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.
General BBC-related comment thread!
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Will86: The BBC are obsessed with Gender and race. If I were a family member of one of the “male” solider skilled last week I think I’d be rather annoyed that a woman got more attention just because she got killed.
Classic Beeboid nonsense. Read the comments!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markeaston/2008/06/map_of_the_week_poverty_in_the.html#commentsanchor
More classic crap from Nick Robinson. Best coverage Brown has had for weeks says Robinson.
Well the BBC covered it. Most of us thought it looked rather pathetic. Brown could do more by cutting fuel duty. If that means slashing public spending, then so be it.
To be honest Brown could knock 50p a litre off Petrol now and he’d still be a gonner.
However, the ‘next’ leader of the Labour party might not like the idea of Broon taking the party on a suicide mission.
They Just Can’t Help Themselves
The BBC and Yasmin Alibhai-Brown demonstrate their anti-Israel obsessions.
another day, another load of eco bollox from Al Beeb
This time its moonbat Matt Prescott, remember him? creator of the doomed E day where energy consumption went up, and he’s also the idiot who going to get light bulbs banned
now he wants a carbon tax so the money can be given to poorer countries
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7471197.stm
As well as Matt Prescott rubbish (above), the BBC’s reporting of today’s government plans to force us to spend £100bn of our money on ‘green’ energy’ (ie wind turbines that don’t work most of the time and costly solar panels)get the most unbelievably easy ride. The propsoals are reported here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7467336.stm
Predictably, the only groups called on to comment on the proposals are eco-maniacs Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. Not a taxpayer in sight. Nor any of the millions who are being forced into fuel poverty by these loony, unecessary schemes; nor any real energy experts. It’s a torrent of madness.
doesNotCompute:
David Vance is really dragging this site down. He’s a bit of a wacko, any chance of preventing him posting ? His continued references to “Judea and Samaria” and other crazy stuff like his recent quotation of some (equally crazy person): “I certainly do not want to see someone whose paternal ancestry shares the same religion as the evil-doers who killed 3,000 people in New York City seven years ago”. That is just mind numbingly stupid.
How can anyone not cringe seeing stuff like that ? Really, it seriously affects the credibility of this site which I have been following for a long time now (and am completely in agreement with the description of the BBC as biased, very far, to the left).
(post tranferred from other thread)
His continued references to “Judea and Samaria” and other crazy stuff …
Judea and Samaria is the correct, and historical name of the area also known as The West Bank. I do not consider calling the area by its proper name to be “crazy stuff”. Why do you?
It was not David Vance who said, “I certainly do not want to see someone whose paternal ancestry shares the same religion as the evil-doers who killed 3,000 people in New York City seven years ago”, it was his friend Andrew McCann.
Quite Bio.
David is habitually right on both specifics and generalities, and he undestands BBC bias very well indeed.
He may also enjoy winding some people up rather :-), who knows?
I think this blog loses legitimacy by being all too often a raging tirade against the “liberal left”, making its bias far worse than the bbc’s itself
for what it’s worth, i identify as being liberal rather than conservative, but that doesn’t mean i’m pro-islamism, pro-id cards, that i want sharia in this country or even that i’m pro-labour/Brown (i most definitely am not). but this blog’s total oversimplification of everything as the fault of the liberal boogyman is doing no one any favours, and only serves to take away the credibility of a tool we really need; that is, a fair and accurate look at the biases that afflict the bbc
Another spate of existential comments re this blog and more farewell notes.
Richy alluded to the high number of recent hits, whereas David P refers to a recent decline, partly attributing that to the spell of vicious personal insults and invective. Even worse is bullying, typically when several people gang up and trounce someone’s comment beyond all rationality, which becomes the catalyst for the decision to leave. It’s a shame.
I sympathise with those who retired hurt. I also regret the disappearance of the legitimate defenders of the BBC or if you like, apologists for it. Whenever I’ve said that previously it has attracted a hail of disagreements. Some rude.
Is this just a platform for letting off steam? Or should we aspire to jolt Beeboids out of languishing complacently in their cosy consensus, and hope to effect change. Hope and Change. Hmmm.
A new euphemism: “the ability to ‘update one’s thinking.’ Apt though.
The BBC’s flawed article on the forgotten refugees (pounce | 23.06.08 – 9:38 pm; Simon | 24.06.08 – 12:07 am; and Biodegradable | 24.06.08 – 3:01 am) is one glaring example of bias and partiality where input from a BBC representative would add to the substance of this site. Will Simon get a proper response to his excellent letter? I don’t suppose we’ll ever know now.
There is plenty of media coverage of U.K. politics constantly exposing everyone to a wide spectrum of opinion, providing ample balance, but the majority of people in the U.K. trust the BBC to inform them on ‘World’ subjects.
For that reason I think the BBC’s failure to fulfill its obligation (to be impartial) particularly over its vilification of Israel and the Jews together with its sentimental romantic idealisation of Arabs and Islam is the most dangerous area of bias with potentially devastating possible consequences.
I’ve said this so often before, I’m getting fed up with it myself.
There are SO many people out there who increasingly despise the ridiculous BBC – perhaps this blog could become a valuable focus for anti-Beeboid resistance.
Dr R | 23.06.08 – 5:56 pm |
I wondered what you meant. Because that’s what I thought it already was. But now I’m not so sure.
He may also enjoy winding some people up rather
Nothing wrong with that either ed.
James,
I think this blog loses legitimacy by being all too often a raging tirade against the “liberal left”, making its bias far worse than the bbc’s itself
I don’t know about losing legitimacy, whatever that is, but I do agree with you about the anti-left bit.
I have never voted for the right and would describe myself too as something of a disillusioned socialist á la Nick Cohen. Frankly I feel increasingly that left and right no longer have any real meaning as political place markers.
I also agree that there is at least one regular commenter who seems to have a disturbing fixation with gays and things anal.
James and Sue,
Good thoughts, both of you.
Those people who think that ‘Liberalism’ has been redefined are naïve.
Take, for instance, the slogan “Freedom of the Individual.” The ontological question is “freedom from what?”
From society says the Ayn Rand fed Libertarian.
But what if society is oppressive oweing to it’s structure? Then immediately, just like that, we have Socialism, the highest expression of which is Marxism.
See? Liberalism immediately leads to Marxism.
(Don’t bother trying to bring in Libertarianism here, Libertarianism is also a structure and order)
Liberalism is at heart an existential malaise. Existentialist’s deny there is a structure to reality, for that reason the individual existence’s must be made free from anybody who says there is a structure to reality – and finally reality itself as the moral insanity candidly described by Nick Cohen in “What’s Left” makes very clear.
Egalitarianism is end result of the denial of order and structure; for the denial of order is inherent to Liberalism, if one believes in a transcendent order one is probably religious and probably not a liberal.
It’s not so much a battle between right and left as between individualism and collectivism.
Liberalism was indeed individualism once, before the collectivist left hijacked the name in the 60’s because the name “Marxism” already had tens of millions of murders associated with it.
The line of “left to right” is more aptly described as a circle, with the extreme left and extreme right (both collectivist) almost, but not quite, meeting at the top.
Ayn Rand was absolutely right in that the only moral role of the state is to create and sustain conditions of individual freedom. She rightly asserted that anarchy, which most people wrongly perceive as “total freedom”, is not freedom at all since the individual is at the mercy of whatever marauding gang or savage wishes to attack, enslave or kill them. Real freedom is only possible with the enforcement of the rule of rational law – and the law should be there for one purpose only, to protect the rights of the individual.
The great hypocrisy of leftists is in my opinion their confusion regarding the subject of individualism. In some contexts, they viciously defend the right of the individual to be themselves and their inalienable right to their own lives. Examples include a woman’s “right to choose” and the rights of gays and others with “alternative lifestyles” to be who they are. They often vocalize their disgust at the idea of being part of the “machine” of society – “I am a name, not a number”.
But turn the subject to politics, economics and aspects of morality which aren’t part of their “protected agenda” – for instance the right of the individual to do what he pleases with his own money, the right of the individual property owner to decide who he does and doesn’t employ or allow on his property, the right of the individual to say what he pleases about subjects leftists consider “protected”, in fact the right of the individual to go about his life without being part of some “master plan” – and all of a sudden their defense of the individual is thrown out of the window.
People must be taxed to pay for some non-existent “common good” (which is impossible since we all have different agendas, hopes, dreams and aspirations). People must be banned from doing business in this fashion, in that fashion. People must be forced to employ according to some racial or sexual quota. People must be forced to contribute to a media outlet which projects nothing but left wing views 24/7. No choice. Enforced if necessary. They support an ideology in which the individual is swallowed by the collective, in which we all must be forced to “work together” towards some “brighter future”, and the notion that we’ll never all agree on what that future should look like never occurs to them. THEIR vision, which is naturally the only moral one. Everyone else is “misguided” or “greedy” or “selfish” or just plain “evil”.
I think the difference between the mainstream right and the mainstream left is that the mainstream right does not romanticize or sympathize with the extreme right – you don’t see them walking around with Hitler t-shirts, wearing swastikas or defending fascism as some kind of “ideal” which just hasn’t been implemented well yet. In contrast, the left does romanticize and idolize the extreme left and holds such ideas as Marxism and socialism in high regard. It thinks that some day the world will embrace these ideologies, and that we’re “not quite mature or ready for it yet”. Leftists have, through the decades, defended and even idolized such mass killers as Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao and Che Guevara. They just wanted “what was best for their people” and hence it is wrong to judge the bloodbaths they were responsible for.
I’ll change my mind about this when I see young Republicans on US campuses wearing T-shirts which glorify fascism or Nazism.
Sue,
I agree with your comments.
The point of this blog should be to carefully and rationally document and make publically available the problem of continual bias in many areas in the BBC’s reporting, with the goal that the BBC will change its behavior as a result.
Trevor Asserson generated the closest thing to quanitfiable, scientific reports in this regard, and Richard Sambrooke tossed them in the garbage without looking at them, by his own admission. (By that I mean, he read the report, which had obviously taken a huge amount of time and effort and which was far more thoroughly and scientifically thought-out than the ludicrously inconsistent “editorial guidelines” of the BBC, for example) and wrote back a half page note saying, thank you, there is no bias at the BBC.
Only by continual pressure from rational, clear-thinking posters who do not engage in ad hominem attacks will this blog maintain the credibility required to be taken seriously.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/james_kirkup/blog/2008/06/25/giles_coren_on_british_soldiers_rations_an_exercise_in_bad_taste
apologies if old.
Thanks Simon.
It is very difficult to change one’s mind. Most people react to opposition by digging in. Most of us do it. You can see that happening before your very eyes here on this blog. People who concede a point with good grace have my utmost admiration.
How many Trevor Assersons would it take to change a Sambrook?
Some interesting comments folks – thanks for that.
I continue to find the quality and depth of most B-BBC contributors excellent and do my best to provide you with daily bread! That said, I am very busy on many fronts so sometimes posts are rushed – but so is life!!
I have my own views on political and world events but am usually able to get on with those who hold diametrically opposed opinions so long as everyone is friendly and courteous. Those from the left are as welcome here as those from the right. The central issue IS BBC bias and it is good to remember this at times.
Thanks again for feedback.
BBC Bias By Brazen Snidery
“Four decades ago, during the Vietnam war, Mr Duyet was in charge of the notorious Hoa Lo prison–the place where Mr McCain says he was brutally beaten and tortured during five-and-a-half years as an American prisoner of war.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7459946.stm
WHERE MR McCAIN “SAYS” … huh? You mean the torture of John McCain hasn’t been well documented over the past 40 years?
You doubt McCain do you, Andrew Harding?
Think he’s “lying”?
Well clearly yes, because you then gave over a whole article to some Vietcong commie to claim McCain was “never tortured.”
Despite the fact that as the son and grandson of Admirals, the capture, imprisonment and brutal torture of John McCain, and his fellow prisoners, is possibly one of the most widely documented POW cases to emerge from Vietnam.
The fact that all his teeth were kicked out. The fact that his left arm is virtually useless and cause him constant pain to this very day?
No bias here, of course.
Continuing on the issue of the BBC’s reporting of Jewish refugees from Arab countries:
Recognising the Jewish ‘Nakba’
UPDATE
Unusually, for a straightforward news report, the BBC has devoted half of its article to the views of “BBC’s Arab affairs analyst Magdi Abdelhadi”, who denies the Mizrahi Jewish Nakba.
Could you imagine a report on the plight of Palestinian Arab refugees, that was qualified by a BBC employee expressing the view that it was “highly controversial” why Palestinian Arabs left Israel, and that some of them left because they were Arab Nationalists hoping to return in the wake of a victorious pan-Arab army, and that some were encouraged to leave by the Arab League, and frankly who knows why they left at all!!!!
Or putting forward the suggestion that it is an “undisputed fact” that Arabs are fully integrated into Israel, with not a care in the world?
Top performance by the BBC.