George Galloway is currently being fawned over by BBC Radio Scotland, on of all things football programme ‘Off the Ball’.
‘…It’s a pleasure and a privilege…’
‘…You showed them…’
‘…Heroic…’
‘…Americans are thickies, just look at the president!…’
UPDATE ADDED 29 MAY: USS Neverdock saw this post and expanded on it, including an audio clip.
BTW2. Here’s a BBC page with a link to Fox News. It’s an interesting story. ;o)
BTW 3, I found the Dasani link on Fox News. Nothing to do with Fox except it’s been turned up by a search engine, no?
Fox News, along with the rest of the mainstream US TV media either didn’t report the story, or reported it in a low key manner. They all get a substantial amount of their revenue from the Coke group of companies. I can’t see how I’ve moved the goalposts. I remain to be convinced.
BTW 3, I found the Dasani link on Fox News. Nothing to do with Fox except it’s been turned up by a search engine, no?
Ahem, umm, yes, that is what I said originally isn’t it? But the fact that it came up so readily in the Fox News search engine doesn’t exactly support your conspiracy theory does it?
I can’t see how I’ve moved the goalposts.
O Garry dear, let us count the ways:
1.) You claimed that the US media did not cover the Dasani story at all. When refuted on that, you changed your story to “Oh, but I bet you can’t find it on Fox’s website.” (Goal post move #1)
2.) When I posted links to the CommonDreams story I found on Fox’s website, you changed your story to, “Oh, I bet it took you a long time to find it.” (Goal post move#2).
3.) When I replied that it was the first or second link to come up, you changed your story to, “Oh, well, it doesn’t really count, it was only in the Fox news search engine.” (Which is what I had said in the first place — Goal post move #3).
BTW, why are people in the US still drinking it? I’m not trying to be funny, but if they’ve been well informed about what it is and how much profit Coke makes on it, well, why is it still so popular?
I don’t know that it is — I rarely see people drinking it in my neck of the woods. However, my superior knowledge of American culture tells me that:
Americans like the convenience of bottled water, period, and aren’t as appalled as English people at the prospect that Dasani is merely bottled tap water. Many Americans will put out bottled water on ice for party guests, rather than a pitcher of tap water with cups, because they think it’s “nicer” than serving a pitcher of tap. Then there’s the convenience of taking the stuff with you in the car, on a jog around the block, buying it at a sandwich bar on your lunch hour (few sandwich bars have the facilities to serve a glass of water to their customers.) Much more convenient than filling up a Thermos.
Ok, I admit I didn’t choose my words with care. Lets start again.
Dasani filtered tap water went on sale in the USA in 1999. As far as I can see, there was no mention of it being filtered tap water in any mainstream US media source in the next 4+ years. The product was then launched in the UK in March 2004. The BBC and other media outlets immediately reported the fact that Dasani was filtered tap water and that Coke would be making very large profits on sales of this product. At this point, after the story has broken in the UK, and more than 4 years after it first went on sale in the USA, the story gets some limited coverage in the US media. As far as I can tell, Fox News has never broadcast anything on the subject and neither has NBC. CBS makes brief mention of the story in an AP report on their website in March 2004. It’s about Dasani in the UK. The ABC website, to their credit, has a report on filtered tap waters which mentions Dasani. It is from 2005.
The point I was making is that there is a conflict of interest involved. If you’re being funded by a large company, it will make you think twice about broadcasting negative news about that company. I’d say Fox highlights this best, which was why I chose it as an example. If you really belive that one link to a commondreams story (which is about the release of dasani in the UK btw) on the Fox website absolves them from bias towards Coke and against consumers, then I feel we must agree to disagree. The BBC included the story in their news broadcasts, Fox news did not. There were 4+ years where the story simply did not appear in any mainstream American media. It doesn’t inspire me with confidence.
BTW, Dasani sales: While the Dasani bottled water, Minute Maid juices and other non-carbonated products have delivered solid, sometimes spectacular growth, the company’s flagship Coca-Cola brand has struggled since the late 1990s.
Thats from one of two mentions on Fox News of Dasani when I do a search. It’s from November 2004.
BTW2, you like the BBC page with the Fox link? It didn’t take me long to find.
A final point. I actually didn’t want to become a trolling pain in the a**e here.
I just thought it was odd that the original post was trying to make a serious political point out of a radio programme like “Off the Ball”.It’s a silly comedy radio sports show. It isn’t somewhere people go for serious political debate.
The whole Dasani thing was a bit of a side argument which got out of hand.
I feel it could go on for ever. I think Fox is biased to the right, lots of people here think the BBC is biased to the left. It’s a circle which can’t be squared. It’s been interesting though.
Garry
You are still missing the whole point.
Fox being “right” doesn’t matter. It does not claim not to be.
Bt the BBC clims to be blanced, ikndeed it is required by its Royal Charter to be balanced. In fact it is skewed to the left. And we re forced to pay for it.
You obviously don’t watch Fox News. If you did, you would have to concede that their panel discussions actually do have a balanced mix – far better than the BBC. And they have some leftie presenters as well as right.
Also – their “right” is fairly mainstream “right”. Whereas the BBC is well to the left of the Labour Party.
If Fox was extreme right, it would not have wiped the floor with the former all-leftie TV networks. Fox speaks to a major, right-of-centre section of America, but with reasonable balance in discussions. By contrast, the BBC skew is all-left, without much attempt at putting a balance of views. It does not care if this upsets a lot of the audience – it still grabs our money.
dogsdanglybits – The News Quiz doesn’t use canned laughter, it’s taped before a live studio audience (as US sitcoms used to point out).
It’s rather inappropriate to say that she’s not allowed to make jokes where the humour derives from americans’ famous lack of knowledge of history or anything foreign, ‘cos she’s got Danish parents. By that token, nobody would ever be allowed to make any jokes ever because of the history of their nation. This is political correctness gone mad!
Given that only 10-20% of them have passports, it’s quite probable that 80% or even more of them don’t know who Joan of Arc was. Your point that they would be unlikely to think she’s Noah’s wife is valid.
On another point, Fox does not ahve anything that vaguely resembles a reasonable balance (unless you mean a reasonable balance across the US nationalist right-wing spectrum. It’s a running joke even in America.
The people who earlier claimed that the BBC is run by Marxists – you’re clearly a deluded lunatic, and you’re doing your fellow right-wing bbc bashers a disservice with this wildly exaggerated nonsense.
The BBC is funded by threatening people with jail.
It does not have to do this and resists moving to subscription.
We can only assume that the BBC knows that given the choice, very few people would pay 130 GBP for it’s small number of mediocre channels.
Being good socialists (and therefore natural parasites) it’s much easier to keep jailing.
Tom P
What’s the P for? Peabrain?
Thanks for proving that no country has a monopoly on stupidly. (If you do think that US citizens are uniquely stupid, that’s called racism by the way.)
You seriously think 20% of Britons have the vaguest idea of who Joan of Arc was?
How many Britons do you think know who Paul Revere was? Less than 10% maybe? But let’s find an easy one… How many Britons do you think could tell you anything about Oliver Cromwell? Good luck with that one.
You think the fact that more Britons have passports means anything? Apart from a working knowledge of all the English bars in Spain, where our so sophisticated folks can eat, drink and watch TV just like they do at home.
What typically unthinking, prolier than thou leftoid you are.
And, by the way, it’s the BBC that’s the joke, not Fox News. The BBC is to a comrade a bunch of Groucho Club Marxists, socialists, commies and pinkos caught time after time after time passing off opinion as fact. They just can’t help it.
Admittedly Fox’s idea of balance is rather revolutionary to people from this country: that is, equal representation between lefties and conservatives. I do understand that this is a tremendous shock to leftoids like yourself who can’t cope with anything less than a panel of 4 lefty nutjobs plus the Dimblebore of the day against the conservative.
But, you know what pea brain. Get over it already.
TomP
In all seriousness I don’t think it’s inappropriate for Fru Toksvig to gag on the theme of our American cousins.I don’t give a proverbial who she uses as the butt of her jokes. If she upsets someone, upon her head be it What I do object to is the way the BBC continually platforms people with agendas like hers to the exclusion of balance.
Her ‘humour derives from americans’ famous lack of knowledge of history or anything foreign’ does it?’ Famous to who? I correspond with a typical Noo Yawker, Brooklyn born & bred. English to her was a third language after the French & Italian she used at home. Taking her round London is always fun. She chats in Turkish with the grocers, has Pakistani waiters jumping through hoops, orders Vietnamese meals in Vietnamese, speaks acceptable Spanish and can get by in Russian.
You make a point of few Americans having passports. Many more Brit’s have passports but most of them have never used them for anything more ambitious than the 800 mile flight to Majorca. 800 miles would hardly get you out of some American states. As she says, if she wants to go abroad she just walks a couple of blocks.
Why is it that Yankaphobes like Fru Toksvig and yourself find it so hard to contemplate that American are overwhelmingly immigrants – mostly 2nd & 3rd generation. More Americans speak Spanish than there are Spaniards. There are lots of farming communities in the mid-west where they speak German or Swedish at the dinner table. Francophones are a whole ‘nother world down near the Gulf.
Do you think Americans forgot where they came from? There’s loads of Italian- Americans who know more about what’s going on in some little village in Sicily or Campania than they do in Rome.
As for Fox, who expects them to be totally, 100% balanced? They’re not obliged to be. If you don’t like where they’re coming from… well I was going to say watch Dan Rather but that’s a bit difficult after his essay into balanced reporting.
Susan recommends CommonDreams. Personally, I get my liberal fix at: http://www.theonion.com/ ’cause they have a sense of humour.
Unlike the above the BBC has it’s obligation to impartiality nailed down in Article 7(f) of it’s Charter. Pity nobody at Broadcasting House ever bothers reading the thing.
Oh, and by the way. I have regular contact with a BBC Radio producer. The sort of person who picks the ‘balanced panels’ that the BBC boasts about. As far as I’m aware he’s been a committed, unashamed Marxist all his adult life but then maybe he’s been deluding me…
Garry:
Regarding the BBC’s coverage of Coca Cola/Dassni, you seem to be making the post hoc ergo propter hoc error that if the BBC gives a lot of attention to a news story, it must be important. It seems to me that the BBC (and other news organizations) often cover stories in ways that bear no relationship to their relative importance.
I listen to the World Service, and notice that every time some environmental pressure group comes out with a story predicting environmental disaster, the WS puts it in their top-of-the-hour news bulletins, presenting only the worst-case scenario.
The BBC also go on and on and on about the Augusto Pinochet case. The last I heard, Lithuania is still waiting to question Mikhail Gorbachev over his role in the 1991 murder by Soviet troops of a dozen Lithuanians outside the Lithuanian Radio building, but that story gets no mention whatsoever in Western media.
The BBC’s coverage of the US elections was equally marred by selective reporting. When it came to Rathergate, there was almost no mention of it until Rather was forced to admit CBS got it wrong: at that point, the WS’s story was from the angle that CBS may have gotten it wrong, but they were asking an important question. Of course, that wasn’t the angle they took regarding the Swift Boat veterans. The angle there was that the campaign finance laws allowing such organizations needed to be changed to stop such wicked organizations. The BBC failed to mention that the Swifties were operating under the same loophole as MoveOn, which came in for BBC praise….
Do you really think the allegations regarding Bush and Vietnam were important, while the ones about his opponent weren’t?
BTW2, you like the BBC page with the Fox link? It didn’t take me long to find.
Still moving goal posts eh, Garry? I distinctly asked if the Beeb included Fox news links in its search engine, not some random story.
Try again.
Ted: the point I was making is that no-one in the UK bought the stuff. Left wing or Right wing, we thought it was a rip off. It isn’t for sale any more because we all knew that it was filtered tap water and that Coke were making approx 2000% profit on it (I can’t remember the exact figure). In the UK, consumers were able to make an informed choice about the product and we didn’t like it. In the US, the fact that Dasani is filtered tap water, and the fact that Coke makes an enormous profit on it, has not been widely reported. Consumers are not able to make an informed choice.
Susan, have you given up on the Dasani thing then?
The BBC/Fox link was a little joke I attempted. I admit it might not have been that funny. I do love the way you’ve changed the goalposts from my previous arguments to one which doesn’t seem particularly relevant. If you like you can do a BBC search which will list the FOX News website as the number one result. It doesn’t prove anything one way or the other. My argument was that private news networks will always have a conflict of interests when it comes to reporting bad news stories about the companies which advertise with them.
Fox News coming up on BBC Search engine: that’s not what I asked Garry, and you know it.
I merely kept after the Dasani thing because you were being so dishonest in your posts on it.
And you are still at it. Sad.
Garry
After lots of posts you have not made a scitilla of argument to contest the case that the BBC is biased.
No. I can see that would would think that. I’m going to leave this thread now. I tried to make two points.
1 My initial point was that using “Off the Ball” to make a serious political point is only going to make people think you’re clutching at straws. It is a petty, flippant, silly radio football show. It’s only my opinion.
2 We went off at a tanget about Dasani, the filtered tap water which Coke makes approx 2000% profit on. I admitted that I’d been loose with my language earlier. I made my case in a more considered way. Calling me sad doesn’t really add much to the debate.
My point here was that private media news has it’s own inherent bias due to the funds they receive from advertisers. I think the BBC is one of the few broadcasters who can still act as a brake to this. Again, only an opinion but one I can’t find any reasoned argument against here.
BTW, I thought my point about the BBC and their coverage of the stock market was quite interesting. Not convincing for anyone who comments here, but interesting.
I’m going now, and I doubt I’ll be back. Feel free to discuss these matters further in my absence though. Try to remember that if you’re rude, or resort to name calling, people will just think you’ve got nothing intelligent to say. I wish you all the very best in your future endeavours.
Did someone touch his r’s again?
To close the Dasani issue finally, I expect that it just something that we take more seriously than our American cousins.
There must be some things that we’ve tried to export that havn’t gone a bomb in the States. Could someone over there enlighten us?
I get a vision of a British Leyland salesman looking at an ’75 Austin 1100 Atlantic that’s disintigrated on a back road in Iowa saying “Well it doesn’t actually say it’s got any proper steel in it on the wrapper”
Any comment at all about the actual points I made about competition in the mainstream TV market?
My initial point about this post still stands BTW. If you’re using anything said in “Off the Ball” to make a serious political point then you are probably clutching at straws.
I love the calmness with which you are prepared to discuss this though.
Garry | Homepage | 01.06.05 – 1:40 am | #
I was under the distinct impression that I had answered some of your points, in a fairly lucid manner. All you seem to have done in reply is respond in what has become to be known as ‘the left liberal way’.
Take a good look at yourself. When somebody makes a point back to you, you accuse them of ‘sticking it in you’ instead of just answering them.
Incidentally, and this is only peripherally about Dasani but is relevent in any discussion about company profits:
“filtered tap water which Coke makes approx 2000% profit on”
The figure that any manufacturing business is looking for is net profit on turnover which reflects how much it actually makes on a product when sold and is related to the cost of production.
In Coke’s case it starts with the fixed costs of it’s bottling plant, the interest on the money it borrowed to buy the machinery and the factory or the rent it pays if it doesn’t own it. Then there’s the heating, the lighting, insurance, rates, building maintainance and most of the wage costs. All of those have to paid for before a single bottle leaves the plant.
Now we have adjustable costs, things like production workers and transport. They can hire if demand is high and lay off if there’s a slump. Of course labour regulations complicate matters and redundancy payments could negate short term savings.
Then we’ve got variable costs which in Coke’s case amount to little more than the water coming out of the tap, the cost of the bottles and the electricity required to get one into the other.
Lastly there’s the cost of marketing which I’ve kept separate because it can be inversely proportionate to volume of production for obvious reasons.
I’ve no idea what the typical profit on turnover for the industry is but I would imagine anything in the low teens would please Coke. And remember with this product so much of the costs are fixed it’s going to be incredibly volume sensitive.
Before we get to that magic 2000% profit we also have to figure in mark-up in the retail chain which can vary from 10% for a supermarket to 100% in the corner shop but that’s a wholly separate set of numbers and none of which Coke benefits from.
To bring the discussion back to the thread, these are exactly the figures that our beloved BBC doesn’t have to bother it’s head about which is why it can front two morons lauding Galloway on a Scottish sports program.
thedogsdanglybits,
To answer your question way above “Does anyone here know who Noah’s wife was” or something to that effect. The answer is that it’s a trick question. The name of Noah’s wife isn’t mentioned in the Bible. The book of Genesis mentions his wife but doesn’t give her name. Only the names of his sons, sayeth this stupid Yank.
‘As for Fox, who expects them to be totally, 100% balanced? They’re not obliged to be.’
um, yes they are, if they broadcast in UK, under UK law (I know this will excite some here, but it’s the law in Britain)
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/tv/ifi/codes/bcode/undue/?a=87101
‘ To ensure that news, in whatever form, is reported with due accuracy and presented with due impartiality.
To ensure that the special impartiality requirements of the Act are complied with. ‘
As for a passport, I too, do not have one. Why? I don’t NEED one. Why should I travel to another country when all I ever need or want is right here? All my family and friends are right here. I’ve got the big city and the countryside. I’ve got the lake, mountains, the ocean and the desert. All I have to do is get in my car and drive. All but the desert I mentioned above can be found just in my home state. If I want to study the cultures of other countries, I’ve got the internet and many libraries to read about them.
One more thing I would like to add. What’s wrong with being HAPPY with where you are?
‘What’s wrong with being HAPPY with where you are?’
nothing, so why the keeness to intervene in Britain?
‘If I want to study the cultures of other countries, I’ve got the internet and many libraries to read about them.’
Brilliant.
I hope you enjoy them. Does the memory of the sunset, or the joy of meeting someone from another country with different views, history, and approach, come through well on the Internet, or through your ‘many libraries’ ?
Steve Jones wrote:
‘As for Fox, who expects them to be totally, 100% balanced? They’re not obliged to be.’
um, yes they are, if they broadcast in UK, under UK law (I know this will excite some here, but it’s the law in Britain)
Dear me. Has anybody told the BBC this? Now personally I’ve got no problem with biased coverage – as long as the bias is confessed and open. It’s the faux-‘objectivity’ of the MSM that gets to me.
Of course the BBC forces one to pay for slanted coverage, and that’s a good bit worse.
Yeah, Steve, I see them and talk to them in person everyday. HERE!
Roxana
I was responding to the claim that Fox doesn’t need to be unbiased. They do, see my point and link to British law above.
‘ Of course the BBC forces one’ – but not you, eh? but you still have a view…
Denise
Oh dear. If that’s how you see the glories, delights, and sights of the entire world, through websites like this, I pity you, I really feel sorry for you 🙁
‘As for a passport, I too, do not have one. Why? I don’t NEED one. Why should I travel to another country when all I ever need or want is right here?’
Oh dear. I have just read that again.
My goodness, what a sad statement
Steve, I had actually thought of traveling to Britain many times. Just because I said I didn’t need to travel doesn’t mean I never wanted to. You asked why I’m so keen to intervene. Ok, I’m a British decendent and I’ve been curious of the Mother country. But why would any American want to go there now when people in London are burning our flag and toppling statues of the man we re-elected? God only knows what would be said to me. What am I supposed to think? How am I supposed to feel about that? It’s perfectly fine for people to disagree on things and I don’t expect people to go along with everything we in the U.S. do. But what I’ve been seeing is pure hatred. You can thank the BBC for that. You mentioned a “country with different views”. Like the BBC world view?
Steve Jones,
If you go back to the link you supplied and look a little further down the page you’ll find this definition in the ‘Rules’ :
“So “due impartiality” does not mean an equal division of time has to be given to every view, or that every argument and every facet of every argument has to be represented”
which is the loophole that the BBC wriggles through every time it’s accused of bias. It get’s through it because it was written very specificly with the BBC in mind. As the major broadcaster it effectively enables them to define what the median in ‘balance’ is and to keep it moving inexorably towards the left.
It’s also the first restriction on broadcasting I’d like to see the back of because anyone hiding behind it’s loose provisions can plead honest when they’re not. We need bias in broadcasting and we need it to be up front where we can recognise it.
Steve, when I said I met and spoke with people from other countries I was referring to the many immigrants and visitors we have here that I meet in person. We have a lot of them. I wasn’t referring to the websites.
When I say here, I mean in my country and state, not the internet.
‘But why would any American want to go there now’
Cos it’s there. You know, like life is, and reality is
‘when people in London are burning our flag and toppling statues of the man we re-elected? God only knows what would be said to me. What am I supposed to think? How am I supposed to feel about that?’
That the world is a big and scary place, but my goodness, you experience it, you go out and see it, feel it, live it
‘what I’ve been seeing is pure hatred. You can thank the BBC for that’
Oh dear. Really, you think that? That the hatred for America that some show (really, trust me, there’s not much of that in Britain, despite what you have seen/ read about/ clicked on pictures of, we quite like you really) is actaully the BBC’s fault? Goodness me….
But really, you have my sympathy. It’s scary out there. Who knows why people are angry at Bush, or Americans, or Brits, or anyone? So… hard…
Best stay indoors. Shut the curtains, turn over the TV. There’ll be something on soon, or maybe you could look on ‘the internet [or visit] many libraries to read about them.’ to find out what other countries are like
Like I said, I feel for you.
Maybe if you’d been to any other country and seen the differences you’d be less quick to sound off about them when they don’t match your world (country? state? town? street? It’s a scary place out there!) view?
Just a thought
Dogs (is that an OK abbreviation?) – read the page itself.
At the top, it says: ;this section of the Code does not apply to BBC services funded by the licence fee or grant in aid, which are regulated on these matters by the BBC Governors.;
So, whether that’s better or not, it doesn’t apply to your very interesting point
‘toppling statues of the man we re-elected?’
Where on earth are there statues of Bush in London?
If there are any, where have any been toppled?
One more thing, Steve. A lot of people in the States like myself, are busy trying to earn a living and pay the bills. Traveling is expensive and a lot of people just don’t have the time or the money. It’s sad but true. Most of us are middle class and spend our money on our families instead. With some places of employment, people might only get one week of vacation (or holiday as you call it)the whole year. That’s not enough time to see many places in the world.
Protesters made the statue to look like Saddam, Steve.
Steve Jones,
My humble apologies. Their version appears in their charter in section 7 but amounts to the same thing. Efectively those are the guidelines the Governors are supposed to follow under the Charter. You see my point anyway?
Steve Jones,
Further to the above, if you’ve ever got the time or the inclination to wade through the Charter, the Agreement, the Amendment to the Agreement & probably the Agreement to the Amendment if they’d thought of it, you find how the BBC has been given license to proliferate into almost any area it chooses. Even the parts that you think on first reading limit it can in another part permit. The thing’s a labyrinth that keeps bureaucratic hoards in no doubt well paid employment
Steve, just because I’ve never traveled to another country doesn’t mean I stay all cooped up in my house afraid of everyone and everything. And I seldom watch tv, by the way. I’ve traveled quite a bit within the States, probably the same distances you would travel around Europe. I do get out and enjoy life.
Denise,
I’m a bit disturbed that you think that London is full of hysterical lunatics burning US flags, sacrificing Bush effigies and abusing Americans. Unless you were to run around Whitechapel in a ‘Nuke Falluja’ t-shirt I suspect that you would have as enjoyable and unmolested a time as my many American colleagues. I think your perception is quite a sad indictment of the media that you consume – equal to the BBC’s unpleasant stereotyping of everything American which those of us who regularly visit the place find extremely frustrating.
If I were American and formed a lot of my view of Britain on what I saw on BBC TV or heard on the World Service, I would have to conclude that many people in Britain were distinctly unfriendly to US values.
I refuse to accept that BBC coverage implies that British people spend large amounts of time actively attacking US symbols or citizens, however petty it can be. This sort of belief comes from right wing websites and media ludicrously extrapolating an occasional clash of ‘values’ into some sort of all out European war on American expats and tourists.
I would have to conclude from recent events that many people in France were distinctly unfriendly to Anglo Saxon values but I’m not expecting to be burnt at the stake next time I pop over.
Steve wrote:
I was responding to the claim that Fox doesn’t need to be unbiased. They do, see my point and link to British law above.
Yes,I got that. And I was wondering why this didn’t apply to the Beeb, but a later poster answered that question.
Here in the States we used to have something called ‘The Fairness Doctrine’ which meant that broadcasters had to give time to opposing povs – except those expressed in news programs. The effect of this was to silence conservative voices. Fortunately it has been repealed.
‘ Of course the BBC forces one’ – but not you, eh? but you still have a view…
Not me because I live in the states. I don’t watch much BBC America either, in fact I can’t remember the last time I tuned in. Nothing personal, I don’t watch a lot of television these days – to busy on the computer 😉
Garry, Anonymous, and others:
The advertising being some kind of evil argument is stupid, because Sky’s revenues come predominantly from subscription fees. In fact, their revenues from subscription fees are over ten times larger than their revenues from advertising. Sky would even still be profitable if they stopped all advertising tomorrow. It might even make commercial sense to do that, as it would probably attract more paying subscribers than it would cost in lost revenue. If I were James Murdoch, I’d do it just to p**s off the Beeb.
So your analogy with the license fee about Sky being inadvertently funded every time we walk past a billboard showing cool, refreshing Dasani, is at best misguided. Sky is all about the subscribers.
Cockney
Absence of violence does not mean that the French do not dislike a lot of AngloSaxon values. And absence of violence against Americans or US property here in Britain does not mean that the BBC is not endlessly pushing an agenda that criticises America and its values. That is the picture that comes across to US viewers and listeners.
Cockney, JohninLondon, Steve Jones and anyone else
I’m sorry for saying all that and I should know better. I don’t watch much tv but when I do, it’s usually the news and I get all that stuff from all the MSM, not just the BBC. There was a time when I watched BBC America quite a bit but after realizing it’s bias, turned it off. I’ve also heard a lot of crap while chatting online. And what JohninLondon said is true. There are Americans who see this and don’t know any better because this is all they see and then they form their opinions. I admit I’ve been guilty of this sometimes. Unfortunately, for those who do not have the internet or know nothing about blogs, the MSM is the only source of news they get, unless they travel and see for themselves. But as I mentioned above, people are too busy to travel or can’t afford it. But I should have known better and again I do apologize. I hope you will all forgive me for my rant. I don’t know what got into me, really. I was in a really nasty mood and I shouldn’t post comments when I’m like that. I’m so sorry. Won’t happen again.
Denise W
I didn’t see it as a rant. What I do see is people like S Jones in denial about the malign influence of the BBC.
Denise,
No need to apologise whatsoever, I was just genuinely concerned that media reports could portray Britain or more specifically London as somewhere that would be dangerous for Americans (or anyone else) to visit. I don’t think that’s true at all and the same goes for anywhere else in Western Europe in my experience, having visited France, Germany, Italy etc etc with my American relatives.
Ok, thanks for clearing all that up. You know how the media is. There can be just one house on fire for example and the media can make it sound as though it’s a whole neighborhood and people panic. Same story with Iraq. I was wrong to believe it was the whole neighborhood. I’ll be more careful of what I absorb from now on.