Monthly Archives: March 2005

In a comment to a previous post Rob directed our attention to this link from Melanie Phillips. It may shock you. Yes, even you, longtime Biased BBC reader, who think you have seen it all.

Now scroll on to the BBC’s TV coverage on sunday of the Tel Aviv bombing, in which five people died and 49 were injured. Using a clip entitled ‘A family in mourning’, the family it showed was not one of the Israeli dead but of the human bomb terrorist instead.

BBC panjandrums are embarrassed enough to put their hands up to this one. In what it coyly calls a ‘correction’, the Beeb has posted up the following comment by Roger Mosey, head of TV news:

‘The programme editors and I agree it was inappropriate to begin the report with footage of the suicide bomber’s family in mourning.It was also inappropriate to include this footage without coverage of the suffering of the victims’ families. Using this picture sequence in this way was a mistake. However, the report’s coverage of the political ramifications of the bombing and this week’s London conference was balanced and fair – and we did, of course, report fully the events in Tel Aviv in our bulletins on Friday night and Saturday.’

No, Mr Mosey, it was not ‘inappropriate’. It was grotesque, outrageous and despicable. And a ‘correction’ just won’t do. It does not begin to address the moral deformity of BBC journalists who, when Israelis are murdered, automatically direct their compassion instead at the family of the bomber. For BBC journalists, Jewish victims, Jewish dead and Jewish grief just don’t seem to exist.

See what I mean about being shocked? (Bold type added by me.)

James Naughtie of Radio Four’s Today programme, interviewing Labour Chancellor Gordon Brown’s special adviser Ed Balls yesterday.

James Naughtie –

“If we win the election, does Gordon Brown want to remain Chancellor ?”

Ed Balls –

“Erm … I …”

James Naughtie –

“You win the election”

Spotted by the Observer blog, who also have an mp3 clip of the quote. Full interview here (RealAudio).

Not his first ‘slip of the tongue’. Immediately after the US Presidential elections, in an interview with former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook and ex-Tory leader Ian Duncan Smith, the following transcript :

And, Robin Cook, what about those who say – President Bush now, he’s got four years, doesn’t have to worry about opinion in the United States, he’s there, presidents do some – er – can do things in the final four years – without what – having to worry about the next election – is he going to do things that will truly scare us, like maybe – scare some people – like maybe taking on Iran directly ?

RealAudio link here. Full report here.

of huge national, nay, international significance – yes, “The BBC keeps the licence fee for another ten years, but the Board of Governors will be scrapped. The Government’s plans for the BBC also include a sharper focus on public service programming and less emphasis on audience ratings”. Strangely enough, Sky News led, rightly, with the story of Shabina Begum, a story of much greater significance than the government’s disappointingly modest tinkering with the running of the BBC (if they’d brought in voluntary subscription to the BBC, that would have been a lead story).

The BBC’s generous coverage of itself included a filmed package by Gavin Hewitt, including this introduction:

But some programme makers doubt whether it will be that easy to define quality, engaging, programming.

to a clip of one Peter Bazalgette of Endemol Productions:

The BBC has Eastenders and Holby City, ITV has Coronation Street and Emmerdale. These are popular dramas, soaps, er, they are the genres of which television is made up of. It’s quite impossible for the BBC to pretend it’s not going to make any of those programmes, and they are going to be, in a sense, related to programmes on other channels because they’re in the same genre.

Well Peter, perhaps the fearless, incisive, Tessa Jowell has some other programmes in mind* – drivel like, say, Fame Academy (which has to be the all time number one example of the BBC copying a nihilistic ratings grabber from its non feather-bedded commercial rivals) or Changing Rooms or Ground Force or Ready Steady Cook. And who makes tosh like that? Why, Endemol Productions of course, not that The Ten O’Clock News saw fit to mention Endemol’s substantial relationship with the BBC.

* not that Eastenders is worthy of preservation in its current form – it and its ilk have a lot to answer for, teaching generations of young Britons that all social interaction takes the form of violent slanging matches in dreadful Estuary English.

Despite the fact that hundreds of TV channels now exist, and the fact that subscriptions to channels can be easily managed these days, the government decides that the BBC will continue to have the power for another decade to extort money out of people who don’t even watch it, in order to make whatever programs they feel like making.

Tessa Jowell’s statement is here.

While she’s aware that digital TV is going to shake up TV, she shows no awareness that the internet will probably revolutionize broadcasting within a few years, and certainly before 2016.

She also says:

Alongside the NHS, the BBC is one of the two great institutions of British national life.

Not that bad, surely? It doesn’t kill people, after all (well, not directly).

Perhaps surprisingly, the licence fee retains a high degree of public support.

If it has such a high degree of public support, then why is there the need to force people to fund it? If it’s so popular, people will pay for it out of their own pockets. Unless, that is, it turns out that it isn’t really so popular after all.

And although not perfect, we believe it remains the fairest way to fund the BBC.

But why wouldn’t this sort of reasoning (or lack of it) apply to other services? Reading newspapers has a high degree of public support – so would it be ‘fair’ that a state-backed license fee be used to fund The Guardian? Drinking milk is popular, so would it be fair that a state-enforced license fee be used to fund a milk company?

P.S. As for the story about the scrapping of the governers, as Kelvin McKenzie says, it’s merely putting another bunch of “establishment dimwits” in charge. Michael Grade has dismissed McKenzie’s comments with “I’m not sure that Kelvin speaks for the nation. He speaks for Kelvin”. But who says Grade speaks for the nation? Who voted for him? Who would win a vote between Grade and McKenzie? At least I don’t have to watch or listen to anything McKenzie puts out, whereas I am forced (as a TV owner) by law and the subsequent threat of jail to pay over £100 a year towards whatever Grade puts out (even if I don’t watch it).

(Wonder if BBC News will start getting worse now that this decision is over and done with. After all, this might be the last ever charter.)

P.P.S. And check out this vague blather:

A BBC that promotes citizenship and builds our civil society.

A BBC that promotes education and learning.

A BBC dedicated to creativity and cultural excellence

A BBC that celebrates our nations, regions and communities.

A BBC that brings the world to the UK and the UK to the world.

A BBC which is strong, independent and securely at the heart of British broadcasting for ten more years.

Cross-posted at Blithering Bunny.

Both BBC News 24 and BBC News Online have given substantial coverage this morning to the case of Shabina Begum, an orphaned 16-year old Muslim girl who, apparently under the sway of her older brother, in yet another ‘human rights’ judicial travesty, has won the right to drive a coach and horses through the rights of schools to set and maintain a school uniform policy.

With all the BBC’s coverage of this appeal case, including this News Online article, Muslim gown schoolgirl wins case (timestamped 10.56am and updated at 12.16pm), why is it that one has to turn to The Times, Muslim girl wins battle to wear traditional dress in school, to find that:

Ms Begum was represented at the appeal court by Cherie Booth QC, Tony Blair’s wife.

Why has the BBC seen fit to excise this small but noteworthy and newsworthy detail from their version of the news? Didn’t they notice Cherie Booth’s name? Or have they purposefully decided to ignore the involvement of the Prime Minister’s wife in this case?

Update: Channel 4 news this evening covered this story properly. Samira Ahmed’s report mentioned the involvement of Cherie Booth, the influence of Ms. Begum’s older brother (her effective guardian, since the death of her parents) and his links with the extreme Hizb-ut-Tahrir group (according to the Sunday Times HuT’s ‘ultimate aim is a worldwide Muslim state, ruled by sharia, Islamic law, and it urges Muslims not to participate in democratic politics’). Channel 4 News also mentioned that the headteacher of Denbigh High School is a Muslim too – another interesting aspect that escaped the BBC’s notice (or at least their reporting). Finally, prompted by Susan’s comments on this post, it seems that Ms. Begum’s lawyer, Yvonne Spencer, speaking on Channel 4 news last year, suggested that the real reason the girl objects to wearing the shalwar khameez is that Sikhs and Hindus also wear it.

The BBC have made a remarkable scientific breakthrough which has eluded the world’s medical researchers.

They have discovered that unborn infants fall into two distinct classes.

If the mother wishes not to bring the the unborn infant to term, it becomes, by a process not yet fully understood, a ‘foetus‘.

“The procedure involves the extraction of the body of the foetus into the vagina before the contents of the skull are sucked out, killing the unborn, after which the intact foetus is removed from the woman’s body.”

If the mother does not wish to kill the unborn infant, but threatens its life with, for example, cigarette smoke, the unborn infant becomes a ‘baby‘. Again, more research is needed to establish the exact mechanism by which this change occurs, but the infant can become a ‘baby’ within six weeks of conception.

“A study found that nearly a third of women whose partners smoked more than 20 cigarettes a day lost their babies within six weeks of conceiving.”

Whereas an unborn infant whose mother does not wish to give birth remains a ‘foetus’ up to the ninth month of pregnancy.

“Partial-birth abortion is one in which the foetus is partially delivered before the pregnancy is terminated.

The procedure would not normally be used until 20 weeks into a pregnancy. Most are performed late in the second trimester, which ends at 27 weeks into pregnancy. However, “partial-birth” abortions can be carried out right through to the ninth month of pregnancy.”

UPDATE – tidied up (with a hint of stealth edit) 9.06 am 03/03/2005