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.”
from the blog link above:
“We want Kurdistan to be the 51st American state.”
now, i can only take this blogger at his word – but if that is true, and indeed the Kurds are incredibly pro-USA to that extent, it is curious that has never made its way into BBC news coverage of the situation in Iraq.
i’d like to hear more about Kurdistan, but sadly, Al BBC wont provide that for me.
so , i’m dependent on a amateur blogger and his travel notes.
I too have Iraqi friends and they say the BBC is far too negative. And they despise the BBC for appearing to want things to fail in Iraq.
“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.”
RB -> thats why i like Salam Pax’s reports – but they are the rare exception on Iraq reporting. i actually do want the nitty gritty detail of day to day life.
Its called journalism
instead , we get “Today” style lecturing and agenda setting.
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.
Eventually the Beeb is going to become so politically correct it will descend to the level of that brilliant parody that Natalie wrote a few months ago — I think it was about the Aussie beach riots: “Some people went to Salford and did some stuff to some other people.” End of article.
Well RB, here’s someone else who just got back and exposes the myths being peddled by MSM.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/03/myths_of_iraq.html
Which pretty much jives with what others who have just been there say as well.
On top of all that, MSM’s much hoped for civil war refuses to materialize and Zarqawi is being hunted by everybody on the planet, including Sadr.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1107AP_Iraq_Militant_Cleric.html
In fact, things are going so well CBS, yes that CBS, just aired a positive story about Iraq.
More here. Follow the links and enjoy.
http://ussneverdock.blogspot.com/2006/03/iraq-sunnis-turn-on-zarqawi.html
Marc, that seems to be the same link.
I appreciate that there are conflicting reports and am not necessarily suggesting that the BBC’s aren’t politically motivated – merely submitting my mate’s experience.
I’d probably suggest that your average Western bloke wandering around with the explicit or implicit protection of aggressive men with f***ing big guns wouldn’t get a representative experience either way – be it danger from the hardcore nutters or excessive benevolence from the sensible citizens who after Saddam and the occupation have presumably learned to be nice to blokes with f***ing big guns and their pals.
I don’t doubt that we’ll get there in the end. There’s just a danger that glossing over some of the f*** ups that have contributed to the situation in the name of being supportive/patriotic/freedom loving etc etc risks repeating them if there’s ever a need for a next time.
BBC story on “Angry Muslims” in Holland: complete one-sided pap, no mention whatsoever giving the “root causes” of why Dutch people might have lost their “tolerance” of Muslim immigrants:
Beatings of gays on the street; massive increases in violent crime rates,mostly of Muslim origin; sexual harassment of non-Muslim women; murder of artists in the street in broad daylight; threatened murders of two duly elected Dutch MPs; ethnic cleansing of non-Muslims out of “Muslim” areas; massive Muslim celebrating observed in several Dutch towns after 9-11.
No mention either of the other groups of immigrants who seem to encounter few problems “fitting in” in Holland: Indonesian Christians, Surinamese, Eastern Europeans to give a couple of examples.
Again, amateur Dutch blogs and even “Expatica.com” provide better reporting on this subject than the 3 billion dollar extortionist-funded “world’s greatest broadcaster.”
Ritter
That entertainment link you posted, I was particularly interested in the box about half way down the page where there were five key attributes that they wanted each program to have at least one of.
Would be an interesting game on the News to determine which one it was covered by. My best guess for most of it is “Innovative” – or at least, made up.
“BBC story on “Angry Muslims” in Holland: complete one-sided pap,”
but the Dutch are one the most tolerant and civil people on the face of the planet – how could anyone be “angry” against them is beyond me.
oh wait – thats it.
the Muslims are intolerant of tolerance and are therefore “angry”.
in other words, a bunch of bigoted , gay-hating, sexist, sectarian Islamofascist totalitarians are “angry” , so the bbc goes “ah diddums, poor things”.
I didn’t watch the programme on Kenneth Williams (Fantabulosa) (egh?) a new spanglish word, how clever, how yucky). I must have seen the advert beforehand about six times. This advert for the programme was tedious, odious, and repetitive. It didn’t tickle my fancy ( getting in the genre) and judging from the subsequent reviews failed to convey the pathos of an entertainers sad and lonely life. (which we could have guessed at).
This so called advert was equivalent to what Hollywood used to produce for a ‘B’ movie and was about as boring as a film trailer in the interval when you go out to get your ice cream.
Hollywood is run for profit by private enterprise and bears the cost of any failure of its own trashy films itself.
The BBC uses my money, your money, money I pay the BBC in after taxed income, money I have worked for, money that should be in my pocket, money I can better spend for myself, and for my family.
£180 in before taxed income is either £219.60 or £252 depending on your tax rate.
BBC White Paper “To take Britain to the World”
What does this mean?
Imagine if all the lefties in this country had to pay £180 a year to Hollywood. Imagine all the intellectual objections they would raise, it would be enough to fill the British library, on the other hand us plebs are expected to put up and shut up over the BBC licence fee.
Do as you are told, give us the money. We are talked down to, humiliated, and patronised. ” You don’t know what good value this is” Sounds like nurse trying to give me unpleasant medicine?
Just watched a Channel 5 news report on the governments failed Asylum removal policy; they reported that among the possible 283.500 thousand that need to be removed, there are 400 convicted criminals who’s current whereabouts are not known to the government. I turned over to BBC Parallel Universe news, where they had no mention of the criminals whatsoever, just the usual sob-stories about young mothers with children, who will be “persecuted in their own countries” etc.
Well done people, top two comments at the ‘Should the BBC be more accountable’ HYS are now:
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
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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
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But keep up the good work, there is a pro BBC comment in third place.
http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?sortBy=2&threadID=1302&edition=1&ttl=20060314183330&#paginator
OT: Remember the huge outcry on the Beeb America pages – Bush aide Claude Allen charged with fraud etc? It turns out the guy has an identical twin brother called Floyd and suddenly the BBC drops everything off their site – perhaps becuase it might be a total turnaround in this story which they pushed to the top of the page? This has to be the first ever anti Bush article that lasted less than a day! And just because he was one of the Bush ‘Uncle Toms’ as NAACP calls them, ie a black Republican, the Beeb dived straight in with details of the charges and wondering aloud how this reflected on Bush even though the guy had not even been tried. Innocent before guilty? Not if you are on the BBC’s list of groups they hate…
Archduke “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.”
Ireland is too hideously white for the bbc!
“Ireland is too hideously white for the bbc!”
a-ha!
penny drops.
that also explains the lack of Aussie Rules football so.
http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?sortBy=2&edition=1&ttl=20060314183330&messageID=550474򆙊
i found this pro-bbc statement to be highly amusing
“Considering the drivel you find on most American channels the BBC is excellent.”
So HBO is figment of my imagination , eh?
“Commerical channels need a large demographic and therefore need to dumb down their content to appeal to the masses,”
Eastenders?
“the masses that watch adverts and bring in funds. The BBC can rise above this and provide quality programming without fear of losing viewers.”
Lets have a look at BBC 1 this evening so.
7.30 Eastenders – soap
8.00 Holby city – soap
9.00 Dalziel and Pascoe – police soap
10.00 Ten o’clock News – left wing agenda driven “news”
10.35 Drunk and Dangerous
Jamie Theakston on 24 hour drinking.
Just been watching Watchdog on BBC1, and they were telling us of some dodgy selling practice whereby someone has to opt out of paying for a service or else they will be billed, maybe without really wanting the product. The presenter questioned this sharp practice saying ‘surely if a product is good enough it will sell itself, people will be glad to opt in’.
How I’d like to be able to opt in or out of paying for the BBC depending solely on whether I think the BBC product is worth buying. At the moment I ‘opt’ in to buying the BBC so I can watch Sky football without getting a criminal record. Some ‘option’!
The BBC should practice what its Watchdog presenter preaches.
Does anyone else think that the two pub-goers in Salford who shot those black gang members will be charged with racially aggravated murder?
“racially aggravated murder” – which carries a heavier sentence than normal murder.
am i being dim, but i cant find the Manchester double-shooting story on the England news page:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/default.stm
Pete,
I also have just watched dog watch on BBC 1. After yesterdays fulsome attack on Sir Ian Blair for secretly taping his conversation with the Attorney General (wholly unacceptable)I watched the BBC secretly taping and filming Harveys. Not only that but they broadcast the secretly taped conversation to the nation. Hope they had permission.
Oh! and I watched the Ofcom report on unfairness shown by dog watch as well, it sounded as if the announcer was calling from Moscow, as Ofcom found dog watch guilty.
Thinks – does the Attorney general never secretly tape his conversations – ever?
Fairness and Privacy Cases
Upheld/Upheld in Part
Complaint by Mr Erich Reich of Classic Tours
Watchdog, BBC1, 7 December 2004
Summary : Ofcom has upheld this complaint of unfair treatment. Mr Erich Reich complained that both he and his company, Classic Tours, were treated unfairly in this edition of BBC 1’s consumer affairs programme Watchdog.
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/tv/obb/prog_cb/pcb40/#content
bbc – finally – changes the story
“Victims may have started shooting”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/4804156.stm
How to Complain
We’re here to help
If you’re a consumer, viewer or listener and you want to complain to Ofcom, this section of our website will give you a step-by-step guide to help you tell us about your concerns.
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/complain/
The manchester shooting story has only just been updated…how many hours is it since EVERY other media outlet had this story WITH the main facts right?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/4804156.stm
looks like google maps have upgraded the resolution of Manchester.
here’s the pub where the shootings happened:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=manchester+england&ll=53.485838,-2.289764&spn=0.000608,0.002559&t=k
pete “The presenter questioned this sharp practice saying ‘surely if a product is good enough it will sell itself, people will be glad to opt in’.”
The irony of the BBC advocating this presumably went right over the presenter’s head.
—————-
HYS on BBC
“just jess” of Cardiff is having a hard time responding to all the commenters with BBC type financial acumen – i.e. licence fee good value for them (ignore those that don’t watch BBC), licence fee better value than sky (sky is optional & therefore smaller subscription base), I watch from Holland (STFU then), I subscribe in the US/Mexico & the BBC is great (go to prison if you don’t subscribe?), hate adverts (voluntary subscription could have advert free service – if you are prepared to pay full whack for your own entertainment).
But the same licence loving chumps keep on making the same half-assed points.
OT: the manchester-sheffield-leeds area has been upgraded to hi-res
cambridge/peterborough
reading/thames valley/london
cardiff-south wales
if you zoom out to England, you’ll see these areas as a kind of yellow/lighter green. previous hi-res indicators were brown colour – but they didnt have the resolution of this new suite of imaging.
“But the same licence loving chumps keep on making the same half-assed points”
the dual licensing + advertising model in ireland seems to work – as far as agenda-driven news output goes.
it doesnt exist.
they just report the news
phone-in shows or topical debate shows arent hysterical. RTE doesnt bang on and on about single issues – it doesnt campaign. it just reports, as best it can.
secondly, the licensing aspect allows it to report on areas the commerical sector wouldnt report on – seriously local issues, like farmers in Donegal, or fishermen in Galway. Interesting stuff – local stuff. About the country itself. A previous poster alluded to the serious lack of reporting about ENGLAND on the BBC. He has a point.
while at the same time , the advertising revenue, ensures that its got its head screwed on with regards to the real world. A bubble doesnt develop where egomaniacs free of commerical pressure are allowed to run rampant and continue their university adolesence well into their fifties.
Yeah – i’m talking about you John Humphreys and Jim Naughtie.
The BBC frequently copies out AP and Reuters wires without amendments; and it often copies them out with rather ham-fisted changes in order to suit its ‘impartial’ agenda.
Consequently, a killing in Indonesia (see B-BBC threads passim) or a riot in Nigeria (featured here and on various blogs) is altered to the point of meaningless because the BBC excises all references to perpetrator, victim and motive lest it appears to be speculating.
This Manchester pub-shooting appears to be more of the same, except it is not clear who has provided the story.
We missed this one:
http://bustingbbcbias.blogspot.com/2006/03/bbc-considers-mao-hero.html
Busting BBC Bias reports that the Beeb referred to totalitarian mass murderer Chairman Mao as a “hero”. Oh for effin’ sake!
OT. Yesterday, I listened dumbfounded as the presenter on BBC World asked their Kabul reporter if “the Afghans must be hankering after the good old times.”
This came after the reporter had explained that efforts to contain the Taliban by the US and allies, and the apparently many misdeeds by the Afghan Govt were upsetting some of the locals.
He was serious. The folks at the BBC are nuts.
The HYS topic is now fully moderated. Who saw that coming?
For those who want the full story on the Gaza attacks, here’s the take of Blognor Regis.
“Sadly the Benjamin Zephaniah / Nantwich Morris Men double bill tour of the Gaza Strip was not a hit with the local audience.”
http://blognorregis.blogspot.com/2006/03/cultural-critics-respond.html
“This Manchester pub-shooting appears to be more of the same, except it is not clear who has provided the story.”
it looked to me as if it was a cut and paste job, but gone through the BBC grinder, the end result of which was
“crime in manchester. stuff happened. end of report.”
in a way, it really does remind me of 1984 and the way MiniTruth filtered news to such an extent that it was meaningless.
this aspect is what really gets on my goat – i honestly wouldnt mind paying the license fee if i got a first class news reporting agency – seriously HIGH quality reporting.
instead i get amateurish crap – and i have to resort to blogs or local newspaper websites to figure out what’s really happening. its just NOT good enough.
*however* there are big exceptions – Paul Reynolds being one big huge one.
you can read a lot of his articles via this google search:
http://www.google.ie/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=paul+reynolds+site%3Anews.bbc.co.uk&btnG=Google+Search&meta=
i like his style – he just reports. he ties the threads together, and reports on a subject – he doesnt set HIS agenda.
that’s left up to us , the reader. and rightly so.
Abu Hamza in ‘jail food protest’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4806820.stm
hamza doesn’t eat his lunch? are they f%6king kidding?
is that a story? what next, “hamza farts during exercise”?, “hamza doesn’t read a paper today”?
this is quality BBC journalism in action. Actually, i’m surprised they missed the ‘Torture’ angle on this one –
hamza just has to say the word “can’t get my sky+ to work – this is TORTURE!” and the Beeb will be all over it.
FFS!
Oh my God, listening to the World Tonight on Radio 4, they’re making this prison thing sound like Stalingrad. Still, at least they got their pictures of Israeli tanks and burning buildings.
BBC plans attacked for ‘TV tax’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4806948.stm
Best headline the beeboids have come up with for a while. Down with the ‘tv tax’!
BBC ten O’Clock news reporting on seizure of wanted Palestinian terrorist by Israeli forces…….
“For years Palestinians who have been seen as pro-western are adopting…….”
Wait a minute, “Pro Western Palestinians?” What planet are these beeboids on? If they believe that is true they appear to be seriously deranged. The sub text being propagated by the BBC propaganda machine is more likely to be the big lie.
Previously “Pro-Western” Palestinians are turning to militant Jihad because of Israeli provocations. Now we see the BBC explanation for Palestine adoption of Hammas. It was forced on them by the Israelis.
The closing clip of Palestine female protesters included the woman spokesperson who usually graces our TV screens speaking in a low soft voice. In the clip she is shouting and chanting at the head of the demo.
The HYS topic is now fully moderated. Who saw that coming?
Can “technical difficulties” be far behind?
Found on page 2 of the most recommended comments on what we think of the BBC.
http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?sortBy=2&threadID=1302&start=0&tstart=0&edition=1&ttl=20060314221135&#paginator
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
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Ha!
Ritter,
Unfortunately for us plebs, successive governments are taken in by the service the BBC allegedly provides to the sacred cows of the security and military services.
Local radio is not provided for your entertainment but for use by the Government in periods of “heightened tension” and “national emergency”
When this happens you will be told to tune into your local radio station and listen for “further announcements”
Wow, the moderators are engaging with the audience. This one’s hot off the press:
Added: Tuesday, 14 March, 2006, 22:21 GMT 22:21 UK
To ensure that this debate remains high relevant, we ask that you keep your posts to the particular story or issue at the top of the page.
BBC Host
Apologies to all for greedily posting again, but I would just like to say the following to BBC Host. The majority of posts are highly relevant to the topic of this forum. Please try to remember that you are hear to serve the public, not the other way round. BBC Censorship is relevant!
Steven Martin, United Kingdom
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Maybe it’s finally got through to someone in authority there how those busy little editors censor HYS.
Could it be that they have been instructed to do what they should have been doing all along – post comments as they come in?
Pro Western Palestinians elected these people and their charter?
THE HAMAS CHARTER (1988)
Preamble: “Israel will exist until Islam obliterates it, as it obliterated others before it”
Article 6: “Hamas strives to raise the banner of God over every inch of Palestine, so followers of all religions can coexist in safety”
Article 11: “Palestine is an Islamic endowment consecrated for future Moslem generations… it should not be given up”
Article 13: “So-called peaceful solutions contradict the principles of Hamas. Jihad is the only solution for the Palestinian question”
Article 14: “Liberating Palestine is an individual duty for every Muslim wherever they may be”
Archduke:
Try downloading and running Google Earth…great mapping, but hardly any of Ireland covered.
Thank you Laban.
I am available for Radio 4 comedy panel games by the way. (For Ross Noble and Paul Merton to wipe the floor with me.)
Ah, uncensored friend, you haven’t mentioned the true villains of the piece and the major obstacle to peace, according to Hamas…
…Rotary Clubs.
I do wonder how many, if any, BBC reporters have read the Charter. Or maybe they have and simply choose to disregard the stuff about Allah and obliterating Jews?