Not many posts while I was away, I see. I suspect that, with the honourable exception of Laban, the Biased BBC shock-jocks were unable to post due to a prior commitment to getting some serious hung-over layabouting done. Never mind, other bloggers took up the slack:
- Read Adloyada on one award the BBC won’t be boasting about – namely an ironic award from Honest Reporting.com.
Readers provided a full laundry list of complaints and we found the most effective way to condense the biggest offenses was in a simple list form. The examples of bias from the year past indicates a pattern of naiveté, dishonesty, forcing facts conform to a narrow worldview and, arguably, a desire to inappropriately influence events-all paid for by British television viewers through the TV License Fee, which costs the typical household £126.50 per year.
But don’t take my word for it, or Adloyada’s. Rather, follow the numerous links provided.
- The American Expatriate posts about BBC coverage of the NSA monitoring issue:
From TAE’s count, the NSA wiretap issue has been addressed or mentioned in nine different BBC online articles since the story broke on December 16. In seven of those nine articles, the BBC gives voice, often extensively, to the view that Bush’s authorization of the NSA monitoring program is at least questionable, if not plainly illegal. However, in only one article is anyone besides Bush himself or someone from his administration presented as defending the authorization as legal and within his constitutional powers. And that mention, frankly, was a tepid, passing reference.
This was it:
To balance this off, Reynolds mentions that “Acting House Republican Majority leader Roy Blunt said he was “personally comfortable” with what he knew of the programme.” This single sentence represents the entirety of the BBC’s coverage of any non-administration official defense of the president’s actions. Even this rather miniscule mention sets Reynolds apart from his BBC colleagues.
Plenty of people are indeed concerned – but to report this story without mentioning President Clinton’s very similar use of his powers and without mentioning that a large body of opinion outside the administration, not to mention a large chunk of the US public, has expressed support of the present President’s policy is to tell only half the story. No surprise which half the BBC chooses to tell.
Again, copious links are provided.
- Jim Miller (inspired, he says, by a comment here) asks why Bill Thompson, writing for the BBC, thinks it’s a “shame” that significant “second-generation internet plays” (this appears to mean innovations) come from the US. I suppose Thompson could be thinking it’s a shame that they come from one place rather than all over the world. The next sentence supports that idea. But that’s not what he said, and when we are obliged by law to pay people to write for us it is not unreasonable to ask that they be capable of expressing themselves without appearing to take gratuitous swipes at foreigners.
I wrote to Mr Thompson a few days ago asking him just why he thinks it’s “a shame”; if I get a response I’ll post it here.
Cheers.
Sky’s top article is a BBC hidden article.
http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-1207634,00.html
Only Mugs pay the TV-Tax thugs.
So this site has now posted and listed and mentioned and e:mailed etc. etc. the roll call of BBC bias. But nothing is actually being done. Set up a paypal account and people like myself will gladly contribute to the site in order for it to advertise itself in newsprint. The BBC is PC’s propaganda outlet: it is Big Brother! Bear in mind that at the end of this year (2006), the BBC’s Charter will be re-newed: unless there is a wave of protest at how the BBC has broken daily the terms of said Charter.
SPOT THE DIFFERENCE COMPETITION
ITV Teletext; Page 311 @ 10:30 on Tuesday 03/01/06
PC ‘A THREAT TO SOCIETY’
A social policy think-tank has blamed PC attitudes for the “Muslim ghettos” which produced “young men who commit mass murder against fellow citizens”
Political correctness has become a form of “soft totalitarianism” leading to “moral cowardice and intellectual dishonesty” said a report by Civitas.
PC has gained a “vice like grip over public debate” and now “causes more harm than good”, it argued.
BBC CEEFAX; Page 113 @ 10:30 on Tuesday 03/01/06
PC thinking ‘is harming society’
Britain’s institutions are infected with political correctness which is damaging society, according to a book published by a right wing think-tank.
Civitas says political correctness has allowed the creation of “Muslim ghettos” which produce suicide bombers.
PC thinking now dominates schools, councils and the media, Anthony Browne says in The Retreat of Reason.
But Inayat Bunglawala, of the Muslim Council of Britain, said even the term ghetto was inflammatory.
******************
The BBC hoist on its own petard of political correctness.
I seem to recall that Inayat Bunglawala’s father served a term of imprisonment for heroin trafficking, but can find no reference to it on the BBC site.
One day I must reveal an extremely disturbing conversation I had many years ago with a Trotskyite schoolteacher and a man from the BBC concerning the death of the Vietnamese boat people and the control and manipulation of information.
I lost track of the Trot. The BBC man was occasionally in the news, eventually becoming head of BBC news before moving on.
It also took them several days to even mention that there were international telephone calls – never mind the fact that it’s ONLY about international phone calls…
Rob Read,
“Only mugs pay the TV Tax thugs”. As I mentioned before the enforcers have NO right of entry, without a search warrant. So, they obtain consent from the occupier by the use of carefully chosen words.
The mugs aid abet and incriminate themselves in the criminal prosecution of themselves.
See Q&A’s in the house:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200203/cmselect/cmpubacc/118/2070104.htm
off topic, but relevant to the bbc nonetheless.
On Sunday morning this week [1-1-06], I heard Monita Rajpal [or whatever her name is] describe one John Demjanjuk as an “alleged” or “suspected” concentration camp guard. For background to this story, Demjanjuk came to the US after WW2 as a “displaced person.” During the war he worked as a concentration camp guard. This was documented by the prosecution and accepted by his defense in a trial in Israel about 15 years ago as to whether he was the notorious “Ivan the Terrible,” an especially murderous camp guard. That he was a guard was proven and accepted by his defense at the trial, but the court said that it had not been sufficiently proven that he was “ivan the terrible.” Hence he was sent back to the US where he had been denaturalized from his US citizenship for lying on his admission to the US and when applying for citizenship. Furthermore, Jean-Francois Steiner in his book on “Treblinka” [I think that that was the title] had stated that Demjanjuk was Ivan the Terrible, and Demjanjuk had not sued for libel over that identification. So what is the bbc trying to do now? It seems that they are trying something close to Holocaust denial, discrediting charges and convictions of Nazi and collaborationist war criminals. This also means denying that Jews have any credibility as witnesses or accusers. So bbc gets more untruthful and more dangerous day by day.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4576618.stm
This seems to be yet again highlighting the unprofessional nature of the Home Office and to a great extent shames them for inaction.
Its ironic that Denis McShane talks about stopping the sex traffic of young women and yet his Home Office minister colleagues appear to be in the dark about “Sex for Passports”.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml;jsessionid=PO5UCCXVPPKRVQFIQMFCFF4AVCBQYIV0?xml=/opinion/2006/01/03/do0302.xml&sSheet=/portal/2006/01/03/ixportal.html
I think they need to stop insulting everyone and get a very firm grip of Immigration in the UK.
I am pleased to see the BBC reporting this. Well Done.
Slightly O/T.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4576528.stm
Interesting how the BBC immediately homes in on the Islamic element of the Browne thesis; and, of course, the Muslim Council of Britain is quickest out of the blocks in condemning it. What is the MCB’s chief objection? Inayat Bunglawala is angry at the use of the word ‘ghetto’.
Mr. Bunglawal claims it’s all so unfair because “the term [ghetto] itself is very inflammatory.”
Is it? Or, by concentrating on this single word, is Mr. Bunglawala in fact acting in an ‘inflammatory’ manner by attempting to appeal to Muslims’ sense of grievance?
Possibly. But wait. Look at what he says just prior to his ‘inflammatory’ claim.
“You still have Jewish areas, you wouldn’t describe them as ghettos…”
Aha! It’s the Jews wot did it! Sort of.
So, according to the BBC, the MCB’s reaction to Mr. Browne’s thesis is to contrast the treatment of Muslims with that of Jews (i.e. indirectly blame the Jews).
Summary: a think tank claims that public debate is being stifled because the media and government do not want to cause offence or allow uncomfortable truths to be aired.
The MCB responds by working itself into a fury at the use of the word ‘ghetto’.
Oh, the irony!
Today’s “World at One” on Radio 4 provides a perfect tutorial in anti-Israeli bias by the BBC. The show is hosted by the reliably anti-Israel Brian Hanrahan. It headlines on the fact that Israel is preventing political canvassing in East Jerusalem. Those nasty Israelis! Now they are being anti-democratic, the very thing most of their supporters claim the Israelis are good at. Only later in the programme do we find out (only via an Israeli spokesman of course) that elections at this stage in East Jerusalem are prohibited by the Road Map agreement, but rather form part of the final status negotiations. So why didn’t Hanrahan (or any other BBC journalist in the last few days) mention this important fact? Clearly the main problem with the Palestinian elections is the near anarchy in Gaza coupled with the disintegration of Fatah and the ascendancy of Hamas. But these appear as minor issues to Hanrahan, principally because they can’t be directly blamed on Israel. Clearly the Palestinians in their classic “it’s all the fault of the occupation” blame shifting tactic are using the East Jerusalem thing to deflect criticism from their own inability to exert the rule of law in their own territories. Needless to say, the useful idiots of the BBC newsroom fall over themselves to help in this regard.
Oh, and did I really hear a BBC journalist describe Sheik Yassin (RIP) as a “martyr”? And did I also hear him describe Hamas as a militant organisation that perpetrated violent acts against the Israeli military? The BBC seems to have air-brushed the murder of Jewish civilians, including Jewish babies by Hamas, out of their worldview.
Shame on the BBC for their pernicious bias.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=GHETTO
There are so many scare quotes in that BBC article about the Civitas report that I wouldn’t be surprised if the ‘quote’ key on the writer’s keyboard is worn out.
Also, note the “right-wing think tank” description which appears almost immediately, a not-so-subtle attempt to smear it from the beginning.
Sarge,
You can be sure I did not pay (for 2 years now) and will not pay the TV-Tax.
Why would I let my enemy take 126 GBp to use for my harm?
Here is a link to the full press release on the Browne book sent out by Civitas:
http://www.civitas.org.uk/press/recent.php
Read the whole thing. Check out the examples of inaccurate politically correct thinking that Civitas/Browne highlights in the comparison chart.
The Beeb has been guilty of every single one of them!
Rob
It’s not only Civitas that has been declared “Right Wing” by the BBC.
I have it on good authority from them that Migrationwatch and Sir Andrew Green are also “Right Wing”.
I love the fact that Sky news have been reading out viewers e-mails concerning the PC report,and everyone of them agrees with the report.On BBC News 24 ……..nothing.I`ve been on the civitas site and downloaded the book in a pdf version,should be interseting reading.
re last paragraph and Bill Thompson’s missive.
He is not ‘appearing’ to take a ‘gratuitous swipe’ at the US; Mr Thompson is expressing himself very clearly – this is the BBC giving air to another free hit at America.
After a quick scan of Bill Thompson’s other articles, it is quite clear that the bloke has a track record.
The BBC is once again drawing from a single constituency for its opinions and opinion formers.
Shame on the BBC for their pernicious bias.
Eamonn | 03.01.06 – 1:35 pm |
eamonn, i truly hope you (or someone) will lodge a formal complaint raising these points, with the bbc governors, your mp, and anyone else appropriate…
i’m not a uk citizen, resident or taxpayer, so dont’ feel entitled, but boy…
Not so much a matter of BBC bias..more an example of remarkably poor taste-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/trevorsworldofsport/pip/q73go/
-is another fine example of the ‘comedy’ programs that infest Radio4 at frequent intervals throughout the week.
At five minutes to seven we get the amusing line “..and he told the bloke in the FCUK T-shirt that he looked a CTNU…”. Now, I must say that when I first heard the gag in a comedy club directed at a guy in the third row (who actually was wearing one) it got a good laugh. Then again, a couple of years ago you did find FCUK T-shirts in other places than the 50p rails at the charity shop, which is maybe where the BBC writer dredged this line up. However is it the sort of joke that you want to be explaining to your 9 year old as you collect them from their music lesson and were hoping to catch the 7 o’clock news headlines on the car radio? Surely, isn’t there some sort of ‘watershed’ issue on the ‘c’word even if it is just implied?
I suppose I could complain to the BBC but what’s the point? To be fobbed off with the usual explanation that the BBC encourages new writers to explore…Oh forget it. We all know the script to that one, we’ve heard it so often. The one thing I wouldn’t get is an ounce of contrition.
Or am I just being old fashioned and overly sensitive? I really would appreciate your views.
I give it five years before a BBC presenter shouts the word “c*nt” during a concert performance on Radio 3. It would, after all, be ‘edgy’ and quite possibly ‘sassy’, and it would ‘challenge’ the audience.
BBC showed their sassyness on yesterday’s programme on language, “Poppycock & Piffle”.
It did start at 9pm so I suppose one can expect anything, but amongst the consultations with the OED editors it took time out to tell us about the argot of the 1950s homosexual. And that needed to be explained by the presenter following another man into a public lavatory cubicle, along with much laviscious gurning.
Eliayu,
The BBC is a curious mix of ignorance and bias. And of course, it’s impossible to know whether it’s mainly ignorance or bias which is being expressed in any given report.
Was Rajpal ignorant of the facts of the Demjanjuk case? Or was she aware of them but still let her bias trump the facts?
Eamonn,
Hamas will still remain terrorists no matter how hard the BBC and others try to smarten them up and spray them with deterrorant.
It reminds me of how the media wordwide trumpeted Robert Mugabe as the great new black hope for Rhodesia/Zimbabwe after the ousting of PM Ian Smith. But they became strangely silent as Mugabe slowly but surely dragged the country down to basket-case status.
Er…’wordwide’ should read ‘worldwide’.
A programme on BBC2 was about Three Men In A Boat.Im over at my elderly parents who wanted to watch it as they come from the Isis area of the Thames.What did we get?-crudity and profane language.I switched it off.
England is right,these people think they`re funny because they can swear.Why cant the BBC comedy side realise that what is spontaneous and funny down the pub just doesnt catch on when broadcast.We should expect a lot better because highly paid proffessionals should put on a programme that is commensurate with their salary.They should amuse us without us being enebriated or drugged.
Im not allowed to show such amateur performance in my job.No one would pay me.Why should we pay them?
What really p****s me off is that a couple of years ago the BBC were appealing for new comedy writing talent with some sort of telephone number budget figure being banded about.
A friend who does stand-up in the States submitted some stuff and had to fly over for meetings a couple of times at her own cost. All a complete wind-up. The “Don’t call us we’ll call you scenario.” Funny how a Radio 4 show aired a while back bore a remarkable resemblence to one of her ideas. Uncanny. Must be coincidence.
Biased BBC blog readers might like to compare and contrast the BBC’s coverage of the story surrounding the US Government’s monitoring of possible American links to foreign terrorists with the corporation’s stance regarding another government-sponsored, domestic electronic-spying issue:
New generation of television detector vans hit [sic] the streets
http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2003/06_june/24/licensing_detector_vans.shtml
Some fellow readers may be confused as to why this page comes via the BBC press office rather than the news department. This is because “TV Licensing” (not an actual licensing “authority”) is a wholly owned subsidiary of the British Broadcasting Corporation (actually a licensing authority). The statement “the BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites” is quite correct, but that shouldn’t be confused with the fact that the TV Licensing website is owned by the BBC.
Don’t forget – you’re contrasting the reporting of government-sponsored electronic-spying upon citizens suspected of links to international terrorism, against an announcement of government-sponsored electronic-spying upon citizens suspected of watching television without permission.
.
I notice that TV Licensing often puts a cookie on my computer, without my visiting their website & with my PC’s privacy set to block 3rd party cookies.
I found the order of this article rather interesting.
The first paragraph is dedicated to explaining the work the Oxford Professor does for developing countries, the second paragraph actually explains what his research is. Surely his mathematical work is far more important in terms of precedence than developmental work, which though noble, is something anyone can pretty much do.
Oxford mathematician knighted
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4569656.stm
With all the details and fuss about the kidnapped, but physically unhurt Kate Burton and her family, al-beeb had nothing about Al-Mazen, the organisation Burton works for. The World Bank is, shall we say, a bit concerned. Here is what they are saying:
“The evidence presented shows that Al Mezan is abusing the Portal for political campaigning and to promote its highly biased view of the conflict. Given Al Mezan’s record of a virulent anti-Israel agenda that exploits human rights rhetoric for political ends, its involvement in the Portal is inconsistent with the World Bank’s objectives of promoting peace and cooperation.”
Al-beeb’s new slogan: The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth!
BM, have you got a link for that. I cant find it and want to use it in a (another) complaint.
Cheers.
Richy,
I can’t see anything wrong with that article on Mathematician John Ball.
Perhaps it’s been changed by the secret BBC reader?
How are the anti-BBC-tax stickers coming along? Are they available to download yet?
Rob White,
You can find the stuff here:
World Bank PNGO Project: Support for Social Services diluted by Politicized “Portal”
Date: 03/01/06 18:38:04 GMT Standard Time
From: distribution@ngo-monitor.org
Big Mouth
I’m willing to believe that Al Mezan is as meretricious as you allege. However, it seems to me that your quote is not from the World Bank but from an ngo monitoring outfit. Again, I am willing to believe that the quote bears a very close relationship to the truth but omitting to mention that the monitoring outfit is Israeli-based is doing what the BBC tends to do ie using unnamed and possibly biased sources to reinforce its world view. Just to make myself clear: it’s pretty obvious that our British heroine – and her parents – are the useful idiots they appear to be and the BBC (as expected) does all it can to enhance their usefulness. But even appearing to play the BBC game of selective quotes from possibly biased sources is an unwise contribution to this particular blog.
Umbongo,
You may indeed question the quotes; and you may not care for either Israel or the World Bank. But you cannot deny that kidnapping is evil and that the Burtons are foolish for not opening their eyes and minds. Having said that, it is important to note that the bbc misinforms us all, and that is the essential point of this blog.
Big Mouth
We’re on the same side here. All I’m saying is that we should not even appear to act like the BBC by using quotes from what might be a suspect or non-impartial source to further a world view which we favour. I read your initial comment as a quote from the World Bank itself and was disappointed (but hardly surprised, since the World Bank and the BBC have the same intellectual instincts) that this was not so.
Umbongo,
I take on board your comments. But consider this one, even if you consider the “source” biased. You won’t ever hear anything like it on al-beeb:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1136102653775&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter
As Islamic Jihad, the Popular Resistance Committees and Fatah’s Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades announced an end to their self-declared truce of January 2005, under which they pledged to refrain from attacking Israeli targets, an annual summary of terror activities for 2005 released by the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) on Sunday revealed that a total of 2,990 attacks were launched against Israeli targets. The attacks occurred after the truce was announced the report stated.
It seems that allthough the bbc are well known for their dishonesty they are not short of sheeple who seem to
know an awfull lot about them and watch/read their drivel regulary.
The bbc can not be judged on what they put out only by the truths they omit.