Open thread – for comments of general Biased BBC interest:

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162 Responses to Open thread – for comments of general Biased BBC interest:

  1. TPO says:

    Did you catch the obnoxious Crick’s piece on the Southall By-election on Newsnight
    IiD | 18.07.07 – 9:10 am |

    Along with Question Time, I stopped watching Newsnight about three months ago, the credibility of the latter reduced to much the same as that of Panorama (Once upon a time in the 60s & 70s, an excellent programme).
    In fact the only regular viewing of the BBC I do now is of the twice weekly series called Rome. And that’s not the BBC’s work.
    It is filmed in Italy and made by HBO. It’s also available on Sky.

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  2. TPO says:

    Parody of the BBC, courtesy of the Daily Telegraph.

    Another scandal shakes the BBC

    ‘I interviewed them, in profile, in a darkened room and their lines were spoken by actors. (I should add that, sometimes, my own grave nodding has been added at the editing stage of this article.)’

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml;jsessionid=UX2ANQTQTE2KRQFIQMGCFFWAVCBQUIV0?xml=/opinion/2007/07/18/do1807.xml

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  3. TPO says:

    Here is the BBC’s press office falling over themselves in rushing out a letter from David Frank, the CEO of RDF Media Group PLC, in which he takes the rap for the BBC’s gross misrepresentation of the Queen’s action.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2007/07_july/16/rdf.shtml

    And this is how the BBC website spins the story;

    TV firm takes rap for Queen error
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6901613.stm

    If people wish, they can swallow this one hook, line & sinker, that is a matter for them.

    Up to the end of RDF’s last financial year they made an operating profit of £9.2m.
    Here’s their board of directors (You’ll see that there is a lot of BBC in there)

    http://www.rdfmedia.com/rdfmedia/about/people/

    I would want to know how reliant for business RDF is on the BBC. My bet is a substantial proportion.
    I have no doubt that someone in the BBC ’leant’ on RDF to take ’the rap’ on pain of loss of business.

    The BBC use blackmail on a regular basis. It wasn’t so long ago that a High Court Judge castigated the BBC for using such tactics in a ‘Rough Justice’ type programme.
    The odious Fincham should be sacked by the BBC immediately.
    Oh, I forgot to mention, I’m not a fan of the monarchy and harbour republican views.

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  4. BaggieJonathan says:

    BBC’s (HBO’s) Rome.

    High marks for authenticity and production values.

    Medium marks for entertainment.

    Low marks for historical accuracy, check out Wikipedia for some of the most glaring historical errors, misrepresentations and omissions.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome_(TV_series)#Historical_deviations

    Follow individual episodes for each one’s major historic inaccuracies or falsehoods.

    Also note that the BBC ‘controversially’ edited Rome for broadcast despite showing it after the watershed and giving explicit warnings of violence, sexual scenes and strong language with every showing.

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  5. Bryan says:

    Fine response here

    7. At 09:53 PM on 16 Jul 2007, Peter North wrote:
    “We’ve finessed impartiality down to a fine art.”

    Who are you trying to kid?

    You clearly never listened to your own coverage of the Lebanon war.

    “We do not boost, we do not label, we do not “belong””

    That is what is wrong with you people.

    While decent people everywhere have no problem boosting western secular values and labeling the likes of Hezbollah and Hamas as terrorist thugs it’s far too partial for you. You do not “belong” to the moral British society. You have equivocated and neutralized into the hands of the enemies of liberty.

    My question is, why bother when Al Jazeera does it for you?

    The fact that licence fee money goes to the likes of you is the reason I don’t own a TV anymore.

    To the self-satisfied, blinkered PC article by a self-satisfied, blinkered BBC “journalist” here:

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2007/07/centre_of_attention.html#commentsanchor

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  6. Ritter says:

    To Russia with no love lost
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2007/07/to_russia_with_no_love_lost.html

    “There has been a lot of speculation in the media that the new faces in the Foreign Office – including David Miliband and the former deputy secretary general of the UN, Mark Malloch Brown who fell out with Washington when he was at the world body • indicate that Mr Brown would seek to distance himself from the Bush administration and recalibrate the foreign policy of the Blair years.

    Clearly this story (Brown’s foreign policy) still has a little way to run, but one thing is already apparent – those predictions that the arrival of a new government would see a different foreign policy have yet to be borne out.”

    It was the buffoons at the Beeb who were falling over themselves to announce a ‘significant’ change in foreign policy when Brown became PM, based on errrr… not much really. Idiots.

    The BBC. Crap journalism. It’s what we do.

    The subtle shift in British foreign policy
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6897313.stm

    So subtle, no-one can explain any action Brown has taken that Blair would not have done.

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  7. BaggieJonathan says:

    For the fully unedited version of Rome in the UK don’t hold out any hopes it will be appearing on the BBC anytime soon.

    You will need to buy the dvd set I fear.

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  8. Anonymous says:

    But for all the clamor from the BBC to quit Iraq, there is little serious discussion of just what quitting will mean.

    “If US troops leave prematurely, the Iraqi government is likely to collapse, which could trigger violence on a far deadlier scale than Iraq is experiencing now. Iran’s malignant influence will intensify, and with it the likelihood of intensified Sunni-Shiite conflict, and even a nuclear arms race, across the Middle East.
    Anti-American terrorists and fanatics worldwide will be emboldened.
    Iraq would emerge, in Senator John McCain’s words, “as a Wild West for terrorists, similar to Afghanistan before 9/11.”
    Yet none of this seems to trouble the BBC surrender lobby,
    http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/07/18/the_consequences_of_quitting_iraq/

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  9. K says:

    Apologies it this has already been mentioned but why is the BBC not giving prominent coverage to this story?

    It should be on their front page but I guess good news is no news when it comes from Iraq.

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  10. dave fordwych says:

    Anonymous
    “yet none of this seems to trouble the BBC surrender lobby”

    Because everything that goes wrong for the next 10 years or so in Iraq can(and will) be blamed on Bush/Blair and their “illegal” war.

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  11. dave fordwych says:

    TPO

    “take the rap”

    Google this phrase and the Free Dictionary gives you.

    “To be blamed or punished for something bad that has happened especially when it’s not your fault” as in “I’m not going to take the rap for someone else’s mistakes.”

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  12. Andrew says:

    I’ve made a new blog post and have posted a new ‘open thread’. Please refresh/reload your browser if you can’t see them yet.

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