This week on the BBC: rows over Gaza, alleged bullying and Kneecap
Photo by Mike Kemp/In Pictures Ltd./Corbis via Getty Images
More than 200 BBC staff have signed a letter saying the corporation's refusal to air Gaza: Medics Under Fire shows 'the BBC is not reporting 'without fear or favour' when it comes to Israel'. One insider whispered: 'The BBC's news coverage of Gaza has been terrible. And then to drop this film for no good reason beyond upsetting the Israelis shows utter cowardice by management.' In a statement, the BBC said it was 'determined to report all aspects of the conflict in the Middle East impartially and fairly'. Broadcasters are now battling to air the documentary after the BBC handed back rights to the independent production company Basement Films.
Breakfast TV host Naga Munchetty may have earned a reputation for fortitude by standing up for junior female staff in the face of a 'tyrannical' show editor, but she was outgunned in the latest vicious BBC briefing war. While pressure mounted over Richard Frediani's alleged 'aggressive management style', the Sun claimed Munchetty made a 'crude quip about a sex act' off-air at Radio 5 Live in 2022 and had allegedly been reprimanded for bullying a junior staffer. Rumours are that Munchetty has designs on the LBC weekend breakfast show but these have been hampered by concerns over her 'reputation for being tough'.
Like a JCB churning through a field of daisies, JD Vance has joined BlueSky, the social network for lefties exhausted by the fury of X. After being temporarily expelled due to verification issues (no one could believe it was actually him), he posted a rage-baity thread about trans youth to prove it absolutely was. Within hours he had been blocked by more than 110,000 accounts. The daisies fight back.
How grateful Martine Croxall must be that BBC bosses are 'intensely relaxed' and backing her after she changed an autocue that mentioned 'pregnant people' to say simply 'women'. Presumably they're the same bosses who just four months ago reached a settlement with her over claims she was among those being discriminated against for their age and sex.
It was perhaps not the publicity the BBC might have wished for when Kneecap's Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, newly bailed after a court appearance on terror charges for flying a flag supporting Hezbollah, told fans: 'For anybody going to Glastonbury, you can see us there at 4pm on the Saturday. If you can't be there, we'll be on the BBC.' Insiders say Kneecap's set will be aired after the event, rather than live, and only if there are no guideline breaches.
Greatest Hits Radio is to rebroadcast the full ten hours of Live Aid, 40 years on, despite criticism of the event's harmful impact on perceptions of Africa. One 1985 participant unlikely to be tuning in is the Rolling Stones' Keith Richards, 81, who later questioned the organisers' motives: 'I know the music business, and it isn't that pure.'
A profile of Mark Zuckerberg in the Financial Times reveals Trump discussed the Meta boss taking a role in the White House. Meta staff apparently refer to their boss as 'Maga Mark', although the firm's chief technology officer insists the world is seeing 'authentic' Zuckerberg. How fortunate this chimes with Trump's agenda, just as Meta begs for backing in potentially catastrophic regulatory and legal battles.
Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe
Snout line: Got a story? Write to tips@newstatesman.co.uk
[See also: Jeff Bezos's Venetian wedding is a pageant of bad taste]
Related
This article appears in the 25 Jun 2025 issue of the New Statesman, State of Emergency
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
38 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Call The Midwife 'to end after 15 series as the cast of long-running BBC drama begin to film final scenes'
Beloved BBC series Call The Midwife will reportedly come to a close with its 15th series this year. The heartwarming show first aired in 2012 and has since put out 14 series, totalling to more than 100 episodes following the nurses and nuns in Poplar. A Christmas special for this year has already been announced, with the cast currently at work filming for series 15 to air next year. However, according to The Daily Star, the season will be the show's last, as bosses want the popular drama to 'go out on a high'. A source told the publication: 'After years of drama and countless births, Call The Midwife is coming to an end. The team have decided it's time to draw the show to a close and bow out. 'This is the last we'll see of these much-loved characters. Storylines will tie up a lot of loose ends. It's a bittersweet time for the cast and crew. They're all sad it's coming to an end, but they want to make sure the show gets the ending it deserves.' However, the insider teased that there could be a special return episode one day in the future, saying: 'The writers are also open to the idea of reviving Call The Midwife for a special one day in the future. It's a case of never say never.' Earlier this year, the show's creator, Heidi Thomas hinted the longstanding drama may take a break from production in the future. She told Radio Times in February: 'Those of us who are most invested with the show, cast and producers alike, who have been there since the beginning, it is our lives. 'I don't believe Call the Midwife will ever end. But I do think we might take a break at some point.' The screenwriter added that there was an 'ongoing conversation' each year where they discuss if there is an 'end point' to the show and what they want to 'work towards'. 'So if we do take a break, it will be with a view to looking at other aspects of Call the Midwife,' Heidi explained, before hinting that a spin-off may be on the cards too. In May, the BBC confirmed a two-part Call The Midwife Christmas special is being prepared and will be set in Hong Kong and the East End. It will be followed by eight new hour-long episodes from January 2026 on BBC One and BBC iPlayer. The new instalments will launch into 1971 and the nurses will tackle several issues including 'premature birth, placenta previa, kidney cancer, tuberculosis and slavery'. At the start, senior members of the Nonnatus House staff head to Hong Kong on a mercy mission. While they're away, the younger midwives are left to help the local community alone. Sister Julienne (Jenny Agutter) experiences a huge change in mindset and the 'energy reverberates throughout series 15'. What's more, the women's liberation movement is in full swing and several ladies burn their bras outside of the convent. In another treat for viewers, a Call The Midwife film is also set to be produced and will be based in 1972. While a prequel series is also in the works for next year and will dive into the streets of Poplar during World War Two. Speaking about the prequel, Heidi said: 'The opening of new doors at Nonnatus House feels profoundly emotional, and yet just right. 'I have never run out of stories for our midwives, and I never will. But having wept, laughed, and raged my way from 1957 to 1971, I found myself yearning to delve into the deeper past.' She reflected how the East End during the Blitz was 'extraordinary' and 'filled with loss, togetherness, courage and joy'. Heidi added: 'The bombs fell, the babies kept on coming, and the Sisters kept on going.' The writer teased what was in store for the prequel and said: 'There will be so much in the prequel for our wonderful, loyal fans, including the appearance of some familiar (if much younger!) faces. 'As the classic Call the Midwife series moves further into the 1970s, it also seems the perfect time for our much-loved regulars to take a short break from Poplar and test themselves in an unfamiliar landscape. 'The rise in hospital births, and changes in the NHS, have clipped their wings, and this is their chance to take flight and work out what really matters. 'Whilst the location of the film remains top-secret, I can say it is going to look absolutely fantastic on the big screen!' Beeb boss Lindsay Salt described the show as a 'jewel in the BBC's crown'. While executive producer Dame Pippa Harris added: 'In an increasingly competitive viewing environment not only have our loyal fans stayed with us for 14 years, but they've been joined by a new, younger generation who have also fallen in love with our characters and the challenges they face. 'Emboldened by this warmth and enthusiasm, now feels like the right time to expand our world and take our nuns and midwives onto the big screen with our movie, and back in time with the prequel!' More information about the upcoming film and prequel series are set to be released later in the year.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Amol Rajan Goes to the Ganges review – ‘I miss his love. Oh god, I loved him so much'
Three years ago Amol Rajan's father died unexpectedly of pneumonia. Ever since, as the BBC journalist and broadcaster puts it at the start of Amol Rajan Goes to the Ganges, 'I've been in a bit of a funk.' I get it. As a fellow second-generation kid of Indian immigrants (and journalist from southwest London to boot) I, too, have been in a funk since my mother died (two years before Rajan's father, at the same age, 76, as him). In Rajan's case, his grief plunges him into a search for belonging and an attempt to reconnect with his Hindu roots. Where might such a quest take him? To the largest gathering of humanity on earth. The Kumbh Mela, where over 45 days at the start of this year half a billion Hindus gathered on the sacred banks of the Ganges. The question Rajan poses, and it's a pertinent one for many, is whether 'an atheist like me can benefit from a holy pilgrimage'. This is the deeply personal premise of what turns into an intimate, moving, entertaining yet oddly depoliticised documentary considering both the day job(s) of its presenter and the fact that the Kumbh Mela is the world's biggest Hindu festival, funded by a prime minister whose success is built on his identity as a Hindu nationalist strongman. Only once is Narendra Modi mentioned, halfway through, and it's in the context of his government investing £600m in the biggest Kumbh Mela to date: a mega-event owing to a specific celestial alignment that occurs once in 144 years. We know, watching Rajan's film in the aftermath, that at least 30 people were killed and many more injured in terrifying crowd crushes. As much as he is spiritually shaken, even altered, by the experience, he's also traumatised by what he sees. 'The people in front of me were just stepping on women,' Rajan says after he and his fixer are forced to turn back due to reports of a stampede 800 metres ahead. 'Lots of very poor, very old, very fragile, possibly quite sick women … they were like human debris on the floor. Kids as well.' Before he flies to Delhi, Rajan returns to his childhood. Born in Kolkata, he was three years old when his family moved to southwest London in 1986. On the three-year anniversary of his dad's death, he goes home to Tooting with his mum. 'This was my field of dreams,' he says wistfully as they drive past the pitch where he played cricket as a boy. 'You were very chubby … pleasantly plump,' his mum recalls with a giggle. The loving, mischief-laden sparring between mother and son make for the most touching moments. Like when Rajan's mother watches him flip a dosa and quips: 'You are already getting spiritually enhanced!' Or when he jokily asks, 'Do you want me to come back a mystical yogi?' and his mum gets serious and says, 'No. I want you to be calmer, to take life in your stride.' What emerges, above all, is how grief-stricken Rajan is by his father's death. 'I've avoided thinking about him because I found it too painful,' he admits, sitting on a bench with his mum overlooking the Thames where they scattered his ashes (the exact same stretch where we scattered my mother's ashes). Weeping over a framed portrait of his father, the rawness of the loss overwhelms him. 'I really miss that smile,' Rajan says. 'I miss his love. Oh god, I loved him so much.' In India, the documentary ups its pace as Rajan heads for the city of Prayagraj, joining the millions of Hindu pilgrims seeking moksha (liberation from the cycle of birth and death and the end of suffering). He spends the night in an ashram with sadhus who, hilariously, stay up on their phones watching YouTube and WhatsApping videos to one another. He's astonished by the magnitude of the megacity temporarily built on 15 square miles of flood plain to house the Kumbh Mela – the 30 pontoon bridges, 250 miles of road and 150,000 toilets. He's just as blown away by all the men who look like his father. The pilgrimage to the Sangam – the sacred confluence of the Ganges, Yamuna and mythical Saraswati river – takes three days. Along the way Rajan, a congenial, very English guide, becomes more and more introspective. He puts on orange robes, talks to pilgrims in the smattering of Hindi he's barely spoken since childhood, and begins to feel a 'tremendous affinity and fellow feeling with others'. It's moving and subtly handled. By the end Rajan has failed to make it to the Sangam because of the dangerous crowd surges. Instead he performs an ancient funeral rite for his father, finds a safe spot to enter the Ganges, releases his dad's soul and plunges underwater. Has the atheist been healed by the largest gathering of people ever recorded in history? Kind of. 'There's a power in doing something that a lot of people have done for a very long time,' is how he carefully puts it, high as a kite. What Amol Rajan Goes to the Ganges expresses most powerfully of all, certainly to this fellow bereaved Hindu, are the irresolvable particularities, and commonalities, of second-generation grief. Amol Rajan Goes to the Ganges aired on BBC One and is on iPlayer now.
Metro
an hour ago
- Metro
Call The Midwife 'axed' after 15 years with final season set for 2026
Call The Midwife is reportedly set to come to an end after 15 years on the BBC. The beloved BBC period drama confirmed that series 15 filming was underway in May, with eight hour long episodes on their way to fans. The broadcaster has also confirmed the show will have a two-part Christmas special, set in Hong Kong and Poplar, which will arrive on BBC One and iPlayer in January 2026. Yet it has now been reported that will be the show's swansong after first hitting screens in September 2012, with the cast having already filmed their final scenes. Call the Midwife bosses are said to want the show to 'go out on a high', according to a report in The Daily Star. 'After years of drama and countless births, Call The Midwife is coming to an end,' a source told the publication. 'The team have decided it's time to draw the show to a close and bow out. This is the last we'll see of these much-loved characters. Storylines will tie up a lot of loose ends.' However, if this is to be the end of Call the Midwife there's a glimmer of hope for fans yet. The BBC has already confirmed that the world of Nonnatus House will be expanding, with a prequel TV series on the way. The new show will still be set in Poplar, but during the Second World War, and will begin production in 2026. In even more good news for longtime fans, BBC Film and production company Neal Street are making a Call the Midwife film, which will be set overseas in 1972 and feature much-loved characters from the original show. The new projects will be written, created and produced by the all-female team behind Call the Midwife, including showrunner Heidi Thomas and executive producers Pippa Harris and Ann Tricklebank. The BBC said further details about the prequel series will be shared with fans later this year. Creator and writer Heidi Thomas said in a statement: 'The opening of new doors at Nonnatus House feels profoundly emotional, and yet just right. More Trending I have never run out of stories for our midwives, and I never will. But having wept, laughed, and raged my way from 1957 to 1971, I found myself yearning to delve into the deeper past. 'There will be so much in the prequel for our wonderful, loyal fans, including the appearance of some familiar (if much younger!) faces.' View More » Metro contacted the BBC for comment. Got a story? If you've got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@ calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we'd love to hear from you. MORE: How to watch Glastonbury Festival 2025 in the UK: TV channel and live stream MORE: Emmerdale, Coronation Street and EastEnders pulled from schedules next week MORE: Dominant EastEnders' winning streak continues as it nets yet more awards
