The BBC wants to increase the licence fee, and, guess what, the Guardian agrees:
“At a time when many of our traditional industries have lost their international reputation, the BBC has managed to maintain a blue chip brand of global excellence by combining technological innovation with editorial independence. It has proved a winning combination that is well worth backing for the future”.
Well, it’s an opinion.
Test post – please ignore.
On second thoughts, a question. I thought I had posted the miscellany below this morning (8.32am GMT). Does the fact that it has no comments mean that no one has been able to see it until just now (3.58pm GMT), or does it just mean no one had any comment to make?
Blogger is being intolerably slow for me at the moment, so here is a miscellany of Beeb-related items all in the same post. Comments to the effect that a lower proportion of my musings per link constitutes an improvement will be met with a Paddingtonian Hard Stare.
– Adloyada writes in critical vein about Andrew Marr plugging Robert Fisk plugging his book on Start the Week. On the other hand, ever just, she describes the BBC coverage of recent intra-Palestinian violence as sensational. Follow the link if you don’t believe me.
– I praise BBC correspondent Justin Pearce for going secretly to Zimbabwe in a post for Samizdata.
– The Independent runs through some media bigwigs’ views about BBC reporting of Israel/Palestine. Ex-BBC correspondent Tim Llewellyn says:
What the BBC does not do is go into the West Bank and live there and be there. If it did that, and lived life as a Palestinian Arab lives, then it would experience the daily humiliation of that existence.
However reformed Today editor Rod Liddle says:
To use a singularly inapt metaphor, they see the Middle East as David versus Goliath – except that David isn’t a good Jewish boy any more, but a stone-throwing Arab. Foreign affairs really are that simplistic for some producers and reporters.
– Here is a new Beebwatching blog coming from the other side of the hill: Blogging the Beeb. The first post says:
What does the word ‘British’ mean for the BBC today? How does the BBC reflect contemporary Britishness? What does Britishness mean after devolution, the enlargement of the European Union, the challenges of globalisation, 7/7, the current debates on multiculturalism?
This is a blog about a book – or rather, a blog in advance of a book.
I am writing from the perspective of someone who believes strongly in public service broadcasting, and the BBC being at the heart of that. I believe in an independent BBC, supported by the licence fee. However, I don’t believe that the BBC is perfect. I think the BBC itself needs to avoid defensiveness, and engage with its critics. It needs to be alert to the dangers of its own internal culture dominating the way in which it covers the external world.
On Sunday I noticed a report on BBConline which talked about the international aid effort to Pakistan which was then underway. Knowing that such affairs are almost becoming a catwalk for the compassion of the developed world, I approached with caution.
Anyway, a read of the report showed the BBC magnanimously including the US in the lede about international aid swinging into action- generally an upbeat presentation. However, I say maganimously because the US is listed as having pledged just 100,000 dollars- far less than the EU or even the UK (this issue of EU aid versus individual EU countries giving aid is very much an unresolved reporting issue for the Beeb- for instance, having effectively headlined the EU in lede and list, they throw this line in at the end, ‘France, Ireland, Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands and Greece have all allocated funds or pledged to assist with immediate needs.’Meanwhile, Ireland had pledged about a third of that, I subsequently learnt.)
Needless to say, the BBC’s assertion that the US had pledged just $100,000 seems to have been flat out wrong: this report (of the same day, timestamp ‘earlier’- but later given transatlantic timezones) says the US had given– not pledged (a v. important distinction oft abused in BBC journalism as elsewhere)- 500,000 dollars to the Pakistan Red Cross via the relevant US agency, and that this took place on Saturday, by way of a beginning.
Although the Beeb follow up the 100,000 assertion- a figure I found was actually repeated from an earlier article– by quoting Bush that ‘”Our initial deployments of assistance are under way, and we stand ready to provide additional assistance as needed,” they fail to point out what that initial deployment had actually meant- all they needed to do was quote Bush… a little more:
‘Speaking in the Oval Office with the Pakistani Embassy’s deputy chief of mission, Mohammad Sadiq, by his side, Bush said that the United States has already sent some financial aid — the U.S. Agency for International Development sent $500,000 to the Red Cross in Pakistan on Saturday.
A second relief package in the form of emergency supplies, military helicopters and emergency management personnel was on its way. Two C-130 and a C-17 U.S. military aircraft containing blankets, winterized tents and other relief supplies were in motion already.
“We’re moving choppers. Secretary Rumsfeld is surveying the assets they may be able to move in the area,” Bush said. “Pakistan’s a friend, and the United States government and the people of the United States will help as best as we possibly can.’
Geddit Beeb?- costly, present actions: the choppers probably no-one else will send, plus aircraft and crewmen. I wonder how much it costs per day to fuel, maintain and man these kinds of items in foreign terrain? Wassa matter, Beeb, Bush’s colloquialism ‘choppers’ too low brow for ya t’report? $100,000- pah!
The Beeb, it seems clear, learnt nothing from their failures over reporting the US contribution to the tsunami. Even if situations move quickly, what would have been wrong in updating the report (the most recent I can find under a ‘Pakistan Aid’ search of the BBC website)?
One last note- I see that in addition to top-billing the EU, the Beeb also co-mentioned the ‘several Islamic nations’. Concerning this latter group: A)Where’s the beef? (statistically, in the article, I mean- no doubt the Beeb would get the facts wrong but still it would be something to go on) and B)Where’s the rest of Allah’s righteous nations in showing love to the Ummah? (a question I am sure they’d rather leave to the relevant heralded Panorama)
Update: Well, I did say ”c’mon’, and lo! they came (on)- the Beeb got to the US aid delivery 24 hours (or more) after their competitor news organisation. They also updated the old story (similarly late). But the explicitness with which they refer to the US role (could actually be more explicit) almost makes me think they took a hint from someone…
‘The US has promised $50m for relief operations and Kuwait pledged $100m.Six helicopters have now arrived in Pakistan from the US airbase in neighbouring Afghanistan.
(that’ll be ‘US helicopters’- ed’s guess)
The US ambassador to Islamabad, Ryan Crocker, said planes with US relief supplies were forming a “virtual air bridge” into Pakistan.’
Yet I do notice how Kuwait gets a starring role, in grating juxtaposition with the US’ effort. And, if you’re going to talk in those terms, why not Ireland, the ultimate David-like persona to grate with? Didn’t they pledgemuch more than Kuwait? And (cherry on top time) why leave it to an ambassador of the USA to say that the US airforce is forming a ‘virtual air bridge’? Isn’t it near enough a very expensive and yet vital fact?
The US is acting, promptly and decisively (surprise!), and this is doubtless costly too. Knowing the US stance on aid, it probably isn’t even counting the gift of the choppers etc as part of any sum of money it’s pledging to give. After all, you can’t pledge what you’ve already given. One thing that’s certain is that while all the other aid may line the pockets of various bureaucratic layers, trickling on down to the bereaved and the homeless, this is one donationgoing where it’s really needed. It’s just difficult to get the BBC to admit it.
This morning’s Broadcasting House on Radio Four featured something I don’t think I’ve heard before on a news programme.
Around half an hour in there was a long item on asylum seekers, and the alleged shortcomings of the information used by the government to decide on asylum claims. We heard from the Refugee Council, a couple of other asylum pressure groups, Amnesty International and a solicitor specialising in asylum claims, who all told more or less the same story.
Apparently the government immigration and asylum service doesn’t deliberately tell untruths – but ‘they’re selective in what information they choose to put in and to leave out’. You could say the same about another State agency, too – but no matter. So far, so standard for the BBC.
What was unusual about this story ? The interviews with asylum seekers at the beginning and end of the piece. The opening interviews were overdubbed with weepy strings – the sort of music you might hear in a documentary about the Warsaw Ghetto, or the Aberfan disaster.
The final interviews – of women at the Crossroads Women’s Centre in London – were accompanied by mournful piano chords.
It looks as though the Broadcasting House producer has crossed the line between news (no matter how slanted) and propaganda. How long before interviews with senior Tories are accompanied by the Benny Hill theme ?
BBC: Lib Dems in clear over donation
The Electoral Commission has cleared the Liberal Democrats of wrong-doing over a £2.4m company donation it received before May’s general election.
The watchdog’s probe looked at whether the donation was “permissible”, as electoral law requires donating firms to be registered and trading in the UK.
5th Avenue Partners was based in London but owned by a Swiss-based firm headed by Scottish financier Michael Brown.
The Times: Lib Dems censured but keep £2.4m gift
THE Liberal Democrats have been criticised by the elections watchdog for failing to enforce a rigorous checking process on its biggest ever donation of £2.4 million earlier this year.
However, the party will be allowed to keep the donation after promising to tighten up its procedures…
It was revealed that the money had come from a Swiss bank account, that Mr Brown was not registered to vote in Britain and that when the first donation was made his company did not have an office in the UK…
The businessman, who has confessed to being arrested for bouncing cheques and made his fortune in real-estate deals in Florida in the late Nineties, said that Charles Kennedy was not ready to lead the country.
How confusing! Can anyone explain this divergence of opinion?
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.
Damian Penny has a good summary of the story that the BBC put out and is now pulling back from, that President Bush said that God told him to invade Iraq.
Here’s the BBC’s original press release. And here’s what they are saying now.
10pm news coverage of David Davis speech – BBC showed a man with his
head down, apparently sleeping during the speech.I saw that same man at two fringe meetings – he has some problem with
his neck that causes his head to slump over permanently – it never
changes, and I know that he was wide awake at those meetings. All
praise to him for staying involved and in the fight despite his
problem – and SHAME, SHAME, SHAME on the BBC by using that shot as
propaganda against Davis – they MUST have seen and known that this
man always has his head slumped down.YET AGAIN the BBC show their true colours.
I don’t know whether or not the BBC knew of this man’s condition, but there is so much media scrutiny at any event these days, especially at party conferences, that it is easy for journalists and producers to sift through acres of footage to select the briefest of images that “tell the story” they want to tell, either in ignorance of their proper context, or worse, regardless of their proper context.
To depict a private individual in this way, implying that they were asleep when they may not have been (understandable though that might be in the case of David ‘IDS with hair’ Davis), and then broadcast it nationwide, is an abuse for which the BBC ought to broadcast an apology, naming the producers and reporters involved – to encourage greater diligence and responsibility when it comes to ‘telling’ the news.
If some adult at the Beeb could provide a straight answer about stage-managed “insurgent” photos, could they also explain the Beeb’s failure to report the results of this poll? It finds that Sunnis are surprisingly supportive of the new Iraqi constitution (even before the latest improvement). However gloomy it looks to BBC reporters, the Iraqis seem ready to prove them wrong.
…But the polling by the Iraqi Center for Development and International Dialogue — a nonprofit organization funded partially by the United Nations — indicated that the referendum was headed for passage regardless of the Sunday parliamentary action. “The part that surprised me was the percentage of supporters for the referendum. I didn’t expect that,” said Mr. Hafedh, who was minister of planning under interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.
Although support for the constitution was particularly high in the northern Kurdish areas and southern regions dominated by Shi’ites, Mr. Hafedh said it topped 50 percent even in central provinces known as the heartland of Sunni unrest — a sign, he said, that the Sunni-Shi’ite split is not as wide as many fear.
“This is exaggerated by political elites who are seeking power and by Western media and analysts,” Mr. Hafedh said. “If you go down to the streets, you can’t tell who is Sunni and who is Shi’ite. We are all mixed.”
When the Beeb fails to report key aspects of a story which is of critical interest to understanding what is happening on the ground, it is reasonable to conclude malintent.
Via Instapundit and RealClearPolitics
Update: In response to B-BBC commenter “Toad”, I have it on good authority that ‘malintent’ is well on its way to being a particularly good way to describe the BBC’s reporting. After all, Bill Gates can use it to describe the malicious code of hackers
“Now in security, there are some very, very key and obvious solutions. The most important is what’s called isolation. This is making sure that people with malintent can’t arbitrarily send code to all the different systems.”
and the word is now the stuff of legal disclaimers,
“In the absence of any other agreement, despatch shall be at the expense and at the risk of the buyer. The supplier shall be free to choose the route and the mode of transport. This choice must be made with the diligence of a prudent businessman, whereby the supplier and his agents shall be liable for lack of diligence only in the event of malintent or gross negligence.”
…I am more than happy to use this word as a descriptor for the Beeb!
On a more helpful note, B-BBC commenter Frank P mentions Melanie Phillip’s Diary as another case of the BBC’s “abandonment of fair journalism”. Read it all.
