Actually I thought that Marc Landers was a little harsh on the BBC’s David Reid in dealing with his treatment of Iranian bloggers. Blogging has improved freedom of speech there, despite the recent appalling state persecution of bloggers. The tone of the BBC article when writing about Chinese and Iranian bloggers was not objectionable to me.
However Marc Landers hit the Beeb fair and square when it got to Rather and Jordan. The BBC talks as if Rather was eased out of his job merely for some error of fact such as any journalist (or blogger) is statistically certain to make every now and then. Wrong. He lost it for sustained, reckless, arrogant, obviously partisan refusal to confirm the authenticity of a major political story both before and after it was broadcast. All bloggers did was make that obvious to the public and his employers. The BBC also makes it sound as if there is room for significant doubt as to what Eason Jordan said to get him fired. As Landers says, if Jordan feels he has been misquoted he has only to release that tape.
And hasn’t David Reid discovered the many highly political blogs on the left?
I agree with this assessment. I also think the Beeb have decided they need to say something about blogs, they can’t just have a high and mighty “we are above all this”………”this is all about other organisations and not us” attitude, and might as well try some damage limitation, in case their journalists are next in line. Hopefully……
My BBC-biasometer must be in need of tuning. I don’t think the references to Rather and Eason are unreasonable. It’s not relevant whether they deserved to go, for the purpose of noting that it was the blogosphere that did for them.
The only trademark BBC touch is that we get an awful lot of a whining lefty we’ve never heard of before, casually introduced as if he is some big authority on something, when he probably wears pyjamas like everybody else :
Bertrand Pecquerie, of the World Editors Forum
Who he ? What it ? Why should we care less ?
The only “bias” is that the BBC doesn’t balance these rantings with a few sober remarks from Prof Reynolds or someone like that. But at least Pecquerie’s remarks are just reported as his remarks, not as “the truth.”
[OT] I certainly can’t fault the World Service (heard late night over US public radio) on the ammount of coverage on the Pope’s death. In fact, to me, the story seems over covered on the BBC and cable news. It’s sad, but not unexpected, and “The Latest Developments” updates are a really odd concept given the nature of the event. However, that said, I do find some of the bias amusing. The pope is criticized time after time for “adhering strictly to church doctrine”. Well, duh, he’s the pope! More substantively, his criticism of “liberation theology” in Latin America is held up as a big failing, explained only as “he thought helping the poor sounded too much like Marxism” (all quotes approximate..) Well, IIRC, Liberation Theology _was_ Marxism (though I suppose not Godless Marxism) and one could hardly have expected such a man to support it..
O/T
Radio 4 Today Program website (The Extended Interview tab). “Justin Webb Iterviews Walter Cronkite, who pays tribute to Dan Rather”.
Is this the same Walter Cronkite most recently in the news for his critisism of Dan Rathers role in “Rathergate” and his suggestion that Rather should have retired “a long time ago”. Should the headline not have reflected this?
If posters to this site can do do this stuff, why cant the fully paid and well pensioned BBC staffers?
With its obfuscation, half truths, lies and incessant left wing bias, BBC News is a “Berlin Wall” that encircles us all, it “journalists” the watchtower guards. If we cant drag them from thier ivory towers, at least we can campaign to withdraw public funds. I can`t take another decade of this.
O/T
We all know how the BBC likes to highlight those Tory misdemeanours yes? And the BBC is impartial and even handed, yes?
“JUDGE UPHOLDS VOTE-RIGGING CLAIMS” (no clue there to the culprits then)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_midlands/4406575.stm
“A judge investigating vote-rigging in Birmingham’s local elections has ruled there was “widespread fraud”, and has ordered new elections.”
“Election Commissioner Richard Mawrey QC upheld allegations of postal fraud relating to six seats won by Labour in the ballot of June 10 last year.”
Nope, they were won by labour but no clue as to the culprit. No mention in the piece either that this government has brought in and encouraged postal voting against the protests of those who predicted this very thing.
Further down we discover the names of the victorious Labour coucillors:
Shafaq Ahmed, Shah Jahan, Ayaz Khan
Mohammed Islam, Muhammed Afzal and Mohammed Kazi. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there seems to be a pattern in that list of names somewhere. For some reason I don’t think this story will be around for long!
At the end of the piece a spokesman for the The Electoral Reform Society is quoted:
“We do not believe that electoral fraud is confined to Birmingham, to the Labour Party or, most importantly, to particular communities.”
Well that’s ok then.
Pete
I agree the story of the corrupt Labour councillors will not be around for long and quickly hushed up, its rather obvious they are not Conservative and of an ethnic origin so any constructive criticism would draw the tag of racism.
Electoral Reform Society is quoted:
“We do not believe that electoral fraud is confined to Birmingham, to the Labour Party or, most importantly, to particular communities.”
Well don’t leave us hanging in mid air, who, and where is this fraud taking place, otherwise its just a politically correct statement tainting everyone involved.
❓
If they ever did invite a representative from this website to appear on a show, which one of you would it be?
Re: Radio 4 Today Program website (The Extended Interview tab). “Justin Webb Iterviews Walter Cronkite, who pays tribute to Dan Rather”.
As I didn’t hear the clip, I’ll assume this report is correct..
Which is odd, because one true thing is widely known about joint lefty blowhards Cronk-never-right and Blather. Cronkite hates Rather’s guts. Period. So that must have been one weird tribute.
Not me, Monkey. I’m shy.