Monthly Archives: March 2009

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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A LEAVE OF ABSENCE.

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Well folks, even the most ardent blogger needs a little break and so I am off for a week to Cyprus for a week of gentle sunshine and relaxation. So, I won’t be around until the 9th April and will leave it to my colleagues here to keep you provided with thought-provoking material. I’ll see you again on the 9th or so – refreshed and ready to do battle. See you soon!

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APRIL FOOL A DAY EARLY.

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It’s my view that the BBC has wilfully chosen to present the news that Marks and Spencer’s sales have “only” fallen by 4% in the last trading quarter as a possible greeen shoot of recovery. This is sheer foolishness but I wonder of it helps Gordon as world figures arrive in the UK for the G20 summit to pretend that our “well-placed” economy is on the way up? Not waving, drowning.

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AN UNHOLY CHORUS

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What a sight to behold! Gordon Brown, flanked by fellow lefties Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd and the Bishop of London, Richard Chartres, lecturing bankers on the need to behave morally. Setting the scene, the BBC had Druid Williams on this morning offering a series of empty-headed homilies concerning our need “to discover something of what it is to be human” – ie socialist. The Archbishop gets such an easy ride from the BBC, as indeed does the arch hypocrite Brown. The BBC seems to have missed the supreme irony of Brown lecturing anyone on the need to distinguish between right and wrong as he heads up an administration which is a stranger to the truth, mired in deceit.

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REDUCE OR REMOVE?

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Did you catch this debate on Today this morning concerning whether the BBC’s remit should be reduced over time to include only those programmes and services which the market would not provide? Former Sky TV executive, Martin le Jeune and the BBC’s director of strategy, John Tate, discussed what the corporation should be producing. I think that it is a very curious idea that the BBC should exist to produce programmes that no one would pay for, don’t you? Surely the BBC should be encouraged to produce programmes and services that people want – and then see if they sell them to us. That, of course, means the ending of that…ahem…”unique” means of funding.

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ISRAEL DISPUTES GAZA DEATH RATES

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SCARY

 

Total dead: 1,166 (1,434)
Fighters: 710-870 (235)
Non-combatants: 295-460 (960)
Women: 49 (121)
Children under 16: 89 (288)

 

“SUE” COMPARES SCARE QUOTES “RATES”

I divided this “article” about discrepancies in “casualty” figures into two.

A = Putting Israel’s case.

B = Putting Palestinians’ case.

Although there were about 55 more words reporting Israel’s case, the article still seemed biased against it.
How, I thought, could this be? Having separated them, (by “scientifically scrupulous” method of scrutiny by “agenda-driven bigot” ) I noticed that A was sprinkled generously with scare quotes while B had only one set which related to directly reported speech.
I counted twelve sets of inverted commas altogether, a ratio of 11-1. 

My survey.
Total words in article 630Representing Isr (Pali) = 304(249)

 
Total sets quotation marks = 12

Isr /Pali quote marks = 11 (1)

 
Direct speech = 0 (1)

 
Reported / Indirect speech = 4 (0)*

Gratuitous scare quotes = 7 (0)**



*”It is generally considered incorrect to use quotation marks for paraphrased speech where they may give the impression that the paraphrasing represents the actual words used.”

**”to indicate or call attention to ironic or apologetic words.”

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General BBC-related comment thread.

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143 Comments

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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BBC ANTI-SEMITISM.

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I thought that an essay by Robert Solomon Wistrich writing at the Institite for Global Jewish Affairs has a very well expressed analysis of the vicious anti-Semitism that pervades much of BBC reporting…

“Since the Second Intifada, the BBC as well as some major British newspapers have reported daily on Israel in an often tendentious, biased, and one-sided fashion. Under no circumstances will the BBC refer to any act of Hamas or other Palestinian terrorist organizations as terrorism. These killers are always referred to as militants, which has trade-union connotations in Britain. It is the term used when, for instance, shop stewards advocate a factory strike. “Within the distorted BBC system, the reporting of Israeli civilian fatalities and Palestinian suicide attacks made them seem no more than minor pinpricks compared to the retaliations by Israel, the definitive rogue state.’ The BBC invariably disconnects jihadi terrorism from any notion that it is part of a hate culture and the result of ideological indoctrination. The explanation is that these murderous deeds are driven by the relentless, racist actions’ of the Israeli government. It is Palestinian misery and oppression that allegedly brings about suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks. I believe this is a false, simplistic, and one-sided account. Terrorism is mentioned without connection to an ideology and the issue of antisemitism in the Arab or Islamic world is virtually nonexistent.”

He has a point, doesn’t he?

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HOW GREEN IS THE BBC VALLEY?

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It’s going to be a loooong week from the looks of it as the BBC relentlessly propagandises on behalf of it’s pet projects ahead of the G20 meeting in London. Did anyone else catch Roger Harrabin’s “report” on the need for the G20 “stimulus” to focus on the global climate problem i.e. direct massive swathes of taxpayer monies into the hands of the ecowackos? Why does the BBC never allow an alternative voice to be heard on these kinds of reports – the sort of voice which challenges the bias that oozes from the Green movement. It’s a low carbon economy uber alles for Roger who also, amusingly, portrays UN lobbyists such as as being non-political. This daily drip drip drip of eco-propaganda is an outrage, aimed at  perverting UK public opinion. It’s  not a mission to inform, it’s a mission to mislead.

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