If BBC News wanted to verify the size of the settlement, or any of its other terms, all it needed to do was ask. That includes the non-financial remedies, such as the agreement to restore my name to the end credits of the Oscar and BAFTA-winning @MrNobodyAgainstPutin and the other films it had been removed from. I would have been happy to share the relevant sections of the agreement. The BBC lawyer who signed it, as I did, might also have been able to help.
On Monday, an hour or two before the report was published, a senior BBC journalist called me about the story and the overall settlement. He asked if he could record the call, I agreed, and my recollection is that we discussed the details.
I don't want to dwell on this. I don't want to spend the rest of my life arguing with a former employer I still believe it was a privilege to work for. My focus now is to take what I've learned from all this, move on, find a new role and rebuild my life.
As I do that, I hope the BBC will heed this week's calls to do the same: to learn from my experience; to acknowledge the need for, and set up, an independent inquiry into not only how it treats its Jewish staff but how it reflects its Jewish audiences; and to move into a new Charter with commitments that are kept, so that in its second century the BBC is truly for everyone, its staff and its audiences alike.
#BBC #Antisemitism
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The BBC tried to memory-hole Oscar and Bafta-winning producer @imluciekon - failing to include her Emmy in a list of its awards and re-editing her Oscar-winning documentary to remove her name from the "end board" of credits.
Astounding behaviour from a public broadcaster
The BBC has agreed a £400,000 payout to a Jewish documentary-maker who says she was the victim of anti-Semitism and was bullied out of the broadcaster.
🔗: telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/10…
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The BBC rejected a Jewish documentary-maker's formal complaint of anti-Semitism AND her appeal – then paid out £400,000.
How can it refuse to apologise or admit she was a victim of anti-Jewish racism while justifying shelling our that amount of licence fee-payers' cash?!
The BBC has agreed a £400,000 payout to a Jewish documentary-maker who says she was the victim of anti-Semitism and was bullied out of the broadcaster.
🔗: telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/10…
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In the future, no-one will listen to any actual Jews, any antisemitism experts or any research into the subject.
They will defer entirely to Owen Jones, who has been obsessively trying to define Jewishness for Jews since he was a teenager
If a right wing commentator posted a 16-tweet thread trying to dismiss and undermine an official report into any other type of racism, Owen Jones would be the first to call them racist. But when it comes to antisemitism, he is first in line with the 'debunking'. What a hypocrite.
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We didn't need any new allegations to understand why Meghan Markle cut off contact with her father (as if it was any of our business in the first place). It was already a matter of public record that he had collaborated with paparazzi and sold her childhood photos
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Owen Jones has, for the last three years, revealed himself to be a man who watched a film of Hamas atrocities and complained there wasn't "conclusive" evidence of rape; defended marches on Oct 7; responded to report of antisemitism in our schools with post headlined: "Debunked!"
Owen Jones has, for the last three years, revealed himself to be a man of enormous courage, integrity and truthfulness. No one should think for a minute that his relentless defence of Palestinian rights and historical truth is easy or comes without heavy personal costs. Throughout the genocide in Gaza, Jones remained a tireless bur rigorous and supremely decent voice. I suspect part of what initially moved him was the strong displeasure in being treated like an idiot by the official propaganda – a noble motive in itself – but there is no question he has been genuinely touched by the images of suffering arriving daily from Gaza. And yet, how does his intellectual fixation on a battle between left and right help us understand the horrors of Gaza, or move us to stop them? My impression is that the opposite has happened. People look at what is happening in Gaza and ask themselves what a person on the right or on the left should think. In many cases this is ideology. In most, simply careerism and group association. Jones shows how limited the perspective really is. How about, like the author himself, asking how a human being should feel? How about returning to the world of facts and feelings rather than our endless Marvel franchise? newstatesman.com/culture/boo…
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🗼 Did the mast at @Yourallypally help us win the Second World War?
📺 Or, as Churchill might almost have said: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to the cathode ray tube.”
🗞️ My feature in today's Daily Telegraph. Gift link in comments....
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I thought cultural appropriation was supposed to be bad
Pro-Gaza activists sell ‘Palestine poppy’ before Remembrance Day
telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/10…
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A bold pitch from Zack Polanski... to become the prime minister of a country he doesn't think has the right to exist
“I don’t think any state has a right to exist"
Green Party leader Zack Polanski says he “supports whatever the Israelis and Palestinians need to live side by side with equal rights” when asked whether he supports a two-station solution
#BBCLauraK
bbc.co.uk/news/live/c64gv8k2…
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Etan Smallman retweeted
Excellent interview with Steven Berkoff by @EtanSmallman
'...Basically,' says Steven Berkoff, 'Zionism means a sanctuary and at last, to escape, to have a land where you can defend yourself.' God bless him!
Steven Berkoff: ‘Producers tell me Jews aren’t popular at the moment’ msn.com/en-gb/entertainment/…
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In my interview in today's @Telegraph, Steven Berkoff raged about directors "masturbating over iambic pentameters", how he responds to antisemitic abuse and why he has no regrets over his death threat to one of the "scumbag" critics.
Gift link in post below 👇
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