Cover Image And Thumbnail Image Courtesy: James Banks

Esports commentator James Banks lashes out at BBC over an allegedly false and defamatory article against him





Banks admits to having made a bad tweet when he was a kid. Claims BBC used this out of context





He explains his side of the story in detail via a podcast with Blake "Raistlin" Panasiewicz

Esports host, presenter, as well as a commentator, manager, and journalist, James Banks revealed his horrid experience with BBC News after winning the Best Presenter Award at the Women in Games (WIGJ) Esports Awards in 2018.

“Oh yeah, f**k the BBC. Those c**ts need to just f**k off and be destroyed,” said the 29-year-old during a podcast with Blake "Raistlin" Panasiewicz, as he told his side of the story from back when BBC had written an article against him, which Banks alleges had consisted of false information to defame him for winning the ‘Best Presenter Award’ at a women esports awards.

He stated how BBC used a tweet from years ago when he was a kid, along with a statement of him saying something about a ‘mix team’ which they took as something related to ‘mixed genders’, misleading the opinion of the public against him.



This had a huge impact on Banks who said that “It nearly brought me back into depression.” He went on to breakdown the article that BBC had written against him, providing reason and clarity for all the points which he felt were misleading and had been used to portray him in a bad light.





James Banks has been an Active Talent Since 2003

He started off by clarifying as to why he went to this award function by saying that, back in the 1.6 days he had managed a team (female) with no funds, helping them get sponsorships without “having their assets like b**bs and stuff showing, having to wear skimpy outfits and stuff.” He had actually got them “a great deal where they could be actual professionals,” while also working with both Lauren “pansy” Scott and Eefje “Sjokz” Depoortere, whom he had helped in the early stages of their career.



Stating his reason to be present at the awards, Banks said that “I’ve been nothing but positive and especially when I have so many females in my life that are so important,” following which he pointed out that even after all this BBC took his Tweet about ‘mixed teams’ which in CS means a bunch of randoms put in a team together, and twisting around its meaning, “made a whole lot of walk around how I didn’t deserve to win the award.”



Banks goes on to admit that he made this one bad tweet when he was a kid, stating that he had just returned from Sweden and then put out a Tweet saying “that the standard of women or quality of women has dropped now that I’ve come back home.” He went on to admit that it was dumb but argues that it was so long ago and still BBC went on to use it in their article.





The Tweet that James Banks was Referring to Above

“F**k the BBC, they’ve got no work ethics,” said Banks as he spoke about how every other person at the entire event had applauded for him when he had received the award for his achievements, for what he had done to push female gaming forward and the BBC literally took this article and just said that “Guy wins this award and brought up all these tweets.”





Banks goes on to point out to some other articles on female gamers that the BBC has done “where they basically twisted all the words and turned them around,” just to create an article with clickbait.

Presenting his side of the story to an article written in September 2018, Banks tried to show how the evidence used in the article had been twisted to portray him as a villain.

Correction Note: The bullet points summary at the top of the page have been edited to better summarize the story.