Monthly Archives: January 2007

where they claimed that “a row has erupted” about a museum display, complete with some pseudo-official sounding quotes from a university professor to back up their claims.

It turned out that the academic in question is a well known Marxist and SWP activist, though the BBC omitted to mention this, even though they knew full well about him from their own website!

After this manufactured ‘row’ was exposed here and elsewhere, the ever professional Beeboids stealth-edited their original article, downgrading their manufactured ‘row’ to mere ‘criticism’, as if they’d never hyped it up in the first place.

On Monday BBC Views Online published a story about the redundancies announced last week at NCR in Dundee, including the news that:

Dundee University lecturer Carlo Morelli urged workers to occupy the plant in a bid to make NCR bosses change their minds.

You can guess where this is going, can’t you? Yes, indeed, a quick Google later and it’s plain that Carlo Morelli of Dundee University is another far-left activist, having stood as a candidate for the SSP (Tommy Sheridan’s one-time mob) and written for Socialist Worker, the SWP’s far-left rag.

Did BBC Views Online mention any of this? No. Yet again they’re caught red-handed promoting the views and interests of a far-left activist under BBC provided cover of academic respectability. Whilst NCR’s treatment of their employees does seem shabby, the far left’s involvement in this protest is all about promoting their own cause rather than saving anyone’s job and the BBC ought to be honest in reporting their involvement.

, writes the ever erudite Daniel Finkelstein in today’s Times. Here’s an excerpt:

Which brings me to the BBC. Unlike a lot of columnists, I like the BBC. I think its reporting is generally excellent, its news programmes are of high quality and its foreign correspondents are usually both brave and illuminating. Although the corporation can be high-handed in dealing with complaints (the theory that if both sides complain they must be getting something right is absurd) I think its staff does genuinely wish to be politically unbiased.

If only they always knew how. For on Israel, they (not everyone, of course, but too many reporters and too often) sadly get it wrong over and over again. They mistake reporting equal numbers of deaths from both sides with giving people a complete appreciation of the arguments involved. They tell you how, when, who and how many. All this is balanced. As to why, you are often left with a very one-sided view.

Let me provide an eloquent example. One of the biggest stories in the Middle East is the civil disorder in Gaza. Last week on his website, the journalist Stephen Pollard reproduced an internal memo from the BBC’s Middle East editor, Jeremy Bowen, to his colleagues. It contained a passage in which Bowen explains “the way that Palestinian society, which used to draw strength from resistance to the occupation, is now fragmenting.

“The reason is the death of hope, caused by a cocktail of Israel’s military activities, land expropriation and settlement building — and the financial sanctions imposed on the Hamas-led Government which are destroying Palestinian institutions that were anyway flawed and fragile.”

Now this is certainly one explanation of the reason why members of Fatah and Hamas are killing each other. No one can object that this argument is put before the BBC’s audience. But for the BBC’s Middle East editor to believe that it constitutes the sole explanation and to offer it up alone to his colleagues? Now that’s a different matter.

Do read the rest.

Last week, BBC Views Online, reporting on the case of Molly Campbell/Misbah Rana, told us Misbah’s mother in custody offer, including the following quotes from Misbah at a press conference in Pakistan:

However, Misbah said she wishes to have nothing to do with her mother.

The girl said: “They say I have been abducted.

“This is not true. I am living with my father and I don’t want to go to Britain.”

Asked whether she would meet with her mother if she came to Pakistan, the girl said: “I don’t want to see her.”

She added: “I have my rights where I want to live and rights who I want to live with.”

BBC Views Online also has a video clip of the press conference on the same page, where they invite us to Watch Misbah’s comments, uploaded here to YouTube, since their video player is much preferable to the BBC’s kludgey player):

Here’s a transcript of what she said, from the BBC’s clip:

Misbah: “No, No, I, I don’t want to live, I don’t want to meet my mother, I don’t want to see her, she made me do things which I didn’t want to do. I have my rights, my rights to where I want to live, I have my rights to who I want to live with, so I want to live in Pakistan. She can come and visit me, and my Dad can come and visit, anybody can come and visit me, but I’m not gonna go to Scotland and visit my Mum. My name is Misbah Irma Ahmed Rana. No, my Mum changed it, so my family couldn’t find me. She was the one that abducted me. People say that I got abducted. If I got abducted I wouldn’t be here right now.”

Yet, turning to the Daily Telegraph, we learn that Molly’s mother drops fight to bring her home, which quotes Misbah, at the same press conference, as follows:

The schoolgirl, known in Pakistan as Misbah Rana, was not in court for the hearing yesterday and later insisted that she would not visit her mother in Britain. “She made me do things which I didn’t want to do,”* she said.

“I have my rights where I want to live. I want to live in Pakistan. She can come and visit me, everybody can come and visit me, but I’m not going to go to Scotland to meet my mum. My mother is non-Muslim, a non-believer.“ (emphasis added).

Search though I have, I haven’t been able to find that last sentence in any of the BBC’s coverage. Now why would that be? They were at the same press conference weren’t they? It is relevant to the story, isn’t it?

Turning to The Times for their coverage of this story we learn that In public, Molly wore purple… but two hours later The Times found her in a black burka in a madrassa linked to the Taleban:

Molly Campbell, the 12-year-old girl at the centre of an international custody battle, is wearing a burka and living in a religious seminary suspected of harbouring Islamic militants, The Times has learnt.

Barely four months after fleeing her mother’s home in the Outer Hebrides to live with her father in Pakistan, Molly, who wants to be known by her Islamic name Misbah Rana, has enrolled at the Jamia Hafsa madrassa in Islamabad, known for its pro-Taleban views and suspected links to al-Qaeda.

Just two hours after facing the press yesterday dressed in a traditional purple headscarf and shalwar kameez, she spoke to The Times at an office at the madrassa, with her face only partially visible behind a black burka. Surrounded by officials at the madrassa and appearing slightly overwhelmed by her surroundings, she spoke briefly about the latest twist in the custody battle between her parents.

Molly did not talk about her new education, but Sajad Rana, her father, confirmed that his daughter had moved out of his home in Lahore to study at the seminary. Admitting that he did not know when she would be back, he said: “She is a grown person, she is an adult. I would have liked her to be near me, but she wants to study Islam and she has joined this group for her education.”

He added: “The last time we were in Islamabad she spent a day at the madrassa, but now she’s made up her mind and she’s going to join it.”

Surprisingly, nothing from The Times report from Thursday was picked up or mentioned at all on the BBC, in spite of its clear relevance to the story. At least, that is, until Saturday, three days later, when BBC Views Online came out with Misbah’s father denies school bid, forgetting that they hadn’t, apparently, noticed the reports in the first place.

So, why is it that the BBC completely ignored the details in The Times report, until they were able to report a denial of the story three days later? A denial which of course begs the question, did The Times make it all up? I very much doubt it, but the BBC make no effort to tell us how such different versions of the story arose or explain the disparity in Sajad Rana’s reported quoted comments. No surprise there then.

* My mother was like that too – in the words of the famous Terry Scott song, My Brother, “every night when we’re wide awake, she make us go to bed. And then in the morning when we’re fast asleep, she makes us get up”.

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.

Tony Blair enjoyed free airline upgrades worth thousands of pounds during his controversial holiday to the Miami mansion owned by Robin Gibb, the former Bee Gee…

MPs said Mr Blair had become a national embarrassment for repeatedly failing to pay his own way. Mr Blair has taken “free” holidays worth more than £775,000 with wealthy hosts since taking office. They include four holidays at a Barbados villa owned by Sir Cliff Richard.

I look forward to BBC Views Online’s Magazine doing a lighthearted jokey style article about the extent of Tony and Cherie’s freeloading, just as they would were there an opportunity to poke fun at Conservative politicians. Over to you Beeboids!

we find in the Sunday Times that the BBC says it’s running out of money – apparently:

Despite job cuts at the BBC, ministers have felt the corporation has not tightened its belt enough. They were particularly angered by revelations last year about the salaries paid to presenters such as Jonathan Ross, who signed an £18m three-year contract.

Meanwhile, according to the Sunday Express, ‘Hard up’ BBC blows £33m on expenses, including the following spending details:

• £18m was spent by the BBC on hotel bills
• £15m went on air flights around the world
• About £1m on World Cup travel & hotel expenses
• £15m on cab fares
• £5m on management consultants

As if that wasn’t bad enough, the Mail on Sunday tells us Now BBC plans an ‘I love the C-word’ documentary:

a £200,000 TV documentary devoted to the most offensive word in the English language. The programme – tentatively titled I love The C-Word – is billed as examining why the word has become more mainstream in recent years.

Hmmm, perhaps its because there are so many C-words at the BBC, ripping off the tellytax-paying public to spoonfeed us with their politically-correct left-of-centre world view.

Finally, Charles Moore in Saturday’s Daily Telegraph points out that If the BBC is so good, we will give it money, noting that:

If (God forbid) you spoke to 100 journalists on the BBC, you would find that more than 85 were anti-American, pro-green and opposed to the war in Iraq. They would be happy making a programme about lying tobacco companies and unhappy making one about too many immigrants.

and:

Look at the BBC history website’s entry on the Provisional IRA. It fails to mention the fact that they killed actual people, whereas that on the loyalist UVF (rightly) gives the number of victims and uses words like “vicious”. The BBC never surprises.

and:

The BBC’s relation to our culture resembles the old British Rail’s relation to our means of transport – it is an over-centralised, expensive, unresponsive, obsolescent, occasionally magnificent but mostly squalid enterprise whose faults the managers do not see because they travel first-class.

Read the whole thing. Mr. Moore’s suggestion of a popularly funded and popular BBC, would, of course, solve all of the BBC’s apparent money problems at a stroke. Roll on the day!

Hat tip to the various Biased BBC commenters who noted these links.

Yesterday Laban pointed out how the Marxists and fellow-travellers in BBC Southern region manufactured a row, nay, the eruption of a row, in their story, the third most important story in England in their opinion:

Row erupts over Golly exhibition

A row has broken out over a golly exhibition at a Hampshire museum.

Turning to the same shocking story today, after Laban’s article (and articles by Iain Dale and Tim Worstall), we now find that the row that erupted was, in fact, mere:

Criticism over golly exhibition

An exhibition of golly badges at a Hampshire museum has been criticised.

Yet, surprise, surprise, the BBC’s mendacious Last updated: timestamp remains unchanged, still reading Saturday, 13 January 2007, 12:01 GMT, as if it was as it always had been. “Wot us guv, stealth editing, nah, you must be mistaken, we’re professionals you know!”.

Yet again, BBC Views Online demonstrates precisely why they need to implement a publicly available document revision history system, just like the one Wikipedia use on all of their documents, so that the tellytax-paying public can see for themselves just how scrupulous the BBC are in reporting the news. The discipline and rigour of such a system would do the quality of BBC news a power of good.

Failing that, the tellytax-paying public are of course perfectly able to implement their own systems to show just how professional the BBC are, such as the wonderful News Sniffer Revisionista system created by John Leach, which more than amply demonstrates the BBC’s stealth edit:

News Sniffer: The BBC’s Marxist manufactured golly ‘row’ is stealth-
edited down to mere ‘criticism’ after they were caught in the act.

Hat tip to commenter HSLD.

Addendum: Commenter Phil notes that Molyneux is being true to Marx’s creed, quoting from an 1862 letter from Marx to Engels about Lassalle, an ideological rival and one-time suitor to one of Marx’s daughters:

Marx: “It is now quite plain to me — as the shape of his head and the way his hair grows also testify — that he is descended from the negroes who accompanied Moses’ flight from Egypt (unless his mother or paternal grandmother interbred with a nigger). Now, this blend of Jewishness and Germanness, on the one hand, and basic negroid stock, on the other, must inevitably give rise to a peculiar product. The fellow’s importunity is also nigger-like”.

The BBC:

Pair killed by Underground train

Two suspected graffiti artists have been killed by a London Underground (LU) train in Barking, east London.

The Sunday Times:

Vandals mowed down by train

TWO young men were killed after being caught spraying graffiti on a London Underground train and then running into the path of another Tube train as they tried to escape.

Artists indeed! It’s almost a pity that the tasteless deadtrainbums.com site (archived here) went the same way.

(Thanks to reader Septimus Lupo for this classic.)

“Row erupts over golly exhibition” – the BBC England page finds room for this major story.

A row has broken out over a golly exhibition at a Hampshire museum.

A row. Gosh. Gollygosh. Tell more.

A collection of golly badges on display in Westbury Manor Museum in Fareham has been criticised for its perceived racist connotations. Dr John Molyneux, from the University of Portsmouth, said the items should not be regarded simply as a childhood pastime or hobby. But Nick Martin who owns the collection said the exhibition had been very popular and no-one had complained.

I see. One person says it’s racist. We have a BBC story. A story big enough for the England page.

And who is this one person ? It sounds awfully like this John Molyneux.

“John Molyneux is a socialist, activist and writer. He is a member of the British SWP (Socialist Workers Party) and of RESPECT. He lectures at Portsmouth University, and writes mainly about Marxist theory and art.” There’s more at Wikipedia.

I would just love to know the processes by which this ‘story’ found its way to the BBC and onto the England page. You don’t think he just rang up a mate, do you ?

Dr Molyneux has every right to pursue his political agendas as best he may. Whether it is right that the BBC should act as the megaphone for an SWP activist’s one-man ‘protest’ I’m not so sure.

(Note btw two other reports on the front page – the believed arrest of a believed man for what police believe was a hammer attack – and the deaths of two ‘graffiti artists’. Didn’t they used to be called vandals ?)

UPDATE – this might be a lazy journalism/bias mix rather than the old comrades network in action. The story appeared in the Johnstone Press-owned Portsmouth News on the 10th, was picked up by the Daily Mail the same day, and the Mirror the following day (note that none of the foregoing are financed by compulsory taxation). Two days later the rehashed story appeared on the BBC. They might have done a bit of checking, but why bother when it rings all the right bells ? (Even nobler, unmercenary bloggers may be guilty of such sins on rare occasions.) Thanks to Matthew in the comments at Tim Worstall’s.

UPDATE 2 – Andrew points out that the BBC certainly know who Dr Molyneux is.

At last. The BBC give us the detailed story on the school hammer attack.

She told the BBC the men attacked the boy and then another got out a hammer and starting hitting him.

“He fell to the floor and asked them to stop, but they kept kicking him.”

She added: “The boy tried to get up but they kept hitting him, then suddenly they all ran away.”

Police have arrested eight male youths aged between 14 and 20 in connection with the incident.

Those right-wing hate-sheets the Guardian and the Independent tell the same story but with a few angles that the BBC either overlooked or just didn’t consider relevant.

Some parents at Ridgeway School in Wroughton, near Swindon, said the attack, in which four Asian men pinned the boy down at the end of the school day on Thursday, was racially motivated.
Mr Colledge said he was on patrol in the grounds when the boy, who is white, was attacked. “After school had ended for the day and pupils were exiting the premises at least four young adults unknown to the school came into the tennis courts and attacked the pupil, we believe with something similar to a hammer.” He said he understood the boy had been hit more than once and was “bleeding profusely but conscious at all times”.

He added: “Relations seem to be very good and pupils mix, play football and chat together. It’s predominantly a white school. Asian pupils probably make up less than five per cent.” But Mr Colledge had heard the attackers were relatives of a pupil at the school.

A mother, who did not wish to be named, said she had heard there had been previous racially aggravated incidents at the school. She believes children walking home from school were subject to verbal and physical abuse from relations of Asian pupils at the school.
Police have arrested eight male youths aged between 14 and 20 in connection with the incident.

That big-budget outfit the Swindon Advertiser also picks up a few things the BBC are prevented from reporting due to budget restraints.

The attack has left many parents afraid to let their children go to school.

A concerned dad, who did not want to be named, said he doubted his children would be going to school today after what had happened.

He said: “Both of my kids saw what happened. They are both traumatised by it. We are shell-shocked. This was a particularly nasty attack.

“This is the third major incident that’s happened in six months.”

He said security around the school grounds needed to be tighter.

“The security is absolutely appalling,” he said. “This is horrendous and it needs to be highlighted.

“We don’t expect the police to be there 24/7 but it’s time the school spent some money on putting up fencing around the perimeter.”

Another mum, who asked not to be named, said she would not be sending her children to school today.

“This is not the first time something like this has happened and something needs to be done,” she said.

“I am absolutely petrified about what might have happened.

“I don’t want my child in the school but he has his exams to take in May and, apart from getting me into trouble, how is it going to help him in the future?”

She said that parents would be waiting at the school gates this morning to demand a meeting with the headteacher.

“Something needs to be done,” she said.

“The last time we were told it was being dealt with and now we are back in the same situation.

“Hopefully this new head will take a different stance.”

In May, six teenagers from Ridgeway were taken to hospital after a group of men jumped out of two cars and attacked students, leaving one with a broken jaw.

Police patrolled outside the school in Inverary Road for a week in an effort to soothe the worries of parents and pupils.

Officers dealing with the case at the time refused to comment on speculation that the fight was racially motivated.

Now it could be argued – and no doubt has been – that reporting such inter-racial attacks could inflame feelings and damage ‘social cohesion’ – and that therefore details of attacker and victim ethnicity should be downplayed or suppressed. It’s not a position I’d agree with – for starters it should not be the job of a news organisation to suppress facts – but it’s a respectable argument for a state-owned, non-independent broadcaster to put forward – assuming it applies to ALL inter-racial or inter-communal attacks. But this isn’t what the BBC do. In practice, attacks by members of the majority community get ‘big air’, attacks on members of the majority community don’t. This not only, in the Internet age, destroys BBC credibility as a news source for a (currently small but) increasing number of people, but by giving a one-sided picture of inter-racial attacks it creates an untrue narrative of only majority perpetrators and only minority victims.

A while back Yasmin Alibhai-Brown wrote an Evening Standard piece commenting on double standards in the reporting of racist murder :

I have talked to some black and Asian inmates serving time in prison for such crimes: most justify their actions as collective retribution for attacks on “their people”.

“Attacks on their people”. Where would they get those ideas from, I wonder ?