The Today programme like to think that they don’t just report the news, that they “help to set the agenda” – and to a great extent they’re correct. You can hear Humphrys or Naughtie worrying away at a point like a terrier with a rat. hoping to get an admission which will make the NEXT news headlines.
“In an interview on the BBC Today programme, the Minister revealed that …”
But there are scoops and scoops. The BBC has an institutional bias towards a pro-abortion viewpoint – I’m sorry, the approved BBC term is ‘pro-choice’, and against the pro-life viewpoint – I’m sorry, that should have read ‘anti-abortion’.
Which might explain why this remarkable interview (RealAudio, 25 minutes in) with ‘pro-choice’ Dr Stuart Derbyshire wasn’t the main headline at nine-o’clock, and would just have been quietly forgotten before the Web.
Dr Derbyshire argued that babies did not feel pain until they were up to several months old, an argument which seems to fly in the face of common sense and human experience, as John Humphrys acknowledged. Such a bizarre claim made by a proponent of an unpopular (to liberals) ideology would have been picked up and amplified by the BBC, used to discredit their cause. The two sides of bias are promoting that which supports a view and ignoring or suppressing that which discredits it.
I can imagine how a pro-life BBC would have spun it.
“A pro-abortion doctor today claimed that babies cannot feel pain until up to several months after birth. Controversial psychologist Dr Stuart Derbyshire – who has previously claimed that vivisectionists have no duty to care for laboratory animals beyond what is necessary for successful experimentation, said that …”
Here’s the transcript (note Humphrys’ self-correction of ‘baby’ to ‘foetus’, so characteristic of the BBC):
John Humphrys : “Right – so your contention is that the baby – er, the foetus, cannot feel pain until … ?”
Dr Stuart Derbyshire, psychologist : “Until it’s had an opportunity to undergo some sort of learning process – until it’s had an opportunity to undergo a process whereby pointing and showing occurs”
Humphrys (interrupting) – “But that would suggest it’s weeks – possibly months – after birth – and surely that’s nonsense, isn’t it ?”
Derbyshire : “It possibly is weeks, possibly months – I mean it’s very difficult of course to ever draw a line as to precisely when it happens – but I do think we can draw a line and say that it is vitally dependent upon a process that’s going to take place outside of the womb. Pain – in the same way – all experience is in a sense social – it’s dependent on other people, and that doesn’t occur until the point of birth.”
Humphrys : “Dr Derbyshire, many thanks”
Dr Derbyshire was propounding an identical theory in the magazine Living Marxism ten years ago. Why is the BBC suddenly publicising him ?
“The US is considering legislation to make doctors tell women seeking an abortion it will cause the foetus pain.”
Ah, the Great Satan. Now I understand. Happy Easter.
Certain issues flush out those who are intent on creating a Mirror World and inverting moral standards and essential values of human life…………….and each time the BBC nails its colours to the mast
bbc news (on tv) – lead story was “global warming”
*sigh*
the LEAD story no less.
archduke
There is a medical condition known as “cancerphobia” Here it is outlined:
Fear of future illness shares many characteristics with a wide variety of conditions. Concepts such as hypochondriasis, adjustment disorders, generalized anxiety, and mass hysteria must be considered. Also, factors such as reporting bias, influential others, collective behavior, political groups, and litigation appear to induce symptom reporting from patients complaining of fear of illness and cancerphobia. Cancerphobia may result in impairment ranging from avoidance behaviors to cognitive dysfunctions. Various treatment modalities have been used successfully in treating cancerphobia, and the prognosis is typically good. Complaints of chemical AIDS, universal allergy, or twentieth century disease have little medical or empirical support and require further investigation. Researchers and clinicians must recognize multiple factors contribute to fear of future illness or cancerphobic complaints, and additional research must be undertaken if a thorough understanding of fear of future illness, cancerphobia, and perceptions of chemical AIDS is to be obtained.
mass hysteria must be considered. Also, factors such as reporting bias, influential others, that’ll be the BBC then.
Globalwarmingphobia
Birdfluphobia
PCeology
All current BBC science subjects
“the lead story was “global warming”” – in fact the website has had “Stark Warning on Climate Change” as the top story all day:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4888946.stm
And it’s one of those “a BBC scientist told the Today programme” stories too. It has the typical dig at America at the end; no mention of Russia or China’s environmental record. China has a billion people – I’m sure they must give off a lot of heat. China is also fond of the kind of government programme that Friends of the Earth’s Tony Juniper – great name – argues in favour of in the above report.
The report also has a link to this, in which the Director of the British Antarctic Survey – I picture a pale, bearded man who likes to be alone – argues in a BBC editorial that there are three billion too many people on the planet and that they should… go:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4584572.stm
Apparently “the world is likely to experience a temperature rise of more than 3C” according to the UK’s chief scientist. I was unaware that the UK had a chief scientist; there must be something preventing him from moving abroad, where there are jobs for scientists. I doubt that the UK can single-handedly reduce global warming.
The report doesn’t come out and give a timescale for this 3C rise. There is mention of a 100-year time period and there is mention of a 3C rise but nowhere are the two things explicitly linked together. It all seems a bit fishy. This is the lead story, but it is based on the opinion of one man as reported to the Today programme. An opinion that happens to gel with that of the BBC’s employees.
Is the BBC making you depressed and anxious?
The cause of mass hysteria is often a baseless belief that begins small but, like a hurricane, travels and becomes more devastating as it picks up speed. Orson Welles’ “War of the Worlds” radio broadcast in 1938 is a well known example of the power of a false idea gone berserk.
We have a job to do – save the world!
Containing the Fear
Mass hysteria is best countered through prevention or very early intervention. The most powerful tool is for a calm authority figure to give clear and accurate information repeatedly, and to remain visible and available to provide updates and reassurance. In contrast, a message that is dramatic and menacing, is guaranteed to have a catastrophic result.
Yes I know the lead story on BBC News was global warming, it is now such a commonplace I didn’t comment on it, I have done so already many times.
But did you get this? the video I saw was of a tall chimney belching smoke.
Think about it, if you are in a concentration camp wouldn’t that sight make you feel sick?
It’s the crematorium chimney where we are all going, as the Jews used to say ” we are going up the chimney”
or in the case of the BBC the “global warming chimney”
An outbreak of mass psychogenic illness is a time of anxiety and worry. During an outbreak, a lot of media coverage and the presence of ambulances or emergency workers can make you and other people feel more anxious and at risk.
Re my anonymous – Good Friday draws to a close, made memorable for me by the BBC as ‘Global warming Good Friday’ and ‘Hug a Muslim day’.
Why do BBC staffers have to project their fears and phobias on to me and others mentally stable and healthy?
*sigh*
Climate change. Not this rubbish again. Funnily enough, I commented on their “Have your say” page. My long (well as long as their character limit allows), reasoned, substantiated attack on global warming was moderated out while badly spelt, irratically punctuated inane comments such as this:
“If taht is the case I think we should immediately increase the carbon tax on petrol to ensure it doesn’t happen!!!”
were allowed through. Once or twice I could believe that they just got too many comments, but this has happened at least half a dozen times now (the VAST majority of my comments that get through are the less right-wing ones), and all while stupud two-liners from Left wingers were allowed through. Have Your Say should have its own website, it really should.
At least (despite the overall volume of left wing comments being higher) the right wing comments tend to rise to the top of the ‘Most Recommended’ list regularly, although I’ve heard reports about recommendations “mysteriously” disappearing, too.
Anyway, this may also be of interst to some of you – http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4881474.stm
At first glance you may think that the Beeb is finally tackling the problem of anti-Americanism, but if you read on the bulk of the text seems to be about how the woman in question did not support George Bush or the Iraq War, and so was not deserving of abuse. Presumably the Beeb believes that Bush-ites are deserving of all the xenophobia and assaults they get…?
The BBC is the very incubator of anti-Americanism in the UK today.
Close down this vile corporation now and march the bastards in leg irons through the streets.
Not really bias, but just rubbish reporting:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/4911258.stm
And I’m not trying to make a point about the victims’ ethnicity. It’s a report about a man who has been charged with three counts of manslaughter. I’ll repeat the whole thing here:
“A 49-year-old man has been charged with the manslaughter of a woman and two young brothers who were found dead in a house in east London”, it says.
Atalokhia Omo-Bare, of Marson House, Provost Estate, Islington, is due before Barking magistrates on Saturday.
He faces three counts of manslaughter and two counts of grievous bodily harm.
A woman in her 30s and two boys, aged three and 18 months, were found at the house in Alderman Avenue, Barking, on Thursday afternoon.
Two women who were rescued by fire crews are said to be in a serious but stable condition in hospital.”
There is a photograph of a police car outside a normal-looking house.
It’s a very bad news story. In fact, it’s useless. It doesn’t say what is supposed to have happened. There is mention of “fire crews” and the implication that there has been a fire, but the report is almost suspiciously uninformative. This seems to be breaking news – it’s the only report about this particular story – but why? What’s going on? Surely there are house fires all over Britain all the time?
Anonymous writes:
“Have Your Say should have its own website, it really should. ”
No, it should be closed down: it’s a complete fraud. I have refused to have anything to do with it since I caught them out in what I am certain was deliberate and calculated fiddling with posts in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.
Particularly bearing in mind the position on the BBC food chain (think of a line of veggie burger and noodle stalls), jobs on the website almost certainly go to young ‘ideologically sound’ kids, just down from university, their heads so filled with nonsense that they barely understand what they are doing.
Small wonder, meanwhile, that the BBC leapt on the nonsense spouted by Prof King this morning. It fits their watermelon millenarist agenda, perfectly.
How curious, though, the deafening silence about the 60 Canadian scientists who wrote to their PM, in which the following was just one of many telling remarks: “Observational evidence does not support today’s computer climate models, so there is little reason to trust model predictions of the future…..”
It’s not just ignorance – it’s wilful ignorance compounded by deceit.
Midnight top headline is about Donald rumsfeld. How many UK newspapers tomorrow morning will lead on this story or even have it as a major headline on the front page ? Answer = NONE, according to the photos of Saturday’s front pages at the Sky news site. Clear evidence of an obsession at the BBC.
And now the BBC is giving Norman Kember, the nasty ungrateful pacifist hostage, 45 minutes with Feargal Keane on Saturday on Radio 4. Being plugged every hour on the hour. A bloody fellow-traveller with terrorism being interviewed by an unctious foreigner. Gee, thanks for not being biased about Iraq, BBC.
Dumbcisco – you really are a spiteful hate filled person aren’t you?
Norman Kember risked his life to got to Iraq on a peace mission. You may disagree with what he did, you may think he was stupid and you may even think he was ungrateful to his rescuers. But what grounds do you have for calling him nasty and implying he is a terrorist? And what the hell does it matter his interviewer is not British? Unless of course you are just a bigot.
Norman Kember risked his life to got to Iraq on a peace mission.
No he didn’t. He went to seek out cases of abuse by Coalition troops. His organisation’s main activity is to assist the enemies of Israel & the USA.
Far from bringing peace he was looking to give the hornet’s nest a stir.
Norman Kember was not on what anyone except the gullible would call a “peace mission”. He was helping people cause trouble against the Coalition. He was NOT giving charity. He was a trouble-stirrer. I call that nasty.
And he caused serious risks to the lives of British, US and Iraqi troops who had to rescue him. As well as very heavy costs for weeks and weeks of searching.
And Feargal Keane is just another of the BBC crowd who give the gloss “It’s all the West’s fault”. I happen to be half-Irish – and I am sick to death of Keane’s monopoly of righteousness. He and Orla Guerin are two of the most cringe-inducing voices on the BBC.
A lurker writes:
“And what the hell does it matter his interviewer is not British? ”
I notice you don’t quibble with dumbcisco’s description of Keane as ‘unctious’.
One has to assume that even Left wingers find Keane’s brand of mawkish, sentimental, hand-wringing claptrap a bit much to take on a full stomach.
Oh, and at risk of also ending-up spittle-flecked by your use of that handy little ejaculation so loved by the Left (‘bigot’), I think I rather object to the dreary procession of Irish polemicists lecturing us from BBC pulpits, too.
Can’t say I hear too many Home Counties accents on RTE.
More post-colonial angst at work, no doubt.
Norman Kember got saved by people far better than himself.
A pacifist is a security parasite.
Is it too much to expect that the main interview, possibly the only interview, with a man hostile to the BRITISH troops’ presence in Iraq and who put BRITISH lives at risk of death on his behalf, carried by the BRITISH Broadcasting Corporation, should be handled by a BRITISH interviewer ? What is bigoted about that ?
THIS should be the headline on the BBC, not Rumsfeld :
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/04/15/wiran15.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/04/15/ixnewstop.html
Every link which follows has a date stamp of Friday the 14th and has been taken from the BBC website;
Bombs go off in Indian Mosque;
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4910028.stm
Muslim terrorist attack in Kashmir
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4909126.stm
Muslim terrorist attack in Afghanistan
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4909348.stm
Muslims strike in Pakistan over Muslim terrorist attack on Tuesday
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4909030.stm
Muslim Chad cuts diplomatic links with Muslim Sudan over terrorist attacks.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4909650.stm
Muslims attack Christians in Nigeria
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4909156.stm
Muslims kill Muslims in Iraq
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4909246.stm
Muslims attack Christians in Egypt with knives
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4909378.stm
US blacklists Muslim terrorist group
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4908958.stm
US blacklists another terrorist group
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4910860.stm
British soldiers hurt in Terrorist attack in Afghanistan
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4909054.stm
Police granted more time to interview Muslim on terrorist charges in Scotland
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4909242.stm
And the Beeb continues to tell me that ‘Islam’ is a religion of peace.
The top story in North America today concerns the threat made by Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who said, “Like it or not, the Zionist regime is heading toward annihilation… The Zionist regime is a rotten, dried tree that will be eliminated by one storm,”…
I found it interesting that the BBC News website made no mention of this as far as I could find.
I’ll wait a few hours to see if it pops up.
The Independent has it:
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article357808.ece
I had a feeling this is Islams last century.
With Imonajihads remarks I think islam might be put down much earlier.
Debris Trail,
The Independent’s qualifying phrase “Sermons are often used by leading regime figures as a platform for public statements, often accompanied by calls of “death to America”.”
Is on par with the BBC’s analysis of those “home made” Quassam rockets that “rarely cause caualties”.
See: http://www.haloscan.com/comments/patrickcrozier/114439939458782703/#224117
Is anyone watching News 24. They have become a mouthpiece for Hamas. They are letting their spokesmen get away with saying about how Israel is going to be wiped out etc etc no question. They let them moan that they are getting no aid from the West then threaten to annilhate Israel, and noone questions a word they say. They are glorifying Iran’s Nuclear program. And as for their attempt at Easter coverage earlier, Manchester Passion. Today has been one of their worst.
The only BBC programme that intereste me is 4.30pm Saturday Radio 4 on Maundy Gregory – a man convicted of selling peerages worth £150 million at modern prices for Lloyd George and who is responsible for murdering Victor Grayson, a Labour MP who threatened to expose him
16:30
The Man Who Sold Peerages
The years after the First World War saw the then Prime Minister David Lloyd George splitting from the main body of his Liberal Party and setting up a coalition with the Conservatives. He decided to pay for his new coalition party by raising money from the sale of political honours, establishing a brokerage system for titles.
At the centre of the system was Maundy Gregory,
Back on topic, is Stuart Derbyshire seriously saying that, for example, one could punch a newborn baby, moments old, and it wouldn’t feel any pain, because pain is a learnt response? What an absolute tosser. Doctors slap brand-newborn babies to get them to start crying, to get their lungs working.
Why is the BBC giving him so much prominence? I can guarantee that if Derbyshire had a theory that babies/foetuses/whatever could feel pain from the moment of conception, the BBC wouldn’t so much as consider giving him airtime.
Today programme grinding on about Iraq. Rumsfeld as main headline, Rumsfeld was the first item of What the Papers Say at 7.10 am – even though no paper has led on this story except the FT. The BBC is gunning for Bush on this – Rumsfeld is just the proxy. There are hundreds of generals in the Pentagon, what a handful of dissidents say is being blown out of all proportion.
A second main headline for the Today prog. is the Norman Kember interview. Who the hell cares about that pacifist, he is old news now ?
The BBC online news homepage has Kember as the main headline. It is just a rehash of what we already knew – so it is not NEWS – plus a second story splashing his propaganda statement.
There is a link to the old, now closed DHYS on Kember, which has been totally rigged to eliminate virtually all the recs against Kember and the leftie peaceniks, it now shows lots of praise for him among the top postings.
The BBC is totally out of step with public opinion on this. Most Brits regarded Kember as a misguided fool who caused danger to our troops and who should now return to obscurity. The BBC should not be spending a lot of resources on Kember and certainly should not be treating this as a top “news” story. It is clear that Keane failed to press him hard enough on his motivations for going to Iraq, his deep political antagonism.
Rumsfeld and Kimber as main “news” items = agenda-driven news. Where is the attention and analysis for the evil lunatic statement from the President of Iran ? Nowhere.
Another day, another BBC phobia.
Saturday 07.14 BBC News, discussion about buying fruit and veg out of season, which means importing food from abroad involving polluting transport. The gent being interviewed tries to remain calm, “If the consumer wants strawberry’s out of season the supermarket will stock them, responsible consumers won’t buy, sorry that’s an emotive phrase”
The male presenter
says
“Nevertheless this is a HUGE ISSUE”
(for the BBC and the other paranoids)
Expect to see “responsible consumerism” featuring predominately in BBC science.
Prodi quickly caught in row over remarks about Hamas
John Hooper in Rome
Friday April 14, 2006
The Guardian
Italy’s prime minister-in-waiting, Romano Prodi, yesterday stumbled into his first big row since winning this week’s general election when he was quoted as saying he would try to get the European Union to change its approach to Hamas.
Now we know why the BBC loves and adores this centre left politician in Italy.
The BBC is in a continuous panic about Iraq – it exaggerates the costs to the UK relative to other conflicts. Yes, the casualties are bad, but they are not enough to justify the BBC’s endless machinations and propaganda against the Coalition.
Maybe someone should remoind the BBC of the scale of casualties during the emergency in Malaya after the war. The idea that BBC commentators would be critical of that exercise is laughable. They would have been sacked – or rather, they had the decency to take the British side all through, not equivocate and grind on with an anti-troops agenda.
Part of terrorist strategy is to encourage those who ‘want to do something’ but don’t want to take up arms, to ‘get in the way’ of the opposing security forces.
Foolish admittedly and risky sometimes fatal, but still they volunteer. They are all volunteers.
The Italian Elections radio 4 0850.
and the presenter introduces a ‘liberal left’ politician for her views on the outcome, she points out along the way that she is ‘socialist left’ (some people just can’t take a BBC hint)
The absence of a spokesperson from the opposing party for their views is apparent.
Note to BBC: for balance do try better.
The BBC has left the impression that it is Berlusconi making the allegations, there are others who predicted such an outcome including
Pecoraro Scanio, the president of the Green Party, has pointed out this threat of election fraud and called on Italians to be prepared for such a controversy.
You would have thought that with credentials like the green party the BBC would be mooning all over them to give them some air time.
The Green Party here, teaming with the Communist tradition and as a minority party in the left coalition l’Unione, speaks of renewable energy, a jobs program built around the sustainable transformation of the peninsula, a respect for immigrant populations and diversity, an immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq, peace on earth, etc.
When the pressure is on you know who your friends are:
Hamas points donors to Cairo bank with French ties
14 Apr 2006 19:08:31 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Adam Entous
JERUSALEM, April 14 (Reuters) – Hamas, facing a funding crisis two weeks after taking over the Palestinian Authority, is asking supporters to deposit money into an Egyptian bank linked to one of France’s biggest financial institutions.
In a rare public appeal on its Web site, Hamas asked donors to wire money into an account at the Misr International Bank , which French bank Societe Generale gained control of last year.
Here is an offensive cartoon the BBC didn’t tell you about, it’s Tom and Gerry. It takes an Arab to explain it all:
“Zionist cartoon conspiracy”
Posted: 15-03-2006 , 07:31 GMT
Professor Hasan Bulkhari, a senior cultural adviser to Iran’s Education Ministry, recently stated that the animated series ‘Tom and Jerry’ was created as part of a Jewish conspiracy.
Bulkhari explained that the cartoon aimed at shifting the image of mice – often attributed to Jews by the Nazi regime – from a negative one to a more positive, friendly, intelligent one, according to Worldnetdaily.
“It should be noted that mice are very cunning … and dirty.”
“The Jewish Walt Disney Company gained international fame with this cartoon,” he said.
I’m surprised the BBC hasn’t pulled Tom and Jerry from it’s schedules.
http://www.albawaba.com/en/news/195490
Another day, another ludicrous environmental group with a scare headline lapped up by the BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4897252.stm
As for the whinging about importing food, does that mean that Liberals will be campaigning for the prevention of import of wine, coffee, houmous, organic yak’s milk from Khazakstan, all of the favourites of the wealthy left? This would wipe out the economy of Hampstead overnight – all of those delis and “health food” shops would collapse!
And is this ‘story’ about Norman “useful idiot” Kember REALLY justified as the main headline on the BBC site? He may be a Christian but the Beeboids manage to supress their repugnance because he is a gold mine of anti-American and anti-Western news copy.
The World Service in its introduction to its ‘World Briefing’ programme a few minutes ago, said something like this:
Norman Kember, in his first radio interview since being released in Iraq, said he was grateful to his rescuers. We discuss what else he had to say.
A few minutes later they broadcast a brief clip of Kember saying he thought his rescuers were vey brave but immediately qualifying it by saying he doesn’t agree with what they’re doing. Then he said it’s ironic that one goes to Iraq as a peace activist and then gets rescued by the SAS.
Kember and his ilk are beyond help.
Cherry on the top re Kember:
Right at the end of the clip, he’s quoted as saying that the SAS is one of the most violent units in the British Army.
Simon Heffer in The Telegraph
Rare outbreak of civilisation at the Beeb
Few things depress me more than the BBC’s obsessive desire to cater for minorities, which results in large tracts of its output being a no-go area for most civilised people – such as those with the wisdom and taste to read The Daily Telegraph. Three cheers, then, for the Controller of Radio 3, Roger Wright, who is heroically determined to cordon off one area of the corporation for the not insubstantial minority that includes us. Cancel whatever else you are doing on Monday and listen, from 8am, to 16 hours non-stop of the most towering achievement in the history of music, Wagner’s Ring Cycle. My colleague Frank Johnson has been trying to explain for some weeks in his column why it is so marvellous: but, in fact, all you need to do to understand its greatness is to listen.
Then, in a further defiance of BBC orthodoxy, Mr Wright is devoting St George’s Day, a week tomorrow, entirely to the music of our wonderful English composers. Why, it’s almost enough to make me demand an increase in the licence fee – until I accidentally switch on EastEnders, of course.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/04/15/do1501.xml&sSheet=/opinion/2006/04/15/ixopinion.html
Bryan,
I do like that, violent soldiers, whatever next? Perhaps kember would prefer the salvation army to go into battle with.
As I posted earlier – A Lurker – please note – kember and others are all volunteers. no one forced them to take the action they did, they did it voluntarily and of their own free will.
If they gave any thought to the risks involved, they either ignored them or discounted them. Perhaps kember was relying on a higher authority to protect him. It was wholly their choice and they and they alone are responsible for the consequences. Get yourself into trouble, get yourself out of trouble. It is the first rule of the emergency services, don’t make yourself a casualty trying to rescue others.
No government or security force can take responsibility for those who choose to act in a foolhardy fashion.
Controller of Radio 3, Roger Wright
Any willing to open a book on how long he will last?
Friends of radio 3 don’t appear so enamoured of the channel.
http://www.for3.org/pressquotes.html
A few quotes;
After four years of what controller Roger Wright calls ‘exciting new developments’ • BBC speak for stealthy dumbing-down • devotees of what the station used to stand for have turned themselves into the Friends of Radio 3
Once again the old assurance has gone, the fear of being called highbrow and elitist. In a recent conversation on air, the channel controller uttered the usual reductive defence; that no distinction of worth can automatically be made between pop music and Mozart.
When listening to the radio station that used to be the envy of the educated world, I keep it on so low I can’t hear the exchange of inanities, but can tell when the music begins. The dim talking to the dull • the hallmark of today’s BBC Radio 3 • makes me sweat with loathing.”
Judging by these comments Roger Wright is BBC personified.
highbrow and elitist – is that you?
Hmmmm, suppose this counts as an improvement for the BBC – they’ve left in the quote from the woman worshipper, but they still can’t bring themselves to say who exactly is behind these attacks (militant Buddhists would be my guess).
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4911346.stm
The BBC’s absurd “Britain now ‘eating the planet'” headline on its Bias Online front page this morning surely deserves some special award for rubbish journalism?
Is there no story concoctable by crazed, misanthropic eco-loonies that the BBC will not give prominence to?
This isn’t science – it’s politics.
That thing by your desk, Mr. sub-editor. It’s a wastepaper basket. Kindly learn to use it!
Kember was held for some time without getting head-hacked, proof of his loyalties. I dont think he should have been rescued, he should be forced to live in Iraq.
Sarge uncensored,
It seems that every time I click on the World Service today they’ve got Kember on. They just had a repeat of the interview with him on ‘World Briefing’. He got quite emotional and couldn’t talk for a while as he began to describe his rescue.
So why the equivocation and lack of real thanks to his rescuers?
And from your 15.04.06 – 9:29 am link:
Professor Hasan Bulkhari, a senior cultural adviser to Iran’s Education Ministry, recently stated that the animated series ‘Tom and Jerry’ was created as part of a Jewish conspiracy.
You can’t make this stuff up.
Absolutely with Dumbcisco et al on the extraordinary PR job the Today programme did for Norman Kember this morning and abuse of news bulletins to push their own interview, that avoided all the dangerous subjects – like the real nature of the Christian ‘Peacemaker’ Teams. Just try to imagine the coverage if it had been a Christian evangelist who supported Israel calling himself a ‘peacemaker’ and the scorn and demonisation that would have elicited.
And on topic I heard Humphrys interview with Dr Derbyshire with incredulity – that rare breakthrough moment when Humphrys exclaimed ‘but that’s nonsense isn’t it’ – was one to savour. Naturally of course it was briskly covered up. As for Dr Derbyshire – I’ve rarely heard quite such unalloyed rubbish passed off as ‘science’.
Oscar,
Quite so. I don’t know what Derbyshire is a doctor of, but if he can make the following comment, it can’t possibly be medicine:
Dr Derbyshire argued that babies did not feel pain until they were up to several months old.
He’s probably a doctor of social engineering …er…I mean sociology.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/healthnews.php?newsid=41608&nfid=rssfeeds
According to Stuart Derbyshire, Senior Psychologist at the University of Birmingham, UK, there is clear evidence that fetuses are unable to feel pain. He added that offering pain relief for the fetus during an abortion is unsound and not in the best interests of the woman as it may put her at unnecessary risk.
And they’re STILL going on about Norman Kember in the 1 o’clock news bulletin.