Typical BBC bias
Handily, the Graun have published a transcript of the portion of the One Show which has caused controversy.
This is useful, because without it I would have had to have gone to the trouble of transcribing it myself.
Have you read it? Are you still outraged? How?
You know what Clarkson was doing? He was taking the piss out of the BBC’s famous policy of achieving “balance” by having two polar opposite viewpoints (sometimes to the point of being ridiculous); having said that the strikes hadn’t bothered him in the slightest, there’s a “oh, but this is the BBC, we must have ‘balance’!” moment, before providing an alternative—and in jest—perspective that those on strike should be taken out and shot. Not the funniest joke in the world, but not a massively offensive verbal blow to public sector workers either. It’s incredibly difficult to see—unless you take that one single line out of context of the rest of the exchange—how anybody could reasonably interpret it otherwise.
Personally, I don’t think either he nor the BBC should have apologised. There was nothing to apologise for.
