David Vance intends to tell the BBC a thing or two, to their faces:
‘I believe the License Fee should be scrapped forthwith and ALL subsidy to the BBC ended. The BBC must stand, or fall, on it’s own two financial feet. As far as I am concerned state broadcasting is anachronistic and totalitarian – time to end it.’
A merry thread ensued.
: BBC gives Greg Palast a presenter’s spot on its Latin America news section (should fit in nicely with Gavin Esler’s approach eh?).
Perhaps you know little about Mr Palast, but we at B-BBC remember him.
He’s the man who exulted in Ronald Reagan’s death.
Produces extreme Bush lied theories.
Maintained that that Kerry won in 2004
And now the BBC have given him the task of reporting Hugo Chavez and his ilk. Surprisingly enough, some aren’t happy about that :
‘But Chavez’s sycophants the world over should fear not, for the BBC has come to ‘set the record straight’…’
I sense a little sarcasm in this statement somehow. The last link compares Channel Four News with the BBC’s coverage of Venezuela, and guess which is the more balanced? Just guess.
Adloyada points out the imbalance in this articleby Alan Johnston- a cover up for convicted murderers which includes some apparent far-left plagiarism. One judges people by their friends, sometimes.
… 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).
It had to be concerning the misrepresention of the UN’s position, didn’t it? Nothing else could rouse the BBC Governors and the panel they appointed to investigate matters.
According to the EJP report here, a BBC report published late last year, ‘suggested the UN called for Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from territories seized during the six-day war when in fact it called for a negotiated “land for peace” settlement between Israel and “every state in the area”.’
The Beeb was criticised over it by their Governors, and had to amend their report on complaints because they omitted it from the original (not exactly user-friendly, is it?). B-BBC commenter Ritter noticed this: ‘Whoops, the BBC ‘mistakenly omitted’ to include this judication from the Complaints to the Govenors that found against the BBC in its portrayal of Israel. Funny that eh?’
The EJP source linked first above suggests that a special report into BBC bias on this subject is going to be released soon, with this instance as a key example of BBC bias- specifically online bias.
We await with interest; but it seems that here we have an archetypal instance of BBC bias which supports many of the points made on this site on a regular basis.
***
Thanks ever so much to Will, whose memory has proved invaluable in updating and improving this post- there were things I had got confused in the original, though the basic thrust was ok- and to Ritter, naturally. You can see from my comments to Will in the comments section that I was a bit adrift. The main reference of the bias is to misrepresentation of UN Resolution 242- foundational to the diplomatic process in the Middle East. It’s all quite complex (report into report, followed by amended reports and a following report- following me still?) and I hope even now I haven’t got anything muddled up. It’s late now and I’ve had quite a long day (violins, please). Anyway, I know I can rely on the commentariat to point out where I am wrong :-). (Thx to ATWfor the EJP link.)
. Gavin Esler has the scoop!
There is trouble ahead for Uncle Sam in his own backyard. Big trouble.
It is one of the most important and yet largely untold stories of our world in 2006. George W Bush has lost Latin America.
Fortunately Mr Esler has found it down the back of his sofa. He dropped it there in the 1980s while having a little cry after the Sandinistas lost an election. And elections are the point here – as “Dumcisco” observes,
“Gavin Esler’s view that Nicaragua sums up what has been wrong with US policy for 20 years is simply ridiculous. What has happened is that democracy has replaced dictatorships”
What Mr Esler appears to mean by George Bush “losing” Latin America seems to be that, the US having in his administration consciously dropped the more “realist” traditional American policy that might be summed up by Roosevelt’s words, “Somoza may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch”, some elections are giving results that cause George Bush distress. Well, that’s democracy for you. There is considerable evidence, starting with his own words, that Dubya is rather a fan of democracy. Amazing as it may sound, it may even be the case that he he has noticed that sometimes the party you don’t like wins, and yet remains a fan anyway.
Concerning the same BBC article, Will found and commented on a nice little example of BBC terminology concerning the Peruvian left-wing presidential candidate, Mr Humala:
The presidential frontrunner is Ollanta Humala, a retired army commander who led a failed military uprising in October 2000 and who is now ahead in the opinion polls.
Will asks,
Would that be a coup if carried out by nasty right wing military types?
Many of the comments on Mr Esler’s post are similar to those made by Alvaro Ruiz-Navajas, the author of this post on Off Topic (a blog dealing with Latin American affairs). He writes:
The BBC on Latin America: Peru and Venezuela
Yesterday, the BBC started a series of reports about what they call “one of the world’s most under-reported big stories”. They are referring to Latin Ameica’s shift to the left. Yesterday’s report was about the forthcoming Peruvian elections -read Ollanta Humala- and Chavez. You can see the report here (about 1hr. long).However, I must say I was dissapointed with the report. The report’s hypothesis is very simplistic: the root of the current political situation in Latin America is the US’s war on terrorism. Because of the war on terrorism, the US has neglected its backyard and is about to lose it. The report goes on to say that the US has undermined more than 40 Latin American governments and, basically, is the cause of widespread poverty in the region.
And
Also, besides Puerto Rico, all countries in the region are independent, which means that their success or failure does not depend on the US. So, the current situation cannot be fully attributed to what the US does or does not do. The root of Latin America’s political situation -to the extent things can be generalized- lies in the countries themselves. Widespread corruption, weak institutions, decades of interventionist and populist dictatorships/governments and lack of incentives to private investment did the trick.
Ironically, one of the effects of Esler’s blather about George W Bush having “lost” Latin America is to give the impression that Esler thinks Latin America was Bush’s to lose. Bush himself doesn’t seem to think so. Let us hope Elser catches up.
First, an apology for absence. Some work took rather longer than I had anticipated and I had to drop the blogging for the week. Here are some emails and posts that caught my eye.
The Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas, clearly suspects that genuine negotiations may not be on the Israeli agenda.
I call this technique Bias by Assumed Telepathy.
Of Hamas, the article says,
It considers not only the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza as occupied Palestinian territory – but the whole of Israel too.
Nearly there, BBC, and congrats for bringing yourselves to say that much. In fact if one goes to the Hamas Charter you can learn about the aims of Hamas as described by Hamas:
Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.
I think it’s safe to presume that the leader of Hamas, Khaled Meshaal, subscribes to the Charter of his own organisation, belief in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and all. The BBC as usual did not see fit to mention this fundamental context when it quoted Mr Meshaal as saying that:
“The Zionist position,” he said, “be it that of Kadima or others, is one that buries the peace process, negates its existence and does not give it a chance.”
Incidentally, the linking headline for this story was “From Bad to Worse.”
BBC Newsround is biased and patronising and non-inclusive, particularly about lgbt issues and homophobia. For over two years I’ve made suggestions to try to get them to improve it, without any success so far.
I expect there are a range of opinions among both commenters and B-BBC posters on how or whether Newsround should treat these issues, but that variety of opinion is no obstacle to my adding Newsround to our links on the sidebar to the right.
The last few days in Denmark have been a bit of a media feeding frenzy regarding comments by one of the Danish imams who went on the tour of the middle east to whip up the cartoon furore. Caught on a secret camera suggesting bombing a moderate muslim politician who has formed a group of moderate muslims to distance themselves from the rabid imams and their followers, the imam first denied doing it then said it was a joke (having seen it on tv there’s a small smile on his face but no laughter and no criticism from any others).
You can read more on it here: Agora
Suffice it to say the BBC have totally ignored the story.
Since that email was written, the story has had a line or two from the BBC, here. A line or two. And the story was mentioned as having been covered by the Danish press in this European Press review.
. They don’t stop, do they?
‘In the latest in our series about the role of the state in encouraging couples to have more children’…
Thus runs the intro to the Beeb’s latest in a blatantly calculated series about birth rates.
‘Now then, none of that Mark Steyn hysteria about the emptiness of modern western wombs’, says Auntie firmly- just as firmly as she ignores the actual news which instances just how skewed the typical state approach to birth really is.
Forget for a moment that the Beeb’s barely tempered optimism neglects the fact that, at 10.2 births per thousand, the Russian birth rate is below the UK’s, at 10.8, which in turn is below replacement rate.
When will the BBC acknowledge that in fact the highest birth rates are occurring in places where the government has no need to interfere to raise them: eg. Yemen, Egypt or Saudi Arabia?
I also notice the little things from this article, such as the statement that ‘From 8.7 births per 1,000 people in 2000, it has gone to 10.4 in 2004, state statistics show.’
Er, no need for the past tense then, I suppose (later in the article the writer acknowledges that the 2005 figure is lower, but this would blunt his story somewhat).
But of course what really grates is both the political assumptions behind this story (the state knows best), and the ‘set up’ quality of it, when one can find ample evidence in real news stories about economic and political events which demonstrates that in fact it is the western state apparatus above all that is killing birth rates through illiberal and ideological (especially economically moribund) policy. (see this article for instance. It’s quite simple: ‘the welfare state is an enormously costly luxury that has to be financed from taxes. High payroll-tax and social security contributions reduce the earning capacity of people in fertile age.’)
But, er, I bet we won’t be hearing that on the BBC- and it’s vital that we should.
Update: 7.50 02/04. This is a worthy addition to the above, thanks to Rick in the comments. I noticed the spin the link refers to about ‘le baby boom’ a couple of days ago, which in a way sparked my thoughts towards the current post. However, when the only issue involved is the proportion of muslim babies in the figures, I’m reluctant to focus on that alone; + I’m a nervous number cruncher :-).
Update to the update: well (on closer examination), a good point was made by the link, but it was made badly. But still, a good point is a good point.
