If you suspected the BBC would never give the Republicans as much coverage as they gave the Democrats last week, shame on you. Since the Palin story broke, they been assiduous in keeping it on the front page, cooking up this feature on US teen pregnancies to do so.
“There is,” we are told, “a debate state-side as to the reason for this high pregnancy rate.” I’ve no idea what the debate is, though, because the piece simply blames it on abstinence programmes while being careful to mention that McCain opposed a Democratic proposal to pay for prevention programmes other than abstinence-only education. Oh, the irony.
Elsewhere Radio 1’s Newsbeat is also keen on the story, and interestingly has decided that Palin’s anti-abortion stance makes her part of the “far right”. Quality journalism all round.
UPDATE: Newsbeat has evidently thought better of it, and her anti-abortion stand is no longer a “far-right stance”. It’s progress of sorts, I suppose.
Labels: anti-McCain
great GREAT comment left on LGF which sums it up pretty much entirely:
******************************
I’ve been scanning the Web for the last 12 hours: The left is going ballistic with glee over this pregnant daughter thing.
At first I couldn’t even grasp what they could possibly gain from the news, but after looking around, I find that their (borderline incomprehensible) position is this:
a. Sex is good; everyone should have sex!
b. We can’t stop teenagers from having sex; they all do it, all the time, so we should give them instruction manuals and hand out condoms.
c. Anybody who suggests not handing out instruction manuals and condom is a frigid, anti-sex Puritan.
d. Republicans are therefore all frigid, anti-sex Puritans.
e. Sarah Palin is a frigid, anti-sex Puritan too, even though she is far away the sexiest candidate in American history and obviously must have a lot of sex personally (all those babies), merely because she doesn’t encourage teen sexuality as government policy.
f. Here is our climactic conclusion! : Even though we think sex is good, and even though we think teen sex is unstoppable and good, and even though current statistics show somewhere around 60% of all 17-year-olds have had sex, and even though Sarah Palin never condemned any teen anywhere for ever having sex, and even though her daughter is staying true to her moral principles by keeping the baby and getting married;…because we now have evidence that Palin’s daughter is no longer a virgin, we can hop around and say, “Ooooooh! You had sex! Bad girl! You embarrassed your mama! Oooooh! Neeener neener neener!”
Seriously, that seems to sum up their position exactly.
unlike the BBC, the comments on the OFFICIAL John McCain blog appear to be unmoderated.
i kid you not.
have a look
http://www.johnmccain.com/blog/Read.aspx?guid=cb23fe36-b87a-4107-87a8-0c5ce143e926
http://www.mccainblogette.com/
a blog by mccain’s daughter – lots and lots of campaign photos, behind the scenes stuff.
interesting stuff.
The fight-back has started :
New Repub ad on Palin – note the theme “Country First”:
http://exurbanleague.com/2008/09/02/the-obama-news-network.aspx
(and don’t forget she ran a staff of 25,000 with a budget of $12 billion. Obama ? he hasn’t run a whelk shop.)
Palin WAS vetted :
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=N2EyM2Q2NjYxZmUxMzgxNTYwMjAwZDk3MmE2NGNmNjY
Palin will be fully briefed on foreign and defence affairs :
http://williamamos.wordpress.com/2008/09/02/bush-sends-top-noch-foreign-policy-team-to-breif-and-work-with-palin/#respond
Rezco :
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/rnc-obamas-housing-problem-brought/story.aspx?guid=%7B61ABC0BC-678B-4858-8447-AA56EF46CC0A%7D&dist=hppr
Sleazy Dem campaigning being exposed :
http://www.redstate.com/diaries/redstate/2008/sep/02/breaking-democrats-release-sarah-palins-soc/
http://www.snappedshot.com/archives/2716-Classic-Electioneering-Now-Includes-Releasing-Candidates-SSN.html
and Hillary is still around :
http://thehill.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=75857&Itemid=70
McCain disses CN
http://exurbanleague.com/2008/09/02/the-obama-news-network.aspx
and as some icing on the cake – Why Obama will lose – again the Clinton factor:
http://sigmundcarlandalfred.wordpress.com/2008/09/02/spengler-how-obama-managed-to-lose-the-election/
plus – delicious stuff from Kos of all places :
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/9/2/183838/5097/978/583791
I was just watching BBC News 24 and they were interviewing a Republican Congressman, while summary headlines were being put up on the lower part of the screen. (This is as of about 1am Wednesday, UK time.) One of the headlines was – Palin Former Member of Alaska Indeoendence Party.
Not in quotes, not a report of a claim, a simple statement of fact. My understanding was that this was a claim by some AIP members, which the McCain campaign had expressly denied. Seems to me that this can only go two ways – the BBC can prove that she’s lying, or they’re bang to rights for reporting anti-Palin rumours as if they were facts. Time will no doubt tell.
http://www.mccainblogette.com/
a blog by mccain’s daughter – lots and lots of campaign photos, behind the scenes stuff.
interesting stuff.
Aww. ‘Vote for my mom and John McCain.’
All of this abhorrent far-left behaviour regarding Sarah Palin’s family which the scummy BBC have picked up and run with suggest to me one thing: panic.
Lee Moore
That is the entire pattern of the BBC coverage. Take the talking points of the Dem campaign and present them as facts.
While ignoring the talking points of the Repubs.
Have you seen a single story on BBC tallying with what the Repubs are saying at the time ?
I think it is incredibly naive and patronising of Justin Webb to be implying that palin will withdraw.
Here’s a guide on why not to underestimate her. eg – she could very well help swing key states like Pennsylvania and Ohio.
Justin Webb ought to get out and about a bit more. His “analyses” (or glib comments) are shallow, derivative – and out-of-touch with small-town America.
Sarah Palin might withdraw if she were a little shit like Webb. But she’s got more balls than him (pun intended).
In fact, I see that the Telegraph is reporting the Alaska Independence Party membership as fact, too. I wonder if they just copy off the BBC and the Guardian ? The certainly don’t do any original research – in the Telegraph story they also report that Gov Palin was captured laughing on tape (see You Tube) when one of her opponents (a cancer survivor) was referred to by a radio host as a “cancer.” This has appeared in several lefty places too. But when you go to the clip on You Tube it simply isn’t true. She laughs later on when her opponent is called a “bitch” but there’s no laughter about “cancer” – the story’s just a smear. The only way it could get into newspaper copy is if the reporter doesn’t listen to the actual material but just copies from other written sources. Hey – maybe that’s why they call it copy. Anyway it’s much harder to pin justifiable charges of bias on the BBC, when the so-called right wing press copies off the same lefty US sources.
Lee
The left re in full-on smear mode. Obama has lost control of them – he cannot even LEAD his own side.
Yes, some mud sticks. But if an allegation is false – and if a succession of allegations are disproved – people strt disbelieving the accuser. A bit like “Crying wolf”.
If this is the best the left can do, they are in real trouble. The accusations against Obama and Biden of sleaze have hardly started yet. And fro what I can see, a lot of thm are grounded in fact – so will stick.
I haven’t read all of the comments here yet but I can’t have been the only one to notice that in the article on teen pregnancies, the Beeb unambiguously says that Palin “opposes funding sexual-education programmes in Alaska”, and then in the very next paragraph reveal their disgraceful dishonesty by quoting Palin as saying that she does not support “EXPLICIT sex-ed programmes”
The BBC is not honest enough and has insufficient journalistic integrity to acknowledge that there is a difference between sex-education and explicit sex education. Just another example of the ways in which BBC journalists use sneaky language in order to smear people of the “wrong” ideology.
Another way to look at it – they’re just common lying bastards.
And how come lefties like the twats at the Beeb always insist that being against the murder of a baby is a “far right” stance? Do they seriously mean to suggest that there are no liberals or centrists or moderate conservatives who also feel it is wrong?
I’m a libertarian and I still think it’s wrong to kill a child just because it’s an inconvenience.
And note that whenever lefties use the phrase “far right”, they’re doing their utmost to invoke the image of the swastika. The BBC uses “far right” to describe neo-Nazis….and also opponents of baby murder.
Dammit, at least when we call them socialists and communists and Marxists, we’re actually being accurate.
I think the left are in Dan Rather mode right now. But without his sense of timing.
Politicians usually withdraw because they say, “I have become the story”. Sarah Palin should not withdraw for that very same reason. She IS the story and a good thing too.
The unintended consequence of her few days in the limelight is that now the viciousness and partisanship of the media is out there for ALL to see. And from what I’m hearing, they do! Do you know how offended feminists (I don’t mean the bearded 1960s crones at the Beeb) are by her treatment?
I wonder why the BBC think that Palin having a pregnant teenage daughter, who is not going to have an abortion, is worse than Obama’s history of drug-taking and sexual “adventures” ?
Woops, stupid question !
No Republican voices were allowed to intrude into the Today programme’s gushing coverage of the Democrat convention last week. How very different things are this week. Justin Webb’s 7.20 report about Sarah Palin this morning included a couple of observations from George Stephanopoulos “of ABC News”. Needless to say Webb neglected to mention that the highly partisan Stephanopoulos was Bill Clinton’s communications director. Furthermore, Evan Davies introduced the segment with reference to a “stirring speech” by Fred Thompson in which he “let rip at the media for attacking Sarah Palin”. So, did we hear any of this speech? No. Instead we heard the views of… Barack Obama.
Webb’s commentary included the following:
“What the media seem to be suggesting is that there is a real question mark now and a growing sense of concern about whether or not she is fit for office.”
Webb likes to hide behind third-person phrases such as “the media seem to be suggesting” (another favourite ploy of his is citing unnamed sources). And as for “growing sense of concern about whether or not she is fit for office” – this translates as “growing sense of panic that she might upset the Chosen One’s path to glory.”
And look who BBC online chose to write an article about US political wives – Jamie Stiehm, a Democrat-supporting pundit from the Huffington Post.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/americas/2008/vote_usa_2008/7594922.stm
I’ve posted a response on the Justin Webb blog, post no. 371 by happyuk07.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/justinwebb/2008/09/the_palin_pregnancy.html
I too am having difficulty getting my comments shown.
Which is strange, since it uses measured language and no ad hominems.
It seems quite excessively moderated in my opinion.
Sigh, watching the news this morning, the report from the convention ended, rather predictably, with “Does Palin have the experience required when she is only a heartbeat away from being president”.
Funnily enough, Obama’s experience was never the central theme of the Dems convetion reporting.
Mailman
It seems that the lady from the Alaska Independence Party who claimed that Gov Palin had once been a member has now retracted. But obviously no apologies from the BBC (or the Times, the Guardian or Telegraph) for having reported this unsubstantiated rumour as fact.
Andy
The discussion has moved on to Webb’s latest blog – “Eagleton” Which he cribbed as a theme from Tha Atlantic. You’d never guess that the Atlantic is a Dem journal !
I have been posting a lot there, pushing back against the smears against palin. And now this stupid idea that McCain is going to drop Palin. And I have included in most posts some criticism of the clear bias in Justin Webb’s reporting. I don’t know if he reads it – but I like letting off steam a bit.
D-G
Yes, the Justin webb pice on the Today prog was disgraceful. Just following the Dem taking points. He is always a day late and a dollar short in his reporting. Lazy as well as biased.
Here’s the last stuff I posted over there :
“Justin Webb has been reporting a lot of gossip about Sarah Palin. Can anyone point out when he has reported in any depth on the airwaves on her poltical track record in Alaska ? Like focussing on the real issues ?
I don’t think Justin Webb’s Eagleton dog, borrowed from the Atlantic, media, will run
(Just like the Daily Kos / Atlantic smear on Palin)
To balance Justin Webb’s Dem talking points, how are the right seeing things ? Or even Dick Morris, a Dem with some balance ?
http://townhall.com/columnists/DickMorrisandEileenMcGann/2008/09/03/stick_with_sarah
There could well be a kickback against the smearing of Sarah Palin . Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned :
http://townhall.com/columnists/MichelleMalkin/2008/09/03/the_four_stages_of_conservative_female_abuse
http://townhall.com/columnists/MaggieGallagher/2008/09/03/sarah_palins_pioneering_streak
http://townhall.com/columnists/BenShapiro/2008/09/03/the_hypocritical,_woman-hating_left_targets_palin
http://townhall.com/columnists/BrentBozellIII/2008/09/03/savaging_sarah_palin
http://townhall.com/columnists/RichLowry/2008/09/02/hating_sarah
And the Repubs are now in fighting, winning mood :
http://townhall.com/columnists/JonahGoldberg/2008/09/03/the_new_life_of_the_grand_old_party
http://townhall.com/columnists/BillMurchison/2008/09/03/the_moose_is_loose
Finally – I suggest Justin Webb pays attention to the doyen of the US political press :
http://townhall.com/columnists/RobertDNovak/2008/09/03/mccain_comes_through
Martin the BBC went off Ireland when they adopted fre market policies in 1989 & started their 7% average growth rate. I know of 1 BBC programme which has dealt with what I consider should be the most important foreign example to us & that was on Radio Scotland & done only because I repeatedly emialed them to do it.
In all the broohaha about Palin’s daughter I note that neither the BBC nor the US media has even mentioned Biden’s extraordinary outburst “”all Serbs should be placed in Nazi-style concentration camps” in 1999. On that basis he compares unfavourably with Hitler & suggests that Obama himself has no objection whatsoever to the worst instances of racism as long as he isn’t the target.
Andy
I have checked the link you made – you tried to post on Webb’s blog nearly 12 hours ago and the moderators still haven’t let it through !!!
That is bloody disgraceful. Everything else seems to have been cleared. Right up to the final post at 9.32 this morning.
On the current Justin Webb blog (Eagleton) they have been clearing posts within a few minutes.
Yesterday I had one post blocked indefinitely, never cleared – my first post. And two posts cancelled – saying there was possible defamation.
I had merely said that Obama’s buddy William Ayers is an unrepentant terorist. That is how he is being described in lots of US media. And indeed how he describes himself.
But I have had a lot of posts published since then. There is a clique there, I think after just a day of looking, that are justin Webb groupies and some of them are still obsessing about the palin smear, that Trig Palin is not her baby. Filth. THAT is what should be struck out for defamation, especially after Kos removed all traces of the smear.
So I posted to suggest there had been lots of that defamation on the Webb blog, listing the specific instances. After I tried the compalints button on two particula posts – the complaints of defamation were rejected.
As a parent of girls and a grandparent of girls, I just feel so riled up about that smear – and about the way Justin Webb and the BBC ran with the pack of dogs.
Bias or what ?
Andy writes: “It seems quite excessively moderated in my opinion.”
The BBC’s boards aren’t moderated – they’re censored: as far as I can see, heavily in favour of Left liberal opinions.
JohnA
LOL I have a comment posted at last (no. 400) but it’s simply a polite prompt asking for my original comment (no. 371) to be shown…
I’ve sent another prompt, re-iterating the point that no. 371 contains no rants, foul language or personal attacks, so why censor it.
It seems the deeply insecure BBC excludes opinions it does not like. C’mon Justin be a man and show it.
JohnA
Like you I have daughters and basically expressed the same points in the blog as you made: that this was a deliberate BBC smear and that Kos retracted these cheap shots so why not the BBC.
There does seem to be a kind of wolf pack mentality at the BBC and on Webb’s blog in particular, opposing viewpoints deliberately excluded so as to make us look like minority whingers.
At least the BBC get to show the world their true colours.
Another rerason why the ‘greenies’ and many Beeboids will dislike Sarah Palin:
“It’s the Energy, Inuit!” (Melanie Phillips)
[Extract]:
“Investor’s Business Daily makes the point that McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his VP running-mate has an important strategic dimension, which is of course being missed in all the hysteria. Alaska, with its huge oil reserves, can help break the stranglehold of global petro-tyranny as demonstrated by Russia’s current behaviour. And no-one has done more to promote Alaskan energy reserves than Palin:
“‘Palin knows energy. She’s already figured out how to deliver energy to the U.S. without Congress — by championing state legislation to create a 1,712-mile natural gas pipeline across Canada to the U.S.'”
http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/2056866/its-the-energy-inuit.thtml
According to Sue Cameron in yesterday’s FT A passionate defence of America and the American way of life comes in a new book by Justin Webb, the BBC’s North America editor. The book, “Have a Nice Day”
Some mistake, surely, Sue? but she can be forgiven for elsewhere passing on this gem re Balls Ed?” said one sceptical Whitehall man. “Think Gordon Brown without the charm.”
The BBC should remove Justin Webb from his current position, as he is completely useless, and a waste of resources. If they can’t make him redundant (he is already), then they should just stick him in a late-night radio booth and have him read headlines from the next morning’s papers. At least he’ll be more current than the regurgitated propaganda he’s doing these days. Why pay for him to travel and waste all that TV air time?
I think it’s rather amusing that the BBC keep emphasising UNMARRIED when they talk about Sarah Palin’s daughter.
I wonder if anyone knows if any female beedoids are unmarried and have kids?
DavidP: Webb is an utter waste of space. He has no intention of covering the Republican conference.
Fox have had loads of guests on, Laura Bush, Sindy McCain, Guliani, Romney and so on.
How come all the BBC seem to be able to do is search out the one delegate with a silly hat?
Oh and why does the BBC ignore the fact that Sarah Palin has personal rating so high in Alaska that Gordon Brown would suck Darlings toes for anything half as good?
If the BBC has such high popularity ratings it would be demanding even more money.
BBC interviewing their favourite leftie wanker Stryker Maguire from Newsweek. The man is an arse.
He just said that McCain panicked because Osama was doing so well.
Hang on a minute Osama has been going backwards in the polls since he came back from Germany.
Oh and classic of all
John Sopel on News 24 just now had to appologise. He called John McCain john Major “by mistake”
“Whatever was I thinking” smirked the wanker.
I posted a link the other day to where Justin Webb was arguing that he is very sceptical of the Bush Administration in particular and that is his default positon. So basically he starts off biased and makes no apology for this.
So how come the BBC doesn’t start off sceptical of every claim from Nu Liebour? Instead they start off always with the positive spin.
Double standards.
I see that the charges against the BBC and Leftoid media about their hypocritical stance on teenage pregnancy when a Christian Republican is involved have struck a nerve, at least in one corner:
Why such a downer on teenage pregnancy?
Finlo Rohrer tries to defend against the comments that teenage pregnancy is just as bad in Vicky Pollardville as it is in the US:
A teenager expecting a baby is a bad thing. Or so you would believe if you ever read the news.
This let’s the reader know how to think for the rest of the article. Then we have:
The first curious thing about the issue of teenage pregnancy is that many people do not have a handle on the numbers.
Stats confusion
“People massively overestimate the numbers of people who get pregnant when they are very young. When people believe it is a bigger problem than it is then their response will be more polemical or however you want to describe it,” says Simon Blake, chief executive of Brook, a charity which offers young people sexual health advice.
Just like that, the BBC is justified in its criticisms of the US, because the reverse argument has been dismissed. Further, they mention that one of their sources – the one saying that the numbers are greatly exaggerated, and we only frown because the teens don’t get married (how silly of us!) – is a “pro-life pregnancy counsellor”, but no mention that Brook is a birth-control and abortion clinic. Instead the latter is just a “charity which offers young people sexual advice”. That’s on the border of gross misrepresentation and lying.
The rest of the article is a defense of teen pregnancy, full stop. It’s all down to perspective, you understand. Teenage mothers used to be the rule, but industrialization has changed that. We only frown now because they’re not married. “If you go to different parts of the country, you will see generations of teenage parenthood,” says the CEO of Brook. “Culturally it wouldn’t be considered a problem.’
No mention of whether any of this applies to the US, or the fact that Sarah Palin herself was a teenage mom, just like probably half the people in her state. It’s a cultural norm in many parts of the US as well (like my own neighborhood, for example), only Palin got married and stayed that way. Of course, that’s something too many Leftoids at the BBC are unwilling to admit, due to their own personal prejudices.
Oh, and because apparently society is unable to talk about teenagers having sex, so the poor pregnant teenagers unfairly bear the brunt of that angst:
And so pregnant teenagers receive negative reactions, says Jenny Billings, a “research fellow” at the University of Kent’s Centre for Health Services Studies.
“The initial response was one of horror and shame and it made the kids feel terrible. They meet prejudice on every single corner. Going down the road looking pregnant, people looking at them in a hateful way.
Is she kidding? In this century?
“They are seen as feckless and promiscuous when all it is is kids that are brought into the teenage world under-prepared and incredibly ignorant. We let them watch it on television but we don’t talk about it.”
It sounds more like she’s the one who gets her ideas from television. All that research, and they still don’t know that it’s people like them who cause society to abandon the concept of personal responsibility, and are largely responsible for creating the conditions which produce these ignorant and unprepared teens.
If all this isn’t bad enough, at one point Rohrer comes very close to actively encouraging younger mothers with this line:
For the first time, those over the age of 60 now outnumber under-18s. It’s yet to be seriously advocated that we should stop discouraging those who are 16 and older from having children, but it’s not beyond the realms of possibility.
Didn’t an editor look at this? That had better be a typo, otherwise Finlo is suggesting that only girls under the age of 16 should bear children to maintain the population.
Is everyone light-headed from fasting during Ramadan?