As we’ve noted here before at Biased BBC, often the BBC’s institutional bias is evident in what they don’t tell us – those little details that, somehow, just get missed out. Here are two examples spotted in one browsing session:
Picture power: Tiananmen stand-off – an article and introduction about the famous picture of a brave Chinese protestor obstructing a tank at the time of the communist government’s massacre in Tiananmen Square. Strangely, the BBC managed to omit the word ‘communist’.
On this day: 07OCT85 – Palestinian terrorists hijack an Italian cruise liner, the Achile Lauro, and 420 passengers. The BBC tells us that:
“They shot dead a disabled American tourist, 69 year-old Leon Klinghoffer and had his body thrown overboard with his wheelchair”.
Klinghoffer was murdered because he was jewish!
But do the BBC even mention his religion? No. According to this Wikipedia article, Klinghoffer was still alive when he was thrown overboard after he was shot. Another Wikipedia article includes other significant details that go unnoticed at the BBC, for example: “the PLO paid an undisclosed sum to Klinghoffer’s daughters, which was used to fund the Leon and Marilyn Klinghoffer Memorial Foundation”.
The point here is not the authoritativeness or otherwise of Wikipedia – it is the omission of material facts from BBC reports, whether through journalistic sloppiness or individual or institutional bias that matters.
….it is the omission of material facts from BBC reports, whether through journalistic sloppiness or individual or institutional bias that matters.
It’s probably 1% sloppiness and 99% bias.
If the victim has been a Muslim it would still be the headline item, 20 years after.
Exactly, it’s bias. When you contact the journalists you’ll often find they know these details well, but will justify their omission under some BBC criteria. “Not relevant to the report” or something to that effect.
Why do people trust wikipedia if anyone can edit it?
Simon,
Why do people trust wikipedia if anyone can edit it?
I suppose because it works like a blog, people correcting one another until accuracy is achieved.
But then again, I would imagine that a lot depends on when you access a particular article. If you’re unlucky, you’ll access it right after some shmuck has tried to present inadequate knowledge or propaganda as fact and before anyone has corrected it.
🙂 bbc bias – not what it says but what it omits to say. This self-censorship is a subtle editorial massaging process. Any propagandist would be proud of the bbc’s output – it is almost subliminal – impercebtible bias that is impossible to prove in one item – but if you look at the whole piece the emphasis is always on one side of the argument.
A tactic they employ brilliantly is to find an inarticulate advocate of the other side of the argument and the listener is simply left to discount this opinion because it is crudely or poorly expressed.
President Bush is an inarticulate man but this does not mean his policies are bad – they may well be, but mocking the president as the BBC love to do is a dumb move.
Many democrats in America have mocked Mr Bush and then live to regret it.
If you want to get rid of Mr Bush you need to tackle his policies – not his personality.
So you think there’s no link between the infamous al-Jazeera and the disgraceful bbc? Sir David Frost will be working for the Mid-East broadcaster, and will still continue collecting his salary from the bbc for continuing his labours there. No conflict of interest because they are both so fair and balanced!
Meanwhile, fellow thinkers,
the Bush administration has repeatedly denounced al-Jazeera. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has accused the Qatar-based operation of promoting terrorism and “vicious lies” and has banned its reporters from Iraq. The State Department has complained about “false” and “inflammatory” reporting.
Who else does that sound like? Remember 2003 when Little Satan actually banned the inflammatory and false bbc?
Yes, I remenber that BBC banning.
But I don’t believe Rumseld had the authority to ban al-J. The Iraqis would have been the ones to read al-J the riot act.
Leon Klinghoffer’s murder was the subject of what I though was one of the most damning examples of BBC soft-pedalling ever:link
Fugitive hijacker ‘held in Baghdad’
Yeah, note this paragraph too, as if the BBC and society it (is supposed to)represents has no interest in the import of this matter.
The BBC’s Ian Pannell, in Washington, says the US will regard his capture as an important victory in the war on terrorism, as well as something of a vindication of the charge that the regime of Saddam Hussein was connected to terrorist groups.
I think ANY civilised human being would regard his capture an an important victory, and see the link that Saddam had to terrorism.