Monthly Archives: August 2007

in a current BBC Views Online (Don’t) Have Your Say discussion:

Is manned space travel still relevant in the 21st century? Is it worth the financial burden or just a country’s expensive ego trip – a hangover from 60s?

…which was magically stealth edited into:

Is manned space travel still relevant in the 21st century and worth the cost? Is the risk involved in space missions worth it?

…except that the evidence is still plain to see in the Readers Recommended view of the discussion. As Bodo says, the public reaction makes Biased BBC look tame:

Is it just a country’s expensive ego trip? So let me get this straight, NASA goes to space and does cutting edge research and this is referred to as a country’s expensive ego trip? The BBC truly has no shame.

Tom

Seeing as the U.S is the primary country doing space exploration, I wonder how quickly the BBC will ‘aid’ this HYS [to] degrade into another U.S bashing session…

Azam Azam

Oh lord, I can only predict the comments from the communists “Space travel is a waste when the money could be redistributed to the poor.” Sorry my pinko friends, human curiousity is very strong, I think space travel should be expanded. I cannot wait for humans to head to mars and further. I cannot wait to find life on other planets. If you want to help the poor, donate money, don’t expect us to stop spending money so you can sing the Internationale.

Steven Coran

Good lord, such bitter grapes. I thought champagne socialism and government funded media was a hangover from the ’60’s. This is not your “financial burden”, you have different “priorities” (How’s that working for you?) but you still get the benefits of our “expensive ego trip”.

Dale Rider

Here at Biased BBC we invite you to join in our own Have Your Say in the comments. Here’s the question, after a couple of BBC-style Wikipedia edits (in bold):

Is the BBC still relevant in the 21st century? Is it worth the financial burden, or just a country’s expensive ego trip – a hangover from the 30s?

, in a good article recounting his experience of the media and the BBC in particular while trying to put forward serious policy proposals:

I was delighted that halfway through the week Helen Boaden, a senior manager at the BBC, graciously admitted it had been wrong to run footage of me singing, from 14 years ago, as their lead-in to their first report. I am the only politician who has regularly been given eternal youth by the BBC in this way.

I do not recall, every time Neil Kinnock made a statement as EU Commissioner, the BBC running the clip of him slipping on the beach. Gordon Brown’s statements are not introduced by running the recent pictures of him picking his nose on the front bench. I look forward to fairer treatment in future.

Redwood goes on to say:

Labour has persuaded many that if you want lower tax rates you must cut public spending – and of course you would cut teachers and nurses in their parallel universe, rather than management consultants, bureaucracy and publicity.

I have gone hoarse explaining that Ireland cut tax rates on business, and lowered capital taxes, and enjoyed a large surge in revenue from the extra growth it generated. Ireland shows you can have it all – much lower tax rates, and more revenue and public spending per head. After I explain this, I am normally asked again how many teachers I want to sack to pay for the cuts!

…which is so typical of the underlying presumptions and prejudice of the BBC’s leftist public-sector mentality. Do read the rest.

P.S. Still at the Telegraph: See how they spin: see comments 7, 8 & 9 on Damian Thompson’s Telegraph blog of our story about the BBC’s Wikipedia hypocrisy. Nice try Martin! (Martin is actually a reasonable chap, avid blogger and sometime participant in the comments here at Biased BBC. Martin also wrote an interesting series of blog posts about Biased BBC earlier this year).

Thank you to an anonymous reader for the first Telegraph link.

has written an article, How the BBC disgraced my mother, published in the Daily Mail, beginning:

When it comes to separating fact from fiction, the dear old Beeb seems to have been making a bit of a hash of things recently.

There have been a whole string of exposures about faked competition winners, dubious reporting and manipulatively edited documentaries.

Before moving on to her main point:

So serious is the issue that BBC bosses are now sending their staff on training courses to teach them how to be more honest. That’s a sorry sign of the times. I hope members of the BBC drama department and some of its large army of commissioning editors will also be receiving this kind of instruction.

For here, too, the Corporation has been twisting the truth to suit an agenda. A new film about my mother’s early life has just been commissioned by the BBC. Produced by a company called Great Meadow, this drama – entitled The Long Walk To Finchley – has one crucial passage.

Set in the early 1950s, when she was looking for a Conservative seat in Parliament, my mother is shown in a foul-mouthed tirade against the party’s top brass.

“F**king Establishment!” she rails, after being turned down as a candidate in one constituency.

This fictionalised incident would be laughable were it not so offensive. I have never been against satire directed at my mother. I enjoyed, for instance, the musical Billy Elliot, which contained a diatribe against her.

But this BBC screenplay shows a warped view of history. Neither the writer nor the production company seems to have the slightest understanding of my mother’s character and of the moral climate of the early Fifties.

Carol concludes with this, which applies in so many ways to so many of the attitudes and priorities on display in the BBC’s news and current affairs output:

This world has always dripped with unthinking snobbery and scorn towards her because she dared to challenge their knee-jerk ideology and their addiction to taxpayers’ subsidies. Their endless mocking was their attempt at revenge. And this snide film is just the latest example.

Do read the rest.

Update: According to Andrew Pierce in the Telegraph: BBC orders F-word cut from Thatcher drama. Jane Tranter, the controller of fiction at the BBC, told The Daily Telegraph:

The film is a positive portrait, not negative. It makes clear right from the start that Margaret Thatcher, a trained barrister, chemist and mother of twins, is a phenomenon.

Believe it when you see it!

Thank you to Biased BBC reader Sara for the Daily Mail link.

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 (and never has been) an invitation for general off-topic comments, rants or use as a chat forum. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog. Please scroll down to find new topic-specific posts.

* (well, one can dream!). As Ed blogged below, Biased BBC’s story about the BBC’s utter hypocrisy in its desire to embarrass the CIA has gone big, being picked up, among many others, by Daily Telegraph journalist Damian Thompson, Helen at the usually excellent EU Referendum blog (which covers far more than the EU) and the BBC itself, where Pete Clifton has written on the BBC Editors blog:

Words like glass, house and stones spring to mind, because we weren’t exactly sharp about the other obvious question that springs to mind… What about people inside the BBC?

This was an irritating oversight. Some of you have written to complain, others have given the issue a significant airing online (see here, here and here) and beyond.

Pete Clifton goes on to defend the BBC’s participation in Wikipedia – which is fair enough, up to a point. It’s a pity though, and perhaps indicative of the leftist public-sector mentality of the BBC, that the same benevolent attitude wasn’t on show when the BBC leapt gleefully into action to report, with much fanfare (third most important story in the world, remember!), on the CIA’s supposed Wikipedia edits, which are in the main as benign as the bulk of the BBC’s own ‘anonymous’ edits.

Although the BBC has now updated Jonathan Fildes original BBC Views Online Wikipedia ‘shows CIA page edits’ article with a belated mention of the BBC’s own edits, there’s still room, Pete, to improve the honesty of the article much further – after all, what’s good for the CIA goose is just as good for the BBC gander! You’re too coy about the BBC’s own edits of George W. Bush’s Wikipedia entry and Tony Blair’s Wikipedia entry.

Come to think of it though Pete, the headline and tenor of the article is so badly skewed that the whole article ought to be re-written with a focus on the global embarrassment of large organisations, including the BBC, at the stupidity of (some of) their Wikipedia editing employees, rather than maintaining the pretence that the article is about that great BBC bete-noir, the CIA. Don’t worry though, John Leach’s excellent News Sniffer service will make sure the full history of the BBC’s shabby handling of these revelations is clear for all to see (though as I have said for many years, there is no reason, apart from BBC corporate secrecy and defensiveness for the BBC not to provide News Sniffer’s level of transparency and honesty itself, if, that is, the BBC is interested in being transparent and honest).

The point where the BBC’s participation in Wikipedia ceases to be fair enough though is where BBC employees ‘revise’ Wikipedia articles about the BBC (except for the most minor of typographical errors). It is utterly wrong that even the mildest, most reasonable and honest criticism of the BBC on Wikipedia is dishonestly removed, edited or spun away, and ever so rapidly, by the Corporation’s own employees – especially on the telly-taxpayers time (heaven knows what they get up to on their home IP addresses in their own time).

BBC employees need to recognise that the BBC, in common with all large organisations, can and does do wrong – which is especially dangerous with an organisation with the size, reach and global influence of the BBC. The notion of a faultless, well-meaning, benevolent BBC that can do no wrong, a notion that BBC staff are thoroughly imbued with, is a large part of the ‘BBC culture’ that needs to be thrown out if the BBC is to even hope of regaining the respect that it once, deservedly, had.

P.S.: A special welcome to our visitors from elsewhere on the web. I hope you will take a few minutes to browse our other recent coverage of the BBC, and that you will come back in the next few days to help us keep an eye on the BBC.

* See Wikipedia, where else, for an explanation of this popular British expression.

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Congrats to Andrew over his posting on the BBC’s wikiedits. 7,000 eh? Such busy boys (and girls) at the BBC. Congrats too to all the great commenters who offer us so much to think about here. About half a clap should finally go to the BBC, who have now updated their article to include a modest reference to their own wikiediting exploits. Why so modest, chaps? (see below posts for details) Oh, and they’ve also linked here, as part of their inching towards a compromise on the subject. I think that most people will consider the efforts to be too little, too late.

Update (15.35 UK): that reference in full (at present):

“BBC News website users contacted the corporation to point out that the tool also revealed that people inside the BBC had made edits to Wikipedia pages.”

No mention of the nature of some of the edits: George wa*ker Bush, for instance, or the Tony Blair edits.

Update (15.45 UK): Thanks too to Damien Thompson of the Telegraph for recognising B-BBC in relation to this story with his kind words.

Update (16.05 UK): you will no doubt want to check out the BBC blog’s view of the matter, which also links here (to commenter glj thanks for the heads up on that). Thanks as well to the illuminating Helen of EU Referendum who recommends her readers to visit. Hello to you folks as well.

this evening is: Wikipedia ‘shows CIA page edits’!

Hypocrisy writ large: the BBC pot calls the CIA kettle black

Biased BBC’s story about the BBC’s own editing of Wikipedia has been online for 18 hours – and has been blogged on the BBC’s internal blog system by Nick Reynolds, a senior advisor on editorial policy, and yet this article, by Jonathan Fildes (is that a typo for Fidler?), a BBC science and technology reporter no less, allegedly (maybe he’s the same work experience kid that happened to edit George Bush’s Wikipedia entry!), the third most important story the BBC can find, apparently, makes absolutely no mention of the BBC’s own Wikipedia edits. Unbelievable.

The BBC’s Mr. Fidler writes:

An online tool that claims to reveal the identity of organisations that edit Wikipedia pages has revealed that the CIA was involved in editing entries.

Wikipedia Scanner allegedly shows that workers on the agency’s computers made edits to the page of Iran’s president.

It also purportedly shows that the Vatican has edited entries about Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams.

Now for some BBC-style Wikipedia ‘revising’ for the BBC’s Mr. Fidler:

An online tool that claims to reveal the identity of organisations that edit Wikipedia pages has revealed that the BBC was involved in editing entries.

Wikipedia Scanner allegedly shows that workers on the corporation‘s computers made edits to the page of America‘s president.

It also purportedly shows that the BBC has edited entries about Britain’s former leader Tony Blair.

Now, if one of you Beeboids that hangs around here could just commit my minor edits (in bold above) to Mr. Fidler’s BBC Views Online version of the article (the third most important story in the world!) that would be grand. Thanks very much. (See here for the BBC’s edit of George W. Bush’s Wikipedia entry and here for the BBC’s puerile edits of Tony Blair’s Wikipedia entry).

P.S. If that’s too much to ask, just do the decent thing and update Mr. Fidler’s article to extend the same level of scrutiny the BBC subjects the CIA to to the BBC itself.

Thank you to the many spotters of this development and to Sam Duncan for the Tony Blair Wikipedia link.

Update: You can see the rest of Biased BBC by going to our top page. While you’re here, make sure you see and hear our story from Tuesday about the BBC’s decade long cover up of Neil Kinnock exploding in anger at James Naughtie on Radio 4.

reported and also about the BBC’s (ab)use of that Redwood footage again, Helen Boaden, the BBC’s Director of Views, sorry, News, has written about the BBC’s Red Tape Reporting on the BBC Editors Blog, saying:

In retrospect we weren’t right to use that footage again, which came from a long time ago.

In retrospect Helen? Wasn’t it obvious that it was wrong beforehand? It was obviously wrong to everyone outside the White City Viewsroom, but it’s like a knee-jerk reaction at the BBC: mention Redwood, show that footage, as sure as night follows day.

Some Beeboid posteriors really ought to be getting a boot imprint on them for such stupidity – and Helen Boaden really ought to be apologising for it – not just coming out with a bland, passive acknowledgement of their bias, sorry, Helen, their ‘mistake’. It’s not as if it was an accident – someone purposely dug out that footage and used it to embarrass Mr. Redwood, quite out of context from the news story. Someone wasn’t doing their job properly or professionally. Surely someone in the Viewsroom at the weekend had the power and the nous to stop such stupidity before it got on air? But no, it seems not.

Boaden goes on to list a selection of news headlines in a bid to defend the BBC from Iain Dale’s comments about the BBC’s approach to this news story, but it’s all in vain – anyone can pick a small selection of headlines that don’t happen to say the words Iain Dale quoted, but the tenor of the BBC’s approach was plain – Helen Boaden would do well to admit it, to apologise and to kick some backsides.

It looks like it’s Bloggers (and The Sun): 1, BBC: 0, again.

P.S.: If you haven’t heard it already, see the post below to listen to the BBC interview with Neil Kinnock that was covered up and hidden for more than a decade after Kinnock, Leader of the Opposition and would-be Prime Minister at the time, exploded in rage during an interview. By the same BBC standards this should be (but of course never is) played whenever Lord Kinnock pops up on the box to give us the benefit of his wisdom.

have made somewhere in the region of 7,000 anonymous Wikipedia edits (i.e. not including those Beeboids who have their own Wikipedia accounts), including this BBC edit of George W. Bush’s entry, changing his middle name from Walker to the Beeboid’s own name. How amusing.

Of course the real joke is that we telly-taxpayers are paying these morons to sit on their backsides and indulge in their petty personal political prejudices whenever they think they can get away with it.

Update: Lots more BBC Wikipedia edits have been uncovered by Biased BBC readers, (see the comments), including this one, where a BBC Wikipedia editor has changed ‘terrorists’ to ‘freedom fighters’. What a surprise. Lots more Wikipedia edit-o-rama drama to come I’m sure!

Meanwhile, The Grauniad has picked up on this story too (from where they don’t say – unlike Biased BBC they don’t credit their sources) – but of course, they don’t make any mention of their BBC bedfellows penchant for er, ‘revising’, Wikipedia!

Thank you to Anonymous for this excellent detective work, and to (another) Anonymous for The Grauniad link.