Monthly Archives: July 2007

Rod Liddle’s column in The Sunday Times leads on the BBC:

Cue meltdown at the corporation. A frightened looking man in a suit, Peter Fincham, was wheeled out to apologise for having inadvertently misled the press and was gleefully attacked live on air by his underlings on Newsnight and breakfast news and repeatedly told to resign. And Jana Bennett, the BBC’s director of vision – whatever the hell that means – let the genie out of the bottle by calling for producers to inform her of any other programmes that may somehow have misled the public. Oh dear…

Ten years ago it looked as if the royal family was on its way out; an unloved anachronism. Today which publicly funded institution looks more confident and secure: the monarchy or the BBC?

Read the whole thing, including Liddle’s delicious boot in the nuts delivered in passing to that twit Keith Best, who would do well to slink off and get a real job out of the public eye.

Meanwhile, apropos of the fisking we did waaay back on Wednesday of Beeboid Richard Black’s pathetic article, ‘No sun link’ to climate change, toeing the BBC line on climate change, the Sunday Telegraph has former BBC science correspondent, Dr. David Whitehouse, responding with The truth is, we can’t ignore the sun, where he lays into the same sloppy BBC article, their one-sided approach to reporting climate science and the Royal Society paper on which the BBC article was based. He concludes:

My own view on the theory that greenhouse gases are driving climate change is that it is a good working hypothesis – but, because I have studied the sun, I am not completely convinced.

The sun is by far the single most powerful driving force on our climate, and the fact is we do not understand how it affects us as much as some think we do.

So look on the BBC and Al Gore with scepticism. A scientist’s first allegiance should not be to computer models or political spin but to the data: that shows the science is not settled.

If only the BBC still had reporters like David Whitehouse, inquiring and inquisitive, free from toeing the BBC’s long accepted line on the subject.

from today, Who are the car bomb suspects?, in which the BBC tells us:

Eight people were initially held over the failed car bomb attacks on central London and Glasgow. Three men have now been charged, a woman has been released without charge and four men are still being held.

Details have been emerging about their backgrounds.

Strangely, in such a long and detailed article, complete with supporting quotes from people who know the suspects, e.g.:

“I can’t even remotely imagine [Dr. Mohammed Asha] being involved in extremist activities or terrorism.”

…there is no mention of what linked and motivated the suspects, no use of either a certain ‘i’ word or a certain ‘m’ word, something that is rather, er, fundamental to their backgrounds. Good old BBC – telling us the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, as usual.

The first train wreck is revealed by the ever vigilant (and ever wonderful) News Sniffer Revisionista as it catalogues eighteen versions, 0 to 17, of BBC Views Online’s original Queen walks out of photo session fabrication page.

Watch as the intial version is padded out with more so-called details, with a ‘Tantrums and tiaras‘ section being added, moving revision by revision to the inevitable train wreck at the end, with the mealy-mouthed Beeboids grovelling apologetically, spinning away to downplay the damage and pass the buck as they go!

Highlights include:

• Version 6– where the opening paragraphs:
  

  The Queen is seen storming off after a run-in with photographer Annie Leibovitz during a BBC documentary.

  Leibovitz tells the Queen she thinks her shot will look better without her crown but the Queen says: “I’m not changing anything” and walks off.

  …suddenly become:

  The BBC has apologised to the Queen after clips implied Her Majesty walked out of a photography session with Annie Leibovitz during a documentary.

  “In this trailer there is a sequence that implies that the Queen left a sitting prematurely,” the BBC said.

  “This was not the case and the actual sequence of events was mis-represented,” the statement added.

  “The BBC would like to apologise to both the Queen and Annie Leibovitz for any upset this may have caused”.

• Version 7 – where the second paragraph is spun to accuse the Queen of having “an altercation with Leibovitz”– which is clearly not the case – another BBC fabrication. 
• Version 8 – where the ‘altercation‘ spin is removed, and a dollop of new spin is added, including this gem:
  

  The BBC said the clips for the trailer were “not intended to provide a full picture of what actually happened or of what will be shown in the final programme”.

  Oh yeah, like we believe that!

   

• Version 17 – where another dollop of spin is applied as:
  

  The BBC has apologised to the Queen for wrongly implying she walked out of a portrait session with photographer Annie Leibovitz during a documentary.

  …is amended to become:

  The BBC has apologised to the Queen for mistakenly showing footage that wrongly implied she walked out of a portrait session during a documentary.

  …did you spot that addition? You’d think Peter Fincham would have known what pressing ‘Play’ would do in room full of journalists, wouldn’t you? There’s more:

  The footage, revealed to the press on Wednesday, was not intended to be seen and was shown in error, the BBC said.

  Ah yes, that chestnut – it was all a mistake – we edited the clips to switch them around and fabricated the Queen’s alleged storming out quite by accident – could happen to anyone, don’tcha know!

Courtesy of BBC Top Gear, here is our second train wreck – an apt metaphor for this week’s events, as we see the BBC’s remaining credibility stalled on a railway line, with the engine of public opinon approaching…

Oh dear Peter – ifthat clip’s accurate it looks like your car(eer) and the BBC’s reputation will need a bit more than a patch-up and a respray…

(I wonder how they got hold of it!), here is an unexpurgated 43 second clip of the BBC’s preview trailer, including the now infamous switched around clips wrongly portraying the Queen as ‘storming out’ of a photo shoot:

The silly music and the cinematic voiceover hardly speak for the BBC’s confidence in the ability of their programmes to sell themselves, do they?

here is a BBC Newsnight interview of Peter Fincham, Controller of BBC One, the man who presented the fabricated clip of the Queen to journalists on Wednesday, saying, according to David Silitto’s report, “yes, it looks as though she stormed out”, as he did so.

BBC Newsnight: Peter Fincham interview

Full post still to follow.

to Her Majesty the Queen after showing journalists a preview trailer implying, actually, lying would be more accurate, that Her Majesty had stormed out of a photo shoot after a dispute with photographer Annie Leibovitz.

Naturally enough, journalists being journalists, saw this clip of the queen apparently storming out of the photo shoot for the major news story it apparently was, and splashed it all over this morning’s newspapers.

Unfortunately, the BBC being the BBC, the truth was very different. The BBC’s clip showed the Queen objecting to Leibovitz’s request for her to remove her tiara, then cut to a clip of the Queen apparently ‘storming out’ of the photo shoot, in which she is heard to say “I’ve had enough with this dressing, I’m not going to change anything”.

The reality was entirely different – the clip of the Queen ‘storming out’ was in fact footage of the Queen arriving for the photo shoot, with the Queen presumably complaining about getting dressed up (hence her quote). During the subsequent photo shoot, when Leibovitz asks Her Majesty to remove her tiara, the Queen appears to object by raising an eyebrow in what appears to be mock exclamation, the tiara being an important part of her regalia.

Following the wall-to-wall newspaper brouhaha the Palace complained to the BBC, who checked out what they should have checked out in the first place, and then issued a grovelling apology for publishing such a malign calumny.

Here are two of the BBC’s own lengthy reports on today’s events:

BBC News 24 this afternoon:

The interesting points in David Silitto’s report (above), include the BBC’s statement of apology:

In this trailer there is a sequence that implies the Queen left a sitting prematurely. This was not the case and the actual sequence of events was misrepresented. The BBC would like to apologise to both the Queen and Annie Leibovitz for any upset this may have caused.

…and him explaining that the trailer was a pre-season showing for journalists, at which one of the BBC people presenting the preview (apparently Peter Fincham, Controller of BBC1) said, after showing the clip, “yes, it looks as though she stormed out”.

Silitto also says:

The issue of deception and trust has been said to be an absolute number one priority for the BBC, in fact an email was sent out only a matter of hours ago saying we need to look at every programme over the last few years to be sure, absolutely sure, that in no way we have deceived the public (my emphasis).

It sounds like the email was sent out before this story broke, though that’s not entirely clear. What is clear though is that, if the BBC are to really check back in the way described, then they’ve got their work cut out for them. There are a lot of things they’ll need to check, a lot of them are featured right here in Biased BBC’s own archives. Somehow I expect they’ll just have the most cursory of looks and then report back that there’s nothing to worry about, so that’s alright then.

BBC One’s Six O’Clock News:

This clip has two parts – the first fifteen seconds are from the news headlines at the start of the programme, followed by the full report.

Interestingly, in contrast to BBC News 24, where they said they couldn’t show the original trailer footage “for understandable reasons”, this report does include the footage shown to journalists, with the sequence in question about 53″ seconds into the Youtube clip.

The report goes on to include a clip of Leigh Holmwood of The Guardian (where else, Beeboids!) on press reaction, Ray Snoddy, a respected journalist and media commentator (also presenter of the BBC’s own Newswatch show), saying:

Ray Snoddy: Coming so soon after the fine over Blue Peter, you’d think somebody at the BBC might have thought this was a rather sensitive subject, and might have been more careful, and might have foreseen a possible row by feeding all of this material to the tabloids, who accepted it with the greatest glee.

…finishing up with a studio discussion between Razia Iqbal and presenters George Alagiah and Natasha Kaplinsky (perched together like Statler and Waldorf from the Muppets!), in which Razia Iqbal comes out with:

Razia Iqbal: The other point to make is that broadcasters on the whole feel that they really are up against it in terms of pressure to compete for audiences, so when they launch their highlights for the next season they all want to try and do the best, and clearly this is something that’s happened this time, in trying to highlight something that they think was a real scoop, they’ve not really looked carefully enough at what they were showing, what they were trying to highlight.

Really Razia, do you really think that they were just trying to do their best and that “they’ve not really looked carefully enough at what they were showing”?

Come off it – they manufactured a lie, as simple as that. There is no other way to interpret this devious manipulation of reality, damaging to the reputations of both Her Majesty and Annie Leibovitz. It was a straightforward manufactured lie, and yet you seem content to pass it off as people just trying to do their best and not paying quite enough attention!

Annie Leibovitz’s portrait of Her Majesty the Queen:

Annie Leibovitz’s striking portrait of Her Majesty – the finished product

Apologies for the delayed appearance of a post on this momentous story – it has taken some time to capture, edit, process and upload the clips, not to mention transcribing quotes and writing the rest of the post. More to follow tomorrow.

I wonder how the BBC would cover a story where a BNP activist was arrested on a charge of murdering his Asian next door neighbour.

Like this ?

Blogger Mick Hartley spots the contradiction in this BBC story.

(and it must just be one of those amazing coincidences that the Guardian is covering the same subject)

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 🙂

. Reporter Paul Revoir writes:

BBC staff, viewers and politicians have accused the broadcaster of ‘overkill’ in its coverage of the diaries, which Mr Campbell himself admits have been sanitised to protect Tony Blair and the Labour Party.

As well as three hour-long episodes which run nightly until Friday, the corporation has already carried lengthy interviews with Mr Campbell on Sunday AM with Andrew Marr and Radio 4’s Today programme.

On Friday, Newsnight Review will also be discussing the diaries.

The week-long coverage comes despite the fact that the contents of the book have already been widely trailed across the media.

Revoir quotes Conservative MP, Philip Davies, who sits on the culture, media and sport select committee, as saying:

“Personally I think it is a complete outrage – [Campbell] should be paying them for over three and a half hours of free marketing he has been given. By Alastair Campbell’s own admission it has been sanitised so as not to damage the Labour Party, there is no justification for them showing more spin”

Even a ‘broadly supportive’ senior BBC insider goes on to admit:

Three hours is a terribly long time to give to a guy who is known as a spin doctor and a propagandist as opposed to a seeker of truth.

…to which there is little more that needs to be said. The BBC’s three hours of Campbell’s sanitised Labour-Party-safe spin (sorry, history) starts tonight, Wednesday, at 8pm on BBC2, continuing on Thursday at 8pm, concluding on Friday at 7pm.

Update: Kid Gloves comments: “To paraphrase the senior BBC insider, £135.50 is a terribly large amount of money to give to an organisation which is known as a spin doctor and a propagandist as opposed to a seeker of truth.” 🙂

Thank you to commenter George Whyte for the link.