… Justin Webb on yesterday’s Radio Five Drive show, being interviewed about Kate Couric, new CBS news anchor. He spoke about how the big networks were losing market share to cable and the internet.
“There ate three groups of people who don’t watch the evening news any more, and they are intelligent people, young people, and right-wing people – and obviously there are some people who fall into all three categories – at least (laughs) arguably – so right-wing people tend to watch Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News, intelligent people tend to not bother with the telly at all, and young people get their news from the internet where they get it at all.”
I wonder what happened to the American left ? I suppose that’s synonymous with intelligent.
If anyone wants to listen, it’s here for a week (Wednesday’s show, 2h53m in).
Responding to Rick, Bryan writes:
“I dunno. It’s not easy to measure these things. Certainly the BBC provides ideological common ground and comfort to terrorists.”
Yes, for once (and it’s rare), I disagree with Rick, too. I think the BBC is hugely important, which is why this Blog is vital.
Particularly when the corporation is stretching its tentacles into the Web, promoting a soft-Left worldview and doing so with a great deal of mendacity, a corrective is badly needed.
boblog
How about a bloggers motto:
“You are not alone,
the truth is out there”
And this ‘Hide Your say’ is still open for comments:
Is the US too close to Israel?
http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?sortBy=1&threadID=1413&edition=2&ttl=20060407121417&#paginator
But they’ve bundled it off the main page and hidden it in the murky depths of the site. I found it by accident.
Apparently open but hidden.
Describes the BBC agenda to a T.
GCooper,
I think the BBC is hugely important, which is why this Blog is vital.
Agreed.
And the World Service, as far as I can see, has no real competitors of comparable reach and influence in the English language.
Bryan | 07.04.06 – 12:08 pm | #
The BBC World Service is a matter for the Foreign Office – they fund it – but Birt did merge World Service and Domestic Newsrooms which is why John Tusa resigned.
Radio Nederland has a good international service; VOA is pure propaganda; and the BBC certainly needs to up its game internationally, but domestically it is simply way behind the upstarts like SkyNews and is focussed on 3 stories the entire day.
I don’t dispute that upgrading the BBC is important; I just reject the view that people are captivated by BBC output. In fact I think it is now accepted that the BBC caters to a very weird audience who tune in to the message, and everyone else switches channel
http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?sortBy=2&threadID=1488&edition=1&ttl=20060407130114&#paginator
(D)HYS on Madonna. The question they don’t pose is “Do you think Madonna should be free to set ticket prices at whatever level she chooses?”
EU freezes aid to Palestinian government
Reuters – 47 minutes ago
By Paul Taylor. BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The European Commission said on Friday it had halted aid payments to the Hamas-led Palestinian government because the new cabinet had not recognized Israel’s right to exist or renounced violence. …
From the Princeton Times
http://www.bdtonline.com/editorials/feeds/apcontent/apstories/apstorysection/D8GR4TVG1.xml.txt/resources_apstoryview
The BBC UK channels and the world service have been all over the “Bush was leaking intelligence” like ants over white rice. They are actually turning the whole story upside down – it is a US version of the Andrew Gilligan affair, with the BBC lying yet again.
The context is that in 2003/2004 some mid-ranking people in the CIA and the State Department were deliberately leaking stuff to hurt their President. (Indeed this is still going on – the New York Times cooperated in a leak that there is wiretapping of calls between overseas terrorists and people inside the US – a leak that has damaged national security. There is complete legal authorisation for this wiretapping – but the MSM have preferred to attack the President, rather than attack the NYT and the people who deliberately leaked to them for endangering the US.)
In 2003/2004 Bush was being leaked against by people trying to say that he lied on WMDs – this is the Gilligan/Hutton comparison. Bush himself decided that it was time to put the record straight. He authorised the release of the formal intelligence briefing he had received on WMDs that expressed the consensus view of the relevant US agencies. That briefing said there was a strong degree of confidence that chemical and biological WMDs existed – and that there were good signs of efforts to obtain nuclear capability too. That document was PUBLICLY RELEASED, on the orders of the President. Not “leaked”. This was entirely within the authority of the President.
(Just like Blair deliberately released the WMD assessment of our JIC.)
It took a few days for the full documents to be published, but in the meanwhile Scooter Libby, chief of staff to Dick Cheyney, was authorised to brief some of the press on the FACTS – to rebut the earlier false leaks by dissidents in the CIA and State Dept.
There is no evidence that in doing this he also released the name of Valerie Plame, a CIA employee who was probably no longer a covert operative as everyone in Washington seemed to know her. But the BBC is trying to say this is what happened. Plame is involved in the whole affair because her husband Joe Wildon was one of the people directly involved in the earlier leaking of false info – and Wilson has been shown to have directly lied to the press about whether Iraq was trying to get uranium feedcake from Niger.
The BBC, fronted by Justin Webb, is deliberately conflating the Plame issue with the fact that the intelligece assessment was deliberately RELEASED by the President – and blaming the White House for the public knowledge of valerie Plame’s name.
Webb and others at the BBC appear to be seriously ignorant of the facts of a major US public issue. Or – and it looks more likely – they base their reporting on what the left-wing media in the US are saying, not on facts, and they do not even look at what people say on the other side. Just another stick to beat Bush with.
If that ain’t bias, what is ?
http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/62024.htm
The BBC is plain LYING to us. On matters of national security.
So no one took any notice of this Al-Beeb propaganda sheet
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4661066.stm
Hamas urges EU not to end funding
Ismail Haniya said his concerns were for impoverished Palestinians
A senior Hamas leader has appealed to the European Union not to halt funding to the Palestinian Authority following the militant group’s election victory.
Sorry BBC you and Hamas are stuffed
Sarge
Why isn’t the BBC asking why it has taken weeks and weeks to cut the EU aid to Hamas. It should have been cut on Day 1 with the proviso that aid would resume when Hamas renounced its aim to eliminate Israel.
O/T GOTCHA!
I’ve complained a couple of times about how I can never find a real instance of pure, one-hundred-per •cent bias or distortion on this blog. At last, I’ve found one! But it isn’t the Beeb at fault; it’s one of your posters: Pete, who deserves a thorough fisking.
A few posts up Pete says:
This BBC story tells of a photographer murdered by the Israeli defence force as a British jury has decided he was unlawfully killed. In all the recent cases where a verdict of unlawful killing has been returned by a jury the BBC never decides to refer to the killing as murder. This time they do, and it includes the Israelis. What a surprise.
The clear import of this is that the BBC, faced with a verdict of unlawful killing, chose • without good cause – to describe it as murder and not manslaughter because the homicide was perpetrated by an Israeli and that this demonstrated anti-Israel bias on the part of the Corporation.
However, if you follow Pete’s link to the actual story you will find that:
Coroner Andrew Reid had told the jury at St Pancras Coroner’s Court, London, on Thursday to return a verdict of unlawful killing. He said they had to decide in the context of the case whether he had been murdered or was a victim of manslaughter. After around an hour of deliberation, the jury decided that Mr Miller had been deliberately shot on the night of 2 May 2003. A jury spokeswoman said: “We, the jury, unanimously agree this was an unlawful shooting with the intention of killing Mr James Miller. “Therefore we can come to no other conclusion than that Mr Miller was indeed murdered.”
Clearly it was not the BBC who decided it was murder; it was the jury.
Pete, remember, linked to this story. Is it unreasonable to conclude that Pete deliberately and maliciously misrepresented the facts in order to cast the BBC in a bad light? Is this not a more heinous and brazen example of distortion and mendacity than you guys have ever caught the BBC at? Now, some weasel will say ‘yeah, but we don’t have to pay a licence fee for Pete’. True….but that really would be weaselly. I suppose some conspiracy theorist might claim that Pete is an agent smuggled in by Mark Thompson to discredit this blog. Mmmmm. No, it’s time to fess-up boys and girls • this blog is much more prone to prejudice and misrepresentation than Auntie ever is. Bang to rights.
Why do we spend over a billion a year on the BBC news services for mostly trite, glib, biased and inaccurate coverage of the worldwide threat of Islamist terrorism.
It had its favourite home in Afghanistan, and that place remains crucial. The BBC NEVER does analyses as serious as this piece on the situation in that country.
http://nationaljournal.com/about/njweekly/stories/2006/0407nj1.htm
We are sending thousands of troops to face high risk there, some have already been under attack. This issue is real serious – but the BBC largely ignores it except as an occasion to swipe at Blair and Bush.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Broadcasting_Company
Bit of reading to cheer you all up !
reith
Perhaps you would care to comment on what i had said – that the BBC’s anti-Israel bias is illustrated by the undue prominence they gave to the inquest result, in a case where ONE soldier behaved wrongly. They use it as another stick to bash Israel.
But meanwhile they are FAILING to report the statements made day in day out by Hamas spokesmen that they want the destruction of Israel. FAILING to report that an entire political movement – hundreds of thousands of people – want to eliminate Israel, a movement that has spent years organising the MURDER of THOUSANDS of Israelis.
The comment on reith’s hypocrisy was by me
No, it’s time to fess-up boys and girls • this blog is much more prone to prejudice and misrepresentation than Auntie ever is. Bang to rights.
john reith | 07.04.06 – 2:02 pm
Pete can answer for himself.
However, even if he deliberately “libelled” the beeb (and I do not suggest that he did) you cannot say that that one “false” statement to the readers of this blog outweighs all the deliberate misreporting by the beeb to the world in general as reported on this blog.
There are literally thousands of well attested instances of beeboid lying/misdirection on this blog and you have found just one that appears not to hold water.
JR
It is not for a coroner’s jury to decide whether murder was committed but whether the killing was unlawful. The stress that the BBC put upon the word murder could be said to show bias, especially when it refuses to use the word for the atrocities committed in Iraq and Israel.
I did notice this morning on teletext that the word murder had been qualified with “or manslaughter” so it is likely that an editor picked up on its use.
Dumbcisco
What you call the ‘undue prominence’ given to the inquest result was almost certainly because the victim was a Brit. Lots of people died in the Tsunami but the British media (rightly in my view) gave prominence to the stories of British deaths. This doesn’t mean British lives are worth more than African/Thai/Israeli/Arab lives. It simply reflects the fact that the British media serve their consumers best when they give due prominence to stories that affect their fellow Brits.
As for the BBC NOT REPORTING that Hamas is pledged to the destruction of Israel….where have you been? I’ve heard or seen that reported almost every day since 25th Jan. For instance…on the day after Hamas won the election …..when Olmert said he wouldn’t work with Hamas. When Bush said he wouldn’t fund a Hamas led PA. When Condi said the same thing. Keep your eayes and ears open tonight/tomorrow for the EU aid suspension story.
Webb and others at the BBC appear to be seriously ignorant of the facts of a major US public issue. Or – and it looks more likely – they base their reporting on what the left-wing media in the US are saying, not on facts
dumbcisco
Keeps on happening, doesn’t it?
Like the “Bush lied on no warning of levee breaches by Katrina” story.
The AP report only managed to show a warning by the hurricane experts that the levees could be overtopped (this was widely known before landfall).
But AP claimed that this was a warning of threat of breaching, & Bush claimed after the event not to have received a warning of breaching.
But the BBC (& the rest) closed their ears to the evidence & went along with the AP twisted tale.
The BBC subsequently stealth edited their online piece to “clarify” the terms of the warning – but how many people ever heard the true story?
Peregrine
Wake up. This is what the coroner said to the jury and what the jury said to the coroner:
Coroner Andrew Reid had told the jury at St Pancras Coroner’s Court, London, on Thursday to return a verdict of unlawful killing. He said they had to decide in the context of the case whether he had been murdered or was a victim of manslaughter. After around an hour of deliberation, the jury decided that Mr Miller had been deliberately shot on the night of 2 May 2003. A jury spokeswoman said: “We, the jury, unanimously agree this was an unlawful shooting with the intention of killing Mr James Miller. “Therefore we can come to no other conclusion than that Mr Miller was indeed murdered.”
John Reith doesn’t usually hang around for long. He’s one of the hit-and-run posters. Comes in occasionally to stir things up and when he sees he has no hope of winning the debate, he disappears again.
Now he’s using one post as evidence that this entire site is misguided (and I’m not saying Pete was wrong here because I haven’t checked it out, and I’m certainly not taking Reith’s word.)
It’s a bit comical, really. He plonks himself down here amid dozens of examples of BBC bias on this thread alone, looks around, and says, “Bias? What bias?”
Uhhh….that was me.
reith
One inquest of one Brit is simply not worth all the attention that the BBC gave it.
And the BBC is NOT consistently repeating that the whole essence of Hamas is the destruction of Israel – that this is the very constitution of Hamas, the reason for its existence. It frequently glosses over that fact.
Like this story of TODAY that fails to mention WHY President Abbas is keeping control of border crossings away from Hamas. President Abbas stated his reasons – and the BBC has FAILED to report them :
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4885654.stm
So don’t try kidding us that the BBC properly and consistently reports the murderous intent of Hamas. It prefers crocodile tears over a foolhardy photographer.
That comment re President Abbas was me.
And john reith is a total liar in claiming that the BBC has repported every day since January that Hamas wants the total destruction of Israel.
The biggest ongoing story in the US is the immigration debate – day after day of stuff in Congress, huge marches, endless news articles and TV coverage.
But the BBC is reporting virtually none of this huge debate.
It prefers to run “Bush leaked”.
More stuff on Justing Webb’s absurd smear story about “Bush leaked” :
http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2006/04/todays-liberal-media-blast-on-bush.html
and here :
http://austinbay.net/blog/?p=1025
and here is the absolute legal authority of the Pres or Cheney to release the NIE :
http://www.nationalreview.com/york/york200602160841.asp
If I can find this stuff effortlessly – why can’t Justin Webb and the big BBC news machine ?
Maybe the BBC should pay our hosts here for running this blog. Because the blog lets lots of us feed in FACTS against the BBC bias. Between us we seem to find a lot more US news, a lot more FACTS and REAL CONTEXT than the overpaid and overfed BBC reporters track down.
Some T-Shirts for y’all
http://www.cafepress.com/rightwingstuff
Well JR, I apologise if I was wrong, my understanding of coroner’s courts is that they do not have the authority to make such judgements; but it has been a considerable time since I studied criminal law.
BBC doesn’t like seperating the uncivilised from the civilised.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4858580.stm
Dumbcisco
‘maybe the BBC ought to pay our hosts for running this blog’
As a licence payer – if I found my hard earnes dosh was going to fund what often reads like a cross between Likud’s Amen Corner and the kindergarten wing of the Cato Institute, I’d be tempted to join the boycott too.
reith
Stop ducking the issues. The BBC fails to report facts and context properly, mostly just tries to feed a lot of bias. Several specific examples have been raised in this thread alone – and you are ducking them.
john reith
“This BBC story tells of a photographer murdered by the Israeli defence force as a British jury has decided he was unlawfully killed.”I don’t know where murder enters this equation, which it doesn’t.
Unlawful killing and lawful killing are in a different league altogether. A Judicially approved execution, as in the days of capital punishment was a “lawful killing” I never established the facts but I was told there was a formal coroners inquest after capital punishment was carried out and a verdict of lawful killing was returned.
So “unlawful Killing” is a different concept from “murder” which is killing “with intent to kill”
Unlawful killing has no such intent.
You yourself give the game away by referring to the dead Brit as a “photographer” elsewhere he is described as a “cameraman”.
Stuck in your carbon producing BBC office you have no idea what it is like to be a soldier on the front line, charged with the duty of protecting your homeland, trusted with a rifle for that purpose, well aware that the enemy will stoop to any low and deceitful trick to fool you. A suspicious person who looks out of place, is acting suspiciously, and is approaching your position appears to be carrying something. It could be a camera or a camcorder, but is it? how do you know, a camera bomb was used to kill in Afghanistan. The decision is yours.
You may stand up and say, “Hello young fellow, welcome to my hot spot may I enquire as to what you are doing in these parts”
What happens next if he point s a “camera” at you?
I noticed that the Brit killed
people at the BBC coudn’t give a damn about that foolish photographer. They just want to attack Israel.
JR
It is quite clear that the BBC has set agenda for nearly everything that it reports. Whether those commenting on this blog agree with those agenda or not is not really the point. The BBC should not have any spin on any story.
A few weeks ago, just as an exercise partly because I am undecided on my own view on the issue, I looked at how the BBC was covering the story on the possible wide scale culling of badgers. It was clear that the campaigners against the cull were receiving considerably more coverage than those for it.
The BBC also has a very bad habit of missing out details within its reports that would add considerable context. A recent example is the jailing of a man from Carlisle for racial harassment. Virtually no context was given, and the taunts that were reported were bland. If the man concerned was jailed for six months for shouting “Proud to be British” and had no previous criminal history then this is an extremely serious incident that should concern all who value their personal liberty. If he had had a string of previous convictions for similar offences, and his phrases had been considerably stronger (which is highly likely) then the issue can be looked at in a different light.
Peregrine
To take your example – if you asked virtually anyone whether they thought the BBC would be Pro- or Anti- badger culling, they would say “Anti”.
In our very bones we know their bias on nearly every live issue. And it is that bias that drives the way they report – or fail to report.
n our very bones we know their bias on nearly every live issue. And it is that bias that drives the way they report
Yes ! It is the only political party in Britain with a clear Manifesto and everyone is on-message. It makes you see why those non-virtual parties are in such a mess – noone knows whether they believe their Manifestoes or not
“It is quite clear that the BBC has set agenda for nearly everything that it reports.”
Too true blue.
BBC News 24 5pm lead story BIRD Flu stalks the land, second day running but what of this?
“RACISM IN SCHOOLS” This is the big capital letters in the sub titles used by the BBC when covering a report where the Judge said, “This case has no place in the courts”. So what does the BBC do? why send a message about racism in schools, dolts.
I listened to Justin Webb discussing with John Humphreys on Radio 4 this morning the possibility of both Pres. Bush and VP Cheney being impeached. It sounded rather like schoolboy fantasising and both juveniles were getting rather carried away with it. This is typical Radio 4 fayre.
RE; john reith
What better example could one have of how “out of this planet” the BBC and their friends are, than our John Reith.
At a risk of showing my working class roots, I have no idear what Likuds amen corner or the cato institute are. If he does, I think I dont want to know either.
Private companies spend millions every year almost begging for constructive comments on the performance of their operation.
John Reith and the BBC does not just, not pay any attention to the freely given direct advice, from the BBCs abused and exploited customers. They take the f…..g PISS.
In fact the more people like us complain the more satisfied they are that they are doing a great job. The Left really do hate and have tottal contempt for British people, even when that includes themselves.
When this site started comments were not extream or very political. But time moves on. We have not just, not noticed any improvement, the BBC has got forever, much worse. It does so more every day, in all respects.
This goverment will become, as very unpopular, as ALL goverments get in the end. The BBC will have very few friends left bt then. Even Liberals might actualy become liberal, and disregard the BBC.
We now have many more accurate and diverse ways of getting infomation. The people will never never trust the BBC like they did in the past.
Like, British new Labour socialism, the BBC are showing the futile spasms of a dieing animal.
The BBC is getting more desperate, with every bit of bad economic data, and it shows.
Did I hear the BBCs chief economics editor say ” we are heading for a downturn in the economic cycle”?
Perhaps he has forgotton that the entile Gordon Brown citidal is based on the premiss that this will not happen anymore. As GB for sure does not have the slightest idear how to get us out of the next big bust.
Brownstuff will have himself in his underpants sooner that the BBC will ever tell us.
BTW
If you study lately Brownstuffs tortured face. You might notice it is already getting a little damp down their.
Tonight’s Newsnight Review, Martha Kearney writes
We’ll also be discussing Paradise Now, one of the year’s most
controversial films – the story of two suicide bombers made by
Palestinian director Hanny Abu-Assad. It won a Golden Globe for best
foreign film but some in Israel believe it glorifies terrorism.
Well if its only those pesky Israelis who can spot glorification of terrorism, after all even our own NuCons don’t believe it exists.
G Powell, I suspect that “Likud’s amen corner” is a snide reference to the Likud party of Israel, headed by one Ariel Sharon until quite recently. Likud became the BBC’s latest in a series of ideaological piñatas, whomn they would drag out to bash whenever they had nothing better to do. Apparently the party that gave away the entire gaza strip and repeatedly offered talks to the palestinians, before precipitating the largest withdrawl of Israeli’s from the west bank since the settlements began, at the same time as attempting to protect ISrael’s citizens (the wall has worked in that regard; suicide bombings are down to almost nothing since it went up) is somehow evil. So their !”amen corner” is, I suppose, an insult in the BBC’s world, as it implies that the denizens of bBBC agree with Likud.
I have no idea what the cato institute is either.
Tons of “off-message” posts on the 10-year-old who was prosecuted for “racism.” Note that some of the posts are from non-white people who are saying “get a grip”:
http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?sortBy=2&threadID=1480&edition=1&ttl=20060407195554&#paginator
Can “technical difficulties” be far behind?
G Powell, Likuds
I know of the cato Institute – but they do not have a running commentary on the news. But there are right-wing commentators whose output is easily reachable, eg articles posted at realclearpolitics.co, , National review online, plus a range well-known blogs like Glenn Reynolds, Powerline, etc. It should be a requirement at the huge BBC centre to keep track of the best-known commentary sites on BOTH sides of the political divide. They would be better briefed. All they seem to read is the NY Times, Washington Post and LA Times, all leftie, plus Daily KLos and a hotline to the Dems political office.
I have now complained formally about all the Justin Webb reports describing proper release of information by the White House as “leaks” and in particular the interview with John Humphrys where they stated it was either Scooter Libby being a liar or George Bush being a liar.
Can anyone imagine the BBC in WW2 calling Roosevelt a liar ? They would have been sacked on the spot.
Oliver Kamm quotes that fine fellow, John Lloyd of the Financial Times
Journalists of all opinions – including senior journalists in the BBC – publish and broadcast scorn for parliament, and claim that they should act as the true opposition to the government of the day. But the media cannot be an opposition, because they will never have (and should not have) responsibility for what they propose. Oppositions, if and when they become governments, do.
& Kamm goes on to comment on an account by an RTÉ US correspondent that displays all the arrogance of her BBC counterparts.
http://oliverkamm.typepad.com/blog/2006/04/oppositional_jo.html
Allen@Aberdeen
I shall take it for granted, that they did not discuss the impeachment of Tony Blair, as well.
or say.
Reversable man made globle climate change is BBC colledge boy ” we can make you silly buggers believe the sky is falling down, if we say it enough times” bullshit.
Bird flus ignorent panic stile reporting is BBCs apprentice ” good practise for when we have to scare the people out of voting anyting but Labour, forever” bullshit.
Socialism in all its forms is just fine. Is BBC loves tottalitarian goverment inspired answers,”whatever you do dont trust, ask, or even honestly inform the ordinary people,” bullshit.
Force financed goverment propergander is a protecter of accurate, and unbias reporting standards. Is BBC in compleat denile or just plain lieing, bullshit.
Goverment sponsored political parties, is more BBC self-interest, “you carry on scratching our back and we will carry on scratching yours,” bullshit.
Forever raising the net “tax take” of any goverment, is good for the people. Is BBC ” whats another lousy £200 per anum when the goverment has already robbed you blind,” bullshit.
Blaiming America, Jews and the exsistance of freely moving capital for all the problems in the world. Is BBC inverted “class-warfair”inspired, racist, nationalist, EU worshiping, nazi bullshit.
Gordon Browns “economic miracle”. Is BBC self-delutionary,”keep in power at any cost, even if you have to cook the books” economic “made it up on the back of a over taxed fag box” mumbo-jumbo, bullshit.
All things British and especialy English are bad (except the BBC) ofcause. Is BBC dangerous, insulting, patronising, historicaly inaccurate, divisive, party politicaly motivated,” my daddy forced me to stand up, during the national anthem” self destructive, bullshit.
Excluding John Reith; we all must see by now, that this and much much more, will never, and can never happen at the BBC.
Reith is clearly a BBC troll. As was said earlier, he pops up every few weeks to make a single point, then vanishes once it is challenged.
In the meantime, he avoids any and every substantial point about BBC bias and then claims he sees ‘no examples of bias’ when he waves around the one post in which he thinks he can pick holes.
It’s a very shallow game, but journeyman stuff. Look at the quote from Marr on the site’s masthead – much the same ‘I see no ships’ approach.
Sure you don’t, Reith, old chap.
The BBC story on the “Bush leaked” matter has been stealth-edited, and by the insertion of some facts, some caveats and some balance it now cuts clean across the line Justin Webb was spouting :
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4887612.stm
sarge and others
Why can’t you just read the story? Then you will know you are wrong. The coroner asked the jury to decide between suicide and murder under the unlawful killing umbrella. The jury said – in terms – murder. It wasn’t the BBC gilding the lily. It was the jury giving its verdict..
As for badgers…..sorry I have not seen/heard /read anything on this for months. My pretty uninformed view is that if badgers spread TB, take no risks….shoot them.
As for being a hit and run artist who dodges points…..I’ve been on this blog for more than 4 hours today and posted …I think….4 or 5 times. I don’t want to hog the blog.
I dont much care for sport but I do like golf, especially The Masters.
Can anyone tell me why the twit from the crisp adverts is doing the commmentary on BBC2? The guy is soooooooooooo boring.