Less and less the truth

 

‘More or Less’ is one of those BBC flagship programmes that supposedly provide us with a ‘reality check’ on the world, casting a quizzically cynical eye over the world in numbers so that we can get to the truth about events and discover what others seek to hide by blinding and baffling us with stats.

Or that is what ‘More or Less’ promises to do.  Others might think that this programme was itself part of the problem, itself attempting to blind and baffle us with statistics, all the more cynical for its pretence of a claim to the moral highground and the trusted authority of the BBC as it ‘impartially’ dissects the figures to help inform our view of the world.

Sunday morning we had an example of ‘More or Less’ pretending to look critically at the numbers….this time they are looking at the deaths of black men in the US shot by police.  As the BBC seems to be cheerleading the campaign to lynch white police officers in the US, a campaign which has resulted in many police officers being killed and wounded, you might be a bit cynical about just how honest the BBC will be on this subject.  And you know what?  You’d be right to be so cynical.   [This episode of ‘More or Less’ seems to have been overwritten by the news about Turkey for some reason…but it will be rebroadcast on the 22nd at 22:50….never mind, they have kindly written it up for us on the web]

This is the blatant lie that the BBC tells us, that a study of Blacks shot by police said there was no racial difference of thise shot…..

However, Fryer doesn’t find any racial difference in the cases where police offers actually shoot someone.

Note that in the web report the BBC tries at length to dismiss claims that police are being attacked, they try to conflate the recent attacks with the everyday normal threats that the police face, perhaps trying to suggest these attacks are nothing out of the normal therefore we shouldn’t be angry or surprised at them….and therefore not point fingers of blame at the people who are stoking the violence such as #Blacklivesmatter, and of course the BBC itself.

Conversely the BBC went into great detail as to how many Blacks have been killed and concluded that this was definitely something to do with race.  They then qualified that definitive statement by admitting that the Black crime rate is far in excess of the percentage of the population that they represent…Blacks making up 13% of the population but committing 50% of murders…but apparently that is a whole different subject that they didn’t want to get into so the BBC brushed that qualification aside as a very doubtful one.

We then got onto something we brought up in an earlier post, a study by a highly respected black academic, Roland Fryer, which told us that what the BBC has been peddling, that Blacks are more likely to be shot by cops than Whites, is wrong.

The BBC spent a good amount of time explaining that the study showed Blacks are more likely to be more aggressively handled by police when stopped or arrested.  The BBC then told us in a very brief comment that the study showed that Blacks were only equally likely to be shot as Whites…that’s an improvement on the BBC’s normal claim of blacks being gunned down by racist cops but that isn’t the real conclusion of the study.

The BBC mentioned Houston and indeed the study did say that it was possible there was no difference between Black and White shootings there…but the main conclusion of the study was that Blacks were less likely to be shot……this, as you’ve seen above, is what the BBC said:

Fryer doesn’t find any racial difference in the cases where police offers actually shoot someone.

This is what the study said….

Mr. Fryer found that in such situations, officers in Houston were about 20 percent less likely to shoot if the suspects were black. This estimate was not precise, and firmer conclusions would require more data. But in various models controlling for different factors and using different definitions of tense situations, Mr. Fryer found that blacks were either less likely to be shot or there was no difference between blacks and whites.

The BBC chose to ignore the highly significant findings that undermined the BBC’s long term narrative of racist police that whites were probably more likely to be shot.

And in other cities that conclusion of the study was born out…but not mentioned by the BBC…

In shootings in 10 cities involving officers, officers were more likely to fire their weapons without having first been attacked when the suspects were white. Black and white civilians involved in police shootings were equally likely to have been carrying a weapon. Both results undercut the idea of racial bias in police use of lethal force.

Why has the BBC missed out the crucial facts of that study?  The study that shows Whites not just equally likely to be shot as Blacks but in all probability more likely to be shot?

It’s only one study but other figures back that conclusion up especially when the crime rate within the Black community as compared to the White is taken into account.

As we saw in Dallas where ‘angry’ and politicised Blacks murdered police officers in ‘revenge’ for what they have been told is racist policing the BBC’s words have a serious effect on the world as it cheerleads the campaign that incites murder….and you can see the same thing starting here in the UK as #Blacklivesmatter incites and encourages Blacks in Britain to think of themselves as victims….just where will that lead?

The BBC is the real danger to democracy, stability and peace…and ironically, it being so in love with multi-culturalism and diversity, is one of the chief instigators, along with the Guardian, of racial and religious conflict and discontent in Britain.  The BNP and the Far Right could learn a lot from the divisive BBC which quietly supports armed uprisings by minorities.

Just remember the BBC’s Mark Easton thinks that Muslim ‘radicals’ make a valuable contribution to society…they are the new Mandelas, Gandhis, Churchills of this world.

History tells us that the development of new ideas of governance and government require people to think radically. Extreme views are necessary to test the wisdom of the mainstream.

I wonder what new ideas of governance and government Easton has in mind…perhaps an ‘Islamic State’?