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This is a reply I received from the BBC after complaining how their news report misrepresented a strikers comments as part of a report on 2nd February’s BBC News at Ten, about the wild cat strikes centred on the Lindsey oil refinery in Lincolnshire, when the BBC spun the report to look like the strike was racially motivated and xenophobic.
Thank you for your e-mail. Please accept our apologies for the delay in replying. We know our correspondents appreciate a quick response and we are sorry you have had to wait on this occasion.
As part of a report on 02 February’s BBC News at Ten about the wild cat strikes centred on the Lindsey oil refinery in Lincolnshire, the BBC’s Political Editor Nick Robinson included a vox pop of one of the striking workers. It was used in the context of the Government’s expressed concern that xenophobia might be to blame for the action.
The worker was quoted in the report as saying: “These Portuguese and I-ties, we can’t work alongside of ’em.” Later on that evening, in the BBC’s Newsnight programme on BBC Two, the quote was run on a little longer to add the words: “They’re segregated. They’re coming in in full companies.”
We have received complaints that the shorter quote did not fairly reflect the worker’s views and was edited deliberately to give a different meaning to what he was saying.
While the striking worker described foreign workers in a way that some regard as offensive, the edit gave viewers the impression that he was not prepared to work alongside others from Italy and Portugal, when in fact his full quote said companies were responsible for segregating workers from different nationalities.
There was no intention to deliberately misrepresent his views, but we accept that the edit on the News at Ten gave the wrong impression, for which we are sorry.
Once again, thank you for taking the time to contact us.
Regards
BBC Complaints
____________________________
http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints
Dude 8:31
You were lucky to get a reply and so quickly and an apology from the BBC. One to frame and hang in the toilet !
I must admit, I was a little surprised with the apology.
On 06.02.09 I sent a complaint to the BBC about an interview of Sarah Montague and Mark Regev on BBC radio 4 on 06.02.09. What I find more alarming is Robert’s Wright (BBC complaints) response on 17.02.09 to my initial complaint, to which I responded again on 18.02.09. Here is all the correspondence. It is long but it is worth reading:
My initial complaint submitted to the BBC on 06.02.09:
I was listening to the morning news show on Friday, 06.02.09 on BBC radio 4 at about 8:40am. An interview was held with Mark Regev, the Israeli spokesman and Sarah Montague. As a listener I was horrified to hear the hate and the revolt in Sarah Montague’s voice toward Mark Regev. She blatantly rejected his claim that Hamas was responsible to the collapse of the ceasefire, by saying “this is simply not true” this is a blunt and unprofessional statement of a journalist who do not accept the turns of events in Israel and tries to vilify the Israelis for the their reaction to Hamas terror attacks. I do not recall any journalists interviewing Hamas terrorists on BBC rejecting any of Hamas claims whether they hateful or fabricated, however, Sarah Montague did not have a problem claiming that Mark Regev was simply lying. Furthermore, this journalist had a silence too long in a sentence when she was trying to find her words to describe Hamas militants, this was almost to imply that she was trying avoiding calling Hamas as freedom fighters. She had to think hard until she was able to pronounce “Hamas militants”. I have grave concern of this horrible journalistic misconduct to show a biased and a blatant hate toward an interviewee, and I call for her resignation. This is too serious for just an apology.
Robert Wright’s (BBC Complaints) response on 17.02.09:
Dear XXXX (Nature)
Thank you for your e-mail regarding Radio 4.
I was sorry to learn that you feel the BBC reports of the conflict in Gaza aren’t impartial.
The BBC is committed to due impartiality and across our programming we have tried to explain how the current situation in the Middle East started and has since developed. We have also given air-time to representatives from across the political spectrum and our correspondents are equally vigorous in their questioning of interviewees regardless of whether they are Israeli or Palestinian.
While the BBC agrees that political figures and others in positions of responsibility should be given the opportunity both to explain their thinking on matters of public concern and answer criticisms of it, the job of interviewers is to put the questions likely to be in the minds of listeners and to look for answers. Our interviewers’ intention is always to ensure that their contributions are kept as relevant and useful as possible. The interviewer’s job is to put the questions likely to be in the minds of viewers and to look for answers. Many interviewees and politicians in particular, are very adept at evading questions and following their own agenda when replying. It is part of a professional interviewer’s role to ensure that they are reminded, when appropriate, of the original question or pressed on points that are of particular public interest.
We have reported the casualty figures from both sides: the fact is, however, that there have been many more Palestinian deaths than Israeli. We have also explained clearly and frequently that Israel sees this conflict as a necessary defensive action because of the rocket attacks it has faced for many years. It is for the audience, not the BBC, to judge whether, in its view, the action is justified.
The aim of our news reports is to provide the information across our programming in order to enable viewers and listeners to make up their own minds; to show the reality of a situation and provide the forum for debate, giving full opportunity for all viewpoints to be heard. We are satisfied that this has been the case in respect of our reporting of the Middle East.
Nevertheless, I recognise you may continue to hold a different opinion about the BBC’s impartiality. Please be assured that all of your comments have been registered on our daily feedback log, this is a daily report of audience feedback that’s circulated to many BBC staff, including members of the BBC Executive Board, channel controllers and other senior managers.
Thank you for taking the time to contact the BBC.
Regards
Robert Wright
BBC Complaints
____________________________
http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints
My new response to Robert Wright (BBC Complaints) on 18.02.09:
Dear Robert Wright
Thank you for taking the time to response to my initial complaint about the integrity of the interview Sarah Montague conducted with Mark Regev on 06.02.09, which was only partially answered. Your response did not explain however why as an “impartial” interviewer Sarah Montague had a clear revolt and anger in her voice toward Mark Regev. This incident was not only picked by myself but was largely discussed on the Biased BBC website, as well.
I however would like to point out to a much more disturbing claim presented in your reply. You write: “We have reported the casualty figures from both sides: the fact is, however, that there have been many more Palestinian deaths than Israeli”. I find this statement to be particularly disturbing as it implies that the BBC disputes the classification of Hamas as terror organisation (by the EU, Israel and the USA). As it now has come to light, one third of deaths were of Hamas terrorists, one third were of Arab Palestinians affiliated with Hamas terrorists, and unfortunately one third were indeed Arab Palestinian civilians who paid the price of being used as human shield by Hamas. By writing “there have been many more Palestinian deaths than Israeli” you do not distinguish between the two thirds of the deaths to be attributed to terrorists who are in fact a legitimate target. The journalistic coverage of the death of Hamas terrorists should be equalled to the coverage on BBC of Al Qaeda terrorists deaths when is then considered to be a success and a positive progress. However, when you write “Palestinian deaths” without the specification of who actually were the dead it signifies the fact that the BBC defies the classification of Hamas as terror organisation- it actually implies that the BBC is masking Hamas terrorist deaths as Arab Palestinian civilian deaths. This clearly demonstrates that the BBC has its own political agenda, in breach of partiality, which is most alarming.
I will finish with another quote from your response “The aim of our news reports is to provide the information across our programming in order to enable viewers and listeners to make up their own minds” if this was the case, why is then the BBC paid £200,000 from the tax payer money in 2007 to suppress the release of Balen report damming the BBC coverage of the Israeli – Arab Palestinian conflict as a constitutionally biased against Israel?
“There was no intention to deliberately misrepresent his views, but we accept that the edit on the News at Ten gave the wrong impression, for which we are sorry.”
Right…
“There was no intention to deliberately misrepresent his views, but we accept that the edit on the News at Ten gave the wrong impression, for which we are sorry.”
“Yes,we are sorry we ran over your cat”.
The fact that the edit gave weight to the government’s allegations of xenophobia is of little consequence.The cat is dead.
Dude: Nice one. But lets be honest the BBC did deliberately misrepresent his views and it won’t stop the BBC from doing the same in the future
You guys have missed the day’s main news story…Jade Goody has cancer and the PM expressed his sympathy. It’s all over Sky.
I can’t go on if Jade Goody’s not there…
Keep ’em on the back foot. They are accountable, they have nowhere else to go – they take your money. Well done all. Get them to justify or apologise for the propaganda they recycle.
The problem is their sources – AP and Reuters – have been infiltrated and compromised by stringers and – the Pally “medics say” attribute = Dr Mads Gilbert, Norwegian nutter Maoist.
Your State broadcaster is paid to do one thing, meanwhile it parties. 300 BBC employees needed to go to Glastonbury? Imagine handing over your own tax paid income intended for your family but instead on their expense claims….
Martin: You’re right but the BBC must to learn that they can’t always spin the Labour Governments line with impunity
Here we go again. The Law Lords, wonder of wonders, rule that a vicious Moslem rabble-rouser can be deported to Jordan. So what do the BBC do? They spend ages interviewing someone form that pro-terrorist so-called charity, Amnesty International, who opposes this man being sent to a country who wants to try him for terrorism. Who at the BBC decides to waste time interviewing these extremists from pressure groups. Is therre a list of which groups they will allow on air? As a matter of interest what percentage of the public want to keep this thug in the country on benefits?
“If I don’t have the BBC, I won’t know what’s going on in the world” – Is what some people say. Well, if you had the BBC as your sole source of news, you certainly wouldn’t know about this story:
Foreign worker imbalance revealed
Britain has taken in around four times as many workers from Europe as there are Britons working in the EU, a report has revealed.
Analysis of official figures by the Migrationwatch think tank found there were 1,172,000 people born in Europe working in the UK in the last three months of last year. At the same time around 286,000 British-born workers had left the UK to take jobs on the continent.
http://www.google.co.uk/news?hl=en&ned=uk&ie=UTF-8&ncl=1305324026
The BBC: Ignoring the news that doesn’t fit into our agenda. It’s what we do.
Nice one Dude – but I suspect that no matter how many letters of complaint the BBC get it will make no difference.
John Pinhead just reminding us of Tory sleaze in 1997. Thanks John that was very important, but I think we’re most interested in 5 bellies fiddling her expenses thanks.
I loved the way Pinhead stated that she’s OK as the BBC had someone who backed up her story.
Hmm. Single source? I didn’t think the BBC went on a single source?
Nice to see the BBC give 5 bellies a royal pardon though. I don’t remember Caroline Spelman getting the same innocent till proven guilty treatment?
martin | 18.02.09 – 10:21 pm |
Peter Allen was on her case this afternoon on Radio 5 live – he was even attacking a Lib Dem spokesman who dared to hint at something fishy. And then he said ” I don’t want to defend the Home Secretary but…” I couldn’t believe it (well, yes I could).
How revealing is this:
“It was used in the context of the Government’s expressed concern that xenophobia might be to blame for the action.”
Ha ha. The BBC can’t help betraying its agenda, even when it doesn’t mean to.
What a bunch of charlatans they are.
Why doesn’t the BBC point out that 5 bellies could live free of charge in a house provided for her by the state?
Isn’t that better than shacking up in her sisters loft?
and we have to pay for the extra Policing because of it.
The BBC are just going through the bowel motions on this story. Unless a Tory is up to no good the BBC are not really interested.
Front page of the BBC site:
“Home Secretary Jacqui Smith is asked by Parliament’s sleaze watchdog to explain her £116,000 second home expenses.”
Sleaze and a Labour minister in the same sentence, on the front page – it seems it not just Tories who get called out on their sleaze then
Just now on Newsnight, Wark’s last question to Dominique Strauss-Kahn ( MD of the IMF ), asked with a big smile on her face :
” Is Gordon Brown the man to succeed you ? ”
Unbelievable !
Nature 8:40
Great letters ! I mean yours, not Wright’s pathetic reply. Please keep us in touch.
The most chilling bit of his reply is that interviewers should ask questions which are “likely to be in the viewers’ minds”.
Happy coincidence that the same questions are what is in the interviewers’ minds.
James writes: “Sleaze and a Labour minister in the same sentence, on the front page – it seems it not just Tories who get called out on their sleaze then”
Now perhaps you would like to contrast and compare the time and attention the BBC has given this story with the Herculean effort it expended on trying to defenestrate Caroline Spelman?
You might also care to comment on the slimy way the BBC treated the Jowell/Wright corruption story – in particular, completely avoiding mentioning her name in yesterday’s headline.
Or maybe that’s too much to ask of a BBC shill?
james: Sorry you just don’t get it do you? This is an OLD story and the BBC ignored it for ages.
The BBC have reproted on it mostly to spin it for 5 bellies.
On Newnight some old duffer claimed she’d done nothing wrong yet it seems to me she has broken the rules.
A Tory MP was found guilty to have done the very same thing some time back.
5 bellies will get away with it and the BBC will quickly move on.
The BBC tried to move this story on a few days ago with the “nothing going on here, move along” like the normally do.
Again I like to remind you of the trashing Caroline Spelman got day after day by the BBC yet the amounts of money involved were tiny and she wasn’t the third most important minister in the Government unlike 4 eyes 5 bellies spliff.
G Cooper
11pm Radio 4 news relegates the story to 5th item – when to any view it is a very big story, putting the Home Sec’s job in jeopardy.
……
Meanwhile – here is some good cultural diversity, for a change :
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/4687433/Buddhist-temple-built-out-of-one-million-beer-bottles.html
the BBC are reporting Labour misdoings with all the enthusiasm of leftie 6th formers finding out that Chairman Mao wasn’t the quiet humanitarian he was cracked up to be.
They really aren’t enjoying their precious masters going into the political abyss!!
John A
top story –enthused by this story I have decided to build an extension in the near future.
Another matter about 5 bellies and her rented box room is what does she do with confidential material?
I notice she carries papers with her, does she leave them on her sisters dining table for all her family to look through?
I’m also not that sure that the Home Secretary should be shacked up in a box room.
Hardly good security is it?
JohnA | 18.02.09 – 11:12 pm |
I wonder why Buddhists don’t get much attention from the BBC?
http://www.asianews.it/index.php?art=2139&l=en
The true “religion of peace”
Jon: Spot on. Unlike Islam that continually has to ‘remind’ the world it is the religion of peace, usually after they’ve tied explosives to an 8 year old child or used disabled people as suicide bombers.
Oh and what other religion has as their main man someone who shagged an 8 year old girl?
Martin you racist…
She was nine!
I thought this country was going the same way – but
“13-year-old father Alfie the victim of cash scam, girlfirend’s family friend says”
http://www.smh.com.au/world/13yearold-father-alfie-the-victim-of-cash-scam-girlfirends-family-friend-says-20090219-8bq0.html
“Sleaze and a Labour minister in the same sentence, on the front page – it seems it not just Tories who get called out on their sleaze then”.
The entire Labour cabinet is looting the treasury prior to finding other jobs.Even Brown mooted for some crucial world financial agency,wasn’t above blagging light bulbs.Probably the same eurobulbs we are forced to buy at extortionate prices.
Martin 11:20
I think if she was locked in to the box room it would be good security. Good for those of us on the outside, that is.
Whoops – she picked the wrong subject – I couldn’t see Magnus Magnussen behaving like this.
Grimer: Almost an adult then?
Martin, you’re being racist again!
The Koran is the word of God. It clearly states that:
“Muhammad is the most “beautiful pattern of conduct” and “example” for mankind to follow! (Qur’an Sura 33:21)”
Ergo, if Mohammed considered her capable of sexual relations, then she must have been ‘ready’. Anyway, it isn’t like he jumped straight in. He married her at six and waited until she was nine. Three whole years he waited. Does that sound like the actions of a pervert?
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Sky-News-Archive/Article/20080641314210
I can only hope that if I am blessed with a daughter, a man such as Mohammed will have sexual relations with her, before she is ten.
Anyway Martin, who are you to question The Prophet?
For readers in England
Press release below:
Modern Movement has organised a demonstration in favour of more flights for all:
Support Airport Expansion: Thursday 19 February, 17.30 -19.30 on Parliament Square, East Footway, London. For more details, see: Modern Movement
“The extension of flying to millions of people has been a liberation. Most of us can now afford to go on holiday and welcome the cheapening of air travel allowing us to fly abroad. The development of aviation infrastructure is crucial to allow ever more people to fly.”
Join us in front of Parliament to argue for guilt-free travel, for ever-cheaper flights and for freedom of movement. Facebook event page: here
Come along and feel free to forward this information to colleagues/members and friends.
http://antigreen.blogspot.com/
Dude | 18.02.09 – 8:31 pm |
The complaint you got echoes the official BBC apology for the bigotry of Nick Robinson and his editor, which DB and jp noticed in the Guardian and Telegraph:
http://www.haloscan.com/comments/patrickcrozier/6770155074414414760/#447965
I still say it happened not because Robinson and his editor were deliberately attempting to portray the miner as racist who wouldn’t want to work with foreigners, but because they actually believed it themselves, and simply did the edit to reflect what they honestly thought was the story.
I thought I had found a really good website until I read Martin’s comments. I believed the website was about objectivity and accuracy. Being obsessional and insulting shows neither of those qualities and making things up in the way he has suggests he has a future in journalism – uless that is what he does already.
We try to stop insulting name calling from primary age onwards.
Colin: we often get people claiming they “used to think this was a really good website until etc etc” (although it’s strange we never heard them before). So you “thought you’d found a really good web site”? Until the 5th comment down? Do you usually form opinions so quickly?
We try to stop insulting name calling from primary age onwards.
Colin | 19.02.09 – 6:32 am | #
I love it when people suddenly decide that throwing around a few good-old insults is “childish” when it suits them, when we all know they do the same thing in their everyday lives. Where’s the harm in a bit of good-natured ribbing? It’s all part of the British humor. This faux-indignation makes me vomit to be honest. I mean what’s wrong with throwing a few insults at the fat Scotch window-licker every now and again?
Colin 6:32
Like all websites it has good and bad aspects, intelligent and stupid posts, long ramblers and short and to the point posters, po-faced bores and witty one-liners, trolls and anti-trolls.
Why not give it a try before you make your mind up ?
I have learned more from this website than I learn from the BBC !
Colin: Are you Colin Chase, Hillhunt or some other lefty loser?
You must be running out of names by now.
If you want to be treated seriously, try making serious comments and not spouting Labour/BBC propaganda.
Grimer: I stand corrected 🙂
On the BBC news website today:
‘Desmond Tutu: Can Obama rebuild an upright US?’
Well, old Toots should know – him and his mates have done a grand job in South Africa.
martin | 18.02.09 – 11:27 pm
Have you read the old testament? A far more unsettling collection of fairy stories than the Koran.
MWL 8:42
So howcome some christians don’t use the Bible as a basis for committing Genocide and terrorism ?
However, I suspect we may be going round in circles on this one !
MWL: Point out the Christian fundamentalist terrorists stoning people to death and calling for the death of all the members of another religion and launching rockets against practitioners of such a religion; then we can compare.
I wonder why B-BBC haven’t commented on the photograph at the top of this article (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7898448.stm). To paraphrase so many people here, I just know if it wasn’t about Gordon Brown then they’d have used a ‘nice’ image instead of one where he appears to be nazi saluting..
“So howcome some christians don’t use the Bible as a basis for committing Genocide and terrorism”
Lord’s Resistance Army?
watch out watch out theres a beeboid scumbag about