Monthly Archives: July 2006

Anonymous asked,

“So which party was the defendant in this case…

Ex-council chief ‘abused boy, 13’

… a member of?”

“Socialism is Necrotizing” responded,

“anonymous, they sure didn`t forget to mention the party affiliation in these cases:

Councillor jailed for sex abuse

Council leader resigns

Sex crime councillor is expelled

Councillor jailed for indecent assault

Ex-Tory official jailed for rape

Tory mayor arrested over sex claim

BBC protecting its beloved Labour Party………Nah!”

Here’s another, found by me. To be fair, this article about the same case didn’t mention that the guy was a Conservative. I remember hearing about this one on the radio and thinking, oh he’ll be Labour or Lib Dem since they didn’t mention a party and being quite surprised that he was actually a Tory. I think a memo went round. My impression is that the tendency of the BBC to mention the party if a politician who goes off the rails is right wing and not mention it if left wing has diminished.

“The tendency has diminished”: what very faint praise that is.

UPDATE: Commenter “PJF” has told me that since a reasonable challenge has been mounted in the comments, I have to flag it up. Quite so. The BBC’s “John Reith” and an anonymous commenter have posted and discussed counter-examples. Let battle be joined.

Please use this thread for off-topic, but preferably BBC related, comments. Please keep comments on other threads to the topic at hand. N.B. this is not an invitation for general off-topic comments – our aim is to maintain order and clarity on the topic-specific threads. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog. Please scroll down to find new topic-specific posts.

when it receives loans from the European Investment Bank?” asks EU Referendum. The post goes on to say that according to its own website the EIB is “an autonomous body set up to finance capital investment furthering European integration by promoting EU policies”

• “Now, we feel like a child who’s been told that Santa Claus does not exist …” Eamonn Fitzgerald’s Rainy Day posts about seeing all reference to an error and the writer’s correction of it disappear from the BBC website.

  That this happens will be no surprise to most of our readers – but of course it is a surprise to millions of people who have grown up thinking better of the BBC.

  Note to BBC: Corrections are good. But at least say that something has been corrected. At the very least alter the “last edited” field to avoid telling an untruth. No, on second thoughts, that isn’t the very least. At the very least do not hide evidence that a correction was necessary.

  Better yet would be to take on my colleague Andrew’s excellent suggestion. If Wikipedia can do it, why not the BBC?

• Hat tip to “field.size” who linked to this glimpse through the looking glass.
• Talking of which, we briefly had a “Watch” site, Biased Biased BBC.
• Micheal Gove writes in the Times: BBC bigwigs can’t eat their cake and have it.
• A few days ago someone posted a comment including a list of links to BBC coverage of political, usually local government, misconduct. The point was that if the misdeeds are done by Conservatives the party tends to be mentioned, but if not, not. Somebody find me that comment and I’ll put a link to it in this space. (ADDED 13/9: Found. Scroll up for a post called “Forgetting to mention the party.”)

UPDATE: There is room for debate as to which corrections are significant enough to be announced. I don’t think anyone should expect the BBC to notify the world when a superfluous comma is deleted. This blog certainly doesn’t! A good rule of thumb for deciding which errors merit a public correction might be: if it hurts, do it.

Please use this thread for off-topic, but preferably BBC related, comments. Please keep comments on other threads to the topic at hand. N.B. this is not an invitation for general off-topic comments – our aim is to maintain order and clarity on the topic-specific threads. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog. Please scroll down to find new topic-specific posts.

Meant to post this earlier. Squander Two fisks this BBC story about how North Korea is feeling “under pressure and ignored.”

BBC words in italics, S2 in ordinary type.

The BBC’s Charles Scanlon in Seoul says the North has been feeling under pressure and ignored in recent months, with the US refusing to negotiate on its demands over its nuclear plans.

Its nuclear plans, as eny fule no, involve threatening other states with nuclear missiles in order to extort and probably invade them. Which bit should the US negotiate over, do you think?

Long-running talks over North Korea’s nuclear capabilities have stalled, with six-party negotiations on the issue being repeatedly postponed as neither Washington nor Pyongyang are prepared to give ground.

I love the implied equivalence there. “We want to nuke people!” “We’d rather you didn’t.” Both parties are simply refusing to give ground.

Please use this thread for off-topic, but preferably BBC related, comments. Please keep comments on other threads to the topic at hand. N.B. this is not an invitation for general off-topic comments – our aim is to maintain order and clarity on the topic-specific threads. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog. Please scroll down to find new topic-specific posts.

That was the headline on today’s Ceefax page 111 and also on this BBC story on the webpage. Did it get your attention? It got mine. Here’s what the story actually says:

The man thought to be the 7 July bombings mastermind tried to recruit young Muslims with two other suicide bombers, a BBC documentary says.

Edgware Road bomber Mohammad Sidique Khan reportedly knew suicide bombers Omar Sharif and Asif Hanif, who blew up an Israeli bar in April 2003.

They weren’t Israelis. They murdered Israelis.

UPDATE: Whaddya know. It’s been stealth edited to “7/7 bomber linked to Israel pair.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: In fact the current headline is still funny. “Israel pair” Supremely uninformative, and still easily misunderstood to mean that they were Israelis rather than the killers of Israelis. The BBC has plenty of headlines longer than that: “7/7 bomber linked to bombers of Israeli club” would still have fitted into the space available.

Today’s anniversary of the 7/7 bombings poses the BBC an interesting challenge – to provide wall-to-wall coverage without mentioning the “I-word” or the “M-word”.

No one wants to hold an entire community responsible for the sins of an extreme minority. The reponsibility for 7/7 lies with the evil-doers who planned and executed it. But given that the bombings were explicitly carried out in the name of Islam, not to mention the fact seems perverse.

The Today programme devoted most of the half-hour between 7 and 7.30 to the anniversary. As Sarah Montague so perceptively pointed out, today is the day when “four British men blew themselves up” (an Englishman, a Scotsman, an Irishman and a Welshman ?), but it was 7.23 before the M- or I-words were mentioned – when Church of England Bishop Tony Robinson told us that the bombers ‘weren’t Muslims at all’ !

It remains to be seen how the rest of the day’s coverage will pan out – but the Today programme does like to think that it sets the agenda.

Please use this thread for off-topic, but preferably BBC related, comments. Please keep comments on other threads to the topic at hand. N.B. this is not an invitation for general off-topic comments – our aim is to maintain order and clarity on the topic-specific threads. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog. Please scroll down to find new topic-specific posts.