Andrew Ian Dodge writes about the latest episode of Spooks.
Guess who are the bad guys now? Yeah you guessed it…the Israelis. Not even a rogue element, but proper Israeli agents trying to stop a nuclear power deal with Saudi.
The sheer amazing astoundingness of this shock ending leaves me amazed and astounded.
Jonz and Archduke also flagged this up.
A critical and secret internal BBC report on its perceived anti-Israel bias is the subject of a Freedom of Information court battle, according to The Telegraph:
BBC mounts court fight to keep ‘critical’ report secretBy Chris Hastings and Beth Jones
(Filed: 15/10/2006)The BBC has spent thousands of pounds of licence payers’ money trying to block the release of a report which is believed to be highly critical of its Middle East coverage.
The corporation is mounting a landmark High Court action to prevent the release of The Balen Report under the Freedom of Information Act, despite the fact that BBC reporters often use the Act to pursue their journalism.
The action will increase suspicions that the report, which is believed to run to 20,000 words, includes evidence of anti-Israeli bias in news programming.
Read the rest of the story at The Telegraph.
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.
This blog and its commenters has had hard words for the BBC’s Justin Webb many times. Sixteen times, a quick search tells me, so I won’t bother linking. But our hard words are as nothing compared to the response he got from Democrats for this post saying that the Foley scandal might end up being a trap for the Democrats.
Some of these people seriously need a cup of tea and a nice lie down.
wrote:
Presumably you’ve heard the story of the 14-year old arrested for “racism”.
The BBC report doesn’t mention any of the details i.e. what she supposedly
did or said that was racist. Can’t imagine why.
I’ve been busy, and by the time I came to look at this post and follow the link the BBC story had improved considerably. It now has many of the strangely-missing details, only, oh, a day or so after everyone else.
Here’s a link to the Little Bulldogs post.
My serene confidence that Little Bulldogs, a newish blog of which I only became aware in the last few days, correctly describes the original BBC story is based on experience. They do this. After a while you get to spot the prim, repressed tone that says they’d rather you moved on from this particular story as soon as possible.
It does not help the people they think it helps. All it does is create an atmosphere of distrust.
Sure, if details are still emerging, make that clear. But practically every other news outlet in Britain managed to report what Codie Stott claims happened as soon as they heard about it. In other circumstances the BBC is quite capable of indicating that it does not necessarily endorse what someone asserts.
UPDATE: Now that the comments are working again I’ve seen this comment by “pounce” on the same story.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Back after the weekend, Little Bulldogs provides a screenshot.
From Radio Four’s Law In Action programme :
The prison population has risen rapidly over the past 13 years – up 78% to nearly 80,000 – yet over the same period crime has fallen substantially.
I’m not asking for ‘yet’ to be replaced with ‘as a result’, although that would be my personal view. I suppose the word ‘and’ is just too neutral for the unbiased BBC. No agenda here.
(You can also hear Lord Hurd of the (anti-prison lobby group) Prison Reform Trust on the Week In Westminster – the balancing view being represented by … er … no one. And anti-prison lobbyists on the Today programme this morning, balance being provided by …)
“Then imagine bumping into an old friend who tells you he’s now working in one of the old Soviet republics which has found it hard to throw off the state control. Here, your friend says, you have to inform the state of your address when you buy a television. This address and your name is then kept on a database which is used to verify whether you have a licence to own such an instrument. The state owned channel which you must pay for, whether you want its product or not, broadcasts to further the political Left, although in theory, they are meant to be impartial. And just in case you manage to get a TV without informing the authorities, the government have vans with electronic detection equipment that patrol the streets looking for signals that betray unlicensed TVs. If you’re caught without a licence you are heavily fined and could even be imprisoned.”
– a post by Gary Walker to this Telegraph forum.
ADDED LATER to the same post because it was so close in theme: Lib-Dem blogger Stephen Tall argues against his party’s policy on the licence fee. (Via the Adam Smith Institute.)
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.
asks Drinking from Home.
At some point since Wednesday 27 September the BBC changed the phrase “a Ministry of Defence (MoD) report has said” to “a research paper prepared for the Ministry of Defence’s Defence Academy says”. Paxman’s claim that “We didn’t say it was the Ministry of Defence view” is easier to justify with the updated version. Sneaky move, eh?
For those new to the game, this is standard BBC practice. Stories on the BBC website have a “Last Updated” timestamp at the top. Again and again this website and others have spotted that stories have been updated yet this timestamp remains unchanged. Let us assume that nine times out of ten this neglect is the result of idleness or forgetfulness rather than dishonesty. Given the vast sums we forcibly pay for the BBC, that is not an impressive level of service, but then again it is the nature of a nationalised industry to promote a organisational culture where sloppiness is the norm, so let us blame the unique way the BBC is funded rather than make harsh judgments on individuals.
Around one time in ten such a kindly interpretation becomes impossible. Stories are not merely “updated” they are corrected, as on this occasion. Bloggers and other people with a reputation to maintain usually make significant corrections explicit. My fellow blogger Andrew suggested some practical ways the BBC could do this. But even if admission of mistakes is too much to ask of a news organisation that says that trust is its foundation, ordinary honesty is not too much to ask. To claim, “We never said X” and also (before or afterwards, I wonder?) go back into the records and stealth-edit the bit where you did say X is dishonest. Where the very point at issue is “did you or didn’t you say X” that unaltered timestamp is not a mistake but a falsehood.
(Hat tip: Max.)
UPDATE: The editor of Newsnight has replied that the error “was a swift correction, not a subsequent stealth edit.”
From the opening speil to a Have Your Say forum:
Is UKIP the “voice of the British majority”?
Is the UK Independence Party at the “centre-ground of British public opinion” as its new leader, Nigel Farage, claims?The party is best known for campaigning to withdraw Britain from the European Union. Despite this, it won 10 seats in the 2004 European Parliament elections.
Emphasis added. Spotted by Pete_London.
