. When I blog these posts here, sometimes my critics accuse me of seeing bias where none exists. I do always try to write truthfully and call it as I see it, but acknowledge that like everyone else I am quite capable of error. That said, many of you who come here tend to see many of the same things I do, which is both re-assuring for me and evidence that there is no shortage of people very unhappy with how the BBC produces “news”. This Bank Holiday Monday morning, in an endurance exercise I managed to listen to almost one hour of the BBC’s prime news “Today” programme – and frankly it was an abomination. There were three items that really caught my attention;
Hillary Benn and George Monbiot participated in a debate on green taxation. Monbiot, who is an extreme environmentalist was there to criticise Benn for not agreeing to IMPOSE individual carbon footprint taxes on us all – to “save the planet” naturally – whilst Benn argued back that since the UK has been the first country in the world to shortly impose a mandatory legally bind Climate Change bill, we were still leading the way. I agree, the way to hell and back. The point is this; the debate here was between the uber moonbat left (Monbiot) and the barking left (Benn). Why was there no voice for those who challenge the entire AGW lunacy? The BBC has clearly adopted the Al Gore “the debate is over” mindset and merely now seeks out new and exciting ways to tax us in order that the Polar bears may swim free. On a lighter note, it was amusing to hear Hillary Benn say that “the time is not right” to punish us with individual carbon footprint allowances when WE all know that the only reason he says this is because Labour electoral fortunes are diminishing faster than the Arctic ice shelf!
Following on from this, there was a remarkable item celebrating 20 years of rap band Public Enemy and an interview with lead singer Chuck D. Now Chucky boy is a great admirer of the renowned anti-Semitic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and was allowed to have a go at Bush, Thatcher, the Queen et al. Apparently such has been the significance of Public Enemy that such mere details can be skimmed over in prime time interviews with but the most cursory reference. Chuck is a huge fan of Obama and can’t wait for “the changes” that President Obama will bring. I bet.
Finally, I listened to an interview with veteran Clinton bagman, Sidney Blumenthal being given free rein to shill for Hill! Blumenthal was allowed to attack the GOP whilst making the most outrageous claims for Hillary Clinton’s increasingly redundant Presidential campaign. How is it that the BBC could not find a US Republican to counter Blumenthal’s black propaganda?
After one hour of this dismal left-wing US bashing gangsta loving environmentalist drivel, I did the most important thing possible – and turned it off
David Preiser (USA): You have a point David. But as you increase the population land that would get used for growing food gets used for building house, roads, schools etc instead.
This means transporting food around the planet. The very thing the greens are against.
For example I really don’t see how we could grow enough food in this Country alone to feed say 80-90 million people.
An awful lot of land would have to be used up and even then you’d need thousands of extra lorries ot move it around.
The greens really have lost the plot with this one.
Any sane green is against population increase, or indeed in favour of a planned decrease.
I feel that the ‘green’ label has been hijacked, in the same way that the ‘liberal’ label was.
I do believe in climate change
Oh, come one, you know perfectly well what I meant. I did not expect this from you. It was shorthand for “On the balance of evidence, so far as I have seen, I regard it as more likely than not that human intervention has caused changes in the climate in the very recent past”.
Well no I didn’t. Unfortunately if you want to debate the science of a controversial issue then shorthand leads to confusion and misunderstanding.
I believe in Climate Change sounds like a belief not a conclusion drawn from an assessment of the evidence. Someone else might similarly have used the phrase I believe in Intelligent Design”. In addition Climate Change in its convential meaning is incontrovertible the climate is always changing.
If you are using “Climate Change” as shorthand to mean the AGW theory then that is a good way to mislead readers, which is why the term is bandied about so freely by those who ‘believe’ in it.
“I think the AGW theory is valid” is a construction using only two more words that makes your meaning clear.
Define valid 😉
No, seriously, that might imply (maybe not to you or me, of course!) that I think the theory has been ‘proved’.
How about ‘I think the theory is well-supported’?
(never sure whether there should be a hyphen there; and it’s late).
I am sick to death of being lectured to by the beeb about “campaigners believe” this that or the other.
Sometimes it’s “environmental campaigners believe”, sometimes “anti-poverty campaigners believe” or “human rights campaigners believe”.
Many years ago “campaigners” were slightly obsessive but harmless amateurs who lectured you from boxes on street corners, walked around with placards round their necks or rattled collecting tins at you.
Now “campaigners” are highly paid, hired media and PR professionals pursuing a lucrative career path.
They have no more moral superiority than estate agents or double glazing salesmen – but the beeb relays their pronouncemets with quasi religious devotion.
I suppose they’re just fellow members of the great meeja tribe – leeching off the honest toil of the rest of us in the productive economy.
jason | 26.05.08 – 7:36 pm |
Now correct me if I’m wrong, but if someone you loved was terminally ill and you were told that they were going to be OK and that the prognosis was in fact a lot better that you’d previously been told, would you throw a tantrum or bask in the hope you’d just been given? I know how I’d react.
Not if your religion instructed you otherwise.
Nearly Oxfordian: I’m not saying that we are NOT experiencing climate change. We are, we always have and always will. The debate as I see it is how much influence does humanity have and what can we do about it. And it seems to me that adapting to climate change is what will make sense. Like I said do the left really think the growing middle classes in China and India won’t want a car or a long haul flight holiday? There’s no point the left wanking on aobut Carbon offsetting if 300 million Chinese decide to buy a car and go off on weekend flights to other parts of the world.
Telling people to give up their Chelsea tractors might make good sense from a pollution point of view (and the fact that the 5 feet tall females that drive them seem incapable of actually moving them in a safe manner) but it isn’t going to save the world.
What I want to see is a proper debate. The loony left are using climate change as another way to simply attack the rich, but in doing so are also attacking the middle classes (and the poor who need a car to get about like the rest of us)
If the left really mean it, then why not stand for election with the promise to shut down Heathrow airport totally and put petrol up to £20 a gallon?
I think the message about taking better care of the planet generally (like pollution, deforestation etc.) should be a priority, but it’s been lost in talks about crap like “carbon footprint” and “carbon offsetting” which are just phrases used by fat lying politicians to find more ways to extract money from hard working people. There needs to be talk about reducing the human population. Why the left don’t see this amazes me. Perhaps they feel that their “mandate” (pathetically small as it is) comes from the young and if there are fewer of them about, their influence will be even further reduced?
Oh and for a great read try Littlejohn’s article in the Mail today. He talks about Moonbat and barking Benn on the Toady show.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1022032/LITTLEJOHN-Whats-difference-MPs-expenses-stealing.html
This planet is not overpopulated it is underpopulated, to the point that mankind could very well be described in many places, as already being an endangered species.
The planet can easily produce food, and very well provide for, a population 5-10 times bigger then it currently does.
The reason why we think this planet is overpopulated is because our ruling elites have done everything possible over many years to make believe such a silly thing. By forcing us by government policy to live like sardines in criminal infested Urban nightmares, while they buy up their own personal Islands to live on,
Branson style.
The powers that be already have plans to reduce the population of the world by give or take 50% over the next 20 years. Their excuse is the environment, but the real reason is that they just do not like ordinary people cluttering up the place and no longer have any real need for them anyway.
In other words, cannon fodder and hapless peasants, no longer required.
The not so new agenda is that of, The New World Order.
All you have to do is find out what The New World Orders agenda is, and who has long since been spending literally trillions promoting and investing in it, then all becomes clear.
As I have said before the powers that be control ALL sides of the political debate, so called LEFT and so called RIGHT. All forms of radical politics especially from feminism, socialism, pro abortionism, multi-culturalism, to prisoners rights, pro-life, and animal rights groups, where created/financed and are now completely controlled by the ruling elites.
Which should surprise no one because for many many decades, these people have controlled the educational, and the western worlds scientific establishments among many other things, including the entire worlds mainstream media and all electable party political party’s.
SO YOU CAN’T TRUST ANY OF THEM.
The BBC will not drop this AGW agenda under any circumstances, however much conclusive evidence emerges that the nonsense is indeed a New World Order money making and control freak scam.
This because the entire job of the BBC, is the promotion of the New World Order’s very fascist agenda, or the corporations plug gets pulled.
I fail to understand why it is, so few of you so called educated people on this site, can not see what is to me so painfully obvious.
Why is it so hard for human beings to throw off years of controlled brainwashing, when the evidence for such brainwashing is clearly manifest in all that now surrounds you?
Is it just your respective EGO’s getting in the way of your common sense or rational reasoning?
Or do you just like arguing for the sake of it, while collectively barking up completely the wrong trees all of your lives?
I find it hilarious that leftists here in America are now using high gas prices to attack President Bush and the oil companies. “Those greedy bastards, they’re making gasoline too expensive for the average Joe” is the soup of the day. They demand inquiries into excessive oil profits and want the heads of oil company executives on plates.
Yet it wasn’t too long ago that they were using LOW gas prices as an excuse to bitch about America. Low gas prices in the US were to them the reason for our over reliance on cars and the reason why we were buying too many gas-guzzling SUV’s. “Look at Europe”, they’d say, “they have higher gas prices and people use public transport more”. They actively CALLED FOR higher gas prices.
Now they have them and they’re still bitching – about entirely the opposite. I’ve come to understand that leftists just use whatever they have in reach as a platform to whine from.
Tuesday morning and the BBC obsession with introducing “carbon credits” reaches new heights on the Toady programme. You can almost hear the programme have a collective orgasm as they contemplate the absolute level of control that their friends in “the Party” will have over “the proles”.
I too cannot believe people on this forum who try to suggest that the BBC bias is all in our minds. It’s reporting like this which makes me sure that we’re not complaining hard enough.
jason | 26.05.08 – 3:27 pm
Precisely.
David Vance (main post)
When I blog these posts here, sometimes my critics accuse me of seeing bias where none exists.
True. And this post is another example.
You have chosen three items from a 3-hour programme and sought to give the impression that the programme was one of unremitting left-liberalism.
If, instead of choosing the three items you selected, one were to choose three other items from the selfsame programme, one could give precisely the opposite spin. The same edition of Today included the following:
1. Interview with Conservative MP Andrew Mitchell, who has just returned from Afghanistan.
2. Item on how prison staff have lost control of a prison to Muslim prisoners.
3. Did Russia deserve to win the Eurovision song contest or was there a political motive to the voting?
…. Not to mention an item of the Dunkirk spirit or a Thought for the Day from the leader of the Evangelical Alliance.
On the issue of individual carbon footprint taxes, you ask
Why was there no voice for those who challenge the entire AGW lunacy?
For a number of reasons:
1. Because this was a debate between green pressure groups who want such a tax and a government that is saying no.
2. Because the AGW-sceptic position is not one accepted by any of the main political parties in Parliament. (Nor by governments, supra-national bodies or bodies (like the Royal Society) representing the science community).
3. This maverick sceptic position should (rarely) be represented on the BBC, but not in a way, or so often, that it is granted a spurious equivalence with mainstream views.
How is it that the BBC could not find a US Republican to counter Blumenthal
The BBC frequently interviews Republican commentators (David Frum, for instance) without feeling the need to have Sideney Blumenthal on to counter them.
Selective presentation of facts is not the same as persuasive evidence of bias.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/listenagain/monday.shtml
Honestly, Charles, your special pleading for your paymaster does you no credit.
1. Do you know how many people in the country – outside the minority who belong to and support political parties – are sceptical or questioning about the AGW narrative? Have you ever tried to find out? Or do you want only to repeat establishment lines?
How will you cope with a paradigm shift if the current 10 year stasis in world temperatures continues? There are plenty of scientifically qualified sceptics around, if only you will look. But on this and other subjects, TV viewers in the UK have to watch Channel 4 or satellite to get a different view. Any THEY don’t get a penny of the annual TV tax.
2. How do you decide what constitutes ‘mainstream views’? How do you (can you) keep an open mind?
3. Where do you get your American talking heads from? Blumenthal isn’t taken seriously in the US, and in fact you rarely have David Frum on. Why don’t you have incisive commnetators from the right, like Mark Steyn or Victor Hanson or Hugh Hewitt? You are so parochial and set in the 1990s in your attitudes and go-to guys. The internet is a better source of up to date info on the US than the BBC.
“This maverick sceptic position should (rarely) be represented on the BBC, but not in a way, or so often, that it is granted a spurious equivalence with mainstream views”
Utter nonsense. I am one who on the whole accepts that the evidence is slightly more in support of climate change than otherwise – I have regular arguments here with other posters – but I still say that to call their position ‘maverick’ is exactly the sort of dyed-in-the-wool BBC bias we are complaining about. This term is simply ignorant.
“Selective presentation of facts” – something the BBC could give master-classes in. Your ME ‘reporting’ (LOL) is one long selective presentation of facts, 90% of time institutionally anti-Israel. The BBC website contains non-stop lies about Israel.
Here’s a nice selective presentation of facts:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/7420798.stm
Care to comment why we have to read 7 or 8 paragraphs to discover these are –UN– peacekeepers? Not because the BBC just loves that corrupt racist body, by any chance?
Answers on a postcard.
libertus — a very good short list of American conservative commentators.
Note I say conservative and not Republican.
Of course, I doubt if the BBC would ever ask the brilliant Charles Krauthammer, as he would clean the clock of a Paxman…
or how about Fred Barnes, Wliiam Krystal, Michael Steele, Walter Williams, Thomas Sowell, Laura Ingraham, Tammy Bruce…
And Mark Levin would simply blow their little beeboid minds.
But has the godfather of modern American conservative commentary ever appeared on the BBC. I refer to Rush Limbaugh.
Has Operation Chaos been discussed on the BBC
And Charles,
Do explain how the report about the Muslim Prisoners was anything less than another example of bending over backwards to appease Muslims?
One in four prisoners are Muslims?
That’s Ok, don’t bother to ask why that is.
Don’t bother to suggest that since crime is clearly unIslamic, why should everyone adapt to each and every Islamic whim?
“People don’t understand Muslims.”
Too damn right they don’t.
“Tensions when they’re released.”
Surprise.
“Prison Officers should be taught about Muslim languages and culture.”
Yeah Right.
Don’t bother to suggest that Muslim prisoners should be taught to adapt to the U.K.
Balanced my arse.
3. This maverick sceptic position should (rarely) be represented on the BBC, but not in a way, or so often, that it is granted a spurious equivalence with mainstream views.
Charles (Ex-Today-Producer) | 27.05.08 – 10:57 am | #
Charles
Your post reeks of the beeboid smugness which characterises so much of the BBC’s output.
According to that well known right wing, sceptic rag – The Independent – between 60 and 72% of the population (and your enforced licence fee payers) support the view you think should “rarely be represented” because it’s “maverick”.
Talk about “de haut en bas”.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/the-green-tax-revolt-britons-will-not-foot-bill-to-save-planet-poll-shows-819703.html
Ha ha! That’s very funny.
Now would the regular poster pretending to be Charles (Ex-Today-Producer) own up. You nearly had me believing it really was someone from the BBC but gave it away with the line “This maverick sceptic position should (rarely) be represented on the BBC.” No real Beeboid would be so dumb as to admit that attitude.
Would they?
Yes.
Charles (ex-Today producer,
In passing, what is it with the BBC and the c word, as in “… representing the science c……..”?
Why on the BBC does everyone always have to be referred to as being of a c…..? It’s like a virus at the BBC.
Why couldn’t you say “scientists” or “scientific opinion” or “most scientists”?
I don’t get why your argument relies on saying that opinions or positions have to be mainstream – in THIS instance. There are enough other instances where what is represented on the BBC is not mainstream. Why is it different in this case?
Surely, it must be because the programmes and the editorial decisions reflect the political positions and prejudices of the BBC staff and BBC establishment. Hence somewhat shifting and arbitrary criteria, i.e. in one instance (of a BBC pet project), it must be mainstream, in another, it will be anything but.
As I don’t listen to Today, I cannot say whether or not it is biased in the US nomination / election coverage, but from what I have been seeing and reading elsewhere for the past five months on the BBC, particularly Newsnight, the very late-night news programmes on News 24 and the blog and website reports from America, the edits have been relentlessly, often juvenilely sneeringly anti-Clinton and childishly, embarrassingly, unashamedly promoting of Obama. This has remained true even on occasions when they had someone on who was pro-Clinton: the questioning and the comments hostile and negative, the BBC position remaining obvious and being relentlessly pushed. I don’t think there has been much abour McCain at all.
Where is the reporting and analysis of the candidates’ qualities or policies, as opposed to the excitable fixating on one candidate for no good reason? Where is the neutrality, the balance? Why is the BBC influencing the American nomination and ultimately the election, by adhering to and peddling a position of bias?
It has been an appalling revelation to me of knee-jerk bias and poor quality journalism at the BBC. To think I used to hold this organisation in high regard! Scales have fallen from my eyes. It is not a comfortable feeling.
What on earth does Helen Boaden do at the BBC? Why does she preside over this nonsense?
Charles(TODY),
What nonsense you do utter, who writes the script. Science has never been based on concensus, you look at the data, form a hypothesis and try to break it. Can you imagine how many variables there may be affecting the climate at any given time? Given the numbers, could you imagine working out the interactions of them? Climate has been changing for as long as the earth has had a climate, and will keep on doing so. Man is a puny, part time inhabitant with as much chance of greatly affecting the planet as of moving Mount Everest with a broken arm.
Derek, the BBC is run by scientific illiterates and politically biased arseholes, but I cannot agree with your last statement. It is not remotely correct. Look up the Aral Sea. A man-made ecological disaster on a huge scale. And there are others.
Unless you are saying that there is no cumulative effect, which is also untrue.
Or unless you are saying: let’s test this to destruction. Not a rational approach, imo.