Although I really hate to say this on the week that the BBC bosses will announce job losses in news and current affairs (why don’t they merge BBC3 and BBC4 instead of cutting the very heart of what the BBC should be about?), there was yet another example of massive over-staffing today.
When Chris Huhne launched his Lib Dem leadership bid, our cameraman took the trouble to count the number of BBC people present.
There were TWELVE of them
Sky and ITN had three each.
Nuff said.
Via Guido.
– the usual mush of dumbed down right-on BBC output. Highlights included, in no particular order:
And, while I remember, one snippet from Monday’s Ten O’Clock News, with Fiona Bruce informing us that, yes, a ship going from Britain to Japan via the Panama canal sails “14,000 miles”, whilst going via the Northwest Passage (clear for the first time, natch) it could “save two weeks”. Aaaaaarrrrrrrrgggggghhhhhhh! Useless as ever.
Update: Re. Jean Charles de Menezes: the BBC could say “Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian mistakenly shot by…”, which is just as accurate and informative, but a lot less emotive than Fiona Bruce et al repeatedly intoning “Jean Charles de Menezes, the innocent Brazilian shot by…”. None of this of course is, in any way, a justification for his killing – far from it. See the comments for more than enough discussion of this subject.
A vvvery humble Devil has done some fact-checking on the BBC’s reporting of the venerable Al Gore, and guess what?
They’ve overstated his credentials as a climate change “expert”. Well, go and read all about it, but what is noticeable for me is the tone of forced gratitude on the part of the BBC journalist, Roger Harrabin, and the inadequate way a partial correction is made.
The question is whether Gore ever studied climate science at university at all, as the BBC continue to state.
From the BBC News Search engine (which has lost a lot of functionality in the last couple of months. Gone is the ability to search by date range or by news area. It didn’t always work properly, but the current search is pretty minimalistic) – Eid has just passed, Navratri is still with us, so compare :
Your 7 pages for Lent.
Your 23 pages for Ramadan.
Your 1 page for Navratri.
Catching up on some summer posts that I didn’t quite finish at the time, there was an interesting article in Private Eye no. 1191, 17-30 Aug. 2007, giving “the full story of Channel 4, the CPS and the lies told by West Midlands Police” about the recent to-do over Channel 4’s Undercover Mosque programme broadcast in January.
Although Undercover Mosque was a Channel 4 programme it is pertinent to Biased BBC on at least two counts:
Firstly, that the BBC seems unwilling and unable to make undercover hidden camera programmes about anything that doesn’t fit the BBC’s definition of ‘bad’ (e.g. supermarkets, private security contractors, the police, the BNP etc.) – not that these aren’t worthy of investigation, but there are many other organisations and groups that also need to have their private deeds exposed to the glare of public scrutiny too (see the second part of this post, BBC Newspeak: Four legs good, two legs bad, for a few suggestions from a couple of years back Beeboids);
Secondly, the complete indifference of BBC News and BBC Views Online to the original broadcast of this programme. As with the first point, undercover programmes (including those from Channel 4) that the BBC approves of are covered, whereas those that aren’t approved don’t get covered. Undercover Mosque was barely mentioned by the BBC until August, when BBC Views Online opined C4 ‘distorted’ mosque programme, cheerily reporting criticism of the programme – the very criticism that Private Eye completely demolishes:
Playing silly burkas
The silliest of all this summer’s silly season stories broke last Wednesday, when the West Midlands Police and the Crown Prosecution Service issued a joint press release attacking Undercover Mosque, a Dispatches programme broadcast in January by Channel 4.
The film showed preachers at various “moderate” British mosques – notably the Green Lane mosque in Birmingham – delivering wild rants against kuffaar (non-muslims). “We hate the people of kufr, we hate the kuffaar”, Abu Usamah of Green Lane mosque declared, adding that although he didn’t agree with terrorists “at the same time they’re closer to me than those criminals of the kufr… He’s better than a million George Bushes, Osama bin Laden, he’s better than a thousand Tony Blair’s because he’s a muslim”. Murtaza Khan, a teacher from Essex who preaches at many UK mosques, denounced non-muslims as “filthy” and “accursed”.
Last week’s press release quoted Bethan David, a lawyer from the CPS, who alleged that the film “completely distorted what the speakers were saying”by quoting them out of context. It revealed that Inspector Knacker, a.k.a. Anil Patani MBA, Assistant Chief Constable (Security and Cohesion) for the West Midlands force – is now making a formal complaint to Ofcom that the programme was unfair and misleading.
Had Patani bothered to check the [Ofcom] website beforehand he’d have realised that, under the legislation governing Ofcom, complaints about unfairness can come only from “the person affected”, i.e. someone who has been personally traduced in a programme or by someone offically authorised by that person to act for them. Since the West Midlands Police fits neither category, the “formal complaint”looks like a non-starter. It appears to be little more than a silly season publicity stunt – though quite an effective one, as it was duly and widely reported the next day by newspapers hungry for more tales of TV fakery.
The Eye asked the West Midlands Police why they hadn’t read the rules before lodging the complaint. A spokesman told us that they had “liaised”with Ofcom in advance and been assured that they were following the correct procedures. But is this true?
“No”, said an Ofcom spokesman. Ofcom saw the press release a mere ten minutes before it was issued. Did you “liaise” with the police? “We certainly didn’t”.
The police also told the Eyethat the formal complaint to Ofcom came jointly from themselves and the CPS. Again, this turns out to be untrue. But the confusion is understandable, since Bethan David of the CPS certainly aided and abetted the stunt.
Did the police or CPS discuss their criticism of the film with C4 before issuing the press release? No. (As one bemused C4 executive observed: “This isn’t what a proper police force does. It’s the sort of thing Alastair Campbell does”).
Even more surprisingly, neither Patani nor David has produced one shred of evidence – in the press release, or in simultaneous letters to C4 and Ofcom – to back up their serious allegations.
Even the Eye wouldn’t accuse a film-maker of “completely distorting”the truth without giving chapter and verse – and we’re not an official branch of the criminal justice system. So could the CPS please cite some examples of of complete distortion that support Bethan David’s defamatory attack on the film-makers’ integrity?
“No”, a CPS spokesman told us. “We don’t go into that level of detail”. Or indeed any detail at all. The same goes for the West Midlands Police.
But Knacker may eventually have to justify wasting public money on this media stunt when he could have been tackling real criminals. He and Bethan David may also find themselves having to defend their unsubstantiated allegations in a court of law: Channel 4 and HardCash Productions, the company behind the film, are considering suing the police and CPS for libel.
To their credit, BBC Newsnight did a great piece along these lines last week (one of several great Newsnight pieces recently – perhaps there’s hope yet), revealing, if I recall correctly, that West Midlands Police have spent £14,000 of taxpayers money on this investigation excluding staff costs, and that the investigation was started after they received precisely zero complaints from the public. I’ll try to find it and Youtube it later. You can view the original Undercover Mosque programme via Google Video.
courtesy of Youtube, here are excerpts from last night’s BBC Ten O’Clock News and Sky News at Ten programmes, their respective headlines and their coverage of the award of the Nobel Peace Prize jointly to Al Gore and the UN climate change panel:
BBC Ten O’Clock News headlines, followed by Al Gore, lead story.
Sky News at Ten headlines, cutting to Al Gore, the third story.
Unfortunately I don’t have time just now to transcribe both sets of headlines and reports and write up a comparison – leaving an opportunity for a spot of DIY, and perhaps collaborative, comparing and contrasting in the comments. Have fun.
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.
according to Guardian blogger and media commentator Roy Greenslade, blogging about a new broadcast monitoring service called Newswatch that:
has emerged from a research body founded in 1999 that famously carried out an analysis of the BBC’s coverage of the European Union and found it unduly biased in favour of the EU.
…and undertakes to:
use a range of robust analytical tools to study the British broadcast media. Our methodology is firmly based on established academic principles utilising core quantitative and qualitative research techniques.
An interesting approach indeed, because there are lots of different types of bias, ranging from the obvious to the subtle (but nonetheless insidious) that is much harder to pin down and expose, particularly where the BBC doesn’t realise it is being biased (institutional bias anyone?).
One of the problems with keeping tabs on the BBC is that there is just so much of it – the BBC news factory churns out upwards of forty-eight hours worth of stuff every day – far beyond the ability of any individual, or even a group like Biased BBC, to keep track of, which often leads to complaints about bias being brushed aside with the smug reassurance that:
If only you’d listened to everything on that topic you’d find there’s nothing to worry about…
Sound familiar? Enter Newswatch!
Newswatch spent fourteen weeks prior to the European Council meeting in June monitoring Radio 4’s Today programme for balance in their coverage of the run up to the EU reform treaty (i.e. the revised EU constitution after the application of spin) – a daunting task involving minute by minute analysis of over 240 hours of material.
You’d expect that Today, a daily three-hour long flagship BBC news programme, would provide comprehensive coverage of a topic as important as the EU reform treaty – they probably even think they did – but reading the summary version of Newswatch’s first report (the full report apparently contains over eighty pages of analysis) it turns out that Today’s coverage of the EU Reform Treaty was far from comprehensive, and that what coverage there was was biased, unimaginative and plain sloppy.
Some highlights from the Newswatch summary:
There’s more good stuff in the Newswatch summary report, and I expect a great deal more in the full report. It will be interesting to see how this rigorous approach to analysing the BBC’s output develops, and how well the BBC and other news outlets report the findings of such meticulous analysis of our national broadcaster’s flagship radio programme.
In the days before 7/7, when the BBC were still worrying about a post-9/11 backlash, someone had the idea of a programme depicting ordinary Muslims coping with other people’s prejudices. “Don’t Panic, I’m Islamic“, went out on 12th June 2005, to mixed reaction.
What must the odds be against the footage inadvertantly including alleged British jihadists?
Mohammed Hamid, 50, who called himself “Osama bin London” and ran a religious book stall in Oxford Street, London, described the 7/7 tube and bus bombings, in which 52 people died, as “not even a breakfast for me”, the court heard. Many of the paintball sessions, indoctrination meetings and combat drills he organised across England were attended by a number of those who later carried out the failed 21/7 London bombings, it was said …
A paintballing combat trip was held at the Springwood Centre in Tonbridge, Kent. The visit was even filmed by a BBC documentary crew and later broadcast in a programme entitled Don’t Panic, I’m Islamic.
on the BBC Editors Blog to recent criticism here and elsewhere of Andrew Marr’s “the election is off” interview of Gordon Brown last Saturday.
What Barney labels the ‘fourth charge’, that Marr and the BBC were used by Brown and co. as part of their spin operation, comes closest to my own view, that Marr and the BBC were used by the Brownies as the least painful (as distinct from painless) way of getting their bad news out – with the issue being that of Barney’s ‘first charge’, whether or not the BBC should have participated in such a journalistic ‘scoop’ or ‘abuse’ (depending on your point of view). Unsurprisingly Barney is in the ‘scoop’ camp.
There are a number of interesting comments worth reading, for and against, on Barney’s post too.
Thank you to Biased BBC reader Ritter for the link.
