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.
Oh, and I BTW recommend you check out this great post from BBC Eye.
I haven’t seen any mention of this here on B-BBC
‘Technical Issues’ Kill BBC Balance
A decent article from Paul Reynolds who is pretty consistent. Sadly he is very much a minority in a BBC dominated by moonbats full of anti-US bile like Matt Frei & Justin Webb.
‘War on terror’ loses clear direction
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/5319522.stm
I think a fair and reasonable assessment of where we are.
s.h. writes:
“…both educating
a certain world view they feel we just
dont hear enough about.what ever happend to being entertained.”
This is a very important point and one rather neglected. The BBC’s propaganda is by no means restricted to the underlying assumptions and displays of outright bias in its news and current affairs coverage.
In large portions of its ‘entertainment’ output, the liberal-left mindset is also busily at work. A week’s worth of Radio 4’s afternoon plays usually contains a consistent stream of background Leftist radiation.
Much the same is true of the ‘values’ portrayed in its TV output.
I sometimes wonder if this isn’t actually even more damaging than its slanted news. There is a hefty percentage of the voting population that has a distaste for news output, so they get their dose of institutional Leftism through drama and other non-news material.
Incidentally, regarding Reith’s condescending remarks about Pounce being a ‘gobby NCO’, I have rarely seen a nastier, more snobbish display on these pages.
Still, it as good to see that the class warriors at the BBC are only pretending they believe in an equal society.
After all, you BBC types are so superior to mere NCOs, aren’t you?
Pounce,
Were you a gobby NCO of the sapper kind?
I know, I was!
Is there any other type of NCO?
“FIRING NOW”
GCooper | 08.09.06 – 6:36 pm
This reminds me of “Cathy Come Home” all those years ago. Legend has it that it was a searing exposure of how society neglects the poor.
I’m proud to say that I thought it was a story about someone who desrved all she got from having too many kids and a worthless husband.
My point is that what the left intends as examples of the drawbacks of capitalism may in fact be useful lessons in how to live life properly. If the lefties ever cotton on to this I bet they will be fuming.
Jon:
“This may be a stupid question but why does the BBC actually appease Islamic terrorism? I can guess why the likes of George Galloway does as he is a . But surely what can the BBC actually get out of this appeasement?”
George is not a megalomaniac. Her is a very smart arse staking on muslims conquering the world. The BBC is stuffed with the muslim convert fifth column who know that they can do whatever they like. And what about the people. Stuff them, they say
John Reith, we all remember you defending the abmulance bombing hoax. Please please you know our opinion of you by now, just do the right thing
>>”Were you a gobby NCO of the sapper kind?”
I’m sure Tiny Bott and Ozzie Peters thought so. But not as gobby as Sootie Setrem (Sooty of burning down the bar in Hamelin fame) which is just down the road from Hidesheim and Hannover.(Good night out at the latter)
Disco ducks anybody?
Interesting story on Look North tonight from Leeds.
A woman has been held prisoner for two years – she was forced to do housework and at one point had to do this housework naked in front of some children.
Strange how this story did not make the national news. Maybe if it had happened somewhere important – like Austria or London it would be on national news.
testing 1,2,3,….
While not a gripe at the BBC.
I noticed this while reading through a BBC article about asylum seekers;
“At the city’s All Saints Secondary school nearly a tenth of the students are asylum seekers and according to those who work at the school it makes it a “richer” place in which to study.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/5328758.stm
And I found myself asking is that the answer given to the media just to get an easy life?
I mean what would happen to somebody if they replied;
“No, I don’t like bloody asylum seekers and they make school a much harder place to study”
The reason I mention that is a few years ago we went out shopping and came across an old fashioned toy shop and I asked how much the Blackboard was .The lady who ran the shop said “The chalkboard sir” to which I replied “No the Blackboard” the lady refused to repeat my words and asked if I was from the council trying to catch her out and thus result her in losing her licence. (You need a licence to own a toy shop?) The lady was terrified that I was there just to try and catch her out. So going back to the above quote. Is that the answer given to the media simply to keep them happy?
Trying to post this post that I’d copied and then pasted into the comment box. (Keep on getting “This page cannt be displayed”):
John Reith | 08.09.06 – 3:18 pm, re pounce | 08.09.06 – 1:43 pm:
Reith’s altercation with pounce was quite revealing of Reith’s style. After his completely unnecessary and snotty and superior insult was met by pounce’s reasoned response, Reith ignores the response and goes on to pick apart pounce’s 1:43 pm post:
So, once again you accuse the BBC of having a sinister agenda, when all they are doing is following best practice as laid down by the courts.
If it really is just following court practice, then happily for the BBC its sinister agenda simply coincided with court practice in this instance. John Reith can’t seriously expect anyone to believe that BBC ‘journalists’ are not dhimmies. Worse, they actively set out to mislead the public about the nature of Islamic terror.
After advertising several times a day for at least a week on the World Service that they have a wonderful new series on 9/11 coming up, they pushed the line in the very first episode, broadcast yesterday, about Islam being a peaceful religion. And naturally they get a Muslim woman who’d escaped the scene to be the very first to push this propaganda through her 9/11 experience.
The same woman with the same story also features in an article on the BBC site. I think it was archduke who mentioned that article.
They are laying it on really thick and it’s typical BBC. Muslims as victims, never aggressors. How many people do they really think are still buying this crap?
9/11 victims were “Muslims, Christians and Jews,” the World Service reassures us. How comforting to know we are all in it together. Now there is no need to point a finger at Islam, the BBC would have us believe, as Islamic terrorists and imams and ‘ordinary’ Muslims steadily work their insidious programme to drag us all down into darkness.
pounce,
re: the asylum seekers at the school. I wonder if 10 percent of the pupils really are asylum seekers – or is it their parents ?
And the “richness” bit – a more questioning journo would ask some very simple questions – such as “OK – give me one example of how it makes the school a richer place”. This would put the interviewee on the spot – does he/she really think the school is richer – in which case he/she would have many examples – or is it just some kind of party line that is just being parroted.
Jon:
This may be a stupid question but why does the BBC actually appease Islamic terrorism? …
Hard to say why. Many, many people have noticed that the BBC has some kind of fetish about islam.
Its probably a mixture of things – all cooked up in the group-think atmosphere prevalent within the BBC ranks.
Being muslim is very PC right now – they are definitely top of the tree of PC victim status – this allows them to be misogynistic and homophobic and racist without any criticism.
Also many muslims are brown-skinned as well – this makes them “most righteous people” in the BBC worldview.
And do not forget the tendency among many well-meaning BBC types to report the world as it should be, rather than the real world that we actually have.
.
You could be right Jack – and maybe it is the same as the reason given by pounce for the shopkeeper thinking she may get caught out by the thought police for using the word “blackboard”. This is a cultural thing – similar to the “Shop a Smoker” syndrome.
I have often heard people say things that are very PC – but have often thought do they actually believe what they are saying or is it because they want to look good in the eyes of their peers.? Or could it be more sinister than that e.g. due to exremely effective “Diversity Training”. One good thing though is that this kind of brainwashing does not last e.g. the USSR
Here we go again – Newsnight is sitting at the feet of Al Gore: mouth open, eyes wide, brain empty.
Has Newsnight ever run anything sceptical about ‘Green’ politics?
Who is the guilty editor? And who pays his/her salary – the BBC or Greenpeace?
The BBC: Green propaganda – this is what we do.
Apologies to Jack Hughes and GCooper but I wrote this before their contribution. In many ways we may be saying the same things in different language.
This may be a stupid question but why does the BBC actually appease Islamic terrorism? I hope the thread is still alive. This may be the most important question and I don’t think the answers Jon received really provide an answer.
Because they are left wing nutters that HATE Bush…….and an enemy of my enemy is my friend… is just circular reasoning. Why do left wing nutters find the BBC so comfortable? Wasn’t the BBC appeasing Islam before Bush and won’t they continue appeasing after him?
Then try to think when you last heard even a vaguely pro-capitalist, pro-western, pro-American (forget pro-Israel!) reporter / commentator / analyst on any BBC prog. This seems to restate the question rather than answer it. Essentially all this is saying is the BBC is biased because they are biased.
So here is my tuppence worth (two bits, two pence, whatever). Bias in the BBC comes from a combination of factors rather than one over riding reason.
1) Most journalists are instinctively leftist and the modern fragmentation of the ‘Left’ particularly encourages BBC biases. Far from being monolithic today’s left is desperately trying to find a reason to unite the factions. What really do Green-Left, Third Worlders, Socialists and Marxists really have in common? It is anti Israel/anti American rhetoric that more and more seems to be the glue holding them together (“At least we can agree with that”).
2) Postmodernism, however it is defined ,has become the staple of university Humanities courses from where most journalists are recruited. Two ideologies in this stream have dominated; one can be paraphrased as there are no absolute truth only points of view the other that Eurocentralism is responsible for hostility to the East rather than hard evidence or logic. I hope that the academics will take this discussion off on a tangent because I am over simplifying deliberatelyhere.
3) Add to this mix an aggressive proselytizing Islam with an increasing population in Europe and the U.K. and literally millions of pounds to spend in influencing governments, universities and the media. As always Bat Ye’or’s book ‘Eurabia’ is compulsory reading here.
4) Finally include a BBC corporate culture with more in common to a club than a business backed by a financing system that allows it to ignore market forces while simultaneously defining itself as culturally and intellectually superior to the market.
In short, Leftist searching for unity; postmodernism in academia, Islamic expansion backed by oil money and a corporate culture that ignores the market combine.
It isn’t hard to see these factors leading the BBC to appease (and encourage Islam).
This may be a stupid question but why does the BBC actually appease Islamic terrorism? I hope the thread is still alive. This may be the most important question and I don’t think the answers Jon received really provide an answer.
Because they are left wing nutters that HATE Bush…….and an enemy of my enemy is my friend… is just circular reasoning. Why do left wing nutters find the BBC so comfortable? Wasn’t the BBC appeasing Islam before Bush and won’t they continue appeasing after him?
Then try to think when you last heard even a vaguely pro-capitalist, pro-western, pro-American (forget pro-Israel!) reporter / commentator / analyst on any BBC prog. This seems to restate the question rather than answer it. Essentially all this is saying is the BBC is biased because they are biased.
So here is my tuppence worth (two bits, two pence, whatever). Bias in the BBC comes from a combination of factors rather than one over riding reason.
1) Most journalists are instinctively leftist but the modern fragmentation of the ‘Left’ encourages particular BBC biases. Far from being monolithic today’s left is desparately trying to find a reason to unite the factions. What really do Green-Left, Third Worldists, Socialists and Marxists really have in common? Anti-Israel/anti-American rhetoric seems more and more the glue holding the left together (“At least we can agree with that”).
2) Variations on French philosophers especially Barthes, Foucault
oops – hit publish twice SORRY
Being muslim is very PC right now – they are definitely top of the tree of PC victim status – this allows them to be misogynistic and homophobic and racist without any criticism.
Jack Hughes | 08.09.06 – 10:20 pm
Indeed, that sounds like a plan… 😆
It’s a little too late in the day to get into an an analysis of deegee’s post, so all I can do is commend it.
I might nit-pick here and there (for example, I do not believe most journalists are Leftist – I think they are, by inclination, sceptical of orthodoxies – which has translated into Leftism in the UK while, for example, journalists’ views might be quite different in post-Marxist Eastern Europe), none the less, I think he is very substantially correct in what he says.
I have no doubt, for example, that the post-modernist claptrap taught in place of education at most of our universities’ arts faculties is responsible for a lot of the current nonsense from the BBC.
A good post. It deserves framing.
The problem with journalism is that, these days, it’s seen as an academic subject and taught in universities. All the BBC journos, with the exception of the elders, did journalism studies and some sort of media studies degree. It used to be a vocational occupation, with on-the-job training rather than several years spent listening to someone who wasn’t good enough to write copy telling you how to find stories. Or, in reality, telling you how there’s no such thing as right and wrong…
archonix isn’t wrong. The elevation of journalism from trade to profession has been its downfall.
It has let the academics inject a fatal dose of post-modernism into what was, once, quite a simple trade: you got a true story and published it.
Once you hack away at the concept of truth, nothing makes any sense.
Paging James Naughtie…
Degree thanks for that – this does seem to be the case, but following on from that can this appeasment last?
Someone said in this blog (I forgot who) that Churchill saw Stalin as a friend because he too apposed Hitler. But was this not just a short “friendship” as he was the first to recognise the evils of Communism ie “an iron curtain has fallen …”
Getting back to the point – is it not feasable to suppose that someday something very violent and terrible will happen that even the leftists will see that they have made a most terrible mistake. There are some left wingers who have come to their “senses” e.g. Peter Hitchens comes to mind and those who support the Euston Manifesto.
That the BBC is full of the liberal elite is true, but I honestly cannot see that not one of the thousands of journalists can possibly all hold the same world view. Although they only seem to express their distaste after they have left the organisation with a few exceptions.
I am not a pessimist as I believe that one day someone within the BBC will see what they have done to this country and its people.
Here is a misleading headline
“Dead Afghanistan soldier is named ”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/5329410.stm
Should this not be
“Dead British soldier is named “
Actually John Sipmson the phrase “Can they really be anti-Israeli because they are supported by George Bush ”
was supposed to mean that Isreal is supported by George Bush not the BBC.
That the BBC is full of the liberal elite is true, but I honestly cannot see that not one of the thousands of journalists can possibly all hold the same world view. Although they only seem to express their distaste after they have left the organisation with a few exceptions.
I am not a pessimist as I believe that one day someone within the BBC will see what they have done to this country and its people.
Jon | 09.09.06 – 1:47 am
No-one will speak up and put their job at risk – no-one will bell the cat.
No-one will keep their head down for 20 years, rise to the top of the beeb without getting found out and then fix it from the inside.
I think the beeb has to be demolished from the outside and it’s people like us who will achieve this (eventually).
A possibility is that the Conservative Party will regrow its balls and privatise the Corporation.
gordon-bennettThis reminds me of “Cathy Come Home” all those years ago. Legend has it that it was a searing exposure of how society neglects the poor.
You know it so happens that many cultural offerings by the left end up as sort of “right-wing” things. Take the film “High Noon” for example. It was supposedly a “protest” against anti-Communist “witchunts” in the 50s. In the 80s the poster for High Noon and the main character, played by Gary Cooper, were used as rousing symbols of the very anti-Communist Solidarity Movement in Poland. Go figure.
.
Can the West defeat the Islamist threat? Here are ten reasons why not
David Selbourne
LET US SUPPOSE, for the sake of argument, that the war declared by al-Qaeda and other Islamists is under way. Let us further suppose that thousands of “terrorist” attacks carried out in Islam’s name during the past decades form part of this war; and that conflicts that have spread to 50 countries and more, taking the lives of millions — including in inter-Muslim blood-shedding — are the outcome of what Osama bin Laden has called “conducting jihad for the sake of Allah”.
If such war is under way, there are ten good reasons why, as things stand, Islam will not be defeated in it.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-6-2349195-6,00.html
.
It boils down to a struggle between good and evil. We’ve got good on our side. To believe that evil will prevail is basically to give in to despair. With such a philosophy there is no point in carrying on.
I believe that more and more people will come to their senses worldwide and recognise the evil of Islam, and that good will prevail.
Michael Rosen has freelanced for the BBC in its drama, children’s and schools departments, on and off since 1969. He is an electoral candidate for the RESPECT party and an admirer of George Galloway although you will be hard put to find any mention of this on his own website. But, as he points out, his site is read by children, who obviously do not need to know this.
The BBC’s unofficial poet-in-residence, pundit on poetry and language and especially on children’s books, which he writes, does not mention politics on air or talk in overtly political terms, so his listeners would not necessarily leap to the conclusion that his politics are those of the former Socialist Workers Party, now known as RESPECT.
He was recently interviewed on Desert Island Discs. His eight recordings were an index of diverse and multicultural rectitude. RESPECT was not mentioned. Michael Rosen does not mention his party-political activities in any biographies on his publishers’ websites, merely that his parents were socialists.
Bryan,
I disagree.
Good need not prevail as of right.
To believe that is to believe in the same sort of narrative as the BBC- only the viewpoint is changed.
It is a form of arrogance that may be our downfall.
Until we recognise that we can lose this battle for civilisation, we cannot harness the will of the Western democracies.
In WW2 Churchill considered and planned for the possibility that these islands might fall to Nazi Germany. The Army would fight on for as long as it could, then resort to guerrilla warfare, the Navy would sail to America and other parts of the Empire, the Royal Family would go to Canada.
This was not defeatism but an acknowledgement of possibilities.
http://newcultureforum.blogspot.com/
from conservative home.
ROBIN AITKEN
on
BIAS AND THE BBC
Monday, 11th September, 6.30 for 7pmThe Institute of Commonwealth Studies, 28 Russell Square, London WC1
http://drinkingfromhome.blogspot.com/2006/09/bbc-half-story.html#links
paulc,
I said I believe that good will prevail – not that I thought it was a foregone conclusion. Naturally we have to be vigilant, and part of that vigilance is to oppose the BBC as they cuddle up to our enemies.
a series on what the bbc has done to great britain.
1 put out hysterical programmes on nuclear power that resulted in no new power stations being built for how long?40 years?
panorama is the main culprit
bbc sins continued
2 encouraged multculturalism.the result is higher crime rates and colonies of people quite alien to the land.they will never integrate.
i make an honourable exception of the hindu community in the uk.the indian people are a credit to the nation.
bbc sins continued
3 copied the cultural revolution from china.we are not allowed to criticise immigration.we would get an earful on racism etc.we are not allowed to say that blacks cause crime in the uk out of all proportion to their numbers.
bbc crimes against the nation
4 the newspapers may not identify the race of a criminal.
bbc crimes against the nation
5 we may not say that some peoples are cleverer then others.the concept of psychometrics and iq is scorned.
psychometrics is in fact mainstream science.
i do support the bbc in its employment of minorities.it is the only way forward now that the situation is the way it is.
bbc crimes against the nation
6 the bbc has warned off officials who might choose to be whistleblowers.
policemen immigration officials nuclear power advocates have been told to shut up or be hounded from their jobs.
who has not watched bbc intimidation on question time with awe.they knew and still know what they are doing.
why is the bbc allowewd to employ like minded individuals only?those who do not feel quite the same way soon understand which way the wind blows.
pounce:
The BBC really scrapes the barrel with this story;
Pounce, Tthat reminds me of one of their slideshows of Katrina refugees las year which depicted a family with an obviously Arab Muslim name as one of the refugee families. I thought then how odd it was: NOLA is a town that was approximately 65 percent black Christians and 35 percent white Christians before the flood. But they had to be sure to find the one Arab Muslim family in the whole town to depict as victims.
Johnny one-note Beeb and their idee fixe on the “M” word, so amusing, so predictable.
bryan:
I stand corrected.
🙂
“Town on edge
Muslim residents of Malegaon seething after mosque attack” reads the headline on the “News” homepage.
The article itself is titled
Indian town seething with anger
The last few paragraphs are revealing:
“…Mohammed Irfan, a member of a large crowd around me, answered:
“If a needle is pierced in any part of your body the whole body hurts, doesn’t it? The Muslims all over the world are like a human body.”
But does it hurt to see no Muslim country came out to condemn the latest attacks on them?
“It’s their problem. We do our duty… It’s an obligation by Islam to support Muslims and we do our Islamic duty.”
And perhaps this is the mindset that worries the establishment the most.”
But it doesn’t worry Al Beeb!
Nothing worries Al Beeb….except the fact that they are losing viewers at the rate of over 1 million a year…….
The BBC is obsolete…….lol. People are turning off and away…..and that scares the SIT out of them…..
They need to face facts, the only reason they survive is by threataning to imprison no payers of the TV Tax for 6 MONTHS……..
The BBC survives by taking from the poor, to give to the Rich…..by FORCE and Human Righhts Abuse if need be……
They are vile, sick, repugnant…and as such, the perfect partners for Fascist Islam…..
🙂
paulc,
No problem.