Please use this thread for comments about the BBC’s current programming and activities. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog – scroll down for new topic-specific posts. N.B. this is not an invitation for general off-topic comments, rants or chit-chat. Thoughtful comments are encouraged. Comments may be moderated.
A look at the BBC news website. Only one story about the Labour funding scandal. This is at least four different stories, and should be told as such, all connected but implicating different people in different ways. It has come out in a disgraceful manner, with each story being gradually forced out of a reluctant Labour party. Each stage should be documented, separately to give the full, sorry picture of how it developed.
The only headline? “Brown will ‘assist’ donor probe”. As bland and pro-Brown as anyone could possibly have written without blatantly lying.
Of course it is still a lie, he has already shown he is not willing to assist, by not forcing all his minions to immediately tell everything they know on pain of immediate sacking. More comes out, the people who knew are still in their jobs Ergo Brown is not assisting more than he is forced to.
Anyone care to guess how this would have played were the Conservative Party implicated?
The BBC and all her sycophants revolt me.
And why is the BBC still sneering at Rumsfeld’s perfectly clear, concise and correct distinction between “known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns”? Are thy really so thick that they do not understand the obvious intent? Or is it just another stick to beat the right with?
These people all have arts degrees, many in literature, journalism or something similar. I am glad I took a science degree. At least it left me able to articulate and understand my own language!
On that note, the Labour candidate’s lies were intended to affect the result, not effect it, you cretins. The biggest news organisation in the world and their journalists cannot cope with basic grammar.
Further, why is this story not prominent in the news? Could not find it anywhere, had to go back to the link I was originally pointed to on a Iain Dale’s blog.
See, each screw up leads the mind inexorably to the next.
http://tinyurl.com/234228
Sorry, forgot to link to the glorious story that was about. Grell lost her appeal. Well, she never had any appeal in my mind, but the court now agrees with me.
5-30 a.m. BBC news today led with Chavez rally ahead of the referendum on constitution change. Reference to cheering supporters etc
This lead item didn’t appear on Sky news at 6 a.m.
Another story about the left wing leader of Brazil doing up a poor district of Rio.
This one was also absent from Sky.
Bit of a left wing agenda here methinks.
BBC ‘news’ website has a story about the Labour party funding scandal that could have been written by Gordon Brown himself, “PM vows to change funding rules”, Er why is that a story? It sounds like a pathetic excuse to me. This sory is 2nd to a non story about ‘teddy bears’ telling us what we already know, just a rehash to keep our minds OFF the Labour parties “donorgate” scandal?
The real story is NOT about Gordon Browns ‘heroic attempts’ to bring honest practices to the Labour party, it IS about what Brown knew or didnt know/what was given in exchange for these illegal bungs and did the Labour party know about who gave what when.
Is the Labour party ordering the BBC to run deflection stories to take the heat out of the ‘donorgate’ scandal?
Is the Labour party now writing headlines for the BBC website? because thats what it looks like to me. Let me say here and now that I feel sorry for the teacher BUT its simply not headline news now is it?
The BBC line seems to be, ‘nothing to see here, lets move along, dont look there look over here instead!
The BBC is losing Neighbours and is to make its own Aussie soap as areplacement. Why? Those who still want to watch Neighbours will be able to do so as it is moving to Channel 5. The BBC should just put a testcard on for the slot previously occupied by Neighbours, not waste our cash making a pointless rival.
What is the point of the BBC if it just offers different versions of the same trash available on other channels, and seems determined to to do so too?
The BBC has bought into the lie that the Iranian TV soap opera on the Holocaust ‘Zero Degree Turn’ shows sympathy with the Jews. Iran is not antisemitic after all!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7119474.stm
In fact it shows Jews bribing Iranian diplomats and mangling the Persian language. It is full of ahistorical references to the Israel-Palestine conflict. (MEMRI has a clip showing a Zionist desperado who escaped from jail http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=countries&Area=iran&ID=SP172607)
random | 01.12.07 – 3:01 am |
Rumsfeld’s perfectly clear, concise and correct distinction between “known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns”?
If Rumsfeld had said, “We have defined a number of independent variables but some may be spurious and the literature hasn’t necessarily isolated all variables that may correlate”, he would have been justly criticised for using the jargon of social science to obscure his meaning. Neither I or the BBC know everything or are even aware of everything we don’t know.
Re Chavez. Anything that helps distract the Btitish public away from the corruption within Nu Labour is good news.
You do wonder how many phone calls have been made from No 10 to the BBC about “helping us out abit”
Can we expect bottom wiper Andy Marr to be interviewing Gordon tommorow?
Currently al-Beeb’s rolling ticker on their homepage states that “Labour peers visit UK teacher Gillian Gibbons in custody in Sudan. More soon“.
So, there must be a third peer travelling in the group as we know of 1 Labour and 1 Conservative peer.
Or, is al-Beeb just sloppy?
Stephanie clague | 01.12.07 – 7:07 am
I’m really puzzled why you think the BBC is being soft on donorgate.
It’s been the main story in most of the news and current affairs programmes all week.
Newsnight in particular has been following it closely. It was on Tuesday’s Newsnight that Jon Mendelson’s involvement was revealed.
These blog entries by the journalists covering the story hardly suggest any lack of will to pursue it wherever the evidence leads.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/2007/11/three_unanswered_questions_for_jon_mendelsohn.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/big_fat_politics_blog/
Davka | Homepage | 01.12.07 – 8:41 am,
When I go to your Memri link, I’m told, “The document does not exist.”
I also don’t think the BBC’s Jon Leyne should be rushing to praise Iran over the TV series. The writer and director made this typical anti-Semitic statement, equating Zionism with Nazism:
We sympathise just as much with those innocent Jewish victims of the Nazis, as much as we do with the Palestinian victims of Zionism.
Leyne is evidently too dim, or himself too anti-Israel, to understand the gross insult implied in the comparison of Zionists to the barbarians who murdered a third of the Jews during the Holocaust.
Leyne goes on to pompously pontificate:
Most Iranians, even those taking part in the most ardent anti-Zionist demonstrations, would be quite shocked at any accusation that they are anti-Semitic.
How the hell does he know that? He’s canvassed the opinions of most Iranians? Perhaps Leyne himself feels that is not anti-Semitic to rant and rave against Zionism – which is simply the movement behind the establishment and maintenance of the Jewish state of Israel. If so, perhaps he can bring us some evidence, rather than vague generalities, to support that view.
This reminds me of another ignorant, biased statement from Leyne as he used the Fatah-Hamas bloodshed in Gaza to indulge in standard anti-Israel BBC propaganda:
Many Israelis are rubbing their hands in glee, though the anarchy on its border may not be in Israel’s best interest.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6324677.stm
Someone at the BBC needs to prevent propagandist hacks like Leyne from making statements that cannot be verified. He should be obliged to restrict his bias to his fellow-bigots over drinks at the BBC bar, not inflict it on the general public.
Bryan | 01.12.07 – 12:49 pm |
In this country (England) there is a definite difference in the mind of the ‘average lefty’ between Jews and Zionists. The two terms are not mutually inclusive. Not all anti-Zionists are against Jews by a long way. Their objection stems from the cold war not from any thought through political dogma.
That doesn’t stop some, however, from hiding their anti-semitism behind anti-Zionistism.
John Reith
So why was there only one story on it on the website last night, and that was as sympathetic to Brown as possible? There were at least four stories to tell – Harman, Reid, Alexander, Mendelsohn. Then the tie up to Labour’s terrible leadership needs to be told, gathering together the threads.
Only the last was touched on by the BBC website. The Telegraph had a 3-page web article on that part alone, which still barely covered what was necessary. They had 4 or 5 other articles about the various webs of the scandal.
Even now the only other is the Alexander story, that is in Scottish news in the side list. The leader of Labour Scotland sought and received an illegal donation. Move along, now, nothing to see!
Fat Controller
Although an individual who is anti-Zionist might not hold anti-Semitic opinion, I have never seen one who did not use anti-Semitic arguments.
All the powerful arguments against a strong, Jewish state of Israel are based upon lies. They are lies I used to believe, because our lazy news media don’t bother to find the truth, but they are also anti-Semitic lies. The lies of the founding of Israel, the lies of the identity of the Palestine people, the lies of the refugee, the refusal to see the truth of the other refugee.
Israel and her people have, at times, done some bad things. But these crimes are nothing on the crimes of her neighbours, or of many other states. Most of the crimes of which she is accused she is entirely innocent of.
Dear John Reith,
I am sorry you are puzzled, perhaps I didnt make myself clear when I pointed to the BBC website front page.
Blogs are a different kind of fish altogether and make up a journos considered opinion and personal insight that would not make it into a story.
The news items have not brought up any of the major threads of Donorgate or tried to tie any of them together yet.
When I see headline stories with headlines that look like they are trying to protect the Prime Minister rather than bring the facts of the case to the public, then I wonder why.
Now, it may well be that the BBC are ‘keeping their powder dry’ and holding fire so they dont go off half cocked! If that is the case, then I will put my hands up and say that I was wrong to shoot my big mouth off.
Have a look at those headlines, ignore the blogs, just look at the headline stories and tell me hand on heart that at some point the BBC attack dogs are going to pile in and stick the boot in and Ill accept it.
John Reith: you really are a plonker.
QT had a bum wiper of Gordon Brow’ns on, clealry brough in specially to spout endless pro Nu Labour crap.
The BBC have been very easy on Nu Lbaour. I remember the bile and hatred that the BBC and other scum left wing organisations brought down on the Tories in the 90’s
Why is the BBC so soft now?
Just watch the coverage by Sky or Channel 4 News to see the difference in reporting.
The Fat Contractor | 01.12.07 – 1:19 pm,
Only problem is, when they rant and rave against Zionists, they are obviously ranting and raving against Jews, since most Zionists are Jewish. And the logical aim of the anti-Zionist obsessives is not simply Jews resticted to within the ’67 borders, but Jews without a state to call their own – i.e. Jews yet again living as minorities at the unpredictable mercy of others.
Now if that ain’t anti-Semitic, what is?
Sorry Bryan, here’s the Memri link again (under Iran, 27 Sept entry) :
http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1565.htm.
Agree that most Jews overwhelmingly pro-Zionist, anti-Zionist = anti- Jewish
In my experience with so-called anti-Zionists, which incidentally has only really been in the 8 or so years I’ve had the intertubes i.e. has been pretty much exclusively on the internet, Zionism is taken to mean so very much more than a Jewish homeland in the Middle East. It encompasses conspiracy theories to do with holocaust denial to allegations of Jew-controlled US foreign policy to Jews somehow being the cause of all the world’s problems. It’s a very ugly scene indeed, and seems to be very popular.
Anti-Zionism therefore is usually a synonym for anti-Semitism, and people who are that way inclined prefer to call themselves anti-Zionists in order to fend of (quite rightly) being called racists.
JR
BBC soft on donor gate. Of course not. Perish the thought.
Just heard the start of R4 Any Answers.
Only 4 people allowes to speak on donorgate.
By my score
3 pro Brown/Labour
1 anti Brown/Labour
Of the 3 pro Brown, 2 blamed Blair (they have a point) and one had a go a the Tories.
You have to admit that strong support of Brown/Labour is in line with the opinion in the country (well BBCland).
I have an issue with the fact that in almost all the debates on the teddy bear case I have seen on the net (including the BBC) people are criticising ‘religion’ rather than ‘Islam’. This really irritates me. It is not Hindus or Scientologists who have been marching calling for this womans death, but Muslims. Why should all religions be tarred with the medieval stick of Islam simply because they are classed as religions. When fundamentalist Christians kill abortion clinic staff in the US, you don’t hear people slagging off religion in general, they always make a point of highlighting the Christianity of these nutters. Why are people afraid to call a spade a spade?
It would be very helpful of the BBC to do a story about just how badly the Arab Nations treat the Palestinian refugees within their borders.
How they are denied even basic rights and how they are forbidden legal status.
While at the same time the Palestinian Israeli citizens enjoy equal rights under the law and have representation within the Democratic process.
Even the Sryians who live in the Golan heights enjoy far more freedoms than they would in Syria, that admission comes from them, not me!
Time after time I see Israel portrayed in Jewish terms only, when that is plainly not the case. Muslim citizens of Israel have complete freedom to live their lives and this is something that jews who live in surrounding countries could only dream of.
I am reminded of when Israel gave back the Sinai to Egypt in return for peace, the native Arabs were and still are, persecuted by the Egyptians and feel they were better treated by the Israelis than their Muslim brothers.
I am also reminded of the Sudanese refugees who risk their lives to get into Israel rather than stay in the neighbouring Muslim countries! and instead of running a story on this in a positive way the BBC chose to attack Israel for wanting to make sure that their were no ‘sleeper terrorists’ among the refugees.
All the above makes it crystal clear that the BBC have no interest in judging Israel fairly or in anything other than a negative light.
Read the Bad Science blog about Panorama cocking up their WiFi scare story !
http://www.badscience.net/2007/11/bbc-editorial-complaints-unit-debags-the-panorama-wifi-scare/#more-591
“Toto the dog:
I have an issue with the fact that in almost all the debates on the teddy bear case I have seen on the net (including the BBC) people are criticising ‘religion’ rather than ‘Islam'”
That’s because of the doctrine held by all good social liberals that “All religions are morally and empirically equivalent”. They are morally equivalent as they all promote, for example, violence, to the same extent. They are empirically equivalent as their content is essentially equivalent, and of course they are also all equally wrong compared to our good natured Atheism.
Doctrine is the only way to describe a belief that so totally at odds with what anyone can plainly see, that Islam is markedly different from all other world religions in terms of it’s capacity to engender hatred and violence. Of course, Social Liberalism is a religion too, and another “doctrine” is that “All religions can live in perfect harmony (provided we are the ones who are ultimately in charge)”
“Brown launches urgent funding review”
The above is the latest in a string of headlines on the BBC website ALL of which appear very supportive of Gordon Brown!
Underneath the headline it says ,”Brown seeks cross party concensus on funding”. Now why on Earth is that a story? If Brown is so keen on honesty then why did he wait untill the Labour Party was caught with its fingers in the till and its back pockets filled with illegal bungs before he takes action?
This is just one of a string of BBC toadying headlines that tries to portray Gordon Brown as a ‘man of integrity’ etc etc.
Just who is writing these headlines? are they Labour party members?
@Bill,
Blink and you missed it: Panorama wi-fi complaints upheld appeared on the BBC News website at 22:23 last night. Today it’s disappeared off all the main sections.
A fine demonstration from the BBC of how to bury bad news late on a Friday night.
To hide behind the anti-Zionist does not mean anti-Semitic mantra is to support those who don’t hide behind those semantics. The Arab enemies of Israel use the terms Jews and Israelis interchangeably.
The genocidal Hamas Charter (Article Seven: The Universality of Hamas) states:
the Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to the realisation of Allah’s promise, no matter how long that should take. The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said:
“The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.” (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem).
Please note. Not Israeli, Not Zionist but Jew
In 2006, Edward H. Kaplan and Charles A. Small, both of Yale University, conducted a survey on the connection between radical anti-Israel sentiment and antisemitism in Europe. The study was published in the Journal of Conflict Resolution in August of the same year. The authors’ overall conclusion is that evidence of anti-Israeli sentiment can consistently predict the probability that an individual is antisemitic with a direct correlation between the extent of the anti-Israeli sentiment with the probable measure of antisemitism.
The more extreme the criticism of Israel the more likely you will find undisputed anti-Semites nodding their heads in agreement.
random | 01.12.07 – 1:36 pm
So why was there only one story on it on the website last night?
There wasn’t only one story on it on the website last night.
There were at least four stories to tell – Harman, Reid, Alexander, Mendelsohn.
Not sure what the Celtic Chairman’s got to do with it, but there were stories on the other three • all put up on the site yesterday evening before 9pm.
HARMAN
Friday, 30 November 2007, 17:41 GMT
he Electoral Commission has asked Ms Harman to explain how she paid for her campaign after BBC Newsnight revealed substantial loans were taken out.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7120511.stm
MENDELSOHN
Friday, 30 November 2007, 20:30 GMT
In a statement, Mr Abrahams said he always had discussed the manner of my donations with party officials and “it was never suggested to me that I was doing anything wrong”.
“I’m not going to discuss particular meetings with particular individuals save to confirm (Labour’s chief fundraiser) Jon Mendelsohn discussed this particular method of donating money with me in April,” he said
“I received thank you letters from the Labour Party following donations I had made.”But Mr Mendelsohn denied that he met Abrahams to discuss making donations to the party via intermediaries.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7121952.stm
ALEXANDER
Friday, 30 November 2007, 19:15 GMT
The Scottish Labour party’s leader has admitted that she wrote personally to the businessman who made an illegal donation to her leadership campaign.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/7120096.stm
One man was waving a ceremonial sword and approaching the school…Others were shouting ‘Death to those who insult Islam’…but my sense was it was fairly good natured as well.”
—————————————————————
We have all seen this ‘ceremonial sword’ in the press today.
I’d love to see the plonker who came up with that line, standing in front of that crowd holding a teddybear with ‘Big Moh’ printed on its chest and see how ‘good-natured’ the crowd was and just how ‘ceremonial’ the sword was.
In any case, I know there are some fairly backward backwaters of this green earth, but I can’t imagine too many with assembly-lines running off swords as the weapon of choice. I suspect swords are all pretty much ‘ceremonial’ these days (if sharp and deadly).
JR
They were helpfully buried.
The front page only had a “Brown says” article.
AS to 16:20 today
The single link on the front page is
“PM launches urgent funding review”
OTHER TOP STORIES
Militants kill 14 Iraqi villagers
Turkish army fires on PKK in Iraq
Man arrested over train collision
BBC plans new Aussie soap
US daredevil Evel Knievel dies
Global effort on World Aids Day
ALSO IN THE NEWS
Oh beer, oh beer – can spillage closes motorway
Move along now, nothing to see here.
random:
A look at the BBC news website. Only one story about the Labour funding scandal.
—————————————————————
I can only agree. God alone knows how the BBC can pretend to itself even, that it is the world’s premier news-gathering organisation.
They might ‘gather’ the news, but they certainly don’t bother putting it on their website.
An absolute disgrace.
Correction.
Note to self, check text before publishing
Also
Why are the R4 and R5 News reports saying that there are two Labour Muslim peers on their way to Sudan
Has Baroness Warsi changed from Conservative to Labour at 35,000 ft.
Is this bias to rank incompetence?
JR?
According to the BBC no self respecting Muslim would ever be a Tory. Aftre all it was the Tory party that took us to war in Iraq was it not?
The BBC News doesn’t have enough space in their homepage for the Labour donations scandal, but there is certainly enough room for ‘Yeti footprints’ and Evel Knievel.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/
noobie | 01.12.07 – 4:54 pm
joe bonanno | 01.12.07 – 4:30 pm
The News Front Page isn’t a ‘home page’ nor is it a ‘most important stories ‘ page.
It’s a page where new stories get flagged up as they are published.
That means it doesn’t tend to run yesterday’s stories (though Saturday’s features panel does sometimes flag up features written during the week).
Click on the news stories and you’ll find they tend to have been written today.
Apart from Brown’s party funding review, nothing’s happened yet on donorgate.
The Politics page, by contrast, is crawling with donorgate stories – nine last time I looked, and each of these will probably link to three or four others.
So, here’s a tip: if you’re looking for a politics story – particularly on a weekend, go to the politics page.
Lurkingblackhat | 01.12.07 – 4:43 pm
I haven’t heard anyone say 2 Labour peers….I’ll try to listen in at 6.
John Reith
Sorry, don’t know where I got Reid from. Been a long day and was watching TV as I typed. Hain was the fourth, I knew there was another one!
I guessed they were there somewhere. But I couldn’t find them. They were not on the main news page, not the UK, nor Politics. There was a lot of trivia that was in each. That is the point I am making, why no prominence?
Davka | Homepage | 01.12.07 – 2:16 pm,
Thanks, I had a look at the Memri clip. I see a theme or two developing there – the bad Jews who want to go to Palestine to escape the Nazis against the good Jews who don’t.
In this regard, Leyne’s statement is quite revealing: Mr Ahmadinejad no longer openly questions the existence of the Holocaust. Instead he calls for further research on the issue. Come on, BBC, tell us the truth. It can be done. I’monajihad has to acknowledge the Holocaust to some degree because otherwise his stance that Jews imposed themselves on Palestine’s Arabs as a result of the Holocaust and that they should go back to Europe would have no basis.
And regarding Leyne’s tame wording, “questioning” the Holocaust is hardly an appropriate description for someone who hosts a Holocaust denial conference, inviting people from all over the planet:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/6183061.stm
The above article is the only real journalism I have seen from the BBC on Iran. Jon Leyne should have a look at it to see how it’s done.
So, here’s a tip: if you’re looking for a politics story – particularly on a weekend, go to the politics page.
John Reith | 01.12.07 – 5:53 pm | #
Rubbish, JR – the headline and sub-text is the same on the home page, UK page and politics page:-
PM launches urgent funding review
Gordon Brown has appealed for cross-party consensus over reforms to party political funding.
All the real, critical meat of the story is, as usual, four clicks away from the casual reader.
I must say the BBC website nearly always shows even more blatant bias than the broadcasting.
Why do you think that is?
Who in the BBC hierarchy is ultimately responsible for the web output?
random | 01.12.07 – 6:14 pm
John Reith spins in his grave
I never bother with the front pages. If I want to know what’s the latest on, say, wendy alexander, I stick :”BBC wendy alexander” into google and select news. Takes me straight to the link.
I appreciate casual readers don’t do that but the sort of people who frequent B-BBC could save themselves a lot of time by doing the same.
There isn’t enough room on the front page to give every story an airing, but the front page is changed quite often during the day (more so Mon-Fri probably than w/ends) and you’d be amazed how many stories do get some time on Front Pages – a heck of a lot more than get onto the front pages of newspapers, for sure.
John Reith
That is not how people find out about news though. You’ll never find out about new stories, that you haven’t heard about anywhere else. So in effect you’re just accepting that the news website is useless for finding out what the news is.
Of course there isn’t enough space on the front page for every story (although many newspapers do much better). That is why I expect the major news stories to be given most prominence, and be left there longest.
I see you make no attempt to justify the worst part, the pro-Brown headlines.
The culture show on BBC two visited Brazil to interview the architect and staunch communist Oscar Niemeyer on his 100th birthday. The interview starts; “it’s a great honour and privilege to meet you”.
How is it the Communists never get questioned about their ideology and its responsibility for millions of deaths throughout the 20th century. Can you imagine a similar falling interview featuring a fascist?
I appreciate casual readers don’t do that but the sort of people who frequent B-BBC could save themselves a lot of time by doing the same.
John Reith | 01.12.07 – 7:05 pm | #
Well, thanks JR – I think you’ve just neatly made the point that most of us are argueing.
The corollary of tucking major anti-government stories a few clicks away, so that only news junkies like us can find ’em – is that the non-political average floating voters, who determine elections, never see ’em at all – so the NULAB juggernaut can roll on for ever.
You should be working for Putin.
JR
I forgot to add- I would really like to know which area of responsibility at the Beeb includes the website.
Pray tell.
John Reith spins in his grave,
I believe that Helen Boaden is top dog at The Editors blog, so maybe she bears ultimate responsibility for the website?
Dunno. Anyway, she’s Director of BBC News:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/helen_boaden/
Absolute classic Beeboid stuff at 0630 this morning, Saturday, on ‘Farming Today This Week’.
Second sentence, that Weasel Word Syndrome again:(see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Avoid_weasel_words )
“Some environmentalists claim that intensive farming is responsible for the spread of diseases.”
And who is wheeled out for a long rant about the evils of intensive livestock farming? Why, none other that Dr Caroline Lucas, Green party member and famous vegetarian.
“Some environmentalists claim that intensive farming is responsible for the spread of diseases.”
More (unproven) opinion paraded as fact by the BBC….
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7121487.stm
Who the f*** wrote this? cant we see a name on these?
JR/Bryan
I’ve done a bit of Googling.
Controller of Internet activities at the Beeb is one Tony Ageh:-
Seee Wikipedia entry and pic:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Ageh
Previously (and unsurprisingly) he was at the left wing Guardian where he set up their web activity.
Before that he published the London listing magazine “City Limits” which was supported by “Red” Ken Livingstone’s GLC as a left wing competitor to Time Out.
Colleagues at City Limits were far left feminist Bea Campbell, Melissa Benn (daughter of – you guessed already – extreme lefty Tony Benn and herself a writer for “Marxism Today”) and Guardian writer Duncan Campbell.
The London RIP nostalgia site says of City Limits:-
What happened to City Limits, I wonder? I think it changed hands, then sort of faded away in around 1992. I don’t know whether this was tied up with the scrapping of the GLC, but it seems part of the general demise of many things culturally left-wing/alternative in London in the early 90s.
Are we seeing a pattern here?
Do we feel that Daily Mail readers are going to get a fair crack of the whip from BBC Internet?
Can you spell:-
I N S T I T U T I O N A L
L E F T I S M ?