This is an update to earlier blogposts by David Preiser about BBC coverage of the troubled passage of deficit reduction legislation in Wisconsin (see here, here, here).
Media double-standards over Wisconsin have become so blatant that even a left-leaning blogger on Huffington Post, Lee Stranahan, has expressed his distaste:
Why isn’t the mainstream media talking about the death threats against Republican politicians in Wisconsin?
…Ignoring the story of these threats is deeply, fundamentally wrong. It’s bad, biased journalism that will lead to no possible good outcome and progressives should be leading the charge against it.
Just before writing this article, I did a Google search and it’s stunning to find out that the right wing media really isn’t exaggerating — proven death threats against politicians are being ignored by the supposedly honest media. If you’ve never agreed with a single thing that Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly et al have said about anything, you can’t in any good conscience say that they don’t have a point here. Death threats are wrong and if a story like Wisconsin is national news for days, then so are death threats.
Quite so. If Tea Party followers had made death threats against Democrat politicians, and had gone to their homes to terrify their children, we can be sure that the BBC would’ve been all over it, ramping up the coverage with every fresh act of intimidation. I know this, readers of this blog know it, and BBC journalists, if they’re honest with themselves, must know it too. And we’re talking actual death threats here, not some vague perceived potential for violence of the sort imagined by BBC correspondents when reporting on the Tea Party movement.
The reason for this is simple enough. “It’s bad, biased journalism”, as Stranahan says. The BBC’s highly partisan coverage of American politics reflects the political leanings of its staff. As such, negative stories about Democrats and their supporters are either ignored or downplayed. This is in sharp contrast to the eager reporting of similar or less significant events which are used to bash the American right.
If any BBC journos disagree with my conclusion I’d be happy to read an alternative explanation for their news blackout over the Wisconsin death threats. Comment, email, blog, tweet. Anything.
I suspect you might be waiting for quite some time
Clearly its all lies.
The left cant hate. They love everyone. Its all rightwing conspiracy I tell you!
Mailman
I suspect that the BBC are too arrogant to take criticisms on this blog seriously. This is one issue that unequivocally deserves a response – yet we know it will get filed under “fuck off. The BBC is awesome. After careful investigation we found that the BBC was right all along.”
They will dismiss us because someone made a comment once calling Islam a satanic religion, and a few other non-PC remarks they can cherry-pick to make their case. All while ignoring the fact that comments and posts on many mainstream blogs the Beeboids look to regularly (and even reference on the BBC News website) have far, far worse stuff.
Are you saying we should avoid ‘non-PC’ comments? I can’t see letting the Marxist Left place us in their mental straight-jacket will serve a worthwile purpose.
Anti-Semitism is politically correct racism. Are we to spout the cloaked anti-Semitism the BBC does for them to take us seriously? I couldn’t give a flying tinker’s what excuses the BBC uses to avoid addressing the substance of complaints against it, its in the hands of left-wing subversives, what do you expect? I want to convince non-BBC people that the BBC needs to be held to account and the Gramscian cuckoo kicked out of the nest.
I concur wholeheartedly, Islam is a satanic religion. Because non-correctnick opinion is censored on the BBC, it makes it that much more important to express it in a forum like this.
Well said, DB. I’ve got loads of evidence of violent rhetoric as well as actual violence and vandalism from the Left on this issue, and not just in Wisconsin. If the BBC’s censorship continues, I’ll post the lot.
It’s indefensible DB, so they won’t defend it.
If Mark Mardell ever gets round to posting on the subject, I’ll try and post a comment on his blog about it, as you can bet he won’t mention the violence from the Left. (It will probably be referred to the moderators.)
As David’s posts have proved, the BBC reports have actively taken the side of the unions & the nearest the BBC website has come to portraying violence is to show this blurred photo of police dragging a female protestor from the state capitol building:
This is all of a piece with the election coverage. If a Republican Candidate had been attending a church pastored by the member of the KKK for years, the MSM would have been all over it.
Yet they only reported Obama’s attendance at the equally racist Jeremiah Wright’s church when they could avoid it no longer, and the ‘Jounolist’ did all it could to deaden the impact of the news, accusing Obama’s critics of – wait for it – racism!
http://www.thepostemail.com/2010/07/24/liberal-journalists-shamelessly-shilled-for-obama-to-hand-him-the-election/
The BBC proves its impartiality by stating that it is impartial.
Mardell is unlikely to post on it because it will render his analysis on Obama’s action / inaction somewhat useless. Mardell’s line is that Obama’s seeming quiet is down to him deliberately standing aside to let the international community take the lead on this and has nothing to do with inaction, disinterest or not being up to the big decisions. However events in Wisconsin may indirectly point to another reason for his quiet.
As well as commenting on the death threats to Republican State Senators, there is a running idea that part of the President’s seeming lack of interest in being the President is because the 2012 reelection machine is in full flow and that Wisconsin has a key role to play in it. This has been mentioned by quite a few commentators.
The sistertoldjah blog has picked up on stories that Obama is attending quite a few fundraisers:
http://sistertoldjah.com/archives/2011/03/16/my-prez-wants-to-party-all-the-time-party-all-the-time-party-all-the-ti-ime/
The big Obama machine of 2008, Organizing for America appears to be gearing up again and has been implicated by some as facilitating some of the protests in Wisconsin which appears to have become a key state in the 2012 race.
It would seem that some believe that he is not locked behind doors busying himself leading the free world in the handling of some major threats to glabal stability, but that his most pressing matter may be his own reelection.
Of course if the BBC report it once, Mardell as the North America editor will have to acknowledge it’s presence and the cat will be out of the bag about how the big call for changing the tone of political discourse in the US was only to apply to the Tea Part or Republicans.
Good point. He’s in very tight with the unions, and He really needs them this time around, as the media won’t feel so obligated to carry Him a second time.
A new article about Wisconsin has just gone up on the BBC website, US judge blocks Wisconsin union bargaining law. This also fails to mention the death threats and the intimidation. Another opportunity for the BBC to report the whole story, fairly and honestly, is wasted.
I salute you Lee Stranahan, my political opponent and fellow democrat.