Monthly Archives: September 2010

Introducing Generic BBC America Correspondent…

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(This one is work safe)

Talking of which, here are the opening and closing words to James Naughtie’s report for the Today programme on Tuesday:

Naughtie: New York, Ground Zero around the corner. I’m standing on the site of a planned Islamic centre with a mosque, a proposal that’s turned into an angry national debate here and acted as a proxy for the wider culture war between President Obama and liberal opinion on the one hand, arguing that America stands for religious freedom, and the conservative Right on the other, saying that a mosque would be provocative, offensive and wrong.

[…]

Naughtie: Which leaves the writer Sam Lipsyte looking out to America from New York, wondering what on earth he can do, and dreaming.

Lipsyte: Sure, is there [sic] a lot of tittering and grousing and sort of blanket dismissal that there could be anything but hate in the Tea Party, and I gotta say that what, y’know, their presentation lends itself to that conclusion. And at my most despairing moments I too have that sense of why can’t New York just be its own country.

Judging by the latest poll for the New York Times, Lipsyte’s dream utopia could only be realised if they deported more than half the people (via Newsbusters):

Two-thirds of New York City residents want a planned Muslim community center and mosque to be relocated to a less controversial site farther away from ground zero in Lower Manhattan, including many who describe themselves as supporters of the project, according to a New York Times poll…

Over all, 50 percent of those surveyed oppose building the project two blocks north of the World Trade Center site, even though a majority believe that the developers have the right to do so. Thirty-five percent favor it.

Opposition is more intense in the boroughs outside Manhattan — for example, 54 percent in the Bronx — but it is even strong in Manhattan, considered a bastion of religious tolerance, where 41 percent are against it.

And yet BBC correspondents such as Naughtie, and Hilary Andersson, prefer to give the impression that such opposition is the sole preserve of a scary, reactionary right-wing Tea Party movement.

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MELTING DOUBTS…

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I have not often written about narwhals, but the BBC’s continuing green obsession and failure to observe journalistic fundamentals takes me there today. Here, BBC eco-campaigner Matt Walker (formerly a writer for the warmist publication New Scientist) reports with bated breath so-called research from some of his fellow obsessives from California which claims that the said narwhals are under threat from climate change because they swim slowly and will not be able to breathe properly when they are surrounded by breaking, melting ice floes.

Now, I am not a scientist, but something that my junior school teacher called common sense nevertheless tells me that narwhals have been around for rather a long time, and that the amount of ice around in the arctic has fluctuated considerably over the millenia (glaciation and all that), so our marine friends must have learned to adapt. But don’t just take my undeducated word for it. Here, and here, a Portuguese blogger called Ecotretas, who clearly has studied deeply the ebb and flow of the Arctic, points out that there was more open sea seven thousand years ago and narwhals managed to survive.

In other words, the California story is alarmist tosh. Mr Walker, had he done even a smidgeon of good old-fashioned journalistic digging, could have found the papers that Ecotretas refers to. But balanced journalism is not on his agenda. Never let the facts get in the way of a good BBC eco-scare.

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NICK ROBINSON ON TOUR…

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I see that Robbo has been in Grantham today asking the question “Do you trust the Coalition to cut the right thing” Wish he had asked me. The correct answer is “They should cut the parasistic BBC free from our cash by abolishing the License Tax”

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SPANISH EYES….

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The BBC is the terrorist’s best friend, a willing ally in their propaganda war to convince us that these killers are at worst, simply misunderstood. Why, maybe we are even to blame for their barbarity? EVEN that rag The Guardian prints an article from someone who sees the menace of the BBC. ETA can count on the BBC do do them good..

“It’s noteworthy that the BBC refuses to use the term “terrorist” when reporting on Eta. Such an approach is unacceptable, since it results in a distortion of reality and misinforms the public. On this it may be useful to quote Hannah Arendt, who argued that “to describe the concentration camps sine ira is not to be objective, but to absolve those responsible for them”. In other words, to avoid referring to Eta as a terrorist group whose mere existence constitutes a threat to citizens – after having murdered hundreds of them – and which still poses a threat to a democratic society like Spain, is not rigorous journalism but a demonstration of the fact that sometimes terrorist propaganda can be successful.”

The BBC have made such obfuscation into an art form. They will not call terrorists for what they are and in doing so they do the work of the terrorist. The BBC = even further left than The Guardian! 

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NOOSE TIGHTENING AROUND COULSON?

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Well, the BBC’s jihad against Andy Coulson continues here. They scent damage to Cameron and seem absolutely determined to get Coulson’s scalp. The enthusiasm of the BBC to do Labour’s bidding here is quite staggering. I heard the oleaginous Keith Vaz being given a free swing on a news report, even as he declared that he was not playing Party politics.

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A DIAMOND GEEZER

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BBC is not happy with the news that Barclay’s have made the decision to appoint Bob Diamond as Chief Executive. I caught the 6pm news on Radio 4 and the boot was being firmly put in, with an anonymous”senior Coalition” source leading the critique. All the usual “casino banking” and “bonus culture” tropes were thrown in. How very DARE Barclays appoint someone with a track record of making money as the CEO? Pesto is leading the charge.

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THE DIVERSITY OF BIAS

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Here are two nice examples of how the BBC does subtle bias provided by a thoughtful B-BBC reader!

A couple of curious examples of potential bias on the BBC. Not of the direct kind, but one of apologist and one of omission kind.

Firstly, a news report on a pipe bomb found on school grounds in Northern Ireland. Nothing biased about that of course, but a line from the reporter gives away an opinion: “a small breakaway loyalist group has claimed responsibility for the bomb, however it was NOT left by any mainstream loyalist group” (their emphasis). It appears terrorism can now be ranked in terms of acceptability. As in, “its OK folks.. it was some wannabes that left it. It wasn’t the real terrorists…”

The second one comes to us courtesy of Midlands Today. Apparently, schools in the Midlands will haven to take on moren four year olds due to “a surge in child birth”. No mention of course that the most likely cause of a child birth surge is a surge in immigration. Immigration bad for something? Can’t have the BBC reporting that.

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HARRABIN: I AM GUILTY

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I’ve listened to Roger Harrabin’s second and final programme about climate change available here (due to be broadcast on R4 tonight). Obviously B-BBC readers will make up their own minds whether the programme could be regarded as balanced, but I have deliberately chosen this out-of-context phrase from Mr Harrabin because in my view his whole construct was deeply flawed. Yes he interviewed so-called sceptics, and yes, he conveyed elements of their perspective. But this was only a classic BBC lip-service ploy to convey fairness. The reality was that, on balance, he was snidely scathing about all those who disbelieve in the warmist fantasies, and at the same time, went out of his way to build credence for alarmists, both by allocating them more space and by talking of them reverentially as “mainstream” and “establishment” scientists. He gave his carefully chosen “sceptics” some space, but knocked them down by a combination of snide innuendo, highly selective editing, and by failing to put across their ideas in a way that showed them respect. The whole exercise reminded me of a Mafia chief saying he must be right because most those in his orbit agreed with him. All very unsurprising – it’s what Mr Harrabin does, after all – but people I know were asking me at the weekend if these two programmes showed he might be having second thoughts about his warmist zeal. The answer is clearly a resounding ‘no’. And he and the BBC are as committed to their green religion as they always have been. In future months the corporation will wheel Uncertain Climate out as an example of them giving “sceptics” airtime. But it was a charade.

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