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.
jeffd | 16.01.08 – 5:27 pm
I am still waiting for an answer off you as to why the CBBC Newsround site’s guide index has Islam but not Christianity listed.
Because the guide index is an index to topical (or once topical) issues that Newsround has covered in-depth and produced a guide about. It is not a comprehensive encyclopedia.
In fact, as you’ll have noticed, there are only three topics under the letter ‘C’ – Cancer, Countryside and cycling safety.
Foot and mouth disease is listed, but not cholera.
Harry Potter’s there, but not Lemony Snicket.
Christianity does figure in the form of the leader of the world’s largest Christian denomination: there’s one on the Pope. Christmas and Easter feature under religious festivals.
This is all pretty obvious from a cursory perusal of the site.
The Today programme item was on Monday 14th at 0730 and the Guardian piece quoting it went live at 10.15 the same morning.
John Reith | 16.01.08 – 3:00 pm | #
Team JR, this line that the Grauniad article was simply a transcript of a Toady piece is a complete smokescreen.
Where the Grauniad writers quoted from the programme they used quotation marks and credited appropriately.
I don’t believe the opening paragraphs, which I quoted, were taken from Toady at all.
You’ve got access to transcripts, I’m sure.
Tell you what – put the entire Toady transcript up here so we can all see how even handed Jim (if we win the elction) Naughtie was.
todays helping of global warming propaganda. One would think coastal erosion didnt happen until humanity got involved
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7191196.stm
Currently on the BBC website Business page: “The BBC’s business editor Robert Peston learns that the Treasury has begun the search for a new FSA boss. ”
And on Peston’s blog it says the government has “put an advert in today’s Financial Times”
Great detective work!
With regards to Bliar and his decision NOT to send his kids to a crap bog standard comp and the “muppet” who tried to defend him.
“…Blair state school faces official probe into admissions policy
Independent , 16 September 2005
… The London Oratory, alma mater of Euan and Nicky Blair, has been referred to the Government’s schools adjudicator by a nearby primary school, which claims local kids are unfairly prevented from getting places there.
In a lengthy submission, Peterborough Primary School in Hammersmith says that the Oratory – a Roman Catholic day school – shouldn’t be allowed to interview potential pupils to check their religious persuasion. This procedure, it claims, discriminates against working-class applicants who haven’t been “coached”.
The case will throw unwanted light on to the system that allowed the Blairs – who at the time lived in Islington – to get their children into a school on the other side of London during the 1990s …”
And link
http://www.humanism.org.uk/site/cms/contentViewArticle.asp?article=1949
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4161/is_19990124/ai_n9703865
John Reith
Straight into the trap!!!!
You quote “Because the guide index is an index to topical (or once topical) issues that Newsround has covered in-depth and produced a guide about. It is not a comprehensive encyclopedia.”
So why has newsround covered Islam in depth and not Christianity then smart arse?
I see the BBC are at it again. Read this entry about Hain and “incompetence”
Anyone see a reference to Gordon Brown in the article? Oh no, it’s just written as if it’s the Tories that have used this term
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7191432.stm
The whole tone of the article is one of making Hain look as if the bad evil Tories are bullying him.
What crap.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=508054&in_page_id=1770
I see Newsnight are banging on about UK Muslim terrorists.
Where has the BBC been since 9/11? They slagged off the excellent Undercover Mosque and ignored Richard Littlejohn’s excellent programme on the rise of hatred towards Jews by some Muslims in the UK.
It’s taken the BBC a long time to wake up, especially when you look at the amount of airtime the BBC gives Muslim extremists.
DUH!!!!!
Counting the death
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7191234.stm
http://www.mnf-iraq.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=16493&Itemid=128
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,323097,00.html
bbc 11 death 18 wounded
fox 9 death 6 wounded
mnf-iraq 7 death 15 wounded
So which numbers are true. The BBC based its report on iraqi police and a “local military commander”. The BBC hasn’t got a good track record with regard to the reliability of its sources. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7113406.stm “The police in Baghdad have not confirmed the attack, but one officer told the BBC the killings had occurred.” It never happened.
Fox based her report on iraqi police and hospital officials. MNF-iraq based its report on coalition forces.
Just watching the News. Could anyone tell me when the BBC banned the word immigrant?
The story showed a load of people trying to break into a lorry to get into the UK. Now, any sane person would call these (potential) ‘illegal immigrants’. But not the BBC. Having long dropped the word ‘illegal’ from it’s descriptions, it now refuses to refer to people coming into the UK as immigrants.
And please, BBC drones, don’t use the excuse that they might not stay here. They have no papers, they will not be able to travel, they will be here for good if not caught, they are (potential) illegal immigrants, plain and simple.
The BBC’s bastardisation of the English language, in the name of political correctness, gets worse every day.
Off topic but interesting. There is a curious omission from this story (and other articles):
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7191411.stm
The article neglects to mention who the current chairman of the British Council is.
I wonder why?
Neil Kinnocks son
surely a coincidence
😉
BBC blames decline in reading on technology and capitalism, such as iPods
“Reading was being pushed out by the modern day of temptations of the internet, computer games and the scores of television channels targeting children.” (sic)
Television channels targeting children? Such as CBBC?
My opinion indirectly related to bias: It’s all very well blaming iPods and TV but the article fails to mention that the biggest thing to have changed in reading education in the last 50 years is how reading is actually taught: the abandonment of phonics etc.
WoAD: Yes, funny that Countries like Japan and India both very keen on technology manage to have good education systems and even China is doing well.
As you correctly say, the problem is down to Socialists, liberalism and too many poncy left wing Guardian readers employed within the education system.
Kids in private or Grammar schools don’t seem to have a problem.
Can you imagine the gritted teeth of the Beeboid who typed this headline…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7193174.stm
mike_s:
“Counting the death
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middl…ast/ 7191234.stm
http://www.mnf-iraq.com/index.ph…6493& Itemid=128
http://www.foxnews.com/story/ 0,2…,323097,00.html
bbc 11 death 18 wounded
fox 9 death 6 wounded
mnf-iraq 7 death 15 wounded
So which numbers are true. The BBC based its report on iraqi police and a “local military commander”. The BBC hasn’t got a good track record with regard to the reliability of its sources. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middl…ast/ 7113406.stm “The police in Baghdad have not confirmed the attack, but one officer told the BBC the killings had occurred.” It never happened.
Fox based her report on iraqi police and hospital officials. MNF-iraq based its report on coalition forces.”
follow up:
I don’t know if this is a admission that their first report was wrong, but now the BBC says 8 died.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7193174.stm at bottom of the article: “Violence continued in Iraq on Wednesday as a woman suicide bomber killed eight people in Diyala Province”
CNN says 6 died
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/01/16/iraq.main/index.html
The BBC has trouble to get its fact straight. But what about analysis. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7193174.stm “Reporting from Baghdad, the BBC’s Jonny Dymond says the IMF and UN statements amount to a coincidental chorus of approval that tops off what have been, by Iraq’s dismal standards, a good few weeks.”
yeah right.
Anonymous
“Can you imagine the gritted teeth of the Beeboid who typed this headline…
”
So John Simpsons predictions for 2007 did NOT come true did they? How can anyone take him seriously:
“On Iraq, the momentum towards all-out civil war will grow, and US forces (even if reinforced from home) will fail to contain it.”
The evidence is now fairly compelling that the ‘surge’ has been a success by any metric: total attacks, Iraqi casualties, US casualties, suicide bombings, roadside bombings…
Why are the BBC not broadcasting this , which has being going on for quite a while now? Is it too positive?
It appears the majority of Iraqis trust the Americans. The soldiers (UK and US) were not the wanton killers the BBC tried to portray them as. Neither were they invaders wanting to destroy and take. They are the real freedom fighters, not the BBC’s beloved insurgents.
The truth is that those bitter,
You can bet your bottom dollar that should there be a suicide attack or any kind of coalition blunder, they won’t shy away from it then.
Tony Blair sent his kids to a Catholic school, big deal, so what?
His family were all practising catholics and he was a regular attended at catholic church and has since announced his conversion.
They lived in the the school’s catchment area.
Good luck to them its their choice.
Catholic pupils receive more likelihood of attending a catholic school than non catholic pupils, of course why would it be any other way, otherwise it might as well be a state school.
I add I am not a catholic, but I can see that there is nothing wrong with this.
The posts here that seem to take issue with this I cannot see what their point and I cannot see what it has to do with BBC bias.
There are things you might want to take Blair to task on and wonder why the BBC did not but surely having a go at his kids for going to the school it was quite natural for them to go to is totally out of order.
baggiejonathan: The point with this, and the criticism of Blair when he hired private tutors for his children, is that he led a party that for years has argued parents should used the comprehensive education it champions as the only equitable system. To then effectively opt out of that system for his own children, while arguing everyone else should use it, struck many, not just Conservatives, as hypocrisy. And saying so does not amount to “having a go at his kids”, since they are not being criticised.
hugh, your points are fair enough and he should have done more to change the labour party and its policy as a whole.
Having said that he supported more faith schools (catholic or otherwise) and they have come into being, so its not entirely fair to say that was the case.
Perhaps the conservatives and others would have held more weight if they themselves had not sent their children to faith schools or more likely private schools in such large numbers.
As it was their attacks seemed merely opportunist at best.
As for the catholic schools preferring catholics I would say that was obvious.
After all you do not have to send your children there.
What’s more I understand that if they were prevented from pursuing such a policy the Pope himself would order the closure of the schools as they would not be catholic, with the corresponding drop in standards and loss of places in education (at least in the short run), surely a result nobody can really want.
I don’t personally have an axe to grind, I’m not a catholic, I did not attend a faith school and my children attend a state comprehensive school.
“Perhaps the conservatives and others would have held more weight if they themselves had not sent their children to faith schools or more likely private schools in such large numbers.”
But conservatives have never opposed private schooling or argued against it. That’s the difference. Nor have they been such cheerleaders for comprehensives. Fair enough on the point about Blair’s support for faith schools, though.
The biggest single contributing factor to our failing education system is lack of personal motivation within whole sections of the population.
WHO CAN BLAME THEM?
In particular young men produced from our growing underclass of welfare slaves.
The simple reality for one of these people is.
13 years of hard work at school under very difficult circumstances followed by, if they are lucky, a lowish payed, over taxed, full time job.
No, or little benefits, and less chance of holding down a relationship, and even less of staying married for long.
No chance whatsoever of owning their own home anywhere near where they might want to buy one.
No chance of making any easy cash because the poor fools working life is now owned by his boss.
Who for the cost up to £500 pw, his employee will very likely be getting less then £250 of it.
Which after transport costs and rent could very well leave him with less then £40pw more then when he was on the dole.
Which is about as much as he could make selling half a gram of drugs, or a few packets of duty free tobacco.
This is deliberately destructive government policy. Not a mistake or incompetence.
Gordon Brown was warned by his own then minister, that this policy was “EVIL”, and would have these types of dangerous inhuman results.
A fact that the BBC is very well aware of, yet chooses not to consider it worthy of even consideration.
As a libertarian I am mindful of a quote that my mother very often used. Apart from “socialists are all as mad as hatters.”
“You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.”
Todays helping of Global Warming propaganda is from Richard Black, who thinks that global socialsim is the answer to solving global warming
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7187985.stm
Just the sort of leftist, neo-socialist, anti-libertarian, collectivist rubbish I would expect from a BBC environment correspondent.
As an aside, what’s the point of banning BBC staffers from having newspaper columns while allowing them to publish this sort of stuff on the BBC’s website?
The BBC regularly gives considerable time and space to Greenpeace protests, but it does not give the same sort of prominence to arguably more important protests against the lack of democracy in the European Union, as here:-
“A one party state”
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/
Here’s an interesting article
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7189947.stm
Some select quotes
“selfish capitalism” (the kind of capitalism we have in Britain) is making us sick”
“the emergence of selfish capitalism, first under Margaret Thatcher and later Tony Blair, has led to a “startling increase in the incidence of mental illness”
The citizens of selfish capitalist countries are twice as likely to suffer from a mental illness as the citizens of countries in mainland western Europe, which practise ‘unselfish capitalism’ [not said, but presumably he means”socialist” western countries]
Whilst the BBC does seek alternative views on the question of whether “selfish capitalism” promotes mental illness, there is no truck with the terminology. In fact Simon Wessely adopts the same terminology and also ascribes it to Thatcher
“I would lay the blame less at the door of Margaret Thatcher’s selfish capitalism…”
In short. Everyone agrees that liberal economic capitalism is selfish. Everyone agrees Thatcher is responsible.
There is disagreement as to whether it is causing mental illness
More Simon Mayo bias.
He just interviewed an idiot called Leonard Weinglass (why do all these limp wridted Americans have really wimpy voices?) a left wing moron who defends murderers and other scum.
Mayo let this moron do a 30 minute anti American pro Cuba rant without ANY balance. I sent in several emails and texts asking about the human rights abuses in Cuba ( this issue never got raised) and that Mayo failed to identify Mr Weinglass as a Communist supporter (which would have given balance to his left wing views being spouted).
Mayo appeared to be totally ignorant of this idiots activities and not only that why was this man on Radio 5 live anyway??
Yes you guessed it to bash the Bush administration, is there an election coming up in the USA? Funny thing was the arsehole gave support to Obama not Hillary, oh how gutted Mayo sounded.
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1329
On Radio Haw Haw (5 lite to you and me) Mayo was asking some “expert” (moron to you and me) about the incident at Heathrow. I don’t know who the person was but instead of discussing the incident all we got was a 5 minute (uninterrupted) rant about why flying is evil and no to a third runway at Heathrow.
Quite what this has to do with anything I don’t know, but I’m guessing the 5 Live producers only have camp left wing “Greenies” on their speed dial
And it was so funny hearing their “awful” Pauline McCall? woman who’se supposed to be their “money” expert interviewing someone about the incident.
Not only does the woman know bugger all about money, she clearly knows nothing about aircraft as well.
Some BBC droid referred to the aircraft as an “Airbus” 777. Oh dear!
Baggiejonathan: The point is that Nu Labour have destroyed the English education system. When the PM refuses ot send his children to a “bog standard” comprehensive it says it all.
If they are good enough for the rest of us why not him?
And you totally ignored the other people I mentioned such as Yasmin Alabi Brown, Polly Toynbee and Diane Abbot. What’s the connection there? All work or have worked at the BBC. All spout crap about Socialism but refuse to send their own kids to schools that have been turned into state shitholes by the politics these idiots spout.
In fact Abbot sent her child to private school using the money she’s paid to do “This Week”
These are the same Socialist arseholes that of course want to deny Grammar schools to middle class parents or to give bright working class kids a chance in life.
Why Telegraph Readers Hate The BBC
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/technology/shanerichmond/jan08/why_telegraph_readers_hate_the_beeb.htm
Biased BBC gets mention in Telegraph Article
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/technology/shanerichmond/jan08/why_telegraph_readers_hate_the_beeb.htm
…”for the head of the BBC” (Mark Thompson) “to claim that the media exaggerates the epidemic of violent crime and yobbish bevaviour by teenagers (and younger) which now makes living on so many housing estates intolerable suggests that he is in danger of losing the plot.”
Perhaps a move to Salford will bring in more reality.
‘The Director-General needs to find out how the other 90% live.’ (The Skimmer.)
http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/453001/the-directorgeneral-needs-to-find-out-how-the-other-90-live.thtml
‘The Director-General needs to find out how the other 90% live.’ (The Skimmer.)
90% of people live on intolerable housing estates??
Anonymous | 17.01.08 – 5:35 am |
Can you imagine the gritted teeth of the Beeboid who typed this headline…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world…ast/7193174.stm
Made sure to get the opposing view in the highlighted quote, though, didn’t they?
I wonder what the balance of featured quotes is in articles on other topics? Is it common to have a supporting featured quote rather than a contrary one? Except when it’s about an Israeli statement, in which case we get both. All in the interest of balance, naturally.
Martin,
“The point is that Nu Labour have destroyed the English education system”
Contributed, even contributed significantly, but surely not single handed, it was hardly paradise in 1997.
“The PM refuses ot send his children to a “bog standard” comprehensive
If they are good enough for the rest of us why not him”
One thing you can’t deny is his push on faith schools, so this seems OTT to me.
What’s more I don’t recall any prime minister’s children going to a “bog standard” comprehensive of any political hue and I don’t suppose that will be the case for Cameron or Clegg either.
“Yasmin Alabi Brown, Polly Toynbee and Diane Abbot…”
I couldn’t agree more. If they are so keen on forcing everyone else into their idea of education then they must have the same for their children.
However on reflection I think you will find the ‘ladies’ Brown, Toynbee and Abbot all opposed Blair vigorously just to add to their hypocrisy.
“”I would lay the blame less at the door of Margaret Thatcher’s selfish capitalism…”
In a way the left are the genuine “Thatcher’s Children”,the old lady has become their Beelzebub,the root of all evil.
That the halwit doesn’t seem to have read de Tocqueville or understand the events of the Industrial Revolution is revealing,we have a generation of kiddywinkies at the helm.
Something that genuinely puzzles me.
Accepting the argument that the licence fee is a disguised tax amounting to about 35 pence (70 US cents or 2.6 shekels) per household per day which some people object to paying – why on earth bother to watch, listen or read the BBC online if there are so many better alternatives out there?
Some people posting here come over as a bit disturbed – e.g. some on the Andy Kershaw thread or the poor sap with a grudge about double-barrel names – but surely for those who aren’t, the best course is to lobby your MP to get the law changed and get your information and entertainment from other media in the meantime? There’s enough of it out there, for heaven’s sake.
Why even listen to it if you know you are going to find bias, left-wing conspiracies and sympathy for terrorism at every turn?
Hugh: “the best course is to lobby your MP to get the law changed”.
Really, how so? What exactly is the evidence that private lobbying to an MP (who may be quite happy with the BBC) is a more effective way of highlighting what one considers to be an iniquitous state of affairs than posting on a blog? Much of the popularity of blogs is down to the fact that many do not believe it is.
Why even listen to it if you know you are going to find bias, left-wing conspiracies and sympathy for terrorism at every turn?
Roland Thompson-Gunner | 17.01.08 – 5:04 pm | #
Think of it this way, Roland.
There are 60 million of us in the UK.
Imagine I was empowered by law to take 10p a year off you and everyone else – to fund my bigoted, right wing anti-BBC blog, whether you ever looked at it or not.
I’d be scraping along on £6m a year and feeling pretty smug – but you wouldn’t get upset about a trivial sum like 10p would you?
I think you’re as brainless as your namesake.
“the best course is to lobby your MP to get the law changed ”
You should know Headless,that you should never get between a politician and a camera or microphone.The media is bread and meat to politicians,not to mention a nice little retirement job.Lobbying one’s MP is as likely to get something done about the BBC as it is getting a Referendum.
“and get your information and entertainment from other media in the meantime? There’s enough of it out there, for heaven’s sake.”
In the meantime go without a television or pay the feudal BBC tithe.
Roland,
I am genuinely puzzled that you should claim to be genuinely puzzled.
I am being forced to pay the licence fee under threat of criminal record, fine and from that fine possible imprisonment.
The only real similarity is tax to the government.
In the case of tax one can vote out the MPs, they are in the end accountable.
I cannot vote out the BBC, I can only endeavour to see that they obey their charter and obligations until as I hope happens one day their poll tax aka licence fee is abolished and they are privatised.
Once that happens I will happily give the BBC no more attention than I do say Virgin Radio or Channel 5 (very little if I don’t like what they do I will most likely just not watch/listen).
This is a poll tax and that caused riots in Britian and in many ways brought down Mrs Thatcher.
The value is less but the BBCs licence fee is increasingly seen for what it is a poll tax too.
You must get this, the compulsory poll tax that is the licence fee must go, the sooner the better, and the huge dramatic changes that would follow at the BBC must follow also.
Until that happens I and others will not let up on the BBc we will only get stronger.
My point is partly that the licence fee is peanuts anyway and not worth people working themselves into a frenzy over – the price of a local paper per household per day, a pint of lager a week. I’d prefer a subscription, but I’d cheerfully pay the current fee just for Radio 4.
I’d rather not fund celebrity dancing, but it’s swings and roundabouts.
The poll tax is an analogy which proves my point. We live in a democracy. The licence fee is established by law. The poll tax was. People voted in the party putting forward the poll tax. Then they voted it out.
Why doesn’t this happen with the licence fee?
Probably because, like it or not, it’s a trivial issue for the overwhelming majority of voters.
If enough people did threaten their MPs that they will not vote for them again unless they seek to abolish the licence fee, this might change.
BUT – and here’s the rub for a big chunk of the posters here, where many of the BBC’s more articulate critics are grinding an axe from overseas about the Middle East and have no vote in the UK – if B-BBCM is a representative clearing house for anti-BBC opinion, I doubt many MPs would be influenced by people approaching them wanting the BBC abolished because the odd DJ went off the rails, or because years ago its website asked for readers’ “tributes” after the deaths of prominent people, but it asked for “comments” on Sir Edmund Hillary.
“…I doubt many MPs would be influenced by people approaching them wanting the BBC abolished because the odd DJ went off the rails, or because years ago its website asked for readers’ “tributes” after the deaths of prominent people, but it asked for “comments” on Sir Edmund Hillary.”
Perhaps if the Conservatives get in next time the comments made by Jane Garvey (see blog sidebar) regarding the 1997 election will galvanise them into doing something about the BBC.
As this blog has shown, there is a lot more to BBC bias then a DJ going doolally or the (D)HYS “tributes” vs. “comments” for celebrity obituaries.
Hopefully we’ll soon be rid of al-Beeb.
“Lobbying one’s MP is as likely to get something done about the BBC as it is getting a Referendum.”
Well the government isn’t obliged to listen to public opinion but it can get voted out if it wilfully ignores it. The referendum campaign didn’t achieve a referendum but it’s contributed to Brown’s clobbering in the polls.
The problem with the Beeb is that we haven’t yet reached the tipping point whereby a majority are in favour of alternative means of funding, let alone abolition. When that happens one of the major parties will jump on the bandwagon with a policy commitment.
Blogs might help but are still a very very small niche in the UK populated by obsessives (like me 🙂 ). The problem is that the Sun would love to bite the bullet and push an outright campaign for terminating the license fee (rather than the current drip drip of snide editorials) but can’t cos it knows that it would invite a tide of anti-Murdoch derision and would alienate its celeb filler base.
The biggest thing would be if ITV or Sky came out and said “look, if the BBC gets its funding cut we’ll buy all the trash off them and the increased revenue from reduced competition means we’ll cut down on the adds/reduce subscription rates”.
“The problem is that the Sun would love to bite the bullet and push an outright campaign”
I’m not sure that’s totally correct. While it might seem attractive at first and the BBC would downsize, obviously, the impact of it now suddenly touting for ad business would make a sizeable dent in the fortunes of the different media groups – a fair chunk of which are not in great shape anyway.
Roland Thompson-Gunner,
“Why even listen to it if you know you are going to find bias, left-wing conspiracies and sympathy for terrorism at every turn?”
Very simple, as a US citizen, I am deeply hurt by the constant sneer at my country by the BBC.
If I didn’t know better I would just write Britain off, not just the BBC as you suggest.
In fact, BBC is putting such an ugly face on modern Britain that B-BBC fulfills a truly important public service. It shows that BBC is not Britain! BBC’s taxpayer funded output, bloated beyond proportion, gives it undue prominence among British news sources. Just look at the number of “corespondents” BBC can send to “report” on US primaries. By sheer number of articles of dubious quality, BBC overshadows the others in its presence on the Internet.
Furthermore, BBC is an official public institution, sanctioned by the government and financially condoned by every Brit that owns a TV set!
Whether you accept it or not, BBC is the face of Britain. And, it is not a pretty one!
For comparison, if you want to see a reaction to a single insult running in the opposite direction, take a look at the talkbacks following the Times’ article about Robert Gates’ complaints on NATO troop inexperience. You will find that many Britons find Gates’ comments offensive, and for a good reason. We know and appreciate the fact that British and NATO troops are also dying in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Cockney,
The demise of the BBC will come via Brussels,the license fee it anti-competitive.Further a British Broadcasting Corporation is an anachronism.
The BBC has hitched its wagon to the EU stars in the hope that it will retain its fiefdom,but it won’t be long before some French or German TV company starts eyeing the UK market.
Why even listen to it if you know you are going to find bias, left-wing conspiracies and sympathy for terrorism at every turn?
Roland Thompson-Gunner | 17.01.08 – 5:04 pm
At the risk of being repetitive, I reiterate that I access the BBC from Israel and comment here and elsewhere in order to alert people about the tremendous damage the BBC does worldwide with its implacable bias and to reveal the vast chasm between BBC bias and responsible, informed journalism.
I certainly don’t access it for entertainment.