Please use this thread for BBC-related comments and analysis. 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.
Hopefully, now that we’ve had a brief spell of slashing and burning of the surfeit of comments that have threatened to drown Biased BBC over recent months, things will return to normal and we can resume being the Biased BBC blog that we all know and love 🙂
[Moved from another thread]
I am sorry, this is off-topic but there isn’t an open thread at the moment. I thought you guys might like to read this piece on Little Green Footballs: http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=26240_BBC_Refuses_to_Delete_Antisemitic_Lies&only
Conrad Black was convicted of various financial irregularities today. News at Six laid it on thick that he was a “Tory peer”, previous owner of the Daily Telegraph. On Midlands Today, however, it said he was a “Conservative” peer. Do the BBC have house rules concerning Tory and Conservative, or does it depend on individuals/regions/producers etc?
Hi Trofim, I once asked a BBC journalist about this, and was told that the general rules is to use Conservative on the first mention, with Tory on subsequent mentions.
I personally don’t like the word Tory much – it was coined as an insult by political opponents of the then Conservative Party way back, and has stayed with us to this day, becoming in some parts an accepted synonym for Conservative.
But here’s the thing – whilst most Conservatives use the term Conservative more often than not, their opponents almost always use the term Tory – often snarled or hissed in the manner of the abuse and prejudice they intend.
Strangely enough, BBC journalists almost always prefer the term Tory to Conservative too, just like the Conservatives opponents. I wonder if there’s a connection…
In modern-day touchy-feely politically correct Britain it seems strange that the impartial unbiased BBC should persist in their near constant use of Tory to describe Conservatives, what with the BBC being so sensitive to the power of language and the perceptions of other groups, including their infamous use of the term ‘militants’ as a euphemism for murderous terrorists (which probably narks off Derek Hatton and his ilk too!).
I’m not sure how representative the BBC “Have Your Say” comments section is (link below), but any BBC bigwig reading the ‘readers recommended’ comments of the subject “is TV losing the trust of his audience” would surely be shocked by the venom aimed at the BBC for its political bias. There was an article in (I think) one of last weekend’s papers, that talked about theconcern BBC management about falling viewing figures and how increasing numbers of viewers thought they were not being “engaged” – with the clear implication that increasing numbers were fed up of what they saw as its politically correct left-wing bias.
I used to love the BBC, one of the few things that still made Britain great, but now I won’t miss it when the Internet and multichannel TV makes it an irrelevance. Sad, because with more enlightened and less biased management it could possibly have a future.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/default.stm
Please forgive this response from the previous open tread but I do take exception to David Gregory misrepresenting my position – and thank you Pounce for correcting him. It was Pounce who made the comments Gregory talked about, not me. In fact, I disagree strongly with Pounce on his (her) assertions about Muslims in the BBC.
However, displayed for all to see is the BBC approach to criticism I loathe: “You little people on Biased BBC do a jolly fine job picking up the small errors we may make, but leave the broad policy issues to us, dear boy. We understand this stuff much better than you”.
I don’t know David Gregory (or want to) but how arrogant he sounds. And how typical of this type of superior human being to drop an innacurate comment and then leave the room with a passing “Enjoy your weekend!”
And Pounce, thanks for correcting Gregory. This blog is, at its best, sensible and thoughtful and BBC ‘stars’ who join us here should note they should pay us the respect we deserve. We are their equals, we pay their wages, and in many cases we are people who know where the BBC “bodies are buried” keeping our mouths shut through a sense of loyalty (for what its worth).
bodo
At the laast count on HYS.
Total comments: 1536
Published comments: 466
Rejected comments: 12
Moderation queue: 1058
Still in moderation at least 3 of my anti-BBC comments. I don’t think I have ever seen such a big Moderation Queue, probably all very anti-BBC. Methinks they are rather rattled.
BBC’s Hamas Employee Identified.
http://backspin.typepad.com/backspin/2007/07/bbcs-hamas-empl.html
More via Backspin, on the media (un)use of the ‘T’ word.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1184168541884&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter
JohnBosworth – it would have been better to put your last comment on the original thread, rather than dragging it on to this thread. I realise the details are important to you, but interest in them probably doesn’t extend much further.
Tonight continues with the BBC exclusive about Owen Oyston’s participation in the Labour love-in. But the BBC can’t actually bring itself to be critical of Brown. As commentators, Tonight chose Stephen Pound whose condemnation stretches to the observation that “a wonderful evening was spoiled by Oyston’s presence”: and Martin Bell (looking unwell and massively overweight – is he modelling his physique as well as his politics on John Simpson?) stoutly defends Brown (“well, he made a swift apology” – or words to that effect). Can you imagine how loudly indignant Bell would have been if a Conservative financial supporter and convicted rapist had been welcomed to a Cameron benefit?
Ever noticed how the BBC writes up stories where terrorists are in the dock.
Indian doctor charge over UK plot
Australian police have charged a 27-year-old Indian doctor linked to the suspected UK bomb attempts.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/6898551.stm
Israel army holds Shalit suspect
The Israeli military says it has arrested a Palestinian man over the capture of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit one year ago near the Gaza Strip.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6898236.stm
Man remanded over ‘car bombings’
A man has been remanded in custody after appearing in court in connection with the suspected car bomb attempts in London and at Glasgow airport.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6279704.stm
Why is it the BBC always promote this image of innocence when they refer to terrorists. I mean they are always suspected. Never guilty.
Now contrast the above with how the BBC reports on the Taliban;
Another Afghan man is beheaded
Taleban rebels in Afghanistan say they have beheaded another man in the east of the country for being a spy.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/6897875.stm
I mean no suspects here the man is as guilty as sin.Have to give credit to the Taliban they always get their man.
I think you mean Newsnight, Umbongo. At least they covered Oyston though, and at some length as the lead item, before moving on to Conrad Black, unlike the Ten O’Clock News on BBC1, which went big on Black and completely ignored the Oyston story. I wonder why?
If the positions were reversed I’m sure the Ten would have managed to mention the Oyston story – but as it is, the Oyston story doesn’t exist for anyone outside of Newsnight’s rarefied Friday evening audience.
“Australian police have charged a 27-year-old Indian doctor linked to the SUSPECTED UK bomb attempts.”
How can they say this – at least two men have been caught “Bang to rights”. And while the bomb attempt may have failed, as a TERRORIST attack one could argue it succeeded – many there who saw it would have been traumatised, not to mention the disruption it caused at Glasgow in the short term and across the UK as a whole in the longer term as a result of heightened security.
Sloppy.
Andrew: sorry. I didn’t understand the protocol. But I was fuming! Keep up the good work.
The have your say on the BBC website about ‘trust in the media’ is absolutely savage. There’s barely a pro BBC comment on it. It makes this site look like a Today Show love in for the Beeb. How are they going to ignore this tsunami of bile heading their way?
Mick,
The ‘trust the media’ HYS is indeed amazing. But I doubt if the current ‘journalists’ at the BBC will take notice. They know best. The only remedy is replacing them all or privatising the Beeb.
I tried watching Newsnight last night – was the presenter drunk?
Anyway, here’s news of another march to make us all aware of climate change.
‘Climate protest march under way.’
So how many thousand pairs of feet will be thumping past your door if you happen to be on the march’s route?
Read it and see…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6898605.stm
Yowser! 50,000 on the walk to make us aware of ‘climate change’! That’s very impressive. And from all over the world too (eg India and Brazil). I hope they didn’t fly to the UK, just think of the carbon footprint.
No, I’m sure they walked here. No-one could be that hypocritical.
Could they?
50,000 wasn’t – for me – the relevant figure; it was the multitude setting off today: 18.
“Some 50,000 people are expected to join them along the route over 11 weeks.”
ha ha ha…
Ah yes, the 18. Again, I’m impressed.
It has obviousely fired the public imagination
It will be interesting to see exactly how many do eventually turn up for this event. Of course, this being the Beeb, how will we actually know the true figure?
the build up to the summer war continues
“Syria Threatens Israel on Golan Heights”
http://www.lebaneselobby.org/JSite/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=507&Itemid=2
“Third U.S. carrier(USS Enterprise) to Gulf”
http://www.freemarketnews.com/WorldNews.asp?nid=45552
“Lebanon camp battle rages”
http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/Story.asp?Article=187809&Sn=WORL&IssueID=30116
(Fatah al-Islam is now firing Katyusha rockets at Lebanese villages)
“(Israeli)Military Intel: Iran will cross nuclear threshold in 2009”
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/880731.html
i got the above from a few minutes of googling this morning. one could say that , in cliched terms, that the chess pieces are being moved into position.
and i dont cost several billion pounds per year to run. nor do i have several thousand “journalists” at my disposal.
do we see any of the above on the BBC Middle East page – any analysis, or connecting of the dots? that we may well be building up to an enormous conflagration that might involve Israel, the U.S. , Iran and Syria?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/default.stm
not a chance.
“UN Hails Iran nuclear agreement”
ha ha ha…
and additionally
“Lebanon army shells refugee camp”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6294372.stm
no calls for a UN brokered “ceasefire”.
no condemnations of the Lebanese government for their “disproportionate” response?
nah. they can just shell away, untargetted into civilian areas.
its only a google, but it can be quite enlightening if you do a search on “israel condemned” versus “lebanon condemned”
israel:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=israel+condemned&btnG=Search&meta=
lebanon:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=lebanon+condemned&btnG=Search&meta=
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6294372.stm
“refugee camp”
“taking position outside the camp”
“inside a Palestinian refugee camp”
“assault on the camp”
“edge of the camp”
“eastern parts of the camp”
“edge of the camp”
“of the camp’s remaining residents”
“left the camp”
err.. no. its not a camp
here it is on google maps
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=nahr+al-bared,lebanon&sll=34.463117,35.912075&sspn=0.060859,0.104542&ie=UTF8&ll=34.454439,35.877753&spn=0.003804,0.010053&t=k&z=17&om=1
by way of comparision, here’s another “refugee camp”
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=nahr+al-bared,lebanon&sll=34.463117,35.912075&sspn=0.060859,0.104542&ie=UTF8&ll=34.454439,35.877753&spn=0.003804,0.010053&t=k&z=17&om=1
its Dresden. in Germany.
sorry. last link was wrong.
here’s the correct one:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=dresden,+germany&ie=UTF8&ll=51.067291,13.72467&spn=0.173891,0.643387&z=11&om=1
the build up to war continues
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20670001&refer=worldwide&sid=aLaColVYu5LA
“Iran Asks Japan to Pay Yen for Oil, Start Immediately”
I can recommend the article in the sat telegraph (albeit telling us the fairly obvious)
“so how did it happen that this minority media subculture manage to install itself as the principal interpreter of Britain’s institutions to the British public”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=HHJRAWTJM1FIFQFIQMFCFGGAVCBQYIV0?xml=/news/2007/07/14/nbeeb314.xml
Goodbye GW. Hello CC.
Goodbye Global Warm Mongering.
Hello Climatic Cataclysm.
The End IS Nigh
‘On this day’ – BB4 this morning
The Crusaders entered Jerusalem and
massacred Muslims seeking shelter in the Al Aqsa mosque.
————————————–
We will be now waiting for a simliar date in history where the Muslims massacre Christians…and we will be waiting… and waiting….
Archduke,
The BBC was hired by the French Social-Workers Union to do some PR work. Normal propaganda is on hold for the moment.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/07/in_pictures_on_patrol_with_unifil/html/4.stm
Apologies. The BBC does inform us that there’re going to be fireworks.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/07/in_pictures_on_patrol_with_unifil/html/6.stm
The BBC is really having a rotten time of it at the moment. Conservative Home is reporting a new pamphlet called Confessions of a Reformed BBC Producer, which looks as if it is along the same lines as Robin Aitken’s book. The author is Antony Jay of Yes Minister fame.
I know most commenters here think the BBC is pro-Brown, but when the BBC boast of this scoop
A convicted rapist attended a fundraising evening for the Labour Party held by Gordon Brown, the BBC’s Newsnight programme has revealed.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6898557.stm
aren’t they going against the liberal view that a prison sentence should expunge the criminal’s guilt?
Re Bishop Hill’s comment on Antony Jay’s pamphlet – it’s in full or part in the Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/07/14/nbeeb314.xml
The essence appears to be that the liberal campaining nature of the 60’s media elite remains the same today, despite the changed world & social circumstances now making their targeting inappropriate.
what a great read the Antony Jay article is!
Clarifies many things for me.
archduke | 14.07.07 – 9:54 am,
Following your lead, I Googled Israel was condemned in quotes. Results = 4080. Then I Googled Lebanon was condemned, also in quotes. Results = 4.
And the first of those 4?
Last year’s Israeli aggression against Lebanon was condemned by the overwhelming majority of world’s people
Clicking on the link takes you to a “review” of Jimmy Carter’s anti-Israel book which portrays Carter as way too soft on Israel.
Bishop Hill | Homepage | 14.07.07 – 11:50 am/will | 14.07.07 – 11:56 am,
That Anthony Jay article reveals an extraordinary breadth of vision. I particularly appreciate this conclusion:
I can now see that my old BBC media liberalism was not a basis for government. It was an ideology of opposition, valuable for restraining the excesses of institutions and campaigning against the abuses of authority but it was not a way of actually running anything. It serves a vital function when government is dictatorial and oppressive, but when government is ineffective and over-permissive it is hopelessly inappropriate.
I can’t deny that my perceptions have come through the experience of leaving the BBC. Suppose I had stayed. Would I have remained a devotee of the metropolitan media liberal ideology that I once absorbed so readily? I have an awful fear that the answer is yes.
On the BBC1 10.00pm news last night lead story Conrad Black, the newsreader says Lord Black one of Maragaret Thatchers favourite businesmen, was found guilty…etc. Why the reference to Margaret Thatcher who has been out of office for 14 years?
The irony about the Anthony Jay piece is that the media liberalists of today’s BBC would describe him as a reactionary and probably castigate him as yesterday’s man with yesterday’s ideas.
I’ve been interacting with the BBC just recently (an extremely sharp e-mail exchange that I’m really tempted to put in the public domain) and the reaction of these people is incredulity that you can possibly disagree with them and, not to put too fine a point on it, an obsessive conspiracy theory outlook that looks for, well, oil-companies under the bed.
And yet I am a liberal and they are not. They are the real betrayers of the Liberal tradition. They have become the new Censors, the new Propagandists, the new Historical Revisionists, the new believers in a thoroughly Marxist view of society.
[Bryan – I have deleted your comment while I review it. Re. our archives, you will notice from our sidebar that they are back – I fixed it around twelve hours ago – Biased BBC has been around so long that our method for accessing comments was deprecated back in 2004, and finally ceased to be available earlier this year. Andrew.]
Not much comment on the four previous main posts re The Queen.
Me neither, it’s pretty damned boring.
John A | 14.07.07 – 3:15 pm,
I’ve been interacting with the BBC just recently (an extremely sharp e-mail exchange that I’m really tempted to put in the public domain)
Do tell, do tell!
There seem to be very few individuals capable of independent thought at the BBC. They follow the party line all the way.
Sissons on News24 being, at worst, devil’s advocate on climate change.
Sissons was interviewing Christian Aid’s Head of Campaigns, Paul Brennan, who was launching the round Britain walk. Sissons put to him the Bjorn Lomborg case that the developing world would be better served if the West diverted resources spent on carbon reduction into aid for clean water & disease control. Sissons also cited exaggeration of sea level rise by Gore.
The Christian Aid man was, however, not for turning – after all he’s already produced the T-shirts.
But some effort, at least, by the BBC.
Bryan,
It ain’t over yet. The conversation began with complaining about the obvious editorial bias of that ridiculous “‘No sun link’ to climate change” and I managed to get some rather startling replies from Richard Black.
I know it looks like I’m teasing, but we’ll see where this goes first. If I do go public, I’ll put the entire lot on my blog and then send a link to … who do I send a link to?
John
I know it looks like I’m teasing, but we’ll see where this goes first. If I do go public, I’ll put the entire lot on my blog and then send a link to … who do I send a link to?
John
John A | 14.07.07 – 5:19 pm
Sounds like a fascinating exchange.
I don’t know about the links. Dumb about these things. Maybe e-mail one of the administrators here. You can put the URL of your blog above the comment box, I think.
Andrew,
Fair enough, it’s your blog. Great going on the archives. I was really worried about that.
According to the BBC’s Asia-Pacific title page, nothing has happened in China in the last 24 hours other than bad news for the US
Forbidden City Starbucks closes
Beijing suspends US meat imports
China firm sues Google over name
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/default.stm
Interesting to see that the start of the article covering the ‘Climate Change Walk’, even the figure of 18 has been abandonded. Could it be that less than 18 turned up?
See: http://www.newssniffer.co.uk/articles/54360/diff/1/2
Hold on, they’re still there, but dropped down the page.
“I’ve been interacting with the BBC just recently (an extremely sharp e-mail exchange that I’m really tempted to put in the public domain) and the reaction of these people is incredulity that you can possibly disagree with them and, not to put too fine a point on it, an obsessive conspiracy theory outlook that looks for, well, oil-companies under the bed.”
just post a link to your blog on here and i’ll reproduce your blogpost on my blog. others will do the same , linking back to your blog.
please do post that email exchange!