– you know, the one that the BBC did so much to promote in advance with daily mentions on BBC Views Online, complete with directions to the site (though stopping short of “and it’s handy for those coming by air too – just look for the BBC helicopter above the camp!” – though that wouldn’t have been out of character), I was surprised that we didn’t see this prominent banner in the BBC’s extensive coverage of the protest, as featured in the Uxbridge Gazette, the local newspaper:
“Revolution not runways” – revealing a wider agenda perhaps?
It’s surprising that the BBC missed this one, particularly since they ‘invested’ so much tellytax cash in the coverage of the story, a joint production with the Federation of Soap Dodgers and Association of Welfare Scroungers.
Thank you to an anonymous reader. Picture courtesy of the Uxbridge Gazette.
We can only solve the problem of climate change by a holistic strategy of
1) Not washing our hair.
2) Being marxists.
3) Singing Hamas songs.
I am the only one who finds it somewhat amusing that the BBC had a helicopter flying around, and gave directions by air to a protest that was against unnecessary air travel?
As a friend of mine, who’s a producer for Radio Five Live, said to me shortly before the Cricket World Cup (when I asked her why she and so many others were flying there when she’s such a committed greenie), “but we’re a newsgathering organisation and if we go then lots of other people don’t have to”. I never did receive a reply to my question “Why not buy streaming from a local media company?”. They’re the priests of the new church and the sumptuary laws do NOT apply to them. By Gaia no they don’t!
Sorry Matt T – that was a satirical exaggeration on my part (I didn’t see any aerial coverage of the event, although I’ve been away for the last week so have been ‘deprived’ of my usual access to BBC News Twenty-Bore).
I’ve tweaked the words around it to emphasise that it’s not what they actually said, even if that was their level of enthusiasm 🙂
Ah I see. Maybe not as amusing as I’d hoped.
Although I wouldn’t put it past some protestors to fly to the protest 😉
Well there were loads of supporting comments on their website involving such words as’ sorry can’t be there on holiday in New Zealand’ or ‘ best of luck from us on holiday in India’ and so on! Funny how they can afford holidays in places I can’t and lack the dedication to actually holiday in New Elgin rather than New Zealand and save our beloved planet!
“It’s surprising that the BBC missed this one, particularly since they ‘invested’ so much tellytax cash in the coverage of the story, a joint production with the Federation of Soap Dodgers and Association of Welfare Scroungers.”
In the spirit of revolution and social change, we have been given such terms as ; “Sans Culottes”, “Bien Pensants”,
I would like to suggest the phrase:
“les Sans Savon”
The irony that the protest was carried out on one of the coldest August days for decades was lost on the BBC completely.
Rather then shitting our pants and throwing the baby in the gutter while keeping lake fulls of very dirty bath water.
Would it not be better to get used to this world wide cooling/warming thing and have FUN with the inevitable process?
The pros of climate change are as numerous as the CONS, maybe greater. There never has been a time of no climate change, it is an essential part of our evolution.
There really is far worse things that can and most likely will happen to this planet that we also can do nothing whatsoever about, that have no good side at all. Some that could stop man kinds evolution in its tracks for good and in no more then hours.
One things for sure, if taking a regular bath was the only way to save this planet from a super volcano, none of that lot would be the slightest bit interested the BBC even less so.
The BBC do this all the time.
When we had an antiwar protest in Oxford which attracted hardly anyone (it was wet and the route went up a hill) they just filmed the same people from various angles to make it look like more people turned up. Later they filmed a school kids’ protest up to the point the kids went into The Gap and HMV.
From that blog:
“we’re trying to make sure that we don’t over-report the story just because we’ve invested in it”
Just what precisely would be ‘over-reporting’? The BBC gave massive and sympathetic coverage to it. What else did they have to do to qualify for that?
Would it not be better to get used to this world wide cooling/warming thing and have FUN with the inevitable process?
No, no, no, that won’t do at all. You’re applying the outdated concepts of “thought” and “logic” to the situation, rather than the powerful tools of the New Age: blaming people you envy, sitting around in fields, walking in front of TV cameras, and shouting.
The Baghdad Broadcasting Corporation has always had double standards when it comes ot Global Warming anf flying.
The BBC never turns down an opportunity to run up thousands of air miles sending hundreds of BBC flunkies all over the world.
Just HOW many people have been sent to India to make some sort of show about Indian Independence? Couldn’t they have got someone there to do it? After all most of our call centres are out thee so English is a common language.
What would it take to organise a “Stop the TellyTax” march on Trafalgar Square ? With lots of placards about BBC Lies ?
Sorry, are you now running examples of BBC bias that the BBC didn’t run?
They’re biased precisely because they didn’t run it. It’s called “selection bias” – ie. you report all stories that show the opponents of your philosophy or their philosophies in a bad light, but don’t show the stories that show your philosophy in a bad light. Since news isn’t on for anywhere near long enough to report all the possible stories and very few papers or individuals search out news that isnt on “the agenda”, this is almost impossible to notice unless you’re looking for it. This is a clear example of it.
MDC: So posting this picture would have been an example of bias. And NOT posting it is an example of bias.
Okaaaay.
Not that hard to understand, boys (I’ll speak slowly so that the BBC people can follow).
The BBC painted a pretty rosy picture of the protesters. They made sure the public didn’t know that they were the usual nasty load of hard-left revolutionaries. Other media outlets which weren’t so in tune with the protesters showed a more accurate picture of them, for example, by publishing the photo above.
Funny how these BBC media types, who will be familiar with every Media Studies 101 cliche in the book, come over all naive when their tactics are the focus of attention.
David Gregory, if you cannot see the problem with your reporting on the protests at Heathrow, then I suggest that you look for other employment as your lack of impartiality shines through like a beacon.
I have read many of your comments, and although I commend you for at least bothering to interact with us mere mortals, I find your failure to accept that the BBC has serious flaws to be sympomatic of a wider problem that BBC staff have…namely that you are out of touch with the British public.
Finally, can you tell me why you always seem to pop up to defend JR and his bizzare rants?.
David Gregory
The BBC’s reporting of the unwashed eco-fascists at Heathrow has been reminiscent of the Live-8 coverage, for which you lot got a well deserved kicking. The fact that all the nice, middle-call (washed) end of the anti-Heathrow expansion deliberately had nothing to do with the protest tells you all you need to know about the people taking part.
Welfare scroungers? About half of them have PhDs in some kind of science or other, but don’t let the Factually Correct Brigade shit on your picnic.
“MDC: So posting this picture would have been an example of bias. And NOT posting it is an example of bias.
Okaaaay.”
No one has said that posting the picture would be an example of bias – where are you getting that from? Posting that picture would actually go some way to balance the general pro-protest reporting if accompanied by an article like that in the Uxbridge Gazette.
>About half of them have PhDs in some kind of science or other
PhDs who just happen to be left-wing, Hamas-supporting revolutionaries.
Anyway, you sound like you know them pretty well.
unwashed eco-fascists I’ve heard this (and variations) over and over.
What makes people think they don’t wash?
How can they wash properly if they’re living in a field for days on end? I thought that was fairly obvious…
MDC | 25.08.07 – 6:34 pm
You’ve never been a camper, a soldier or a boy-scout have you? Cleanliness in the field is just a question of organisation.
One water bottle per day to drink wash and keep clean with in the field according to my old Army manuals. Easy to do but perhaps the fact that my daughter spotted many of them using the TESCO toilets for their ablutions might give a clue as to how far they were actually “roughing” it.
They don’t wash generally because they’re “crusties”, not because they’re out in a field.
(This is all a gross exaggeration, of course, but there are a fair few I’ve met who think washing is all an invention of the soap companies).
”
You’ve never been a camper, a soldier or a boy-scout have you? Cleanliness in the field is just a question of organisation.”
I seriously doubt any of these people have ever been soldiers or boy-scouts. Campers… maybe, but still not too likely.
FYI – BBC news chiefs attack plans for climate change campaign – http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,,2156758,00.html
To be honest this has elicited some mixed feelings, as I sense a pendulum swinging potentially too far the other way (though to be sure pushed by some rather unsubtle pulling in one direction) but then I can only be thankful we might be spared yet more ‘awareness’ or “consciousness raising” from such as Jonathan Ross. Like his part in Live Earth worked out so well.
“Welfare scroungers? About half of them have PhDs in some kind of science or other, but don’t let the Factually Correct Brigade shit on your picnic.” – Pejsek
Maybe so – but how many of those degrees are in climate science, meteorology, biology and related fields?
Indeed Roxanne, I doubt if having a PhD in “media studies” qualifies anyone as an expert on “climate change.”
Most PhDs lived off benefits while they did their doctorates and now work in the state-funded universities for state-funded salaries with public sector conditions. It isn’t benefit scrounging by any means, but it is hardly the same as working in private sector where you don’t have substantial holidays and a near guaranteed job for life doing something which cannot be tested for productivity.