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 also be moderated. Any suggestions for stories that you might like covered would be appreciated! It’s your space, use it wisely.
Week-end BBC-related comment thread!
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BBC just covered the “Tories postpone tax cuts” story on News 24 – delivered in a sad, dismissive tone of course, (“Don’t expect anything from those Tories folks”).
Still no mention of the biggest Tory poll lead in 25 years though – clearly not news.
This is really Pravda level journalism – they must be still waiting for the No 10 press release to give them the line to take.
Red Andy’s little Ndoody car just leaving No 10 with this morning’s line on the Tory poll lead -stand by.
Or Noddy if you prefer
Just watched the News Headline on Marr’s show.
Only “postponed Tory tax cuts” again.
Clearly there’s a notice stuck up in the BBC newsroom – ” Tories only news when stealing something, sh*gging something or failing at something”.
Now halfway through Marr’s show and only an oblique reference to the Yougov poll giving a 16% Tory lead – in the newspaper review.
The big political story of today is obviously how Nulab solved the NI prob – as told by Jonathan Powell.
No doubt the beeboids will tell us that these story lines are decided well in advance.
Why do I believe that if Yougov had found a reduced Tory lead this morning – the whole programme would have been hastily rejigged to focus on it?
Your BBC – the news as we’d like you to see it
Yes!
We finally had from Marr’s own lips, in his interview with Hague 40 minutes into the week’s prime BBC political show ….”mutter, mutter significantly increased lead in the polls (no figures of course)” – followed by the Nulab line for the day – “can people assume there will be no tax cuts from a Tory government” – repeated three times despite Hague’s patient explanations that it really depends on the state of finances at the time.
Pathetic.
I’m no fan of the Chinese in Tibet, but I’m keeping an eye on the BBC reporting of the recent rioting, which I predict is going to be rather skewed
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7299212.stm
Notice BBC leads with ’80 killed’, the figure from the entirely objective Tibetan Exiles in India. Also note that the demographics of the victims are completely ignored, the implication is that the Chinese are going in and massacring innocent peaceful protesters: “The Chinese crackdown followed rioting on Friday, that erupted after a week of mainly peaceful protests” No input from any spokesman for the Chinese, or in fact anyone who was actually there, just a series of quotes from the Dalai Lama. Also note the standard anti-US dig at the end “US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Saturday urged China to “exercise restraint” in dealing with the protests. She spoke as pro-Tibet demonstrations were held in Nepal, New York, Australia and several European cities.” Damn US sitting on its hands again!
Contrast with the times: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article3559355.ece
‘may have left more than 30 dead’ the death toll is ‘impossible to verify’. Note the importance of race and reports of Tibetans attacking Chinese: ‘The violence was undoubtedly racial. Its prime targets were the Chinese merchants’ ‘Fire engines were attacked. Any Chinese army vehicles were stoned. Cars were ambushed, victims dragged off bicycles and beaten.’ ‘A few Chinese picked their way back into the blackened ruins of their shops, bewailing the utter loss of their meagre livelihoods’
Abd al-Bari Atwan, (frequent BBC talking head) is at it again. The editor of the London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi, wrote that the Mercaz massacre was “justified” because the seminary is responsible for “hatching Israeli extremists and fundamentalists.”
http://backspin.typepad.com/backspin/2008/03/bbc-sky-news-an.html
This is in desperate need of a fisking:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/7296750.stm
Looking at recent newspaper numbers for the US:
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003723373
USA Today — 2,293,137 — 46,141 — 2.1%
The Wall Street Journal — 2,011,882 — (-79,180) — (-3.8%)
The New York Times — 1,037,828 — (-80,737) — (-7.2%)
I wondered, this should be a good test of the BBC’s left/right bias. The WSJ is right wing and NYT is left-wing, surely an unbiased source reflecting the influence and readership would give twice as many results for the WSJ as the NYT? Let us see how many mentions the BBC gives these outlets
site:news.bbc.co.uk “new york times”
=about 12,600
site:news.bbc.co.uk “wall street journal”
=about 4,160
Obviously, no bias here!
Even more amusing are the top results for these searches. For the WSJ it isn’t news sourced from the paper but details about the weeeeevil Rupert taking over the paper. Results on the first page of google for the NYT include:
“Some right-wing politicians have even called for the New York Times’ editors to be charged with treason”
&
“Republican students in New York spark claims of racism with a game called “Find the Illegal Immigrant”.
Yup, break the law as a NYT journo and the BBC frames the story as an attack by the right-wing. Try to uphold the law and you get called a racist. This is soooo the BBC (and NYT).
The BBC and “all the [left-wing] news that’s fit to print”.
I notice that:-
“Life in the ‘open prison’ of Gaza ” is from ‘our BBC correspondent in Gaza, Aleem Maqbool’.
No bias there, then.
moonbat nibbler: Actually the Wall Street Journal is both conservative and leftist. The editorial pages are conservative (or, if you prefer, classical liberal) and the news pages are leftist.
During the Clinton years, this produced some odd things in the newspaper. You would find thinly disguised editorials in the news section, and the editorial page hired at least one investigative reporter to do the digging the news side refused to do.
In contrast, the New York Times is generally leftist on both sides. In recent years the editorials have been terrible; the editorial writers would have trouble admitting that Bush and Cheney are human, unless you pressed them. But there are still good reporters working on the news side, John Burns, for instance. And libertarian John Tierney often has interesting things to say about science.
But I agree with your central point. (I should, I have been making it for years.)
The funniest part of this
is where classy Sir Steve Redgrave refuses to shake Clarkson’s hand….
Has the BBC apologised for this yet?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/devon/7299282.stm
Plus ca change
Denis Mcshane writing about his old lover, the late Carol Barnes
As young lovers in the late 1970s we were on a mission to change the world. We called our cat Thatcher • and not because we admired the then prime minister. In fact when the Iron Lady invited FW de Klerk, the then leader of apartheid South Africa, to Chequers, Carol was furious.
She joined the demos against General Pinochet in 1973; and in 1978, when Argentina was about to host the World Cup, she accompanied me to the Argentine embassy to present a football inscribed with the names of all the journalists who had been killed under its regime.
Carol had to be careful, of course. From the time we met, her journalistic career was in the ascendant: she joined LBC, a London radio station, then the BBC and was soon reporting on World at One. It certainly wouldn’t have done for a broadcasting star to be out waving placards.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article3558649.ece
Now we’ve had a Yougov poll showing a 16% Tory lead and an ICM poll showing a 9% Tory lead, on the same day – and still no headline on the BBC website (not even on the politics page).
Just to provide a bit of in-service training for any watching beeboids – here’s a piece of straight, factual political reporting from ePolitix:-
The Conservatives have opened up a 16 point lead on Labour, according to a YouGov survey for the Sunday Times.
Support for Labour fell to 27 per cent – its lowest poll rating since 1983 – with the Tories on 43 per cent and the Liberal Democrats on 16 per cent.
A separate ICM poll for the News of the World gave the Tories a nine point lead, with 40 per cent backing them compared to 31 per cent for Labour.
http://www.epolitix.com/EN/News/200803/e8fe6a66-3f40-48e1-831f-8154e2d23ba2.htm
There we are – beeboids!
Not that difficult is it?
Your BBC – bringing you all the news we find palatable
Look what was tucked away in a corner!
BBC staff arrested in Garda probe
Four of the seven men arrested by gardai in County Donegal as part of a probe into paramilitary activity are BBC journalists.
The BBC has said the journalists were working on a current affairs investigation and had full editorial authority under the BBC’s guidelines.
A spokesperson said the other parties present were fully aware that they were with BBC journalists.
The arrests were made on Saturday night.
The men, who are aged between 30 and 48, are being held at Burnfoot, Letterkenny and Milford Garda Stations.
They were arrested under Section 30 of the Republic’s Offences Against the State Act.
A garda spokesman said the men were being held over “ongoing investigations into paramilitary activity”.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/northern_ireland/7299303.stm
I wonder if it has anything to do with this, from the Express last week:-
HAS AL QAEDA JOINED REAL IRA PLOT?
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/37456/Has-Al-Qaeda-joined-Real-IRA-plot-
Beeboid heaven – supporting two groups of terrorists at the same time.
Today and many other times I have heard the BBC comment on Conservative policies with the remark “Labour says where will the money come from, its not possible”. I have yet to hear this comment from the BBC on any Labour policy yet the Conservatives must make a similar statement.
The BBC comment today related to Cameron talking of values and completely unrelated to money yet the BBC still made the remark. Another example of trying to make the Conservatives stupid.
Just to reinforce what some have already noted:
BBC journalists arrested in Garda Probe into paramilitary activity.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/7299303.stm
Note that the BBC claims they were just engaged in making a documentary! Like ‘Don’t Panic, I’m Islamic’?
Wonder what this documentary was going to be called: ‘Don’t stay away, I’m in the IRA’?
Whether the IRA or the islamofascists, the BBC seems to delight in aiding and abetting terrorism.
Yes Matthew, they were aiding and abetting terrorism…ooops no, you just made that up.
Joel, why should the Beeb stop now?
They have been assisting the child murders and the bombers of hotels and shops for decades in Northern Ireland.
Yes Matthew, they were aiding and abetting terrorism…ooops no, you just made that up.
Joel | Homepage | 16.03.08 – 6:32 pm | #
Oops, no – enjoy cheap smears do you Joel?
Educate thyself before posting:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article3001102.ece
http://hurryupharry.bloghouse.net/archives/2008/02/26/dont_panic_im_islamic.php
Looks as if the Garda takes a tougher line on dubious journalism than the British police. Good for them.
i don’t know about you lot but on my day off i don’t dump my 3 kids on the nanny and go out for the day to see how appalling it is at yarls wood immigation detention centre.
then again, I’m not a Today presenter…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/mar/16/bbc.radio?gusrc=rss&feed=media
will | 16.03.08 – 12:42 am |
Anonymous | 16.03.08 – 2:45 am |
not to worry, they’ll likely get aroud to it soon enough, as soon as they can come up with a headline/angle along the lines of, “Tory poll figures down”
What is this doing on BBC’s mainpage?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7291323.stm
Infomercial for Sainsburys, Lexus or both?
It’s now moved onto the front of the business page so you can play spot the odd one out:
JP Morgan to buy Bear Stearns; calls for BAA to be broken up; Air France takeover Alitalia; Recession fears in New York; Share selling scam victims speak out; bloke buys new car.
I wonder what the effect on the markets will be when they open.
Rather odd Have Your Say: Your views on the situation in Tibet?
This has been open for about a week now and when it first opened the question was: What is China’s Game?
This explains some of the flippant answers, like:
Mahjong or possibly ping-pong, they are both very popular in the “middle country”.
This happens oquite often on HYS: the question changes – often quite a lot – making the answers difficult to understand and often bizarre.
Shami on the Today prog now discussing the Orange prize for women.
What next, has she been on cookery yet .. 🙁
Several times I have posted about Sarah Montague’s answer to the Israel Palestine conflict. She has decided that all would be well if only Israel would talk to Hamas. If her interviewee should resist her badgering attempts to get them to agree, she accuses them of preferring to go ‘flat out into Gaza’
Tony Blair’s former chief of staff Jonathan Powell equates the Northern Ireland peace process with the situation in the middle east, and from that extrapolates that Israel must talk to Hamas. Sarah Montague agrees, or has been briefed to that effect. Therefore her adversarial interviews are directed as though Israel’s reluctance to cooperate was the only thing that was standing in the way of peace. She has misguidedly decided that this is the simple answer to the conflict. But she has no depth of understanding of the situation. Yet she has been given free rein by the BBC to promulgate her ignorance publicly and irresponsibly.
There are many reasons why these situations differ, the main one being that Israel demands to live within recognised and secure borders, while
Hamas demands the extermination of Israel.
Violence by Israel’s neighbours, instigated to this end, underlies history. The six day war was one example of an intended extermination that failed. The victorious Israelis occupied strategic areas to protect itself from further attack. This became known as ‘illegal occupaton. ’ Returning all gains won by victory is tantamount to rewarding all agression by guaranteeing against any loss.
Talking to Hamas is no different. Rewarding violence. Encouraging more.
However, Sarah Montague knows the answer to Sderot’s annoying little problem with rockets. She has decided it is easily solved. It’s simply a matter of talking to Hamas. In her interview with Eli Moyal the Mayor of Sderot on Today last week, she hammered home her point. “You said you would talk to the Devil if it would save one child, so why won’t you talk to Hamas?” she persistently intoned. She does not listen to his answer but is far more interested in spouting her own, superior opinion. She is exasperated at his failure to grasp her point.
Unfortunately, he didn’t ask her exactly which bit of Hamas’s plan to exterminate Israel did she think he should discuss?
In her T.V. spot with him on Hard Talk she goes further.
She blames the residents of Sderot for living in Sderot. “Why does anyone live there?” she asks the mayor. She thinks that living there is in itself a provocative act. At one stage she all but springs out of her seat with indignation.
She states that rocket attacks are caused by Israel’s attacks on Gaza and its collective punishment, casually turning events on their head.
“If you would only agree to talk to Hamas, or persuade your government to talk to Hamas, as most Israelis want,” she says, …..then obviously the democratically elected Hamas leaders would stop firing their pesky homemade rockets and Israel could stop occupying Gaza?
Couldn’t this mayor, Eli Moyal, see reason? Negotiate with terrorists, it’s the way to peace.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/hardtalk/7294162.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7299888.stm
As Grimer and others have mentioned, here’s latest bit of propaganda from Gaza from the awful From Our Own Correspondent:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/7296750.stm
I’ve heard sob stories but this one is up there with the best:
*Open air prison
*Like being on death row
*All but sealed off
*Trapped inside Gaza
Having thus set the stage, our BBC “reporter”, Aleem Maqbool, goes on to tell the heart-rending story of Nael al Kurdi. Diagnosed with a cancerous tumour, he goes for treatment in Egypt, the tumour is reduced, but then starts growing again. He applies for permission to leave Gaza but is apparently refused by Israel. Why doesn’t he apply for entry to Egypt, where he was first treated? Our reporter leaves this question hanging. We can’t have people suspecting that Egypt, not Israel, controls the Rafah crossing and we certainly can’t have the Egyptians portrayed as callous. That is reserved for the Israelis – especially the Israeli government spokesman who apparently expresses reservations about allowing the terminally ill into Israel because, since they had “nothing to live for, they might become suicide bombers.” We have no means of checking this statement, since the spokesman is not named. Still, this would have been the ideal place for Maqbool to mention the Gaza woman who had been treated for burns in Israel and repaid those who treated her by going back and trying to blow them up:
http://www.mideastweb.org/log/archives/00000359.htm
I wonder why she didn’t mention it, along with the fact that terrorists use ambulances to ferry weapons and suicide bombers. While on the subject, she could have told us about the Gazans who are treated in Israeli hospitals, including terrorists wounded in clashes with Israel. Strange, the BBC is always telling us that it puts things in context and gives background info.
Our “correspondent” then tells us about Samir, who has lost his job (Israel’s fault, of course), can’t feed his large family and might therefore be driven into the arms of Hamas and work for their “security” forces.
A memo must have gone out because BBC hacks don’t seem to be able to write anything about Gaza without mentioning that Israel’s actions have failed to stop the rocket fire from Gaza. The memo must have been strict about not exploring the fact that Israel has had considerable success in taking out rocket-firing crews and destroying numerous rockets and launchers, and speculating on how much worse the situation would be if Israel took no action.
That would mean legitimising Israel’s existence. And we can’t have that from the Palestinian Broadcasting branch of the BBC.
Peston on BBC1 Lunchtime News tells us that the Bear Stearns affair is causing the selling of the $, he does mention that the £ is the exception in not GAINING against the $, but does not tell the audience that for the past 2 trading days the £ has lost heavily against the $. I just hope that Gordon can keep inflation at 2%!
will | 17.03.08 – 2:37 pm |
Well spotted. I hope nobody dared suggest the that allowing JPMorgan to take over Bear Sterns was a better idea than what Brown chose to do with Northern Rock. Or that the money he dumped into the UK economy won’t have the same effect as what the Fed is doing for the US. Even if he does manage to keep inflation from getting much worse, all those taxes will make the average consumer feel like it did.
Unfortunately the BBC once again chooses to keep the viewers uninformed. Did somebody say “short the pound”?
I was going to post a comment on the BBC’s reporting of stock market movements (big falls put the FTSE link onto the News Front Page, big rises don’t) – but I had to scroll down three times to find an open thread. Does anyone read threads this far down? Can’t it be kept at the top – or new ones opened?
The BBC, in its Radio 4 series, ‘Beyond Belief’ does its best to put a positive spin on the contribution of Islam to Science in today’s programme, by the heavy Muslim membership of the panel, and by the generally polite, even appeasing ethos of the programme overall.
The basic historical fact cannot be denied by the programme: the basically negligible contribution of Islam to Science in the past 7000 years; but there is no discussion of the ways in which the Koran, and the ideology of Islam are anti-scientific. Such an issue is merely assumed away.
There is one (of many) hilarious moments when one unchallenged contributor likens the ‘conservatism’ (that word again) of the past 7000 years of Islam and its possibly (!) negative effects on science, with the ‘conservatism’ of the Thatcher government in the UK, and her negative impact (a woman scientist!) on science!
Another mantra which is commonplace on the BBC, is that there was ‘a golden age’ of Islam from about 700 to 1400. That is, of course, an historical lie, but that lie has featured in such recent BBC programmes as:
a.)Andrew Graham Dixon ‘The Art of Spain’,Part 1;
b.)Monty Don ‘Around the World in 80 gardens’, with reference to Spain;
c.) today’s ‘Beyond Belief’ here:
[audio src="http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4/belief/belief_20080317-1240.mp3" /]
For some counter to the BBC’s pro-Islamic very misguided history, see:
“The myth of the Golden Age of Tolerance in Medieval Muslim Spain”
(by Norman Berdichevsky)
http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm?frm=4205&sec_id=4205
Correction to above; we haven’t had 7000 years of Islam of course, it just feels like it.
The BBC and assorted defenders believe that people like this are amenable to dialog with Israel in order to achieve a lasting peace. They believe that if Israel would just refrain from military attacks on Hamas leaders and stop murdering children (who are kept in the vicinity of rocket launches and/or used as human shields), this man and his associates really just want to be left alone, in control of their own lives, and in peace.
The linked video above is not a pretty sight, so here’s a highlight from the transcript:
“[The enemies of Allah] do not know that the Palestinian people has developed its [methods] of death and death-seeking. For the Palestinian people, death has become an industry, at which women excel, and so do all the people living on this land. The elderly excel at this, and so do the mujahideen and the children. This is why they have formed human shields of the women, the children, the elderly, and the mujahideen, in order to challenge the Zionist bombing machine. It is as if they were saying to the Zionist enemy: “We desire death like you desire life.”
Fathi Hammad is a Hamas MP, faithfully representing his constituents.
A suggested BBC ‘HYS’:
Should St. Patrick’s Day be celebrated in the United Kingdom, given Ireland’s official neutrality towards Germany in The Second World War?
GeorgeR:
Andrew Marr on Start the Week today, talking to a guest, he admits the BBC line on Islam. A verbatim quote;
“There’s quite a pressure on at the moment to find all the areas from the Arab world and the Islamic world that influence us. Slightly politically correct, kind of… we, we must be nicer”
Only in effing cloud-cuckoo BBC land Mr Marr.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/podcasts/stw/
Its 27mins in.
“In 2008, the idea that Powell had a mandate from the white working class to demand forced repatriation of immigrants is stronger than ever. BBC 2’s White Season last week made the explicit connection between Powell’s racism and the white working class then and now. Liberal middle-class journalists could barely conceal their glee in recounting how East London dockers went on strike in 1968 ‘in support of Enoch’, or how chants of ‘Enoch was right’ were de rigueur for white racist thugs in the 1970s and 1980s. ‘Thank god we’re not like them‘ is the self-flattering conceit of commentators who look with disdain at the white working class.”
‘Why they still fear “rivers of blood”‘ ( by Neil Davenport).
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/4877/
Saw this on Harry’s Place, re the beeb’s favourite “radical” comedian:-
George Galloway’s bid to be elected to the GLA is being supported by Britiain’s foremost film director Ken Loach (but not standing), Equity President Harry Landis and “comedian” and writer Mark Steel (but not standing), amongst others.
Nice to know your licence fee’s supporting a good cause.
Nice to see the Beeb celebrating St Patricks day with relish on their flagship soap East Enders.
However;
Im about to open a book here, and I will give anyone the odds of 5-1, that on April 23rd, – St Georges day is in no way refered too, on the very same programme.
In BBC eyes, that of course, would be nationalistic.
A further response to the intellectual weakness of BBC Radio 4’s ‘Beyond Belief’in programme today on ‘Islam and Science’:
(from Robert Spencer’s article, ‘Science, Islam and Christianity’):
“In sum, there was a time when it was indeed true that Islamic culture was more advanced than that of Europeans, but that superiority corresponds exactly to the period when Muslims were able to draw on and advance the achievements of Byzantine and other civilizations. But when the Muslim overlords had taken what they could from their subject peoples, and the Jewish and Christian communities had been stripped of their material and intellectual wealth and thoroughly subdued, Islam went into a period of intellectual decline from which it has not yet recovered.”
http://www.aina.org/ata/20071228150521.htm
I just saw a segment from the foolish Justin Webb about gun control in the US. The US Supreme Court is about to get into a case deciding whether or not the Constitution overrides the Washington, DC local ban on handguns.
But never mind the case itself, Justin visits a local white woman who shows off her legal (because it’s not a handgun and locked away) shotgun, which she keeps for self defense. Seems like a perfectly sensible thing.
Since the BBC is anti-gun, showing a good honest, responsible citizen is not the whole story about citizens’ legal right to own a gun. So we meet someone who, Justin tells us, “knows the other side of the gun issue.” (emphasis Justin’s) We meet a gang-banger who has been shot more times than he can count, counting off his scars and the types of guns which caused them. Does Justin tell us how and why he got shot, or ask about anyone’s legal rights? Of course not, as sensationalism overrides all common sense.
That’s right, criminals shooting each other with illegal guns is directly related to legal, responsible gun ownership for self defense.
More dishonesty from the BBC, and more arrogance, trying to tell us foolish United Statesians what to think.
Just heard Victoria Derbyshire say what the 5 lite phone in is about today. The credit crunch. Just who is to blame? The banks or us? Er, I wonder why she didn’t think the Government might be to blame somehow?
Oh and how about that awful Bill Clinton who was behind much of the de-regulation of the American banking system?
I just wonder if the BBC could have hung this on the evil “torees” Victoria might have been asking a different question?
Oh dear. Victoria Derbyshire’s hatred of men is spouting forth this morning. I don’t think I’ve ever heard her say a negative word about any woman getting dovorced. All the fault of evil men.
Reverse Psychology:
Only a fool would bet against you. Unless the BBC decide to take a new line – i.e. give them the little things such as St George’s day, while you steal the big things like democracy…
The BBC have been unbelievable over the last 24 hours. They are going on and on about the so called “Credit Crunch” yet not ONCE has the BBC pointed the finger at McBean and his glove puppet.
No one has mentioned that since Labour took over they have done nothing but raise taxes forcing more and more people to struggle to simply pay their bills (for example look at the hikes in fuel tax)
Funny that the BBC were quick to crow over the “success of deformed jaw” for the last 10 years.
Now it’s all falling apart the BBC keep reminding us that it’s not as bad as “Black Wednesday” when the “evil Torees” were in charge.
Goos old BBC. Shrilling for their paymasters like the loyal dogs they are.
The BBC published findings that religious folks have a happier life (generally) than non religious folks.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7302609.stm
They do include the academic research, which is quite reasonable.
They include an opponent of the view from an atheist point of view, which was also fair.
He did gave opinion rather than address the research, which was at best an unevidenced faith position, but it was fair to include it.
The best line that was given was that even if it was true its not possible to turn on and off religious belief in order to attain ‘happiness’ which is of course true.
You will note the difference the BBC attempt to skate over as though they were equal
“FINDINGS are consistent with other studies which suggest that religion does have a positive effect”
as opposed to
“other VIEWS which say that religion can lead to self-doubt, and failure, and thereby have a negative effect.” Surprisingly it is the latter that is the faith position not the former. That’s not to say its untrue, merely that it is a faith based not evidence based position, which if the other way round you can be sure would be highlighted.
What was biased was the assertion it was religion that had this effect.
“Religion ‘linked to happy life'”
“Religious people are better able to cope with…”
“links between religion and happiness”
and that it was a belief in God
“A belief in God could lead to a more contented life”
In real fact ONLY Christians were surveyed.
The BBC did not add muslims to the attack on the clergyman story because of the very small possibility that the assailants might not certainly be muslim but it seems quite all right to infer all religious belief for all here even though that is far more tenuous.