If you are like Lawrence, the bloke who ventures to utter a valid criticism at BBC news coverage, be warned. The drones in the ‘editing’ cubicles are just waiting to ‘balance’ it for you. They’ve got their Jack Thomases at the ready.
The media give undue prominence to such actions. And because of that the militants and terrorists take the actions to exploit the media coverage. Would they be doing it if there were no cameras and coverage? I thought the BBC’s recent documentary and surveys at the time of the 1st anniversary of the war showed that the majority of Iraqi’s wanted no part in such militant action. So why does the BBC then give so much coverage. Come on BBC, focus on the positives instead of the negatives for a change.
Lawrence, UKTo Lawrence, UK : You are asking for the BBC to focus on the positives rather than the negatives. I would rather the BBC focused on the truth, something that I believe they have been doing. I’m sure most Americans would describe their media as ‘positive’ but i’d describe it as biased and misleading.
Jack Thomas, Bangkok, Thailand
Come on are you so tainted by your paranoid dogma that you can’t recognise that other people have different opinions.
I was under the impression this site was a forum for libertarian free thinkers. Not brainless drones programmed to believe every conspiracy theory spewed up by the crackpot right.
“Editing Cubicles” indeed I suggest you’ve spent too much time nose buried in low rent literature, UFO’s, the Occult, the Loch Ness monster. Surely its time for you and your friends to grow up get proper jobs and leave these childish ideas behind before you are terminally stunted.
So, Mr. Tea – what does the BBC Newsroom look like? Do you or a relative/friend work for the BBC? If so, please declare an interest when commenting!
(N.B. ‘The Insider’ disappeared from view for a while after s/he was asked this question. Curiously, s/he still hasn’t answered it, but it’s not too late for him/her to do so now).
On R4 recently ‘talking heads’ gave views on Hutton/Iraq – the pro-war/beeb-sceptic of the pair noted that when he’d been taken through the newsroom he’d seen an anti-Bush “Hail to the Thief” poster on display, and that this went unchallenged speaks for itself as to the partiality of BBC Newsroom staff.
On a similar note, BBC2’s “Time Shift” programme a few weeks back eulogised the “Greenham Women” and their achievements in ridding our land of Cruise missiles.
Aside from the one sided view of history (crediting naive leftie soap-dodgers with the achievements of Reagan and Thatcher facing down the Soviet Union), it was interesting to see Fiona Bruce (a BBC news presenter) reminiscing about protesting at Greenham Common. How unsurprising. It’s a pity she doesn’t seem to have grown-up much since then either.
*sigh*
Another imagined/invented bias, with a ridiculous, unprovable accusation of fraud; another victory to the enemy.
Get a grip guys, and stick to the sodding facts!
.
You know I’m quite prepared to listen to a reasoned argument and considering this is your particular obsession you should be able to take me to task, however, apart from PJF and The Insider no one has risen above a rather moronic “they are the big bad BBC”.
You know walking into the newsroom and seeing a Groucho Marx moustache on George Bush is not enough to convince me that there is bias in the beeb.
I did have a friend who worked at the BBC, I’d say his politics where just left of Kylie, I imagine he had his AC/DC posters in his “Editing Cubicle” does this mean Angus Young is against Bush and “Whole Lot of Rosy” is about the troubled Scottish Socialist MP Rosy Kane.
Could be!
Greenham Common Women, Leftie Soap Dodgers? I’m sorry Andrew but what decade are we in, I mean the right wing media has always used hackneyed stereotypes but these ones are well past there sell by date.
Surely there must be more relevant slurs, though the idea of you digging out your 20 year old copy of the Sun for inspiration does amuse.
I mean your not going to be getting any new recruits by banging on about Greenham Common as it’s only the fringe that remember it, oh and old people.
I heard Wham are good are you a yuppie by any chance?
Must do better!
Kerry – why not try writing reasoned responses to specific Have Your Say comments that you view as overly left-wing and naive/silly, and see if they get published? If they still don’t, then there may be some substance to your claims.
(NB being polite and reasoned like Jack Thomas is an advantage here – reading (e.g.) Susan’s comments here, I’m not surprised Have Your Say doesn’t publish them.)
Or were you claiming that Jack Thomas is actually fictional? This is a serious and (at least from the evidence in the post) baseless claim.
I have tried writing carefully reasoned, balanced and unemotional responses. I have never been published. I have also given up, just as I have given up watching the TV news (since any story I know about has such silly inaccuracies).
I have failed to get responses published but don’t attribute it to some all powerful liberal camarilla, manning the BBC’s websites.
Honestly you whacko flat earthers need to get out more!
OT
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/middle_east/04/vivians_story/html/1.stm
The Beeb features an unhappy Iraqi widow and bereaved mother. As you may expect, she is utterly typical of such Iraqi unfortunates • her family were deliberately murdered by Saddam, she is Muslim, and she is in that majority in the Iraqi opinion polls who support the US invasion.
No, I’m kidding. She’s part of that tiny (but still unfortunate) minority of Iraqi widows and bereaved parents whose family was killed (mistakenly, on the assumption that they were hostile) by US troops rather than deliberately and maliciously by Saddam, she’s a Christian and her views on the US invasion chime with the Beeb’s :
“If they want the oil, they can take it. Is it worth more than my children? They didn’t even leave me one
My sympathies, obviously, to her. What an amazing coincidence though that the Beeb’s featured victim should turn out to be one who makes the US look bad.
Mr Tea, you are hardly one to complain about “hackneyed stereotypes”, as you seem to find it difficult to make any post without making comments about; “yuppies”, “whacko flat earthers” and the “crackpot right” (just from scanning your this page).
It is obvious that the BBCs preconceived political ideas more or less correspond to your own, which you assume means that they are in line with the vast majority of the UK (therefore allowing you to dismiss everyone else as extremists and crackpots).
But if this wasn’t the case, and the BBCs news reporting seemed to you to be based around assumptions you didn’t agree with, would you still be willing to pay the license fee?
‘Another imagined/invented bias, with a ridiculous, unprovable accusation of fraud; another victory to the enemy’.
Just reading through those comments you find (a) that more or less all of them are anti Bush/the US (not exactly balanced) and (b) the ‘To Lawrence, UK’ post is the only direct reply I’ve ever seen on a Beeb site.
Well, Mr Tea, the two top guys at the SCBBC had to go because of their bias and lies. Along with a disgraced reported, ala Gilligan. Many more should go.
The SCBBC is the most biased news organization I have ever found. Their lies and spin are well documented here and on other sites. There is proof positive a plenty. Not just opinions.
By the way, SCBBC, stands for “so-called BBC” for their continuing use of “so-called teorrist” and the like.
(Don’t) Have Your Say promises much more than it delivers. I cannot prove that comments are weighted to put a leftie elitist tilt on, but based on other practices of the Beeb, I wouldn’t put it past them. After dozens of attempts to have my say on the BBC website with no success, I gave up.
Happily, this forum is open to all who wish to participate, though some can only resort to ad hominem and name calling. That speaks for itself.
The point I would like to make to “Mr. Thomas” (scare quotes intented) is regarding his point “Americans would describe their media as ‘positive’…”. I’m still howling at that one. That’s a laugher. Now, “Mr. Thomas” supposedly lives in Bangkok. Exactly how does he know that the US media innacurately portrays the Iraq war and spins it positively? How does he know? Greg Dyke’s BBC World Service has told him so…over and over and over.
Alan
I don’t agree with everything the BBC says although I support the BBC. I just consider that posts such as this do not help your cause. It’s based on frivolous hearsay and not worthy of serious debate.
I’m sure you and your fellows may have quite valid arguments but this isn’t one of them. The idea that there are “Editing Cubicles” in the BBC with an army of Winston Smith’s deleting emails is frankly absurd and ranks with the New World Order and the Protocols of Zion and should be filed under paranoid ranting.
As for the stereotypes “Greenham Common Women, Leftie Soap Dodgers” , I simply mentioned “yuppies” to highlight how out of touch the commenter seemed to be with today’s political landscape (this is not the eighties) and if you’re out beat the “lefties” then you’ll have to think up something better than these old potboilers.
I’m also having a laugh.
‘Another imagined/invented bias, with a ridiculous, unprovable accusation of fraud; another victory to the enemy’. (PJF)
Guys this was said by PJF who as far as I can see hates the BBC and has been arguing the case more effectively than all of you combined. However, I’m sure he/she realises that supporting your argument, however, valid with a load of claptrap doesn’t work.
Ken
I have been in Bangkok and guess what …
They get international newspapers, they get international TV and they get the internet.
It’s a big city you know.
Ken
And the guy might be on holiday! It seems to me to be a bit more reasonable but maybe I’ve been hypnotised by the mind probe that the teletubbies use,
Wow, you’re funny Mr. Tea! Teletubbies with mind rays!
People react to the fact that there is a DIRECT response to the previous entry on a comments (unprecedented, at least in my experience) and you act as if questioning this is a symptom of warped thinking. I submit that the true warp is in the outrageously anti-US reportage and commentary on the BBC. It seems that any sane or even remotely objective consciousness could perceive this bias, but apparently this is not the case.
Oh well, I guess fish don’t know that they are wet.
oops, typo — should read “on a comments board” …
I’ve just realised that to get an opinion printed I have to quote an ancient Chinese proverb and sign my name as: Bob, Earth.
Jesus, wept. It’s there, I kid you not.
I can just about take my licence fee paying for a cascade of low rent gardening, makeover and Bruce Forsyth pension fund programmes; however when it is paying the wages of a bunch of complacent, lefty Guardian readers who feel free to destroy the credibility of BBC news then I think I will take exception.
Where is one mention of the fact that Al Sadr is being funded by Iran? No where. They are a disgrace. They make no pretence at objectivity and as such have become bad journalists. Simple as that.
Actually they do occasionally print responses to other posts at (Don’t) Have Your Say. This is certainly not unprecedented as someone claims upthread.
I believe that Theodore Dalrymple wrote an article once about his participation in a BBC radio show. They read some listener’s comments on air and they all skewed the BBC line on the subject, accoring to Dalrymple. Dalrymple assumed they were “representative” samples of listener’s views as the BBC always claims.
However they then mailed him all the comments they received on the subject and he discovered that the comments read on air were not in any way “representative” of the comments received.
Just an anecdote, but it has the ring of truth.
johnb: (Don’t) Have Your Say often prints remarks that are far more inflammatory and rude than mine. They are just rude to the “right” people according to the BBC world view — Americans, Israelis, Christians.
(Don’t) Have Your Say also often prints extremely ignorant comments. For example (and I think I mentioned this on another thread), they are currently running a discussion on the ethnic cleansing in the Sudan by the Arab North. They initially printed several smart-alecky comments smirking that no one would help the Southern Sudanese because they don’t have oil (i.e., their typical indirect slam at Bush and the US).
I sent them a note saying that, contrary to the ignorance expressed by their readers, the Sudanese actually have a ton of oil and that’s one of the main reasons for the civil war. I also pointed out that many of the oil companies operating in the Sudan at the pleasure of the Khartoum government are European — Lundin Oil from Sweden for example, and France’s TotalFinalElf.
They didn’t print my comments but they did remove several of the smart-alecy remarks about the Sudanese not having oil. I guess these comments were too stupid even for (Don’t) Have Your Say.
However the crowning achievement of (Don’t) Have Your Say, at least since I’ve been reading them, was when they published comments last year about the overturning of sodomy laws in Texas by the US Supreme Court.
The title of their discussion was “Should the law be changed in all the states?” — completely unaware that according to American constitutional law, when the Supreme Court declares a law unconstitutional in one state, it automatically negates similar laws in all the other states.
What a bunch of maroons.
Looking at this particular page, there seems to be pretty equal numbers of reasonably well considered views setting out the cases for more troops and/or swift handover of power/UN involvement. There’s about the same number of bonkers end of the world mongers, global peace hippies, ‘it’s all about oil’ conspiracy theorists and ‘why are they so ungrateful?’ types.
This isn’t a bad relection of reality in my experience considering a large proportion of respondents are non UK/US based and therefore more likely to be anti war (weren’t 80% against in Spain let alone the middle East).
Look at the ‘multiculturalism’ debate amd you’ll see a large number of ‘kick em all out’ views. Hardly suggests a systematic bias?
docob
“It seems that any sane or even remotely objective consciousness could perceive this bias, but apparently this is not the case.”
The large majority of people in the United Kingdom do not perceive this bias, do you consider the general public to be insane, because there certainly not all “lefties” or Greenham Common Women.
I know that that there is a particular type of misfit that strays towards this kind of “I know best viewpoint”, usually exponents of eugenics or some other laughable pseudo science. It amuses me that I’m considered to be some kind of Marxist because I’m a dissenting voice.
I would just like some evidence. Not “a bloke I know stood next to Greg Dyke on the tube and he burned Old Glory and stamped on it”.
I mean proper documented evidence because otherwise you seem like the same bunch of harebrained dogmatists seeing reds under the bed again.
Excuse me, Mr. Tea, but did you just try to associate me with EUGENICS? Talk about harebrained!! What, pray tell, caused you to chose such an odious and totally unfounded slander?
choose, not chose … I’m too angry to type straight
If it offends I apologise,
I believe that the general public don’t see the bias and subsequently you must feel you are better than them.
There is particular flavour of political fool that considers the masses to be lesser beings. Often they are proponents of pseudo science and elitism.
Obviously I’m wide of the mark and apologise you are merely arrogant.
The relatively small number of people who protested at Greenham Common were regarded as being on the extreme left. Openly anti-American. Never willing to protest against the USSR.
So Fiona Bruce was a Greenham Common protestor ?
That figures.
And Mr Tea thinks that is OK ? That figures too.
I think it’s laughable in this day and age that you wild eyed ultraists are still harping on about Greenham Common, no one under the age of forty can remember them!
Mr Tea —
YOU accuse ME of arrogance? You drip with it, you sanctimonius sod.
docob
I’m more than happy to listen to your arguments and appreciate them but first you have to offer one.
I consider myself no better or worse than the Joe you on the other reckon your something quite special….
fast typing
I consider myself no better or worse than the average Joe you on the other hand reckon your something quite special….
apologies
Come on I’m being lambasted by all comers surely you people can take a gentle ribbing.
Verbal bombthrowing with words like “eugenics” followed by a passive-aggressive non-apology is hardly “gentle ribbing”.
Mr Tea: “There is particular flavour of political fool that considers the masses to be lesser beings. Often they are proponents of pseudo science and elitism.”
Yes, and many of them seem to be working for the BBC.
It is where I come from!
“It seems that any sane or even remotely objective consciousness could perceive this bias, but apparently this is not the case.”
I’m quite happy to be considered insane, well by you lot anyway.
I would submit that self-delusion to the extent that it threatens personal and/or national survival certainly at least borders on insanity.
Mr Tea,
“I don’t agree with everything the BBC says although I support the BBC.”
Which doesn’t answer the question. I don’t disagree with EVERYTHING the BBC says, although I still don’t support paying for the BBC via the license fee.
I’ll rephrase the question; if you found the politics of the BBC to be unacceptable (let’s say pro-british empire, anti-welfare state, or whatever), would you still willingly pay the license fee?
Mr Tea, in a post above in which you refer to a usually unpleasantly associated particular type of misfit who strays toward an “I know best viewpoint”; and in which you express a desire for evidence (proper, documented evidence); you also make this claim:
“The large majority of people in the United Kingdom do not perceive this bias…”
This may well be true, but nevertheless I’d be pleased to see your proper, documented evidence for your claim.
Alan
The trouble is I consider the BBC to be impartial and along with the majority of Britons don’t really perceive the left or right wing bias. I just see a world-class service. So the question of not paying the licence fee due to the politics of the BBC is irrelevant.
I do buy several mainstream publications both of the right and the left and am not worried by the political content. However, I would be troubled by the Political content of say “Spearhead”.
It is blinkered, to say the least, if people believe that fans of the BBC are all Guardian readers, I mean I was accused of being a Majorite Little Englander by one of this sites contributors which possibly says more about his politics than mine.
Fair play PJF I think I’d need the Insiders comprehensive knowledge to answer that question.
I just consider myself to be pretty middle of the road politically and rightly or wrongly, you guys seem to be universally on the right whether it be old school Thatcherites or raving Neocons and the last time I looked there is a party in power with a centrist agenda and a massive mandate from the people…..
It might be arrogant but I just feel my view, though not necessarily right is definitely more balanced.
Mr Tea, the last thing you need in any area of debate (or wider life) is The Insider’s “comprehensive knowledge”. 😉
Despite your inclination toward frivolous insults, I believe there is still hope for a reasoned discussion with you. Hence the continued engagement. Of course, it’s possible that you are The Insider, in which case – top trolling!
Me, The Insider I think not….. though he/she certainly takes no prisoners, which is amusing.
“The trouble is I consider the BBC to be impartial…”
I don’t believe it is remotely possible to be impartial in all political issues. Do you think it is impartial in the debate over the license fee for instance? or whether public broadcasting is a good thing, or whether the BBC should be sold off? 🙂
“…along with the majority of Britons don’t really perceive the left or right wing bias.”
The majority don’t seem to even consider the question, as far as I can tell, how did you reach that conclusion? Bare in mind that they are all used to the BBC, and take its’ biases as normal.
Somebody asked for evidence that the British public don’t perceive the BBC to be biased. Here’s a recent survey. Mixed bag of results but 61% perceive no political bias (against 33% who do presumably including some nutters who think it has right wing bias). Less than a third support the licence fee against ads or subscription though.
Personally I’m amazed that only 59% think it’s good value for money at £100 odd quid a year (I appreciate the arguments against the compulsion element). This compared to Sky’s rates for a few footy matches and vast quantities of unwatchable degrading crap???
http://www.icmresearch.co.uk/reviews/2004/bbc-panarama-charter-mar04.htm
Alan
I think the BBC has to be impartial during talks regarding it’s future. To my knowledge there are several commissions reviewing the BBC and these will feed back to the DTI. The BBC would do itself a disservice trying to strong arm these, it is after all a mere broadcaster.
The majority of Britons do not perceive the bias as they have the faculties to reason that there is none. In the same way we know that Crop Circles were not made by some great alien race trying to communicate with us.
I understand that if I was out a Thatcherite I would feel out of step with the general public, though I’m sure those dark days may come again or a neocon whose brief moment of glory looks likely to be snuffed out.
As for Rich’s point about good value, I don’t want to sound like The Insider but the Licence fee funds Internet services, radio and many educational initiatives. It reflects local communities and supports British cultures throughout the UK, which clearly there is no profit in but is essential to the history and culture of Britain. I don’t see how we can expect someone like Murdoch to understand or appreciate as he is not British and a businessman.