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.
John Reith v Bryan = Tyson v Berbick.
Nick Robinson reports from the US on the model for the Conservative’s workfare proposals, he seeks to hole it below the waterline with this conclusion
“In New York they may have cut the numbers on welfare, but they haven’t actually cut the bill to the taxpayer. Proof perhaps that it’s easy to sound tough, but actually delivering real change is much, much tougher.”
(video report available as link from
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7176032.stm )
No explanation of why budgetary savings have not been obtained.
“John Reith v Bryan = Tyson v Berbick”
More Danny Williams v Matt Skelton methinks. Goes on forever, repetitive and frankly a bit tedious. 😀
pounce you are definitely one of the most effective posters here but you need to have a quick flick through McNae: Essential Law for Journalists – what you are highlighting in your last post is not bias – it is the law – and you are putting Andrew at risk of contempt while it remains up here.
Having been personally hounded, attacked, called “kuffar”, told “get out of our area”, and accosted by nearly a dozen muslim ‘youths’ in Witton, Birmingham just for walking up Witton Road (near Villa Park) on a snowy Friday I’d say that was getting near a no-go area.
I’m sure you BBC Midlands types have looked into that – NOT!!
You talk your nonsense Ben and I will talk from personal experience, I know which one is reality.
Sarah-Jane | 08.01.08 – 5:35 pm
Do you care to explain?
will | 08.01.08 – 4:59 pm |
Nick Robinson reports from the US on the model for the Conservative’s workfare proposals, he seeks to hole it below the waterline with this conclusion
“In New York they may have cut the numbers on welfare, but they haven’t actually cut the bill to the taxpayer. Proof perhaps that it’s easy to sound tough, but actually delivering real change is much, much tougher.”
No explanation of why budgetary savings have not been obtained.
The entire report is idiotic. After a brief description of the New York plan, the (black only) vox pops are stacked 2 to 1 against. The lad from Jarrow doesn’t want to be put on the track for a full time job if…er…he can’t get a full time job. Nice how the BBC deliberately invoke the Jarrow Crusade to equate mass unemployment and poverty during the Depression with a plan to get parasites off their asses into jobs that actually exist.
At least Chris Hayling is allowed to get a clear statement in, balanced, of course, by Peter Hain’s falsehoods and misrepresentation. Got lots of yoof training hard for jobs, eh, Peter? The attitude of the report is overwhelmingly negative, with a recurring emphasis on the concept that people are “forced” to work for something they would otherwise be “entitled” to. Parasites rule okay.
And typically for the neo-Marxist crowd, menial labor is presented as inhuman and abominable. Scrubbing floors and cafeteria work isn’t the ultimate American dream, but actual Americans understand that’s often how it begins. Not for the neo-Marxist, though, who must spring from the womb with a white collar job with a good salary, and Nero’s sense of self-worth. And who is supposed to scrub the floors and clean the bins, BBC? We’re not dragooning the lame to scrub the streets with a toothbrush, but that seems to be the BBC take on it.
Only a BBC reporter would look at hundreds of thousands of people working rather than being parasites sitting on their asses and not see change.
I did enjoy, however, this evidence of the classic dopey attitude of a BBC editor. We cut to Jarrow at 1:38 in the video, with a shot of St. George’s Cross fluttering in the wind. The reporter then invokes the Jarrow Crusade. Nice touch. Hope no Muslims were offended.
But seriously, comparing today’s lazy slobs with the mostly honest, hardworking people of Jarrow back in the day is rather offensive. Can’t the neo-Marxists at the BBC grasp the difference?
OK, one shouldn’t,really waste time responding to rants by name-calling nutters, and it’s off any thread, really, but . .
Peter:
Matt London,
Preparation,the standardisation began before there was any public admission of a Common Market,let alone European Economic Community or European Union.The germ of the EU came after WWI,this monstrosity has been a long time in the making.
Or after the Congress of Vienna (1815): Metternicht, Castlereagh and the “Concert of Nations” – or under Napoleon – or under the Romans? Most people – pro or anti – seem to think that the version of European unity enshrined in the treaties of Paris, Rome and since, was a response to the two world wars.
But even if you were right, the idea that our imperial measures were not a particularly good basis for modern metrology goes back to the 19th century: our national primary standards (mass and length) have been based on the SI system since the 19th century.
But why should anybody be fined for using weights and measures that people were used to?
If you had the couresy tp read my post you will realise that this isn’t what happens. People are fined (a handful) for using measuring equipment not calibrated – or not capable of being calibrated – in SI units. It’s a law that goes back even before WWI – indeed, essentially following on from mediaeval law.
Basically, measurement in retail trade has always been regulated in civilised societies. That’s a thing they do.
Why do we bovinely accept all the fuckwitted ideas foisted upon us by a shower of shysters and mountebanks
Don’t shout and less name calling – go away and think up an argument.
Alan now that Malik has been sent down he is fair game and the post if posted now would be fine.
But it was subject to a court order beforehand to prevent contempt – ie releasing information prejudicial to a trial while in progress.
The indeminifier when you post does not really indemnify Andrew or whoever it may be who runs the site as they are the publisher as far as the law is concerned and if pounce didnt come clean then they would go for the person who is easiest to catch.
Anonymous wrote:
“There’s a court order explicitly forbidding making the connection you make. It was issued 29 Oct 2007. Probably safest to ask the mods to delete your last post.”
The link I posted directed you to the guardian website. Now if they couldn’t be bothered to remove their news articles in light of a so called court order, then pray tell how little old me could be found guilty of pointing it out.
If there was a court order it was before the court case, the man has been found guilty and jailed. The case is over and the reporting restrictions if there were any will have been lifted. I mean the BBC are running with this version of the story now.
A man in e-mail contact with so-called “lyrical terrorist” Samina Malik has been sentenced to four-and-a-half years after admitting three terror charges.
……………..
In was revealed during the case that Qureshi, from east London, contacted Heathrow worker Malik to ask about the airport’s security procedures.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7176832.stm
The guardian is running with the story;
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uklatest/story/0,,-7208389,00.html
Even the Torygraph has the story,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=43TEPD2BDQKL1QFIQMFSFGGAVCBQ0IV0?xml=/news/2008/01/08/nterror308.xml
Any chance these news outlets will retract their stories. Out of the above maybe the BBC will comply. I await the knock on the door.
Dear Matt London,
People have been fined for not using metric weights,even though customers preferred Imperial measures.
Now who is insulting whom,I certainly didn’t insult you,Dear Benji perhaps but not you.Is he a friend?
All the guff about the history of weights and measures is irrelevant,metrication is a recent impost on this country,there was nothing to stop those who required it using metric.We all know that weights and measures have been regulated by law,this wasn’t about that if you had had the courtesy of reading my post,this was about the imposition of metric measures.
Why are you so sensitive about me calling those who imposed this a”shower of shysters and mountebanks”,are you one of them?
As you know there are measurements which do not require a base of two and five,foodstuffs being a case in point.
Now I realise metrication helps you with your maths,big numbers if you take your socks off as well,but it was imposed,not adopted by the will of the people.
The BBC, Racist attacks and half a story.
Hammer fight was ‘Tarantino-like’
A schoolboy was hit with a hammer in an attack resembling a Quentin Tarantino film, a court has heard. Henry Webster, 16, was punched, kicked and hit repeatedly on the head on a tennis court at Ridgeway School in Wroughton, Wiltshire, in 2007. He suffered three skull fractures, one of which caused brain injury. Two men aged 19 and 18 and two boys aged 15 and 16 are appearing at Bristol Crown Court charged with inflicting grievous bodily harm.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wiltshire/7176983.stm
Yup the BBC paints a story of Youth crime and high jinks in which boys will be boys. Here is how the Guardian reports on that story;
A 15-year-old boy was battered with a claw hammer by a gang in a scene similar to that of a Quentin Tarantino film, a court was told today.
…………….
Four teenagers, Wasif Khan, 18, Amjad Qazi, 19, and two boys aged 15 and 16, who cannot be named, are charged with inflicting grievous bodily harm.
…………………………..
The attack sparked protests at the school last year by parents who believed the attack was racially motivated. They said a gang called the “Asian Invasion” was behind a campaign of bullying at the school, and demanded security guards to protect pupils.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2237218,00.html
Pity how the BBC which is so quick when it comes to racist attacks against Muslims becomes so sedentary when the shoe is on the other foot.
The BBC, Racist attacks and half a story.
With headlines there’s always a limitation on space. So when the Tories protest at cuts in student funding the natural headline :
Tories protest at student funding cuts
has to be abbrieviated. Say to
Tories protest at student cuts or
Tories protest at funding cuts or even
Tories protest at spending cuts
But on the BBC we get :
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7175513.stm
Tories protest at student funding
which conveys precisely the opposite impression to what the Tories are actually protesting at. It is hard to believe that this misrepresentation is an accident. It is just possible that the headline writer had “Tory cuts” so deeply embedded into his adolescent brain that the headline just popped out naturally. But it seems likelier to me that the misrepresentation is deliberate, and intended to convey an anti-Tory message. I am quite sure, however, that the headline writer didn’t conceive of what will have happened when actual Tories read his headline. For them, “About bloody time too !” will have dissolved into grumpy disappointment when the spoof headline turned out to tell the opposite tale to the real story.
pounce you made the jigsaw identification explicit – there is some wiggle room with regard to archive material (beeb and papers are not generally expected to remove prejudicial stuff from their archive but must not link to it) but not if you make the connection direct.
But as you point out, the press push the contempt laws a lot further than the beeb who play with a straighter bat, and I dare say, B-BBC is way down the list when they do bother knocking on the door.
Point is, following the letter of the law more than the press do, is not bias by the beeb, it is bias against the right to a fair trial in order to sell newspapers.
The BBC and how it hides the news.
How many readers have seen these BBC news snippets;
Mayor apology over Muslim remarks
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/bradford/7177872.stm
I used to go on the piss in Mirfield, Why I saw my first Kung fu movie there. Patrick Stewart from “beam me up this planet sucks” fame is a Mirfield lad. But hey and another BBC story hidden away;
Family ‘did not help beaten wife’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_yorkshire/7177280.stm
The BBC and how it hides the news.
Sarah Jane thank you for the concern. However and a big however is that as a Paki (Thank you BBC, Liberal media and such) I have more rights than you. Yes I may get arrested for owning a large number of books on Tanks, Aircraft, the art of war etc.. (even the odd Janes) But the fact remains British society today gives me a far larger field of play than any white Christian person.
I am free to say what I like and have the BBC defend my actions. If say I was to bump into a certain person with teeth and kindly remove them calling him a white bastard and such. I would get a defence from the courts that implicated the said victim as a nasty piece of work. That he was a racist and the BBC would insure that all the world knew I was a victim and a plumber too.
My point is I don’t give a shit about British law, simply because orgs like the BBC have made it very easy for people like me to sidestep it every chance it gets.
Now please stop pestering me before I report you for ‘Racist’ behaviour.’
Silly I know but an excuse I have seen used so many times.
Now you see why I have a bee in a bonnet about the Islamic propaganda machine that is the BBC. An outlet which has done more to destroy race relations in the UK than any amount of far right groups could ever do.
How about whitfield in nelson ?
Our local catholic church was torched by in 2002 by a couple of muslims who timed it to happen during a fireman’s strike
http://www.pendletoday.co.uk/nelson-news/Church-fire–two-in.221956.jp
I wonder why the BBC didn’t pick up on this ? if a couple of lads from the KSC had torched a Mosque the you would bet your bottom dollar that it would have been headline news
stirring rhetoric pounce – can we assume you are a resident non-payer then?
Now that I would respect.
BaggieJonathan: If you say there are no go areas in Birmingham then of course we want to do the story. Email me and we’ll set up an interview with you.
This is more up your street Greggers.
Sarah wrote;
“stirring rhetoric pounce – can we assume you are a resident non-payer then?”
Typical BBC stance more concerned about non payment of the BBC poll tax than breaking a law.
“The BBC, Racist attacks and half a story”
Sorry Pounce I can’t agree with you on this one. This kind of crime is made less significant by being described as racialy motivated. Someone who hits a person over the head with a hammer should spend the rest of his life in prison.
The aim being, of course, to cast this person out of society, rather than to rehabilitate him.
The rehabilitation meme has of course got us to where we are, with a violent crime rate at least ten times higher than fifty years ago and infinitly greater than the working class society that I grew up in in Cumberland.
God preserve you pounce.
What chance that the BBC would give air time to my extreme views?
Stock villain Matt Frei is all over BBC airwaves this week as he is covering the primaries. Today he caught Hillary walking briskly through some New Hampshire whistle stop or other, and, barely keeping up, he shoved the mic in her face to ask if she had a word for the BBC. Hillary, still hurtling forward, turned with a smile and said:
“It’s good to see you. You’ve been very…uh…faithful to this campaign.”
You can’t make it up. Unfortunately, you don’t have to.
I heard today that the UN Irish contingent wounded in an attack in Lebanon
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7177007.stm
were trying to investigate the source of the two Katyushas fired at the town of Shlomi in Israel. (Sorry, no link.)
Apparently this is the third attack on the UN in Lebanon since 2006, including this brutal act of terror, resulting in the deaths of six UN personnel:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6236188.stm
Now the BBC’s Paul Adams felt compelled to tell us that UN personnel could barely conceal their contempt for Israel over Israel’s accidental killing of four UN personnel during the war:
http://www.haloscan.com/comments/patrickcrozier/479291044838395608/#375862
So I assume that the contempt will have been magnified greatly and this time directed against the terrorists who deliberately visit atrocities on the UN in a time of peace.
Now we expect Paul Adams or someone else from the BBC to be digging up evidence of this contempt and reporting on it.
We also expect a rather long wait.
BBC World News just had a little feature on that perennial darling, Cuba. Anything newsworthy? Well, not exactly.
Nasty Americans figured the Communist dictatorship wouldn’t be able to survive after the collapse of the Soviet Union (we get footage of Kruschev and Castro), but (hooray!) the Castro regime has managed to hang on. Due to oil shortages, however, they don’t have buses or cars or tractors in the countryside these days, and everyone uses bicycles and beasts of burden (lots of footage of today’s Cubans using bikes, horse-drawn carriages, and ox-driven plowshares). No real explanation of the whys and wherefores other than they no longer have the Soviet Sugar Daddy.
Then we learn the point of this little encomium: the rest of the world can take a lesson from Cuba on how to fight climate change. We even get a close-up with some Cuban government representative saying that he doesn’t expect everyone to flock to Cuba for guidance, they can still look to Castro’s Communist Paradise as a model.
Brilliant. No shame at the BBC, obviously.
If the BBC is going to come to Salford, could it arrange to house its employees in a special camp somewhere on the banks of the Ship Canal? I don’t want any of them in the leafy suburbs of south Manchester, lowering the tone of the area.
The BBC has a responsibility to the residents of Manchester and Salford, and should bear in mind the effect of an influx of broadcasting types to the cities. London is huge and the manufacturers of rubbish like Eastenders and Dick and Dom can easily be assimilated without much damage to communities.
OK, I’ve been lurking on this board for some time, now.
Trying to prove that the bias even exists to people like JR is as impossible as trying to prove to a 8th century peasant that the world is round.
You say, look, the world is a sphere because of the shadow it casts during a lunar eclipse no matter the angle with the sun. And he replies – what are you talking about, I’ve been walking for days without hitting the edge, let alone returning to the same point.
As opposed to humanities, the true strength of natural sciences is in their ability to forecast events and predict outcomes of actions.
It is very easy to play the prediction game with BBC’s reporting and people, we can:
1. Look at the raw news before they are carried by the BBC, and try to predict which one of the items will BBC carry, and what kind of spin is it going to give (titles, introduction etc.)
2. Look at the people at the BBC and say what their attitudes towards a multitude of questions are.
To exemplify the 2nd, and simpler to prove point:
Try to guess how the following people vote (Democrat vs. Republican, Tory vs. Labor) and what their stance on foreign policy is:
CNN’s Anderson Cooper
CNN’s Wolf Blitzer
CNN’s Sanjay Gupta
CNN’s Lou Dobbs
and even for good measure – Jay Leno
Now try to guess what would the outcome be for this merry bunch:
1. BBC’s Jeremy Bowen
2. BBC’s Lyse Doucet
3. BBC’s Paul Reynolds
4. BBC’s Orla Guerin
…
For the first group, I’m not sure their professionalism would ever allow their personal beliefs to be known on air.
Even hacks like Lou Dobbs – apart for illegal immigration – Can you tell who would he vote for?
For the second group, well…
Shouldn’t a public service maintain at least CNN’s level of professionalism, so you can’t easily tell who are they voting for?
My second proof by prediction
Look at the raw news before they are carried by the BBC, and try to predict which one of the items will BBC carry, and what kind of spin is it going to give (titles, introduction etc.)
is also not difficult to prove, but it requires a lot of time, which I would have only if I took a job in a govt. institution…
However, it can be easily done as a group effort on this board.
Whoever reported this…
http://www.communities.gov.uk/publications/communities/cohesionreportingdiversity
Thank you. I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or quake in my boots. Did you know that OFCOM had a duty to “promote cultural diversity”?
I shall be making a couple of formal complaints in the morning, both to OFCOM and the Home Office for producing such offensive and patronising material.
The BBC, Its reporting from Iran and half a story.
Dozens killed by Iran blizzards
At least 28 people are reported to have died in Iran’s heaviest snowfall in recent years.
………………….
Tehran has declared two days of national holiday, urging people to stay at home to avoid the bitter cold.
………………
There are now concerns the severe temperatures may lead to a major shortage of gas used to heat many homes, reports the BBC’s Jon Leyne in Tehran.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7178192.stm
And here are a few things the BBC doesn’t inform you about the events above;
1) Teheran and several other cities in the north and centre of Iran lie at altitudes of more than 1,000 metres (3,300 feet) above sea level and are regularly hit by heavy falls of snow in winter.
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/middleeast/2008/January/middleeast_January117.xml§ion=middleeast&col=
2) TEHRAN (Fars News Agency)- After a wave of freezing cold weather covered a majority of Iranian city, Turkmenistan misused the opportunity and halted gas supplies to Iran to double the price of exports to the Islamic Republic, an informed source in the Oil Ministry said here on Monday.
http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=8610100526
The BBC, Its reporting from Iran and half a story.
Bryan | 08.01.08 – 11:18 pm
Now we expect Paul Adams or someone else from the BBC to be digging up evidence of this contempt and reporting on it.
We also expect a rather long wait.
Much of this is old news. A question: Is there anyone, anywhere who respects UN forces?
pounce:
Sarah wrote;
“stirring rhetoric pounce – can we assume you are a resident non-payer then?”
Typical BBC stance more concerned about non payment of the BBC poll tax than breaking a law.
pounce | 08.01.08 – 11:03 pm | #
You completely misunderstand, but there is nothing like entering a debate with a closed mind eh?
I find the way the license fee is enforced both distasteful and totally anachronistic.
Hence the principled stand against it, is something I do respect.
We should not be threatening poor people with jail to pay for something they do not watch. This is made even worse when articulate, principled non-payers are conveniently ignored.
What would happen if 100,000 people made a point of not paying? At what point would the system break down?
There are a lot of people at the beeb (admittedly probably not very senior managers) who would rather people paid for it out of choice than obligation…
A question: Is there anyone, anywhere who respects UN forces?
deegee | 09.01.08 – 7:55 am
The BBC, for a start.
I see the Democrats have once gain taken the front page spot on the Beeb Biasite. One could have imagined that the Republicans don’t bother themselves with New Hampshire until you read half-way down the linked report and discover that in an amazing turn-around Mick Huckabee came nowehre whilst John McCain took the top spot. Of course this is bad news for the Beeb, since Huckabee is fundamentalist Christian loon and just the kind of Republican the Beeb likes, whilst McCain’s worst vice is his support for the war in Iraq – a support shared by our current Labour PM. I guess that is why the Beeb want to keep this quiet.
I was listening to the World Service yesterday and genuinely didn’t know that the Republicans were even voting. It was all Obama and Clinton. I was surprised to learn this morning(from the MSN homepage) that McCain had won.
This has gone beyond mere bias. The BBC is treating the Republicans as if they are some minor, inconsequential party without a hope in hell of having a nominee elected president.
Bryan/Ryan the headline on both the News homepage and the World section of BBC NEws Online is ‘Clinton and McCain win US Primary’.
What is your problem exactly – beyond only seeing that part of the world that suits your mindset?
John Reith | 08.01.08 – 11:18 am,
I’m well aware that the Basrans predominantly blame the British for the Iraqi on Iraqi violence. You’ll notice the blame the West/Israel game played throughout the Arab world, from Gaza to wherever. And where better to play it than in front of BBC cameras?
I object to the BBC accepting this blame in typical uncritical fashion. The BBC is meant to be impartial. It would also be nice if just once in a while it would indicate while covering these conflicts that it actually has British roots.
Bryan:
I was listening to the World Service yesterday and genuinely didn’t know that the Republicans were even voting. It was all Obama and Clinton.
…..not at all surprising. The woeful Clare Bolderson managed an entire report on The World Tonight and failed also to mention any Republicans. Most of the piece was devoted to an aged woman known as Miss D (as I recall) who was a Democrat to the core and ended by saying “anything is better than what we have now!”.
………at which point Bolderson appeared (this is radio) to come over all smug with the satisfaction of a job well done.
All on my money. Brilliant.
Sarah-Jane:
Bryan/Ryan the headline on both the News homepage and the World section of BBC NEws Online is ‘Clinton and McCain win US Primary’.
What is your problem exactly – beyond only seeing that part of the world that suits your mindset?
Sarah-Jane | 09.01.08 – 11:19 am | #
The inital headline was ‘Clinton wins Democratic Primary’. There was no mention of McCain – The headline was changed later in one of those stealth edits the BBC is so good at. I’m sure one of the BBBC techo’s can find the intial headline.
Some numbers from Justin Webb’s blog. Number of words in sentences relating to Democrats, 1070, and Republicans, 574. Number of mentions for Clinton, 15, Obama, 12, and McCain, 9.
Odd thing is that after reading his posts I think Justin would actually vote for McCain! (If only so that his predictions are proved right.)
Raggamuffin, check out http://www.newssniffer.co.uk/
When McCain was declared the winner in the early hours of the morning, the headline initially read “McCain ‘wins’ crucial US primary”.
This was promptly changed to “Clinton and Obama ‘neck and neck'” as soon as only 2/3rds of the democratic results were in at 3:40am.
The headline read “Clinton wins Democratic primary” upto 9:08am this morning. Sloppy/slow editing? It didn’t seem to affect the first update at such an early hour.
Out of curiosity, why does every report by the BBC covering both Democrats and Republicans always begin with the Democrats? I’m not a psychologist, but I’d wager being named first in a headline has some effect on people (Good vs Bad etc).
More hard hitting political reporting from the BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7177919.stm
I wish they would stop giving Gordon Brown such a hard time. The poor man must be on his last legs by now.
Have the republicans been mentioned even once before the democrats in this primary?
Just curious and politically ambivalant.(being english i couldn`t get a rizla paper between `em)
Alan | 09.01.08 – 2:22 am
Alan, your comments here are beginning to acquire a kind of verbal slapstick quality.
Take this one-
For the first group, I’m not sure their professionalism would ever allow their personal beliefs to be known on air.
Okay, let’s take one of tour examples of unalloyed impartiality, Lou Dobbs.
It would seem that the AP have less difficulty than you in determining his personal positions •
Lou Dobbs is a newsman on a mission. Or, as detractors would have it, he’s a “raving” trade protectionist…
Every weeknight for more than a year “Lou Dobbs Tonight” on CNN has insistently covered — and condemned —…outsourcing or offshoring.
….exhaustive reporting on a single issue is unusual, as is Dobbs’ strong blend of journalism and advocacy…….. Dobbs….. describes himself as a lifelong Republican….
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4670239/
You also claim that while you can tell the views of the BBC’s Paul Reynolds, those of Wolf Blitzer, on…say, the Middle East… remain veiled.
During the 1970s, Blitzer wrote for Hebrew-language newspapers using aliases. Blitzer wrote for Al Ha-Mishmar, a newspaper affiliated with the left-wing Mapam political party under the name Ze’ev Blitzer. He also wrote for Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel’s most widely-read paper, under the name Ze’ev Barak.
…..that’s when he wasn’t filing for the Jerusalem Post, for whom he wrote between 1973 and 1990.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Blitzer
As for Sanjay Gupta …
From 1997 to 1998 he served as one of fifteen White House Fellows, primarily as an advisor to Hillary Clinton.
but…I grant you…his political views aren’t made apparent on air.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanjay_Gupta
Sarah Jane. For an explanation of what the point is about the US Primaries, how much airtime / words on the website are being devoted to the Democrats or to the Republicans.
Wonder also why the reporters appear to always be close to a Democratic rally (even more so, they appear to be following Hillary around), and seem always to be using pre-recorded footage with voiceovers for the Republicans.
One other point, look at how many reports begin with the Democrat story over the Republican one. Is this just alphabetically by party or is there an assumption that one or other party is ‘the story’?
chris h
They spend ages on the Democrats and very little time on the Republicans. They also never mention policy differences, preferring to spend time talking about the personalities or the polling or the commentary or the momentum …
“Bryan/Ryan the headline on both the News homepage and the World section of BBC NEws Online is ‘Clinton and McCain win US Primary’.”
The idea being as long as the BBC mentions something,somewhere in its vast output,then the job has been done.
In fact listening to a broad spectrum of people it is quite obvious that many are under the impression that it is a two horse race Clinton and Obama.Come along BBC you are a public service broadcasting corporation,not just the lucrative wing of the Guardian
sarah jane – what are you on about now ?
sohail quereshi and sapena (lyrical terrorist) malik are both convicted terrorists.
they had separate trials and both pleaded guilty. please explain the libel risk faced by B-BBC.
Please also explain why the 10 o’c news last night mentioned her name as a link to quereshi but not her nickname (“lyrical terrorist”).
my view for the failure to mention the link is that a lot of liberals wittered on about her right to freedom of speech when pleaded guilty but things don’t look so good for the freedom of speech defence when she is caught red handed emailing a hardcore jihadi details of airside security arrangements.
Peter | 09.01.08 – 1:16 pm
There is no rule saying that equal time has to be devoted to the Democrat and Republican races on any given day.
What determines the extent and intensity of the coverage is the nature of the story… and whether the outcome is in some way significant or surprising.
in any case, nearly all BBC programmes are doing frequent features on the Republican race – Newsnight did one last night with David Grossman out and about with McCain and Paxo interviewing Republican pollster Frank Lunz for the bigger picture.
In Iowa, Huckabee, who’d been in the lead in the polls, won. In NH, McCain, who’d been leading in the polls, won.
In both cases, certain big beasts had decided, more or less, to campaign elsewhere.
Both McCain and Giuliani passed on Iowa and Giuliani also passed on New Hampshire.
The Republican story will be more interesting when these guys all square up to one another.
David Preiser – given what you’ve written about the ‘too racist to elect a black’ meme you think you detect as a running theme in BBC output, I’d be interested to know what you make of this post by Da Fink on the ‘Reverse Bradley Effect’:
http://timesonline.typepad.com/comment/2008/01/could-the-rever.html
Matthew Price gets the pleasure that any Beeboid would have of penning a report that hits at George Bush and Israel at the same time. Perfect!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7176143.stm
For example:
“having lived in both the Middle East and the United States in the past four years, I can assure you that what looks good on paper in Washington looks less convincing on the streets of the Arab world.
There people will tell you that the “ideology of the terrorists”, or “resistance” as many put it, stems from big injustices that first need to be addressed. And many add that until Mr Bush, and that unknown successor of his, grasp that, there will never be any progress towards a lasting peace.”
i.e. Those poor Palestinians are just unable to stop themselves blowing others up unless Israel surrenders.