there was breaking news of a new Fathers4Justice protest at Buckingham Palace. Sky News covered the protest and the removal of the protestor with a split screen – the left picture and the sound covered Charles Kennedy in the Commons, whilst the right picture showed events at Buckingham Palace. Meanwhile, BBC News 24 stuck rigidly with Charles Kennedy. Was it beyond the ability of News 24 to cover the end of the F4J protest? Couldn’t figure out how to split the screen? Didn’t have enough film crews or satellite trucks? (not likely, given all the lame ‘going live’ reports these days). Or was it an editorial decision? Curious telly-taxpayers would like to know…
During the Queen’s Speech Debate in the Commons this afternoon
Bookmark the permalink.
OT but kind of relevant: “Fake Memo Danny” bites the dust!
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6567283/?GT1=5809
May the ripples of doom be felt even across the pond and unto the BBC’s inner circle. Long live the blogosphere!
OFF TOPIC
In this report http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4034581.stm , the BBC reports this:
“According to the report, Intifada, Closures and Palestinian Economic Crisis: An Assessment, there is a close link between the number of border closures and Palestinian economic problems. ”
When in fact the report says the opposite:
“While any short-term recovery will depend on the lifting of closures, this will not suffice to put the Palestinian economy onto a sustainable growth path.”
The BBC link to the report does not work (surprise) but I have a link to it on my post here:
http://ussneverdock.blogspot.com/2004/11/palestinian-economy-in-decline-and-bbc.html
More ‘controversy’ this time supposedely over the proposed use of phone-tap evidence in court….
Come again? Last time I heard there was nothing controversial about this common sense measure at all. Even civil liberties groups are for this move…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4036843.stm
Indeed Andrew P. – such controversy as there is about using phone taps is confined to two groups – 1) the scumbags that will have justice meted out to them all the more effectively; 2) law enforcement professionals who’re concerned that their existing methods and techniques (heck, plenty of phones are tapped now) will be more exposed and thus become less effective.
As for supposed controversy about anti-terror courts without juries, we’ve had those for years dealing with Northern Irish terrorism. Nothing new there – not ideal, but probably necessary given that it’s easier to protect judges than it is to protect juries from the long arm of the terrorists.
Susan
Thanks for the link re. Gunga Dan. Cheered me up no end. So he’s going to ‘step down’ in March. I think we know that being rumbled just prior to the election just may have something to do with it 😉
Andrew
Maybe the BBC is short staffed at the moment. Its possible many of their crews needed a few weeks in Vegas or Hawaii a long slog following Kerry around the campaign trail.
By the way, has anyone seen any mention of a suspected massacre of 60 civilians in the Ivory Coast by French Troops?
A video of it is split into two parts. The second is graphic at the end:
http://real.xobix.ch/ramgen/tsr/tj/2004/tj_11142004-160k.rm?start=00:09:54.250&end=00:13:10.167
http://real.xobix.ch/ramgen/tsr/tj/2004/tj_11142004-160k.rm?start=00:07:40.417&end=00:13:10.167
Dude, this site f-king ROCKS. Keep up the good work!
Back on topic…
This is an interesting one. As the BBC Trots are falling out of love with new Labour they are turning to the next best (and further left) thing, the Lib Dems. Sticking with Charles Kennedy would just be another in the growing list of examples of pro-LibDem BBC bias – a list only briefly interrupted by the coverage of “The Orange Book” at conference, which the BBC was probably only aghast at because it wasn’t as left wing as they would have liked. Fortunately Kennedy and Co soon rubbished the whole thing so normal coverage was then resumed.
Anyway back on topic again. On the other hand, not covering the f4j thing could be the BBC being responsible and not wanting to encourage publicity seeking idiocy like that yesterday.
Oh, hang on. I wrote “BBC” and “responsible” in the same sentence. Silly me!
I’ve said it before but you let yourself down with the good points you make by picking up on stupid things like this.
Perhaps the BBC stuck with Charles Kennedy because they wanted to cover the main political parties equally? I’m sure you would have had something to say if they had cut away or split the screen when Michael Howard was talking.
It undoubtedly was an editiorial decision, and a good one at that. We’ve seen enough of batman climbing up a tree. Is one of these protests really “breaking news”? No, but news channels everywhere love any excuse to play the whoosing sounds and put up a big on-screen graphic. I think it just gets them through the day because 90% of the time they just repeat the same stuff over and over.
Well PD, Charlie K’s message was still available* – in sight AND sound on Sky News with their split screen – so he could hardly say he was hard done by with them also covering the F4J to-do at the same time.
It struck me as a little pointed that News 24 should appear to ignore or play down such an incident at Buckingham Palace (a threat to Her Majesty, Gawd bless ‘er!) – whoever was behind it. I reckon News 24 would have managed a bit more coverage if it was an anti-war protest…
Anyway, I apologise if you were disappointed with the standard of this particular musing… it’s not as if there’s a shortage of BBC malfeasance to cover – it’s more a shortage of time to write it up properly.
* CK’s message went something like “oh alright, just the one then”! 🙂
I’m with PD on this. It’s hard to proove bias on this issue, whereas the BBCs coverage of the UN Oil-for-Fraud scandal is openly obvious.
All morning Radio 4 Radio 5 and BBC1 have been using the ‘terrorist’ word to describe one deceased Jim Johnston whose proceeds from the sale of his house are to be siezed by the state.
Whilst the people who kill innocent civilians in the middle east like suicide bombers and the murderers of Ken Bigley and Margaret Hassan are called ‘insurgents’ or ‘militants’ what has poor old deceased Jim done to merit the ‘t’ word?
Why, he is a loyalist paramilitary ie
a very very bad man indeed.
The BBC has been going to great lengths to explain why they persist in calling terrorists ‘insurgents and militants’ it is amazing they have let
their guard slip so badly but their little left wing minds could not resist the temptation.
And yes the vile Jim Johnston was a terrorist so they got it right for once!
Apologies I should have preceded the above with OFF TOPIC.
This website is the one that is biased, never have i seen so much right wing american, redneck, guntoting, christian, uneducated, bullshit.
it is British policy to not give media coverage to streakers, demonstrators who crash events, or other tv coverage hungry types. if it did it would just encourage such actions. there is a time and place for demonstration, not during queens speach’s, or during football matches.
Use your brains rednecks.