Monthly Archives: February 2010

MANDELA WORSHIP…

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I am sure you will have encountered the Mandela worship on the BBC today. It is 20 years since Nelson Mandela was released from captivity and the excitement at the BBC has been palpable. However I believe the coverage has been very one dimensional and has stayed away from asking any of the tough questions lest the halo around Saint Nelson be dented. 20 years on, we have the corrupt ANC regime rather than the corrupt Apartheid regime. Yes, some of Mandela’s cronies have grown rich during this period but for the majority of South African people, there is still unrelenting poverty, widespread crime and rampant disease. How is this an improvement? Furthermore, I see the football loving Winnie Mandela is now fully rehabilitated and the BBC is again portraying this wicked woman in the “mother of the nation” mode it initially used before the unfortunate Stompie Seipei incident made that impossible. Can you imagine what the coverage of his death will be like? We’re all ANC now. (And to hell with the victims of their terrorism)

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COMPARE AND CONTRAST…

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I have covered this on A Tangled Web but wanted to post it here as well.


It’s a sad story.

British fashion designer Alexander McQueen has been found dead at his home. The poor chap, a doyen in the fashion world, was only 40 years old. His mother died last week.
Here’s the issue.
The BBC report on it here. He died. Just like that, seemingly.
However, as is reported elsewhere, he committed suicide. He hanged himself.
A terrible waste of his life but I wonder WHY the BBC seemed determined to avoid this simple detail? Were they trying to spare the feelings of the family? If so, why is such censorship not afforded to others in such circumstances? Might his gay background be in any way linked to this sudden BBC reluctance to report the facts? I don’t see the issue for the BBC withholding the reason for his death, can you? 

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INDEPENDENT INQUIRY, SAYS BBC!!!

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Mark Kinver, one of the BBC’s most prolific global warming alarmists,was quick off the mark today to say that an “independent panel” is going to review the leaking of the Climategate file from UEA, and also whether climate research has been accurately conducted there. Mr Kinver is telling monstrous economies-with-the-truth and he knows it. The panel is anything but independent; as Bishop Hill points out with his usual eloquence, most of them are solidly wedded to to climate change in the same way that quacks are to snake oil. Not only that, the Royal Society are involved, whose website already proclaims that the world is coming to an end – based on material almost exclusively provided by the UEA climate change mob. Oh,and last but not least, the head of the inquiry has announced he’s investigating a hack, not a leak – thereby showing his true colours from the outset. Mr Kinver was no doubt fed news of the inquiry because of services by him and his employers to the cult of climate alarmism; they knew he would loyally trumpet their “independence”.

Update: No sign yet on the BBC website that Phil Campbell, editor-in-chief of Nature, has already resigned from the panel because he patently and blatantly was not ‘indepedent’. I wonder why?

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Dynamite! BBC fails to Notice. Again.

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Last October I blogged about the BBC’s silence over Andrew Neather’s revelations about the government’s open door policy on immigration, allegedly to fill gaps in the labour market. But the government’s deliberate policy of manipulating the demographics in the UK was to fill gaps in the Labour-voting market, not the job vacancy one.

Before backtracking and claiming his words had been twisted and misrepresented, Andrew Neather mentioned that the government was paranoid about the media getting hold of this information.

Now that formerly concealed parts of this document have been revealed, the BBC is still strangely silent about this, and to what Sir Andrew Green of MigrationWatch UK has written. Other news organs still think it is a bit of a bombshell.

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Question Time 11th February

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Question Time tomorrow night is a Northern Ireland special. On the panel will be leader of Traditional Unionist Voice Jim Allister QC, Old Bailey bomber and IRA terrorist Gerry Kelly, Conservative Lord Trimble, Sammy Wilson of the DUP and Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Shaun “Where’s my Butler” Woodward.

Coming at an important stage of  political changes in Northern Ireland, it will be fascinating to see how the BBC attempt to shape the news agenda with their choice of panel, audience and questions.

For those who wish to take part in the B-BBC Buzzword Bingo, we will be playing by the “Stormont Rules” meaning that “Iris Robinson” is on every card, and getting “Blair“, “Mowlam” and “Hand of History” on a diagonal line is an instant win. The prize this week is a shared Nobel Peace Prize (slightly scratched).

As usual, the live chat will begin here at 22:35 UK time and, as the All Seeing Eye is back, we’ll be carrying on through ‘This Week’ afterwards too. Please come and join us!

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That BBC/Guardian thing again

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Earlier this year we learned that the BBC was helping the Guardian produce its front-page scoops. An interesting series of tweets from yesterday shows that the licence payer is also subsidising technological advice to our national broadcaster’s favourite newspaper.

Here’s the head of all things digital and interactive at BBC Radio 5 Live, Brett Spencer:

A good morning spent hammering out our big interactive general election offering. Off now to do a bit of show and tell at the Guardian

The natural first port of call following a morning’s discussion of election coverage.

The Guardian’s Matt Hall was grateful for the BBC employee’s time:

Great presentation from @brettsr on #fivelive visualisation . He even came over to Guardian Towers to do it!

The editor of the Radio 4 blog Steve Bowbrick was there too:

Just grabbed a coffee with @bowbrick in the Guardian canteen. Talking blogs, governors, twitter & the like.

The Guardian’s head of audio Matthew Wells:

Great presentation about BBC 5 Live interactivity from @brettsr – Gdn can only afford a fraction of what they do, but will take inspiration.

A question from “medluv“:

@MatthewWells Did Guardian pay BBC industry rates for R5L presentation today?

The reply from Wells:

@medluv @brettsr no we didn’t pay. Equally my colleagues and I do similar talks at other organisations. It’s called collaboration

Are these licence fee funded presentations available to all newspapers, or just the BBC’s ideological soul mates?

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Justice From Justin

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I know this isn’t saying much, but Justin Webb on Today is a great improvement on Ed Stourton whom he replaced much to some people’s dismay. I thought he gave Gita Sahgal a fair hearing this morning, and it’s certainly encouraging that for once the BBC allowed someone to dislodge the halo surrounding Amnesty International.

If you haven’t been following the story, Ms Sahgal, a senior official at AI, became uneasy about Amnesty’s association with Moazzam Begg who heads the organization Cageprisoners that “ actively promotes Islamic Right ideas and individuals.”
So she wrote about her concerns to the Times.
“Within a few hours of the article being published Amnesty had suspended me from my job.”
The Today interview gave her the opportunity to express her point without the usual innuendos and interruptions. In My Humble Opinion. *And not a word from Widney Brown.
* H/T Hippiepooter
Update.
As you were!
I may have to take it all back.
Who had an exclusive platform for her rebuttal today? Why, Widney Brown.
But then… but then… did I detect a whiff of hostility in Justin’s tone?

Today R4. 8:46. (Link not up yet.)

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More Palin Bashing

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When Barack Obama was mocked recently for addressing a sixth grade class, and later a committee meeting, with teleprompters present, did the BBC report it? No.
When he was mocked recently for repeatedly mispronouncing “Navy corpsman” as “Navy corpse-man” at the National Prayer Breakfast, did the BBC report it? No.
When he was mocked recently for saying, “The Middle East is a problem that has plagued the region for centuries”, a line right up there with any Bushism, did the BBC report it? No.

But Sarah Palin jots a few words on her hand and already the BBC has responded with two news articles (neither of which finds space to mention Palin’s amusing “Hi Mom” response to the media frenzy). No doubt broadcast versions of BBC news have also covered the story with equal glee.

Unfortunately for all the rabid Palin-haters at the BBC and elsewhere, the repeated attacks on her don’t appear to be doing her any harm within the increasingly influential Tea Party movement. I like the House of Dumb description of Palin as Roadrunner and her detractors as Wile E Coyote:

Every single time they think they’ve totally nailed her, they somehow end up under the boulder while Sarah disappears in the distance.

Update 7pm. Some neat reactions from Monica Crowley and Sean Hannity and guests (hat tips Jack and John in the comments). And here’s an earlier Hannity on Gibbs.

And in related news, here’s Vagina Monologues author Eve Ensler on the Jo Behar Show on Monday, showing us all just how much more intelligent she is than Sarah Palin:

ENSLER: Well, I just think the idea that she doesn’t believe in global warming is bizarre.
BEHAR: Every scientist at every note believes in it but Sarah Palin doesn’t believe in it.
ENSLER: And I think we just kind of have to walk around the world at this point and look at what is happening to nature and earthquakes and tsunamis.

Global warming = earthquakes and tsunamis. I wonder how many luvvie actresses who have appeared in Ensler’s play over the years have slagged off Palin for being stupid.

[I’m sure our old friend Scott will be keen to report this story in The Stage. Suggestions welcome for the headline. I’ll set things rolling with “The Vagina Dumbalogues” and “All About Eve (Stupid Bitch)”]

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IT STINKS…

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The latest climate scare story from the BBC is this gem. Plants are going to be on permanent high alert and a lot smellier. Why this is a problem is not quite clear, but hey, this is climate change work, there’s lots of money in pursuing this line of research, so the authors clearly believe it’s something we should worry about – and the BBC think its worth covering. Who’s the reporter? Matt Walker, who is also editor of BBC Earth News, based at the Natural History Unit in Bristol, increasingly a source of climate alarmism. Oh, and Matt is also a former reporter for New Scientist, and still a contributor. He was writing scare stories like this, even before the BBC caught climate fanaticism. And that will be the New Scientist that is so fervently pro-warmist that it publishes stories with titles such as “50 Reasons Why Warming isn’t Natural”.

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