Monthly Archives: July 2008

GOING WITH THE PROCESS.

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So often with the BBC the bias lies in what is does not say. Here is a good example of how the BBC assiduously cultivates what government wants with no regard to providing a broader balanced view.

The BBC report here covers a secret meeting between the NI Security Minister Paul Goggins and members of the UDA terrorist group. The impression given is that Goggins is “getting tough” with these verminous thugs. However, don’t be fooled. Another local media outlet has revealed that Goggins has declined to call on police to seize loyalist weapons after a senior PSNI officer indicated police know how to find arms dumps!

So two versions of Security Minister Paul Goggins. The BBC version which portrays him as a tough-talking kinda guy who is determined to sort out armed terrorists and then there is the Belfast Telegraph version which reveals Goggins restraining the Police from carrying out their lawful duty to protect the public! I know which version I believe. With BBC reports you have to read between the lines….

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ENVY OF THE WORLD?

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It’s only a few weeks since the BBC was cheer-leading for the National Health Service on the occasion of it’s 60th Birthday. As B-BBC readers know, to criticise the neo-Stalinist NHS is frowned upon by the BBC which is why when one reads about this horrific instance of NHS bungling incompetence in which seventeen patients who were told they did not have cancer were later informed they had the disease after a mix-up does not cause more than a mild media ripple. I would have thought that any good journalist would want to take up the comment by Hereford Hospitals NHS Trust chief executive Martin Woodford that “No patients that we have been able to identify have died as a result of a misdiagnosis.” Not Yet, he means.

But what about the unimaginable anguish these patients and their families have been plunged into by the NHS? The BBC has a duty to challenge the NHS, to pursue these cases of gross incompetence, to ask tough questions about the State Health Provider, but of course it won’t. The NHS and the BBC are spiritually linked; both outdated, both characterised by gross inefficiency, both funded without our consent by our taxes.

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General BBC-related comment thread!

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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.

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Slow burn.

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The BBC Press Office says of Burn Up, its latest drama, made in conjunction with a Canadian company and featuring attractive Canadian locations*, that it is “a highly authored piece wholly of this unique moment in time.”

Don’t ask me.

Anyway, AA Gill of the Times says:

This gem of the scriptwriter’s craft was brought to us courtesy of Burn Up (Wednesday/Friday, BBC2), the hugely expensive and very Canadian and cavernously vacuous thriller about Kyoto and global warming that starred Adam from Spooks and Josh from The West Wing. Watching it was a bit like being manacled to the table at a Notting Hill dinner party, or being lectured by a vegan vitamin salesman.

The finger-wagging about global warming was relentless and unabating, all couched in the comfy velour of the edge-of-history and watershed gibberish. The goodies were witty, brilliant, sensitive, imaginative, attractive, sexy and great dancers – rather, I suspect, like the scriptwriters. The baddies were, well,they were all American. This was film-making from the Soviet school of political subtlety, a childishly black-and-white premise, delivered with a patronising blog of a script, which overwhelmed the plot, pace, anything resembling a character and, finally, the audience’s sympathy.

And Kevin O’Sullivan of the Mirror says:

The end of the world is nigh. Americans are baddies . The oil business is terribly awful. Invest in windmills… before it’s TOO LATE.

Preaching the kind of dreary ecoorthodoxy that soppy actors just love, BBC2’s lukewarm Burn Up was stupefying.

I was a little worried that the BBC might forget to insert the evil Christians into the first episode as made de rigeur by the first episodes of Spooks and Bonekickers. But Mike McNally was able to reassure me:

Battling Holly for Tom’s soul is oil lobbyist Mack, played by The West Wing’s Bradley Whitford. Mack is essentially JR Ewing without the good points, and in case the viewer should be in any doubt as to the extent of his moral bankruptcy, in one of Burn Up’s many gratuitously America-bashing scenes Mack is shown watching a faith healer at work on cable TV, and exclaiming, with tears in his eyes, “Praise the Lord!” It’s not bad enough that he’s a shill for the oil industry — he’s a Bible-bashing shill for the oil industry.


*I want to be positive where I can.

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WHAT STANDARDS?

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I am sure you will have read that the BBC has been fined £400,000 by media watchdog Ofcom for misleading its audiences by “faking” phone-ins. The Comic Relief, Children in Need and Sport Relief TV shows were caught up in the scandal, along with Liz Kershaw on 6 Music and Jo Whiley’s Radio 1 show. Now then, leaving the issue of the derisory size of this fine to one side, the bit that caught my eye was the pompous comment from the BBC Trust that “Our concern now is ensuring that the highest editorial standards are maintained to safeguard the public’s trust” But hang on – the systematic abuse of public trust which this investigation has revealed is incompatible with these alleged “highest standards” and so the idea that these can be “maintained” is a nonsense on stilts. The point is that the BBC has conducted a verging on the criminal abuse of public goodwill. It has shown utter contempt for the public. Does it face into this awkward reality? Does it hell! Instead it uses the entire shameful episode to spend even more of our taxes running a “training programme” for 19,000 employees on how not to rip-off the public!

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RED KEN ON RED CHINA.

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Caught the One O’Clock news on Radio 4 at lunchtime and there was a discussion on the latest Amnesty International report on China’s pathetic failure to live up to the fine promises it had made concerning improving its wretched human rights record prior to getting the green light to host the Olympic Games this year. Now I am not a fan of Amnesty “Gulag of our times” International but on this occasion I think the report they have produced has real value. So who does the BBC invite on to discuss it? That’s right – Ken Livingstone. And what is his take? Well, he decided that since Britain is a human rights abuser it is in some ways worse than China! Red Ken was allowed to tell listeners that the UK’s record of starting illegal wars (Iraq) and human rights abuses meant that it is not in a position to lecture China. The Chinese must love Ken almost as much as the BBC.

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PUTTING THE HOM INTO HOMICIDE

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. Hi folks! Just back from a long weekend in Rome. Over there the good news is that I couldn’t pick up the BBC, the bad news is that I could pick up CNN. Whilst CNN is outrageously biased (“Cult of Obama” at its’ worst) I reckon it is perhaps somewhat less anti-British than the BBC, so small mercies and all that! Plus, of course, I do not have to fund such left-wing drivel.

Anyway, I tuned into the BBC this morning and see they have been pushing the “murder isn’t murder when an angry woman does it” line. This latest instance of Harman-esque man-hating proposes that when a “partner” (read woman) kills her other half, this should be not be seen as murder but rather manslaughter. The BBC shows its balance by giving another view. QC Geoffrey Robinson, that awfully nice chap, thinks that these plans to turn murder into manslaughter do NOT go far enough! It’s nice to be home…!!

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General BBC-related comment thread!

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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.

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The BBC is biased in India too…

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“What is interesting is that the BBC is not reluctant to report an accusation — almost as if it were an established fact — but cannot bring itself to report an established fact that the torching of the train was a premeditated act of Islamic terrorism“

Read about it here. I think someone pointed this one out in the comments on this site, too.

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“A political crisis out of an economic problem”

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I thought that was the strongest soundbyte from the strongest section of Harriet Harman’s interview with Hugh Edwards, and sure enough it was that section the BBC excerpted for their webpage. Edwards clearly showed he was not up to the job when he responded to Harman’s insistence that the problems of the country/Brown/the Labour party were exclusively the consequence of external economic factors by agreeing “all of those factors are clear”. Anyone with the slightest scepticism of the Labour Government would have harried Harman on economic gems concerning Northern Rock, the sale of gold by the Treasury, the growth of the public sector (combined with waste), public debt- including off balance sheet stuff like PFIs- and persistently low interest rates during a housing boom (which, btw, would cast shadows over how independent the Bank of England really has been). All questions which Hugh Edwards allowed Harman to dismiss as though non-existent. The BBC not only would like to save Gordon, but they and their Labour friends are looking well beyond that to the public narrative of the Labour legacy.

Hugh Edwards sounded tough when he was asking Harman about intrigues against Gordon- in fact he was painting the situation as a purely political or personal one. Most sceptical license fee payers will consider the matter one of governmental incompetence on multifarious grounds- rather than just a question of Gordon’s being the Prime Mentalist.

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