Yes, if you want to get a good dose of BBC bias in full-on mode, just tune in to the morning Radio 4 flagship “Today” programme. I have to admit I rarely listen to it these days since it only spoils the start to the day for anyone who is not a foaming at the mouth lefty. But in the interests of this blog, I did bite my tongue and tune in this morning from the “Thought for the Day” section at 7.45am all the way through to main post 8am headlines political interview. My worst expectation were immediately exceeded when I realised that the “Thought for the Day” contribution was a sterling defence of the Imam of Canterbury by a Muslim contributor. Amazingly, he claimed that Rowan Williams had been “misunderstood” and that “most people” were now coming around to sharing this view. This was a pure PR piece engineered to offer support to the not so good Dr William. Following straight on from this was another item on Druid Williams, and the fact that he faces a meeting of the General Synod later this week. Again calls from within the Church for him to resign were downplayed and instead the claim was made by the BBC reporter that Williams was a much loved and respected figure who was holding the Anglican Church together and that it was inconceivable that he would resign. Do you think Lambeth Palace writes the scripts for the BBC?
After the News headlines at 8am, the lead story was “Is Afghanistan a failed State?”, a favoured BBC theme. One might more accurately ask “Is the BBC a failed broadcaster?” We had the usual “It’s a quagmire, get us out of there” defeatist mindset in full flow, with the BBC presenter seemingly oblivious of the fact that Al Qqueda have used Afghanistan as a base from which to bring terror to the West. The hapless David Milliband (Aged 13 and 3/4) tried to explain why we need to defend our interests by staying the course here and fighting and killing the “insurgents” in the southern part of Afghanistan but the BBC interviewer seemed much more sympathetic to the French and German view that whilst armed forces could go to Afghanistan, they mustn’t go to where the danger is! A pacifist army that travels the world is probably the BBC’s fantasy – a crack legion of aromatherapists is something they MIGHT just tolerate! And so it ended, and so did my interest in listening to this drivel. You know it’s when you actually reflect on how interviews are constructed, on how interviewees are chosen and allocated time, and on how running orders are established, that the anti-Britishness of the BBC comes through in all its glory. Do you ever listen to the “Today” programme and if so, can you share how you do this for more than 15 minutes without feeling nausea?
“The scary thing is that, as Rod Liddle said in the Times last weekend, the Beeb’s management seem to think that being ‘inclusive’ means dumbing down these things to the moron level which the market provides”
Absolutely – and the BBC has yet to work out how to settle the paradox: be too expansionist and you’re doing the job private media could (or should) do. But lose market share and risk being called irrelevant and a waste of money.
Personally I agree wholly with Liddle – the BBC shouldn’t be dumbing down to appeal to a wider audience.
We are so few
We are so weak
We are so irrelevant
Then why do the BBC types still visit?
Why not go away, sure in the knowledge that nobody can hurt your Monolith.
By the way, in the main, those you insult and who’s idea’s you trample on are still your employers.
David,
While your contributions have revitalised this blog and should in general be applauded, in this instance I think the trolls and Mr Reith may have a point.
In my opinion the Today programme is indeed hopelessly biased towardsthe left, presented by people who are totally unable to hide their personal prejudices and beliefs.
Aside from the fact that picking a 15 minute section that ou happened to listen to is usually an invitation to others to pick holes in your argument, I just don’t really think that the BBC has been very wrong in its coverage here.
The facts are that Dr Williams, however much we feel his views are abhorrent (as I do), has a large groundswell of support both from his own, and from the Muslim community. It would be wrong for the BBC not to report this. Similarly, his remarks are treated with disdain by many (dare I say right-thinking) people from all walks of life. It would be wrong for the BBC not to cover this. But the BBC have covered this.
Yes, I would like to hear more from the general public on these matters, but in general the BBC has done well on this one. In this post, you have committed the crimes that you have accused the BBC and other posters (John Reith) of in the past.
1. You have cherry picked a small section of a programme that suits your agenda, and
2. You have accused the BBC of bias for not focussing on the point of view that you agree with.
I hope you take this criticism in the manner it was intended. Your contributions are in general excellent, but put something like this onto the front page and Reith and others will jump all over it and rightly so – which undermines much of the excellent work you and others do here.
An upper middle class twat writes:
My reference to being a shareholder was slightly tongue in cheek, because someone had criticised me for posting on B-BBC in work (the licence payer’s) time.
And since you ask, I live in a second floor flat in Harlesden, an area of inner north London which is certainly not all-white.
Why do you assume that I’m white, by the way?
Heron,
Thanks for that – I appreciate constructive criticism. In fairness, I only got to hear a section of the Today programme! I will always try and blog as honestly as I can but do accept that it can always be improved upon. Would that the BBC understood this principle.
BJ,
Trendy Beeboid moves to ethnic area because it is so wonderfully vibrant. ‘Its really on the way up – We have a Cafe Nero now’ he trills.
I hope you survive.
Ditch the manbag.
John Reith,
The BBC’s radio and radio 4 in particular are the BBC’s raison d’etre and are representative of the BBC as a whole!
Really?
Your own latest accounts beg to differ:
2b UK Public Service Broadcasting Group expenditure in MILLIONS of pounds sterling
Television:
BBC One 840.4
BBC Two 374.1
National/regional television 228.6
The CBBC Channel, CBeebies 63.2
BBC Three 92.9
BBC News 24 23.1
BBC Parliament 1.9
BBC Four 46.9
Interactive television (BBCi) 18.2
TOTAL 1689.3
Radio:
National/regional/local radio 141.3
BBC Radio 1 17.7
BBC Radio 2 24.1
BBC Radio 3 31.1
BBC Radio 4 71.4
BBC Radio Five Live 48.9
1Xtra 5.7
BBC Radio Five Live Sports Extra 1.6
6 Music 4.4
BBC 7 5.0
BBC Asian Network 7.6
TOTAL 358.8
The net:
bbc.co.uk 72.3
Other:
BBC jam (formerly known as Digital Curriculum) 35.5
Transmitted programme spend 2,155.9
Proportion on television 78.36%
Proportion on BBC1 38.98%
Proportion on radio 16.64%
Proportion on radio 4 3.3%
If you were being ‘representative’, bogus though that definition is, you would be going on about BBC1 and its budget that is a dozen times more than radio4, as it is you are clearly being disingenuous and leave yourself open to ridicule.
BJ,
Trendy beebiod moves to ‘vibrant’ ethnic area.
‘It is definately on the up. We have a Cafe Nero now’ he trills patronisingly.
I hope you survive. Its grim up north London.
Lose the manbag.
Hey – they both went through. I love haloscan.
I decided on Rockall because I am miserably lonely, isolated, bleak, inhospitable and birds are allways sh*ting on me
Rockall | 11.02.08 – 3:08 pm | #
I always suspected that the Beeboids were sexual perverts. I just never expected that kind of candour. I still thought of coprophilia as something to be ashamed of…
Dude – I am not a beeboid.
As regards the other thing, well, I’ll just keep my own council on that.
I moved there because it’s the only place I could afford that was near work.
I get criticism because people I assume I live in a rich, all-white area.
Then I get criticism because I actually live in a poorer, ethnically mixed area.
I’m confused. Where would you actually LIKE me to live?
Anonymous: I did not know that Williams is a druid. I find that astounding – that our Archbishop of Canterbury is a polytheist.
I think he’s the Eisteddfod, harp-playing, Welsh-poetry-spouting type of druid, rather than the farting-around-at-Stonehenge-on-Midsummer’s-Day variety.
Rockall:
Dude – I am not a beeboid.
Rockall | 12.02.08 – 2:50 pm | #
Welcome to B-BBC Rockall. If you want to have and keep thoughts of your own, get used to the ‘mistaken beeboid’ crap.
I used to like this blog but David Vance has really ruined it.
‘More and more people listening longer and longer.’
John • perhaps this is because there’s nothing decent to watch on TV! lol
Seriously, I don’t listen to the radio, so not qualified to comment, but the BBC’s share of the TV viewing public is going down • in fact, Christmas 2007 was the first Christmas when terrestrial TV had less than 50% share of the overall market.
Plus, as everyone in the industry knows, viewing figures for big sports events are hopelessly skewed in favour of terrestrial because they fail to take into account the fact that the vast majority of viewers watch these at their sports clubs or pubs which have heavily subsidised subscriptions to satellite TV.
Miv Tucker:
I’m totally with Mr Vance on this.
Whether or not THESE SPECIFIC items are indicative of bias, Today itself IS pretty representative of the BBC’s general bias as discussed every day right here on this blog.
I myself gave up listening to the prog in 2006 during the Israel-Lebanon war, when they seemingly didn’t even try to hide their anti-Israel prejudice.
In fact I was so disgusted with the BBC’s reporting that I finally stopped listening to any of its news all together. Being woken in the morning by an alarm, rather than an alarm radio, and thus waking up to silence, is wonderfully soothing.
And since I no longer listen, I no longer care what those strutting Today pygmies are saying or getting up to. Which goes also for the SPs on The World at One, PM, and The World Tonight, and, not least, on From Their Own Correspondent and all the tedious chat shows, art shows, environment shows, achingly unfunny satirical shows, and all the lecturing, hectoring, finger-wagging, bullying, Them and Theirs-type progs.
The fact is that when you give up listening to the news, or reading it, you develop a whole new perspective, so that when the odd bulletin does drift your way, you see the squalid mediocrity of not merely the news broadcasters, but all the people and politicians they’re reporting on.
And I discovered an important truth (though I’m sure wasn’t the first to do so) – bias and disinformation can’t exist in a vacuum. The easiest, simplest way to overcome all the problems of the BBC, and the media generally, identified by the stalwart contributors to this, and many other, blogs, is simply to bypass them. Disregard them completely. Shut them out.
And then John and James and Edward and dear, dear Sarah and all the rest can lie, and fib, and distort to their heart’s content, gassing away to each other into the ether, heard by none, ignored by all, “full of sound and fury, and signifying nothing,” as somebody once said, and perhaps they’ll eventually get fed up with talking to themselves, and try their hand at something more productive, and socially useful.
Miv Tucker | 12.02.08 – 12:02 am | #
Exactly. Once you stop watching/listening, you stop caring. This is one of the reasons that I’m no longer very active in any of the blogs. I’ve simply stopped caring. If everybody stops watching/listening to the BBC’s drivel, then we might actually be able to abolish the licence fee.
In the words of Oscar Wilde: “The only thing worse than being talked about, is not being talked about.”. If everybody ignores the Beeboids and takes part in a grass roots campaign of non-payment of the Licence Fee, we can get rid of the BBC within a couple of years.
@ John Reith, Sarah Jane, Hillhunt
You have a bloody nerve. You have the whole of the news output of the BBC totally tied up the way you want it. No politician can step out of line or else you destroy him/her. You own the world. Not content with that however Al Beeb with billions to spend sends out Attack Patrols looking for anyone anywhere who disagrees with their political agenda. You see people on this site who disagree with you and you attack in packs.
You are no longer an impartial disseminator of information, you now have your personal views and you actively promote your own agenda.
The news departments have completely been taken over by Labour supporters. They support Labour as they most nearly follow their own agenda. This is inter alia
anti English
pro EUSSR
pro immigration
pro multiculturalism
You actively deny anyone who disagrees with you the chance to put an alternative view. By coming on this site also, it seems you want to silence any opposition to you anywhere.
The news departments have completely lost the plot and are without integrity – you are now a corrupted and vile organisation.
You were once the pride of Britain. You are now degenerate: you are now a disgrace and a great danger to Britain. YOU are the problem.
For one of you to use the handle “John Reith” is disgusting and an outrage to the memory of a man of integrity
^^ Thanks for hitting the nail squarely on the head! ^^
Grimer – don’t worry about apologising, that is absolutely fine 😉
Alice – watch it or they’ll be after you next.
BJ – I’m just messing. When I lived in London I could only manage to afford Tooting. Seriously though, I do hope you survive Harlesden.
SJ – So it would seem. I can deal with that.
You must be very wet behind the ears if you expect an apology in the cut-and-thrust of this comments section.
Just this once, I’ll appologise for calling you a Beeboid, it was below the belt (which is incidently, where your lady friend’s stools should remain ;))
Anyway, Tooting really is the arse end of London (and I live in Tower Hamlets, so I know what I’m talking about). You should move East of centre – just as cheap as Tooting, much more central, nicer area, more parks, cheaper taxis home when pissed, etc.
I really can’t think of a single reason to live in Tooting. It’s shit.
Atlas Shrugged:
I like the cut of your jib young fellow me lad!
But as all the Beeboid’s offspring is just a chip-off-the-old-block, they are merely biding their time at Uni, smoking and snorting Mummy and Daddy’s money, until they too will be passed the nepotistic baton so they can continue the lefty relay at Broadcasting house.
Beeboid staff don’t actually believe all this multi-cultural garbage applies to them. It’s just the riff-raff that needs changing.
Lefty Beeboids have such sterile imaginations, they honestly think that if Islam imposed Sharia law in this country, it wouldn’t apply to them. They’d become some sort of inner sanctum. Lords and masters. Because the thing everyone seems to miss, is that to your average Beeboid, worshippers of Islam are just peasant underdogs who need to be constantly patronized and aided. Beeboids don’t think for a minute there is ANYONE in the world more capable of being a ruling class than themselves. Deep down, Beeboids despise everyone and everything except their own elite circle. Namely, white middle class types.
As for the suggestion of blowing up Broadcast House. Well, if a muslim were to run in and detonate himself on the top floor, all the fallen Beeboids would become martyrs to the BBC cause. Which is…erm…promoting Islam! Nothing could sway them from their devout slavery to this cause. BBC staffers are merely sipping the Kool-Aid of Islam served up by the Jim Jones’ of the MCB.
The only thing that would truly HALT a BBC lefty in it’s tracks is to cut off it’s money. That’s all our beloved BBC truly care about. How much of their time would be devoted to propagandizing a murderous religion if they couldn’t pay their mortgages, drive their big cars, send Katherine and Jeremy to private school or invite white middle england to their dining tables any more?
And let’s not forget the status too. Another thing Beeboids thrive on is letting everyone, everywhere know that they work for the BBC! Hurahh – I’m a success!!
Carve the bastards up by refusing to pay the telly tax. March in the streets. Picket broadcasting house. Protest and demand the end of the BBC and throw each and everyone of it’s employees into the real world and see how quickly anyone gives a damn about their bubblegum politics when they don’t have the safety of the pack to hunt with any more.
Or on the other hand, we could just keep posting on this blog.
Tut.
And you have to put up with Sadique Khan as MP. What can I say? I’ve left the big city now.
At least you get a wider choice of mosque in Tooting.
I do enjoy PFoJ’s posts they are so even-handed in their bile, you (almost) get the impression that the interweb libertarian revolutionaries are held in as much contempt as public school silver spoon lefty marxists.
They are also a great example of how one can get away with out references or examples or contributing anything other than ad hominen, as long as one is funny.
Beeboid eunt domus!
😉
David Conway has an article about Islam and ‘legislative creep’ associated with the ‘multiculturalist’ R. Williams; (and,I would say that Williams is aided by a compliant BBC).
The author puts this in the context of certain overall trends in UK politics:-
“Britain’s Muslims form the country’s largest, least well-integrated, and most powerful minority in every sense of the word ‘powerful’. They have an exceedingly powerful foreign lobby to plead their case in the form of the Middle Eastern dictatorships on which Britain depends for much of its oil-supplies, major arms deals, massive endowments to its universities, and notional cooperation in the war on terror. Moreover, let us not forget the ever-present threat of violent extremism in the name of Islam that serves as a constant reminder to the authorities to try and do their utmost to accommodate Muslim demands.
“Not surprisingly, in view of all this Muslim muscle in Whitehall, the pace of legal accommodation in this country to Islam has been fast and furious and on a scale unprecedented.”
http://www.socialcohesion.co.uk
Dear Mr “Valiant-for-Truth” Reith,
Thank you for the sneer, which I shall wear as a badge of honour:
———————–
And my all-time favourite:
The fact is that when you give up listening to the news, or reading it, you develop a whole new perspective….
Miv Tucker | 12.02.08 – 12:02 am
———————–
On the other hand, you make it sound like it’s a bad thing.
But it’s as I said, without an audience, you people are nothing.
“I really can’t think of a single reason to live in Tooting”
cheap curry houses?? nah, you’re right – it’s shit.
Or if you want another take on the subject look at Spengler’s piece at:-
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/JB12Aa02.html
With respect to the Archbishop, how anyone who respects British democratic traditions can advocate adopting any of the legal abominations emanating from that cesspit of iniquity called the Islamic Kingdom should, but unfortunately does not, amaze me.
“I really can’t think of a single reason to live in Tooting”
I can: because it’s still a bit shit you can still, gasp, buy a three bed house in Tooting for under the meagre sum to you sir of just £500k. And you get the joys of the Northern Line thrown in for free.
My opinion as to the reasons why the BBC consistently seemed to hate and despise all things British.
The reasons are many, complicated and not a little bit cleaver.
It is very important to get one thing perfectly straight.
The BBC can not be anti-British establishment because IT IS THE BRITISH ESTABLISHMENT. How could it possibly be, or be allowed to be, anything else?
If you take as FACT that the BBC is such then many other questions are begged. Like WHY does the BBC seem to hate all things British?
The simple way to understand, is to accept that the BBC has a fundamentally different idea as to what British means then most of us do.
To the BBC this island is the British establishment not what the British people think it is.
We seem to be labouring under the illusion that being British is something to do with democracy liberty individual freedom made prosperous and kept free by free market capitalism, and regular corruption free elections.
But the establishment of this country has never believed in these things. To them freedom is an expensive and time wasting pain in the but-hole. Very likely to end up with us all looking and feeling very much like the people of the US. Instead of a class and racially divided reasonably dominant economic and political influence over other Europe powers.
This was the establishments plan in the thirties but unfortunately the Germans tried it first and failed big time.
Whats worse is, it took a half American named Winston Churchill, virtually most of what was left of our Empire, spare cash and a lot of American blood and money to save us from all having to start speaking German.
So things had to wait for quite a while, as the British people had just finished dying in their millions for their own freedom, national democratic rights, and civil liberties.
However plans were made by a combination of the major establishments of Europe Briton and America, before the last bullet had even been fired.
Things progressed slowly then along came Wilson and then Heath and then Wilson again.
By then we were so fucked we would have agreed to anything as long as the trains were running and the lights were lighting.
Then came Thatcher. Which was a big mistake. A mistake the establishment have no stomach for repeating.
It became clear post Thatcher that the plan had been delayed but not completely stopped it its tracks.
But then another mistake in the name of John Major. This really pissed of the powers that be. Now they got serious.
So the establishments long term radical plan to destroy the confidence of the British American and European people in almost all respects, took on an urgent timetable.
Strings were pulled currencies fell politicians were ‘heart attacked’ and along came Tony Blair and Gordon Brown with the BBC as their only real weapon and friend.
I think we all know the rest.
Just like they did back in 1666 when they conspired to burn down most of their very own City of London.
Ask any mason or should I say builder, and he will tell you.
“You have to destroy something before you can rebuild it the way you really want it to be.”
Question
What makes perfectly sure the British people believe that the Queen of England her family and her establishment have NOT ALWAYS BEEN authoritarian corporate capitalist socialists, in short FASCISTS, just like the BBC?
Answer: The BBC.
Sarah Jane:
“I do enjoy PFoJ’s posts they are so even-handed in their bile, you (almost) get the impression that the interweb libertarian revolutionaries are held in as much contempt as public school silver spoon lefty marxists.”
Thank you Sarah. If I knew what the hell you were talking about I could thank you even more.
I do wish you public schoolies would stop masturbating your over-paid educations in public like this. It’s very embarrassing.
John Reith | 12.02.08 – 10:48 am
JR – the programme I DO like to tune into is Andrew Neil’s Daily Politics and This Week is just about the only political satire that can actually be funny (as well as informative and intelligent). So tell me why BBC management does everything it can to sabotage these programmes? Award winning – highly respected – yet the BBC whisks them off air every time Westminster is in recess – as if politics suddenly stops. They don’t do that for the Westminster Hour or any of the other political shows of the week on radio or telly. Only the DP and This Week gets singled out for this treatment. It seems to me that BBC top brass are desperately trying to bring down the ratings so they can axe the shows. And all because Andrew Neil doesn’t fall (on his own assessment) within what the beeb regards as the “politically acceptable” spectrum. OK – it goes without saying that you will tell me I am wrong. But what is your explanation for the shabby treatment of Andrew Neil and his programmes?
Right, so it’s a few thousand commenters v a few million listeners and Reith’s argument is weak?
p and a tale of one chip | 12.02.08 – 11:38 am
*Listening is passive.
*commenting is active.
*Comments are also recommended on Have Your Say and for the privelege of being able to recommend comments one has to register on the site. Another proactive activity.
*If people like Reith were honest they would take a careful look at HYS. Comments there would make a generous basic sample for a poll or three and would certainly prove that Reith is engaged in wishful thinking when he insists that this site consists of people on the fringes.
Concerns expressed here are echoed right across the blogosphere and throughout the media. It is only the BBC extreme arrogance that leads it to maintain that it represents the mainstream of opinion.
*Listening is passive.
*commenting is active.
Indeed it is. Mainstream opinion is also largely passive. Opinion round the fringes is much more active, because people feel strongly enough to do something like write a comment or start a blog.
That’s why, for example, you find disproportionate numbers of people on say, Amazon’s reviewing facility declaring that a book or CD is either the next best thing or utter trash. Much fewer people, relatively, write that the product is OK or acceptable or meets expectations.
It’s not arrogance to question or contextualise open house forums. Its’ basic good practice. For any survey, unless you’re sure that your sample is weighted representatively its results are questionable. HYS, amazon, or any other poll that fails to do weight its respondents runs a high risk of disproportionately emphasising anyone who feels strongly on a single issue.
I do wish you public schoolies would stop masturbating your over-paid educations in public like this. It’s very embarrassing.
The People’s Front of Judea | 12.02.08 – 9:08 pm | #
Sorry to dissapoint PFoJ but my education cost somewhere between jack and diddly squat. I am old enough to have benefited from a conservative county council that thought grammar schools were still of value.
Still, I am sure my teachers will be very pleased to know that you think I have been expensively educated.
Now please find another uninformed viewpoint from which to hector me as this joke has got a little thin.
But keep it coming 🙂
I take your point that people are far more likely to post a comment because they are angered by something than to post praise because they are contented. But don’t forget that for every single person who comments there are hundreds and perhaps thousands more who feel the same but don’t take the proactive step of letting others know on a public forum.
And it strikes me that an open forum is an excellent way to judge public opinion. Here’s why:
*People are anonymous and so feel free to reveal their true feelings.
*They are not influenced by leading questions in polls designed to produce the results the pollsters want.
This is obviously a huge subject and could provide data for endless research. Reith’s claim that the BBC is mainstream and we are the lunatic fringe is something he has tried often before and is one of his weaker arguments, based on no real evidence.
I don’t know how long you have been hanging around here but we have come to know Reith’s tactics very well.
Dont forget his other tactic of smearing everybody as ‘BNP’ – he loves that.
“This is obviously a huge subject and could provide data for endless research”
Yes, although the BBC, like other media organisations, have ongoing research projects that do track what people care about so that it can inform their editorial choices. from memory JR and the Editor’s blog make occasional references to them.
I doubt they are flying as blind as one may assume. The data they collect may, potentially, contradict wildly what goes on the HYS.
And there will be times when the data could be a little misleading. It’s not an exact science. As a believer in MMGW I suspect that the BBC’s regular, and slightly tiresome, focus on it is driven by high numbers of people saying they care about it – rather than a strong watermelon element in BBC News. Because most people probably do tell pollsters it’s an important issue even though they still plan long haul flights etc.
Dont forget his other tactic of smearing everybody as ‘BNP’ – he loves that.
Grimer | 13.02.08 – 11:15 am
Like all good propagandists Reith knows that it’s not such a train smash if his argument gets demolished. He knows that there are many people who will not read further than his comment and will potentially accept it as valid.
p and a tale of one chip | 13.02.08 – 12:45 pm,
That opens up a whole different line of debate. How many people believe in MMGW simply because of the BBC’s constant and relentless propaganda?
Sarah Jane:
Grammar school? Oh!
So you really do understand the rufty-tufty real world of the inner cities then?
LOL
This (from one of the Anglican blogs) may be old news by now, but I haven’t seen any reference to it:
I just came upon an [url=http://www.mattwardman.com/blog/2008/02/13/archbishop-rowan-firestorm-was-started-by-the-bbc/]interesting article by Matt Wardman on the role of the BBC in all this. He documents that timestamps on the first news site and blog postings show that the firestorm had begun even before the interview was broadcast or the lecture delivered. The debate had been framed by the BBC News Update headline (“The Archbishop of Canterbury has said that the adoption of Sharia Law in some parts of Britain is inevitable”) aired before the interview even began on Radio 4, and by the similar BBC website headline that was up, at a minimum, several minutes before the interview was over. Responses on news sites and blogs, and from politicians, began immediately, clearly reacting to the BBC story and not to the interview, which was barely over and not readily available for several hours to those who had not heard it live.