Times – “Bias at the Beeb – Official“
There are some things you do not need an official report to tell you – that John Prescott thinks he is a babe magnet, that President Mugabe is not entirely in favour of white farmers and that Al-Qaeda takes a pretty dim view of the West. The report commissioned by the BBC into itself concluded with something equally blindingly obvious. It said that the organisation is institutionally biased and especially gullible to the blandishments of politically driven celebrities, such as Bono and Bob Geldof. Almost anyone in Britain could have told the BBC that for free, but maybe it’s better to have it in an official report.
Even taking into account the small but insistent internal voice pointing out that the Times is part of the Great Satan Murdoch’s media empire, there’s not much to disagree with there.
” … what emerges from the report is a picture of an organisation with a liberal, anti-American bias and an almost teenage fascination with fashionable causes … the BBC is a self-perpetuating liberal arts club.”
Telegraph – “BBC report finds bias within corporation”
The BBC has failed to promote proper debate on major political issues because of the inherent liberal culture of its staff, a report commissioned by the corporation has concluded. The report claims that coverage of single-issue political causes, such as climate change and poverty, can be biased – and is particularly critical of Live 8 coverage, which it says amounted to endorsement.
After a year-long investigation the report, published today, maintains that the corporation’s coverage of day-to-day politics is fair and impartial. But it says coverage of Live 8, the 2005 anti-poverty concerts organised by rock star campaigners Bob Geldof and Bono and writer Richard Curtis, failed to properly debate the issues raised. Instead, at a time when the corporation was renegotiating its charter with the government, it allowed itself to effectively become a promotional tool for Live 8, which was strongly supported by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Geldof, Bono and Curtis were attempting to pressure world leaders at the G8 Summit in Gleneagles, which was taking place at the same time, to help reduce poverty in developing countries under the banner ‘Make Poverty History’.
Mr Blair said the campaign was a “mighty achievement”. The huge Live 8 concerts across the world were its culmination and the BBC cleared its schedules to show them, with coverage on BBC One, Two and Three and Radio One and Two. Around the same time it also screened a specially-written episode of Curtis’s popular sitcom The Vicar of Dibley that featured a minute long Make Poverty History video and saw characters urged to support it. And it aired another Curtis drama, The Girl in the Café, in which Bill Nighy falls in love with an anti-poverty campaigner – even giving Gordon Brown an advance copy. The BBC also ran a week long Africa special featuring a series of documentaries by Geldof and a day celebrating the National Health Service, prompting Sky News political editor Adam Boulton to tell a House of Lords select committee it was in danger of peddling government propaganda.
The report concludes BBC staff must be more willing to challenge their own beliefs.
(En passant, the BBCs uncritical coverage of the millionaires Geldof, Bono and Curtis illustrates neatly a feature of modern philanthropy. In Victorian times a rich man with a conscience would put his hands in his own pockets to fund a worthy cause – a tradition which continues in America (Bill Gates, Warren Buffett) to this day. Across the water the favoured option of a charitably inclined multimillionaire is to get poorer people to fund your favourite causes via higher taxation – while in some cases avoiding such taxes yourself.)
Strangely the Observer headlines its report “Vicar of Dibley accused of breaking BBC guidelines“. Can’t imagine why. But they also have BBC insider Richard Tait’s view of the report.
UPDATE 18/06 – Commenter Richy is clairvoyant !
“If overly critical then surely the it’ll be placed in the “england” section or the “entertainment” section.”
“Entertainment” it is !
You can find the report here. Plenty of pdfs to get through. The “impartiality monitoring group” doesn’t look like a diverse cross-section of British political opinion to me – you do wonder what political perspectives the man who “co-founded the Democracy Coalition for Children and Young
People” or Kat Fletcher bring to the party.
More coverage at Times (also under Entertainment), Telegraph, Mail, more Sunday Times. Oh, and apologies for calling a BBC Trustee a BBC ‘insider’. Cultural misunderstanding … via commenter JBH, the Michael Crick anecdote about BBC execs all being Guardian readers. Sounds too good to be true – Mr Crick seems to have a puckish sense of humour. But I’m sure it “illustrates a wider truth”, as Dan Rather and Piers Morgan would say.
Hillhunt,
Hours of stuff with a bias.
Even the BBC, in typically sloppy style, reports it as ‘BBC must be more impartial’ How on earth can one be more, or even less impartial?
Re: Nick Reynolds (BBC)
Glad to see there is now a link to the actual report, which is very good: open, honest and very interesting.
Apologies for being repetitive but you didn’t answer about this earlier:
Wouldn’t it be honest, open and interesting to release the Balen report and let the public make up its mind?
Also, as PJF mentioned earlier (thanks PJF, btw), it’s possible that there are restrictions, legal or others, on BBC employees discussing the Balen report. Could you clarify this point? Thanks.
BBC report: Your reaction
http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?threadID=6595&&&edition=1&ttl=20070618134957
pjf:
I now no longer have a TV, instead of watching one illegally previously)
You believe the BBC is “this country’s major cultural asset” (we’re finished); I believe it’s just an oversized telly station (drivel), and an outlet for left/liberal propaganda (dangerous drivel).
Must be hard to reach such definitive conclusions based on not watching any of its output.
Or are you just very gifted as an analyst?
it’s possible that there are restrictions, legal or others, on BBC employees discussing the Balen report. Could you clarify this point? Thanks.
I’m a BBC employee: and no there aren’t. The problem is, I don’t know what the Balen report says. Because, of course, if minions like me were to get hold of it, we’d leak it.
However, it was withheld because the court decided that, it was compiled for the purposes of journalism, art or literature — in line with the Freedom of Information Act 2005. Not because the BBC wanted to “hush anything up”
It seems that those over at HYS are fiddling the readers recommended figures again.
A comment I read on Sunday had 9 recommendations, today it has 1.
HillHunt,
You really are worth every extorted penny of my licence fee. Today the BBC published a report stating the bias as fact. And all we get from you is the usual mantra of denial.
If you don’t accept that your coverage is biased maybe you could take it up with your stalwart bosses. And maybe mention the Hutton report, the Balen report, the removal of Orla Guerin and teary Babs Plett from ME coverage, the leaked meeting last year of BBC figures to discuss the bias, the stacking of QT audiences (as if stacking the panel wasn’t enough), habitual anti-American reports from the ever-unpleasant Matt Frei and of course, Jeremy Bowen our man in Jerusalem (now what country is that the capital of?).
the removal of Orla Guerin and teary Babs Plett from ME coverage
Yawn yawn yawn. BBC correspondents are routinely moved to different foreign billets after two or three years.
BBC Headline: BBC ‘must become more impartial’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6763205.stm
More impartial?
Either you are impartial or you’re not. If not impartial, then you’re biased.
Goodness me the BBC are biased. It says so in their own report, even though they stuffed the ‘impartiality steering group’ with Beeb cronies. I suppose even they realised that the game was up and anything less would have been met with derision and contempt.
RIP jr & Ben. As for the one calling himself ‘Bullshit Detective’, well I suppose most people here will be dancing on his grave, given his propensity for telling lies.
Balen Report:
Not because the BBC wanted to “hush anything up”
BJ | 18.06.07 – 2:33 pm |
If the BBC doesn’t want it hushed up then lets see it.
I’ve come across legal and journalistic privilege before through criminal legislation. When challenged on a case by case basis we would invariably uncover a can of worms involving conspiracies.
When there’s something to hide, it’s normally a conspiracy somewhere.
BJ, if you work for the BBC and are unaware of the controversy surrounding the removal of Guerin and Plett from duties in the Middle East maybe news-gathering isn’t the job for you. And were you really so uninterested in all the other counts of bias? i.e.
he Hutton report, the Balen report, the removal of Orla Guerin and teary Babs Plett from ME coverage, the leaked meeting last year of BBC figures to discuss the bias, the stacking of QT audiences (as if stacking the panel wasn’t enough), habitual anti-American reports from the ever-unpleasant Matt Frei and of course, Jeremy Bowen our man in Jerusalem (now what country is that the capital of?).
Has anyone else noticed that the HYS forum http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?threadID=6595&&&edition=1&ttl=20070618150400
is meant to be reactively moderated (i.e. you can submit comments directly) but when you do submit a comment it gets sent to a moderation queue instead?
This is for Nick Reynolds. Lets see if he will get it now …
ALAN JOHNSON IN HIS OWN WORDS:”When you are with one side, you have got to put to them the very best arguments of the other side”
A revealing Gurniad piece on a talk that Al Johnson gave to BBC College of Jounalism (cringe) … in which he admits that his perspective and reporting is biased in favour of the Palestinians but is “balanced” by his attempts to seek out what is going on in the minds of Israelis …
http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,,2105122,00.html
So much of the job is about trying to find the imagination within yourself to try to see, to really see, the world through the eyes of the people in the story. Not just through the eyes of the Palestinian who has just had his home smashed. But also through the eyes of the three young Israelis in a tank who smashed it. Why did they see that as a reasonable thing to do? What was going through their minds as their tank went through the house?
http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,,2105122,00.html
WOW ALAN! With impartiality like that its no wonder that the latest report on BBC Bias can be trivialised as an attack on the Vicar of Dibley.
Still at least Johnston admits to his loyalties being on one side which must have made it easier to have participated in making up the news that suited one side
like this
http://www.snappedshot.com/archives/941-A-Kinder,-Gentler-Jihad-Bumped.html
or this
http://www.snappedshot.com/categories/21-Thug-Conferences
maybe not as expertly as this
http://www.snappedshot.com/plugin/tag/staged+scene
still I credit Johnson with this line ..
I normally never tell war stories “… when I was in Jalalabad with the mortars coming down … blah, blah, blah.”
which is a reference to a highly irritating self promoting and self regarding personage at Al Beeb
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/6756125.stm
“I have been coming to Jalalabad since 1989, but for the first time in my experience we needed a police escort to drive around there.”
This report provides more entertainment than BBC1. From the “what is imparitiality?” section:
“[Impartiality] is practised day in, day out, by BBC journalists, who have an impartiality gene implanted in their earliest days at the Corporation”
“[impartiality] remains an elusive, almost magical substance, which is often more evident in its absence than in its presence.”
lol
The treatment of different news outlets is rather telling:
“The newest news outlet, Al-Jazeera’s English-language channel, offers another alternative vision, with different news judgments and editorial priorities. Avowedly opinionated news as pioneered by Fox News in the United States (now available in the UK) has growing appeal. Shock-jocks on radio have no inhibitions about voicing their personal opinions.”
Factual mistake: Al-Jazeera in English is not the newest news outlet, its not the newest TV news outlet either. English language broadcasting of both Russia Today and France 24 started broadcasting after Al-Jazeera English.
The line about “Shock-jocks” is ridiculously close-minded and stereotypical nonsense! Shock-jocks have to exhibit inhibitions, ask Don Imus.
The neutral language used for Al-Jazeera could be used to describe any news or propaganda output. Whereas the BBC does make a value judgement with Fox News saying it originated “avowedly opinionated news”.
At least I’ve learnt something from this report, where the name John Reith comes from!
Biljan, where exactly does Johnston admit to his loyalties being on one side? He’s based in Gaza so he sees the destructive consequences of Israeli actions in the war rather than the other way round, but he endeavors to look at Israeli motivations and put these to the Gazans. What’s non-impartial about that? I’d expect a decent reporter in Israel to do vice versa??
The fact that he doesn’t necessarily follow through on these noble aims is something entirely different…
Biljan, where exactly does Johnston admit to his loyalties being on one side? He’s based in Gaza so he sees the destructive consequences of Israeli actions in the war rather than the other way round, but he endeavors to look at Israeli motivations and put these to the Gazans. What’s non-impartial about that? I’d expect a decent reporter in Israel to do vice versa??
The problem Cockney is that all we ever get from the BBC is how terrible Israel is whereas in fact it is the Palestinian arabs who openly celebrate the murder of innocents.
Hey Hillhunt,
Thx for the hat-tip!
http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?threadID=6595&edition=1&ttl=20070618155029
Sorry, wrong link.
http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread!recommend.jspa?sortBy=1&edition=1&ttl=20070618155029&messageID=3012706�
K:
Hillhunt, You really are worth every extorted penny of my licence fee. Today the BBC published a report stating the bias as fact. And all we get from you is the usual mantra of denial.
If you don’t accept that your coverage is biased…
Not sure how many times I’ve now said it, but I have nothing to do with the BBC. It is not, therefore, my coverage.
But just for the record, the BBC report does not state bias as a fact across the corporation’s output, and it has published its principles so that these can be weighed against its output.
I’m sure you can hardly wait to get started.
HE HERE .. HES THERE WE FIND MAHDI EVERYWHERE
have a look at the man supposedly released by Hamas after a year of captivity. he is sitting to the left of Hamas 1:12 into the video
http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_6760000/newsid_6762000/6762087.stm?bw=bb&mp=wm
he has a striking resemblance to the guy at an Al Aqsa press conference few months back (front row far left)
http://www.snappedshot.com/uploads/Intifada2007/capt.jrl11603061522.mideast_israel_palestinians_jrl116.jpg
Could it be the ubiquitous Mahdi Abu Ghazaleh!
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=%22Mahdi+Abu+Ghazaleh%22&btnG=Search&meta=
look at the 2nd row left
http://www.snappedshot.com/archives/618-A-Very-Telling-Omission.html
BBC bias, what BBC bias?
Tackling Tajikistan’s cluster bombs
High above the mulberry orchards and rolling hills of the Rashd Valley, and just beneath the soaring snow-covered peaks, lies the village of Chor Charokh. Donkeys wander amid the mud huts, and women in traditional colourful headscarves shy away from visitors. A group of small children, happily oblivious to the poverty that surrounds them, scream and laugh as they chase a dog along a stream. None of these children were born when the government and the opposition fought for control of these mountains.
……………….
International efforts to ban cluster bombs gained new force after last year’s war between Israel and Hezbollah, when Israel dropped an estimated four million cluster bombs on southern Lebanon.
……………..
In the village of Chor Charokh, like so much of rural Tajikistan, there are hardly any men left. Samir’s father, like many others, has left to search for work in Russia.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/6757535.stm
I wonder why the BBC doesn’t report just who the opposition were during the de-facto civil war in Tajikistan. Could it be a group of people whom the BBC refers to as Plumbers? Maybe the BBC Clones would like to inform the great unwashed just why they left out the ‘Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan’ out of that article. But of course no BBC article would be replete without castigating the Jews Yup according to the BBC the Jews are nasty pieces of work for using cluster Bombs in a war that they didn’t start.Lets not forget the Brits and the Yanks have them as well. Which is strange as China, Russia and Iran produce them. (Which may explain just where the cluster munitions in Tajikistan were produced)
As for blaming the use of Cluster munitions for the exodus of people towards Moscow. What is strange in that synopsis is that people have always flocked West in times of social depravation. Be it Pakistan, Iran, Jordan, Egypt or Turkey You don’t need bombs on the ground in which to get people to vote with their feet over the social depravation caused by running a country on religious dogma. You know BBC like chopping off the heads of little school girls, blowing up Markets and enslaving women because of laws written in a cave 1500 years ago.
And the BBC tries to tell me they are impartial.
HYS BBC report: Your reaction
Added: Monday, 18 June, 2007, 13:55 GMT 14:55 UK
As a proud left-winger who marched against the war in Iraq I can assure you that the BBC is not at all biased. I am shocked that so many on this forum believe that it is. I am even more troubled by the kind of sites one gets when googling ‘BBC bias’.
Hillhunt
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I was going to respond to Hillhunt’s double denial that he doesn’t work for the BBC and which even if he did wouldn’t accept was at all biased. But thanks Will.
’nuff said.
Interesting contrast….
Rushdie title ‘may spark attacks’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/6763119.stm
Liberty head Chakrabarti honoured
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6758217.stm
I have no doubt that Rushdie would defend Shami’s right to free speech. I haven’t heard Shami stick her head above on TV or radio to defend Rushdie’s freedoms though – have you?. Oh I forgot, Rushdie isn’t an alleged muslim terrorist.
The saviours of the BBC speak and its message reeks…
Hamas issues Johnston ultimatum
Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas has threatened to use force to release BBC reporter Alan Johnston by the end of Monday if he is not let free.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6764679.stm
Yup nothing like a bit of free publicity for a terrorist organisation which has had no problems using force in the past.
Be it kidnapping soldiers in another country
Murdering people on the streets (and I refer to the murder of a woman holding hands with her future husband here)
Or even launching missile attacks on another country.
Hamas has never had problems resorting to force in which to get its way of enforcing Islamic rule on all.
But the BBC won’t promote the truth about Hamas brutality. No according to them, Hamas are the saviours of the world.
Cockney
Biljan, where exactly does Johnston admit to his loyalties being on one side?
its here
I was with a journalist, not a BBC bloke, who very much liked being in a war zone, and during the battle for the city, we were in an abandoned block of flats. We went into an apartment where a shell had come through the living-room wall. And I remember hearing this guy immediately start talking about whether it had been a bazooka shell or a rocket-propelled grenade that had done the damage, and where the soldier who fired it must have been standing on the street outside.
But if you looked around the room for a minute, you could see the life that used to go on in it. You could see the books that the family used to read, and the sort of pictures that they liked to hang on the walls, and, from photographs, you could see that they had three kids and that the oldest girl had graduated from university. Of course, their story, what had happened to them – what they were, and what they had lost – was what the war was all about. It did not really matter whether it was a bazooka or a rocket that had turned their world upside down.
note that while the not a BBC bloke was trying to ascertain the facts of what had happened … Johnston was trying to give us a depiction of the human tragedy in Grozny … worthy job as long as he did it impartialy and honestly … but its not the job of a reporter … in Gaza Alan made the mistake that many other BBC journalists have … they dont report the story but become part of the story …
just two examples from that epitomise the BBC style
Barbara Plett crying for Arafat ….
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/3966139.stm
Jacky Rowland testifying at Milosevic’s trial ….
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/2220904.stm
Cockney
and if you want Alan Johnson’s specific quote its here
http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,,2105122,00.html
And when you are with one side from the conflict, you have got to put to them the very best arguments of the other side – the toughest questions. But the aim is absolutely not to smother the story with a search for some sort of formulaic, 50-50-style balance.
“In Friday’s R4 Feedback Bowen when discussing Middle East coverage said that since Israel considers herself western-style democracy with free press etc it is judged by higher standards ”
Ah, right. I’d often wondered why the BBC has a bizarre obsession with what goes on in Israel. Personally after listening to the same old same old for thirty years I really couldn’t give a monkey’s.
Meanwhile the Burmese military continues to systematically wipe out the Karen tribesmen of Burma and we hear not a thing through the Beeb. It turns out this has nothing to do with the Burmese military being Marxist, but is more to do with them being non-western. Presumably the Beeb judges them as little more than savages from which we can expect little better (to take the obvious corollary from Bowen’s claim).
So the Israeli’s must treat the Palestinians better because they are letting the side down old boy and the Beeb expects more from them.
Perhaps Bowen should stick to reporting the facts and leave the opinions and inferences to the audience.
Since I have been mentioned by name… there’s no bias in the Alan Johson piece quoted. Where is it? He says you should look at a story from both points of view. Is it the word “smashed” that you object to? What word would be more accurate?
Ritter an interesting snippet about how Muslims are angered by the Salman Rushdie award. Here is what Mohammad Ali Hosseini of the Iranian foreign ministry had to say on the matter yesterday;
“”Honouring and commending an apostate and hated figure will definitely put the British officials [in a position] of confrontation with Islamic societies,” Mr Hosseini said.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/pakistan/Story/0,,2105748,00.html
So part of the reason Rushdie has to die is because he is an Apostate. On that note would any of the BBC clones CAIR to remind us all about just how peaceful Islam is, when it bestows the death penalty on anybody who has the neck (soon to be removed) to leave the faith.
Has the pro-islamic Al-BBC noted this story yet or doesn’t it fit in with Al-Beeb’s view that islam is a “religion of peace” ?
From the Jerusalem Post..
“Christians living in Gaza City on Monday appealed to the international community to protect them against increased attacks by Muslim extremists. Many Christians said they were prepared to leave the Gaza Strip as soon as the border crossings are reopened.
The appeal came following a series of attacks on a Christian school and church in Gaza City over the past few days.
Father Manuel Musalam, leader of the small Latin community in the Gaza Strip, said masked gunmen torched and looted the Rosary Sisters School and the Latin Church.
“The masked gunmen used rocket-propelled grenades to storm the main entrances of the school and church,” he said. “Then they destroyed almost everything inside, including the Cross, the Holy Book, computers and other equipment.”
Musalam expressed outrage over the burning of copies of the Bible, noting that the gunmen destroyed all the Crosses inside the church and school. “Those who did these awful things have no respect for Christian-Muslim relations,” he said.”
Have Your Say seems to be a bit selective in the comments they let through.
If you post that the Beeb is biased you are limited to two comments but if you support the Beeb, like a commenter called
Left Liberal and Proud you get to post more. Some animals are more equal than others.
will:
HYS BBC report: Your reaction
Added: Monday, 18 June, 2007, 13:55 GMT 14:55 UK
As a proud left-winger who marched against the war in Iraq I can assure you that the BBC is not at all biased. I am shocked that so many on this forum believe that it is. I am even more troubled by the kind of sites one gets when googling ‘BBC bias’.
Hillhunt
K:
I was going to respond to Hillhunt’s double denial that he doesn’t work for the BBC and which even if he did wouldn’t accept was at all biased. But thanks Will.
’nuff said.
I’m afraid the curse of the impersonator stalks even the HYS columns. Why would I consistently deny working for the BBC here, and post the opposite view on a forum which many B-BBCers would be bound to read?
And while I’m on…what is contradictory about being outside the BBC and taking the view that it does not show bias? Are viewers and listeners only supposed to interpret things one way?
Biased BBC: Sky’s the limit.
BBC bias, what BBC bias?
Two BBC headlines ref similar stories.
Children die in Afghan air raid
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/6762549.stm
and
Children dead’ in Afghan bombing
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/6755779.stm
In the former the BBC makes it quite clear just who the guilty party are.
(On the South Asian site it is reported as ‘Nato troops kill Afghan civilian’)
On the latter well something of a fudge. Just from reading the headlines just who killed those children.
And here is something I read in the Guardian today which sums up my point;
“Although Nato’s International Security Assistance Force and the Afghan national army retain the upper hand militarily, Ms Ahmed said the insurgency would only escalate while there were still hearts and minds to win.”They’re saying: we’re here and we’re the winning side. I don’t think they are, but it’s effective propaganda and it’s psy-ops,” she said.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,,2105412,00.html
Yup the BBC just loves to promote the image that Islam rules, be it in Somalia, Palestine, Iraq or Afghanistan the publicly funded News organisation is the biggest promoter of Islamic Jihad going.
pounce;
On that note would any of the BBC clones CAIR to remind us all about just how peaceful Islam is, when it bestows the death penalty on anybody who has the neck (soon to be removed) to leave the faith.
If I knew what CAIR meant, I would…
Hi Hillhunt/Nick et al Beeb,
Please respond to the fair question that Terry Johnson posed. Why isn’t Hamas’ persecution of Christians being covered?
Most of the recent posts are off-topic and should really be posted in the open thread.
I can’t find a single mention in this report of the Beebs support of the “stop the war” march. Hundreds of hours of free advertising, similar to Live 8, yet not a single mention in this myopic self-assessment.
Nick
Since I have been mentioned by name… there’s no bias in the Alan Johson piece quoted. Where is it?
Mentioned you as you are the only one willing to admit working at Al Beeb
Not certain how many times i need to post the quote for Beeboids but here it is again:
And when you are with one side from the conflict, you have got to put to them the very best arguments of the other side – the toughest questions. But the aim is absolutely not to smother the story with a search for some sort of formulaic, 50-50-style balance.
Earlier reference is here
http://www.haloscan.com/comments/patrickcrozier/4068507505364292634/#360786
To the BBC clone who doesn’t know what CAIR stands for;
Council on American-Islamic Relations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_Council_on_American-Islamic_Relations
But then I’m sure you already knew that. But as dictated to you by your holy book you are taught to lie in which to appear the victim.CAIR to explain that?
The BBC has covered this in the past. Do you like this quote Terry?:
“There may never be justice for 19-year-old Yousra: shot dead in Gaza by gunmen from Hamas.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/4522465.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6110498.stm
Bijan – I have no idea why you think this quote shows bias. To me it shows the precise opposite. Explain to me.
And when you are with one side from the conflict, you have got to put to them the very best arguments of the other side – the toughest questions. But the aim is absolutely not to smother the story with a search for some sort of formulaic, 50-50-style balance.
Alan Johnston was definitely with one side of the conflict but when did he ever put Israel’s best arguments to the Palestinians? For that matter when did he ever put Israel’s best arguments to the BBC public?
It is fairly much accepted that he was a propagandist for the Palestinians but this quote makes him out to be a hypocrite as well.
Sorry Nick Renolds,
Much as I appreciate you finding 2year old news items on Hamas persecuting Christians, I was referring to the specific event that happened, you know, recently.
Jpost news that doesn’t quite make it to
the world’s number 1 news provider
But Nick ref your answer to Terry about Christian persecution in the Holyland. Did you know that the first article by Orla Guerin is about the Honour killing of a Christian woman by her family for falling in love with a Muslims. At a stroke the BBC implies that the situation reference Honour killings is an equal problem for Christians and Muslims. Is that what the BBC implies by quoting;
“News programmes must present all sides of the debate, the report says “
Because if you read the mentioned article more prominence is given towards the Christian angle than the Islamic one. I mean it does end with;
“Back in Ramallah, Faten lies buried in the Christian cemetery, in a rough grave, without even a headstone. Her father was released from jail for two hours to attend her funeral.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/4522465.stm
The fact remains ‘Honour crimes’ is a far bigger problem in the Islamic community than the Christian one. Yet the BBC says otherwise.
But on another note. Thank you for at least having the balls to say just who you are. Not many people (and I include myself in that) have the strength of character in which to admit just who they are on this board. And just for the record. I have no problem funding the BBC for the excellent service it provides. I only have a problem with its (my viewpoint) biased news service.
If anyone is wondering whether BBC is biased on the subject of Israel, ask yourself whether any of the following have shown a constant tendency to report the (anti-semitic, suicide bombing) Palestinians as victims:
Caroline Hawley
Orla Guerin
Babs Plett
Jeremy Bowen
Allan Johnston
Matthew Price
Fergal Keane
John Simpson
Then ask yourself whether you’ve ever seen a BBC journalist who’s ever tended to report Israel as the victim.
BBC: When balance is all one way.
Nick
the two BBC reports you site as BBC coverag of the eradication of all non Islamic religions from Palestinian teritories by Hamas are in a word Pathetic
the first is an honor killing story were the real reason is never mentioned through the story … the question of why was she killed is asked but not explicity mentioned … let me guess was the “morality squad” mentioned Moslems? Could Orla Guerin have described them as an Islamic MOrality squad?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/4522465.stm
Anyone reading this article about teh dsestruction of the Christian community would have thought that it had everything to do with Israel’s Wall than the rise of Hamas ….
all that alludes to the real problem is one cryptic comment
“From a statistical perspective and the way things are progressing politically and socially there is a problem,” he says.
“The changes are very drastic and very dramatic in a very short space of time.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6110498.stm
Is this the best you can do to justify the
Supplies ‘urgently needed’ in Gaza
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6764155.stm
“….Israeli officials have also said they will continue supplying water and electricity to the territory.”
What amazes me is that Israel’s people are so generous that they continue to supply an enemy who is sworn to destroy them.
With friends like the BBC, Hamas will revel in being protrayed as innocent victims, at the hands of the evil jooooos.
Maybe the BBC could ask why radical Islam can’t provide for it’s own people? Or would that be (in the language of todays report on BBC bias) outwith the “liberal-minded comfort zone”?
meanwhile, in ‘entertainment news’…..
Does the BBC have a bias problem?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6764779.stm
Al Beeb’s bias continues, regardless of its own critical report on itself:
E.G. Radio 4’s ‘PM’ news summary at
5.30 pm today, carried 3 consecutive
and unchallenged, threatening criticism of Salman Rushdie’s knighthood. They were from Muslims: representatives of the Pakistan and Iran governments, and from Lord Ahmed.
Nick
Bijan – I have no idea why you think this quote shows bias. To me it shows the precise opposite. Explain to me.
first have a look at my earllier comment
http://www.haloscan.com/comments/patrickcrozier/4068507505364292634/?a=39991#360785
If you carefully re-read the article you should be able to understand the underlying point made by Alan about the role of a reporter
http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,,2105122,00.html
Alan is saying dont worry about the specifics of the incident … about “whether it had been a bazooka shell or a rocket-propelled grenade that had done the damage, and where the soldier who fired it must have been standing on the street outside.”
[I can now see how the BBC got the “Qana Massacre” story so badly wrong].
Instead he impells the students to report the story of the victims … and whats worse to IDENTIFY with the victims …
“Of course, their story, what had happened to them – what they were, and what they had lost – was what the war was all about. It did not really matter whether it was a bazooka or a rocket that had turned their world upside down.
So much of the job is about trying to find the imagination within yourself to try to see, to really see, the world through the eyes of the people in the story.”
When reporters start reporting on these lines, then they stop becoming reporters and instead become commentators who by definition have to push a distinct world view … and that is compounded 100 fold when teh reporter begins to identify him/her self with the side that he has decided is the victim … and goes on to fabricate facts to fit with the “victim narrative” thats where the bias creeps into the reporting …
case in point … is this report which bends the facts to accentuate the narrative … yet another house that had a “shell put through it” …
http://www.snappedshot.com/archives/941-A-Kinder,-Gentler-Jihad-Bumped.html