that the moral relativism and non-judgementalism of BBC foreign affairs reporting is spreading to Home News. Here’s a news report which seems to miss half the story.
“Police said two men had entered the pub on the Langworthy estate, which was packed with fans watching a Manchester United game, and opened fire. The bodies of the two victims, who are both believed to be 27 and from Salford, were found on grassland across the road from the pub.”
A glance at this story gives the impression that the poor ‘victims’ had been shot by the bad men who entered the pub. Let’s find out what really happened, shall we ?
“The attackers, wearing balaclavas, walked into the Brass Handles pub in Pendleton, Salford, and opened fire.”
“The gunmen were then chased out of the pub, and while they were running across the little croft one of the men was shot in the back. His mate turned and was shot in the face.”
“Witnesses said a man got out of the Mondeo, took the guns and balaclavas off the bodies and sped off.”
OT
Justification for the licence fee rise to £180 is – to pay for for “super inflation” – (extra wages for on screen talent) AAA!
Read The Times – black gangs come to gun down white gangs in Salford – shoot out in pub.
No need to wear different coloured cowboy hats
Times article on the shootout:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2084418,00.html
After the gun smoke cleared it appeared that the predominantly black gangs from south Manchester had once again tried to move in on the “white boys” from Salford.
Two would-be hitmen from a Moss Side-based gang, said to be of Asian or mixed-race appearance, went looking for revenge on a hoodlum they blamed for a city centre stabbing of one of their own. After opening fire on two men inside the Brass Handles public house on the corner of Edgehill Close and Fitzwarren Street they were chased by other customers and shot dead before they could reach their getaway car.
It’s amazing…By the tone of the Beeb article, you would have thought that it was some kind of accident where people were spontaneously shot…Like a natural disaster or something.
james g. -> and the two who were shot in the pub, but wounded, were just “hurt”
“Two other men, both 27, were hurt at the Brass Handles pub”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/4800506.stm
this report also doesnt tell us that the two who were shot dead were actually the gunmen who attacked the pub – who were then shot dead themselves by people in the pub.
this is sloppy amateurish reporting – a student newspaper written by 12 year olds would do a better job.
and this is a supposedly £2 billion “news” organisation?
if the bbc cant get it right on a gangland shooting in manchester, how the hell is anyone going to trust them when they report from israel or iraq?
“Police said two men had entered the pub on the Langworthy estate, which was packed with fans watching a Manchester United game, and opened fire. The bodies of the two victims, who are both believed to be 27 and from Salford, were found on grassland across the road from the pub.”
Illogical and nonsensical. D minus.
Perhaps a good title for the story could be The English Fight Back? (successfully). You can imagine the chant for the pub afterwards “Two nil, two nil, two nil!”
OT John Simpson on the Iran situation apparently iran isnt a threat to Israel (despite developing Nuclear weapons).
To be fair, it’s much more balanced than I would have otherwise expected from Mr Simpson. But then it is an idiots guide:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4800986.stm
“Does President Ahmadinejad really want to wipe Israel off the map?
Certainly – if he could. But he and his government know it is impossible.
Despite its posturing, Iran is not a great military power. It has few of the logistical and strategic systems needed to threaten a distant country, and Israel is well-equipped to defend itself.
As for Mr Ahmadinejad’s veiled threats to take revenge on the West for the pressure on his government, they are just rhetoric too. “
OT. I am grateful for all the writers on Biased BBC for their relentless efforts to expose BBC bias. I always read it with interest and admiration. Admiration for continued efforts in what seems as, mostly, futile efforts. Regardless of the subject, I can hardly find balanced BBC articles. When reading on numerous subjects, such as the Middle East or the US, the script is written before the event, you only need to spot the bias and distortion in the aftermath. Fortunately, more and more people are becoming aware of the irredeemable, inherent malady.
See for example, the Washington Post, Washington Times recent articles on the subject
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/10/AR2006031001721.html
http://www.washingtontimes.com/books/20060311-102357-4309r.htm
From http://ussneverdock.blogspot.com/
OT (kind of) This isn’t just about national news. On a local level, the massive resources of the Beeb (paid for through a regressive tax which hits poorer, ie more rural) don’t translate into anything like the kind of coverage they’re capable of providing. This is something that nobody is looking at. Forget about being able to report who shot who or where, there are entire areas of the UK where you get little or no news coverage of your home town. Midlands Today is a pretty good example of this kind of pisspoor coverage.
The beeb is only interested in reporting on its small selection of favourite issues. Climate change, health scares, Iraq, the USA, whatever they read in G2 that morning….
*I just got the joke about the pink floyd story!!!* Pink Floyd….The Wall??? Geddit? Teacher, leave those kids alone…Oh how they must have laughed.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4792438.stm
This kind of BBC detergent action masquerading as reporting is just around the corner:
Bullets in pub altercation injure 2, kill 2
newsflash:
EU Compound in Gaza stormed by terrorists:
http://www.rte.ie/news/2006/0314/mideast.html
there are reports that 8 westerners have been kidnapped.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4802388.stm
It’s all the fault of the Dutch, clearly. If they were only more tolerant of muslims in the Netherlands, then all would be well (Inshallah).
henry, UK -> absolutely spot on.
as i said last week, in another thread, i nearly fell off my chair when i saw Scots Gaelic being spoken on the BBC six o’clock news. report on an isle of skye school.
indeed , from the BBC coverage, you wouldnt even know that say, the Isle of Man exists say. Or Cornwall.
Or any number of areas in the UK.
i’m Irish – and my own beef with the Beeb is that southern Ireland is barely recognised or even covered. its almost as if we dont exist.
i’m sure folks that have homes in say Normandy , Belgium and such like also feel the same way. it’s like as if our little corner of NW Europe doesnt feature on the Beeboid radar screen.
“If they were only more tolerant of muslims in the Netherlands”
i wait with baited breath for the documentary on “angry young christians” of Saudi Arabia.
oh wait.
sorry – not possible – they’ve all ended up in chop chop square.
As archduke mentions, I wonder what on earth is going on in Jericho?
For the BBC it’s as simple as this:-
“The threat came as Israeli troops stormed a prison compound in Jericho, killing at least one Palestinian.”
My betting is that it’s a tad more complicated than this – perhaps the UK and US monitors were being threatened by Palestinian terrorists? Or maybe the prisoners were going to be allowed to escape by the PA?
update manchester shooting :
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/4804156.stm
the bbc ARE STILL not reporting that the 2 killed were actually the gunmen – nor are they reporting that the crowd in the pub shot back at them – and shot the 2 gangsters dead.
incredible.
Eamonn – compare and contrast: (and screen grab while you can!!)
http://www.rte.ie/news/
“British office in Gaza stormed”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/
“Israelis storm Palestinian prison”
The BBC begins to clarify the picture:-
The torching of the British Offices in Gaza was IN RESPONSE to Israeli actions in Jericho.
Presumably the Israeli storming of the Jericho jail is IN RESPONSE to ….to….nothing, but is rather because the Israelis are really rather a bad lot.
look at the front page and see whats highlighted:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/
funny how you have to go to an IRISH broadcaster to get the headline report of an attack on BRITISH property
http://www.rte.ie/news/
isnt the first “b” in bbc supposed to be “british”?
OT — I thought this was interesting
A review of “Team America : World Police” on the BBC News Website by Tom Brook.
one extract..
“But the humour begins to wear thin, especially with the violent and gruesome elimination of puppets representing Hollywood liberals who are opposed to their right-wing Team America compatriots….”
and another
“The best thing in the picture are the songs – stirring tunes with lyrics that mock the military bravado of the US”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/film/3743378.stm
Archduke: “i’m Irish – and my own beef with the Beeb is that southern Ireland is barely recognised or even covered. its almost as if we dont exist.”
Given the unique way the BBC is funded, why would you expect to get any coverage at all?
******** STOP PRESS ********
*********NEW WORLD RECORD*************
Alan Johnston has just broken the record for the the number of times anyone has said “its America and Britain’s fault” at least ten times in one minute! Can anyone else eclipse this before the day is through, the bar has been raised…..
“Given the unique way the BBC is funded, why would you expect to get any coverage at all?”
well, the small matter of about 3 to 4 million Irish living and working in England for starters. i’m not after THAT much – just a gentle nod, like the All-Ireland hurling final results.
its the lack of these gentle nods that reveal the beeboid self-contained mindset – anything outside their “agenda” isnt worthy.
archduke,
Muslims have a much higher “left wing victim” status, therefore their “more equal” converage multiplyer is far higher.
coverage
“Muslims have a much higher “left wing victim” status, therefore their “more equal” coverage multiplyer is far higher.”
ah yes indeed. there must be BBC victimhood equation.
I suppose that also explains why American baseball and Aussie Rules football dont exist – but Hajj Hajj Hajj is of far bigger importance.
bbc news 24 – british council building in ramallah is now being attacked.
news 24 keeps referring to Sadat as a “militant” – he was involved in the assasination of the Israeli tourism minister.
they had the Al-Quds moonbat on a while ago blaming everything on the Israelis – trying to arrest a terrorist is apparently a “provocation”.
bbc news 24 question to correspondent in jericho, after he mentioned that Hamas were organising their “supporters”
that’s a code-word for terrorists armed with AK47s
“are more people going to turn up to protest and get involved in the fighting?”
i can see the headline already:
“Israelis kill 10 protestors”
i’ve switched off news 24. it was just too much to handle.
Al Quds moonbat was allowed, unchallenged, and uncontradicted, to say that the Israelis are bombing the Palestinians “every day”
what i dont get is why the british office in gaza was attacked?
almost a smokescreen really? very strange…
and what is the British Govt really up to these days? i mean REALLY up to?
The secret web of deception and fraud is beginning to expose certain people…
i suspect it is just a matter of time before, more senior individuals are caught out…
watch the brow of certain people to see if they are sweating any more than usual when on TV….?
it might turn out to be more entertaining viewing…
So who on here is ‘Voice of Stratford’?
Don’t forget to get voting on the latest HYS.
http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?sortBy=2&threadID=1302&edition=2&ttl=20060314140753&#paginator
One key thing which needs to be addressed is the extreme left wing politically correct bias of the BBC. For example if a British company makes profits the BBC report it as tantamount to theft. The inability of the BBC to call a terrorist a terrorist is simply childish. On balance the BBC should have its news function taken away and given to a truly independent organisation legally required to provide balanced coverage and not to present opinion as fact.
[VoiceofStratford], London
The BBC news is now so unreliable and biased to be virtually unwatchable. It is very clearly agenda driven, this is well documented by a number of ex BBC people, various in depth studies, and from the large number of weblogs dedicated to pointing out the bias and factually errors contained with in the BBC news. Slowly but surely this once great organisation is rightly losing it’s reputation for honesty.
Steve Thursby
________________
Steve Thursby’s comment did mention biased-bbc.blogspot.com. It looks like the ‘moderators’ saw fit to edit his post to remove the link.
I’m going to post it straight back on there 😉
Should the BBC be more accountable?
http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?sortBy=2&threadID=1302&start=0&tstart=0&edition=1&ttl=20060314140512&#paginator
“What is the future of the BBC? What could the corporation improve? Is the BBC good value for money?”
Current No1 ‘recommended’
Added: Tuesday, 14 March, 2006, 10:09 GMT 10:09 UK
I for one am delighted that we have the BBC in this country. Our media would be a much poorer place if we had to rely on the Murdoch empire to deliver us news and entertainment.
Get voting people!
http://www.navynews.co.uk/articles/2006/0603/0006031301.asp
good old mother russia …always learning how we do things….
i wonder how politically motivated this was…considering that Russia views NATO as a threat, and yet joins the RN on NATO Patrol?
very strange..
i’ve switched off news 24. it was just too much to handle.
Al Quds moonbat was allowed, unchallenged, and uncontradicted, to say that the Israelis are bombing the Palestinians “every day”
It was shocking. The presenter then turned to the other guest & said ‘Over to YOU for the last word’ Sounding as if he had dogs shit on his shoe as he uttered YOU.
OT – as noted by previous posters.
Sky give you the news from the British perspective – British interests are being attacked:
Sky News
“British Centre Attacked”
http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-1215231,00.html
BBC give you the news from the radical left, self-loathing jew/US hating, Pali multi-culti perspective:
BBC News:
“Israelis storm Palestinian prison”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4804424.stm
SHAKE UP AT THE GUARDIAN
I don’t know if anyone posted this or not, but if not, YOU HAVE TO READ THIS.
http://adloyada.typepad.com/adloyada/2006/03/palace_revoluti.html
Great news indeed!
Cheers, marc
Ritter,
If it wasn’t for the likes of B-bBC the headline would be Zionist occupiers loot Holy Palestinian security camp.
Mark
I don’t believe it! A Purim joke?
Marc,
It’s a prank.
I hope not.
I’ve emailed Melanie Phillips for her comments.
yeah – looks like a Purim prank to me alright.
The FT led today with :
BBC told licence fee target is unrealistic
By Ben Hall andAndrew Edgecliffe-Johnson
The BBC has been told by the government that its plans for an up to 40 per cent increase in the licence fee over the next 10 years are “unrealistic”.
Negotiations between the broadcaster and the government will begin in earnest after today’s publication of a white paper with proposals to overhaul the BBC’s governance and subject its operations to an independent “market impact assessment”.
Ministers will announce the new licence fee in June or July. But the opening discussions have not gone well for the BBC.
The government has already concluded that the corporation will have to settle for an increase in the annual licence fee significantly below the BBC’s proposal of rate of inflation plus 2.3 per cent, a figure described by Whitehall insiders as an “opening bid”.
BBC executives who presented their case to the Treasury, were “sent away with a flea in their ear”, according to one senior Whitehall figure.
The BBC has argued it will need another £5.5bn between 2007 and 2014 to meet the demands the government will put on it in the white paper, including leading the switchover from analogue to digital signals and raising programme quality. It estimates it can achieve £3.9bn of savings and extra revenue during the period, leaving a funding gap of £1.6bn.
But one government insider said the BBC’s target of a 2.3 per cent real-terms increase had been greeted with “widespread scepticism”. “There is also the question of the public acceptability of licence fee increases on that scale,” he added. “They’ve been told, ‘you’re not getting that’.”
The BBC said it had not yet started substantive negotiations with the government,
Mark Thompson, the BBC’s director-general, said in October that the corporation had tried to “cost the mission” laid out for it in the green paper last March. “If, politically, the government decides this is a price it doesn’t want to pay, then you’d have to look at whether that’s the right mission or not,” he said.
Commercial media groups have become increasingly alarmed at what they see as the incursions of a well-funded public broadcaster into their markets.
Ministers will seek to assuage these concerns by publishing an independent audit of the BBC’s licence fee bid later in the spring and by inviting commercial operators to a seminar to discuss it.
The Department of Culture, Media and Sport appointed Pannell Kerr Forster, the accountants, in October to review the BBC’s bid and help assess the necessary level of the licence fee.
The department also used PKF in 2000, when its conclusion that efficiency targets should be increased by £20m a year for seven years resulted in the corporation’s request for extra money being scaled down.
In the most recent licence period the BBC secured a 1.5 per cent increase above inflation. In exchange, it agreed to £3.9bn of “self-help” measures, including £2.3bn of cost cuts as well as asset disposals and savings from lower licence fee evasion.
http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?sortBy=2&threadID=1302&start=60&tstart=0&edition=2&ttl=20060314143608&#paginator
Get stuck in people! I’ve managed to get a plug of sorts for biased-bbc published (pity I didn’t spot my typo, when I was editing for size).
_____________
Added: Tuesday, 14 March, 2006, 14:35 GMT 14:35 UK
All those people claiming that the BBC isn’t biased, answer these questions. Is the BBC pro/anti-Bush, pro/anti USA, pro/anti Israel, pro/anti multiculturalism, pro/anti globalisation, pro/anti abortion, pro/anti Iraq war, pro/anti EU, pro/anti ‘Make Poverty History’
Various websites record BBC of bias. Look up biased bbc on your favourite search engine. Open your eyes.
[chatmandu_uk], London, United Kingdom
Recommended by 7 people
marc
I hope its not a prank, either way with Monbiot & Toynbee masturbating all over the Comment section The Guardian is doomed as the “soft left” are the real chickenshit in this Country, frightened by the Right and far too much like Schwatzeneggers “Girlie Men” to Hard Left.
Ralph Peters says that the media such as the BBC are full of stories by Iraqi stringers who know what they can sell and what the distant editors will buy. He claims a massive failure on the bpart of our media to actually get out there and report.
His version is UTTERLY at odds with the BBC portrayal of Iraq. Once again, one intelligent guy can do a better job than the BBC’s £1-billion-plus news machine, Why – because of BIAS at the BBC.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/03/myths_of_iraq.html
The use of Arab stringers and Al-Jazeera feed was familiar to me from other sources – it would be interesting to know just how many deals between BBC and Al-Jazeera exist.
The BBC reporters are in the Green Zone – after all the compensation paid to Frank Gardiner must have been considerable after Saudi.
The Media, esp TV needs “exclusive” to convey immediacy and urgency…………the real question is whether people like Zarqawi will be killed by security forces before succumbing to Avian Flu, SARS, or HIV or Mad Mullah Disease first.
the “stringer” thing isnt new – it happens in the Palestinian areas as well. google for “pallywood”
on the other hand, here’s what one blogger , dependent on paypal donations can do:
http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/001072.html
i’ve always wondered – just what the hell do the thousands of people that work for the BBC news arm actually do all day?
BBC given entertainment priority
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4804044.stm
Aww FFS! She must be F&%ing joking!!
Reward for Mills/Jowell-Gate soft touch from the BBC?
‘His version is UTTERLY at odds with the BBC portrayal of Iraq. Once again, one intelligent guy can do a better job than the BBC’s £1-billion-plus news machine, Why – because of BIAS at the BBC.’
Presumably you’ve been over there recently to corroborate his version at the expense of the MSM’s? Or are you just assuming because it sounds better? I only ask because my Iraqi workmate returned to Baghdad to see family recently and could barely speak for a fortnight afterwards it was so bad.