Monthly Archives: October 2010

FISHY BUSINESS

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Anyone catch the easy ride afforded to Nicola Sturgeon during this interview on the BBC? Note how Evan Davies gets lippy to start with, is given a verbal slap by the not so lovely Nicola, and then allows her to trot out one economic inanity after another without serious challenge. SNP delusionalism is given free vent without so much as a demur murmur.

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MINING THE BIAS….

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I’ve had several emails on the subject of BBC bias by omission concerning their coverage of the Chilean miners reascue. In essence, it comes down to one thing – a visceral BBC loathing of admitting the formidable contribution the US has made in bringing the trapped men out. Biased BBC contributor Jon Hunt spells it out in clear terms…

“Thereal heroes are American, not that you would know that fromany British news organisation (and we’re supposed to be America’s greatestally).  For example, the company whom the Chilean government contactedto rescue the miners is a certain Chilean-U.S. outfit called Geotec Boyles Bros. SA .  Theyimmediately contacted associate company LayneChristensen of Pennsylvania.

Itwas Layne Christensen who provided:

a)the mobile drilling rig built by a fellow Pennsylvanian company by the name of Schramm Inc. 

b) thespecial drill bits, manufactured by fellow Pennsylvanian company CenterRock

c) the drillersJeffHart and Matt Staffel – the real heroes of the operation, whom they flew infrom Afghanistan

Withoutthese guys and their specialist equipment the miners would still be down theretoday.

 So,how did the UK media cover this amazing side of the story – how the rescuedepended almost entirely on American equipment and personnel?

 AGoogle news search shows that JeffHart & Matt Staffel’s joint roles are widely reported throughout theU.S., South America, Germany, and Spain – but not by any UKnews organisation. 

 Overthe last month alone the BBC has produced ajaw-dropping 130,000 web pages reporting the Chilean mine rescue.  Andyet, theonly one that reports Jeff Hart’s pivotal role appears in theCorporation’s Spanish-language site – suggesting that the BBC’sSpanish staff are not as imbued with the same anti-Americanism as itsGuardianista UK staff – while there is no mention anywhere of Jeff Hart’scolleague Matt Staffel. 

Norhas the BBC reported the role of the U.S. companies involved:  Searchesfor LayneChristensen and CenterRock turn up zilch. 

Asearch for Schrammthrows up several reports which name it as the manufacturer of thedrilling rig, but only one mentions that it is a U.S. company. Meanwhile, a search for GeotecBoyles, to whom Layne Christensen reported, also produces nothing, but asearch for Geotec producesa BBC bulletin describing the company as “Chilean” andimplying accordingly that it was Chileans who were the key personnelinvolved in the rescue.  The BBC reports:

MrButtazzoni, the head of the Chilean mining company Geotec, said his drill hadalready cut through 464m (1,500ft) of rock. He said his team expected to breakthrough to the area where the miners are sheltering in 3-4 days.

– acomplete and utter mis-portrayal through omission.”

In the BBC world-view, American corporations are always evil so best ensure they get NO credit even when they help save lives.

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HEAP OF S**T…

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The Guardian has been speculating whether the BBC’s committment to reporting climate change is lessening. And earlier in the week, as I noted here, the Daily Telegraph suggested that new BBC editorial guidelines would force more balanced coverage of the topic. I have news for them both. Nothing has changed, and if anything the climate alarmist fervour is getting worse. The evidence? Yesterday, a reporter called Tom Heap presented a programme on Radio 4 in the Costing the Earth greenie strand called “Can Lawyers Save the World?”. It is the most outstanding piece of partisan propaganda I have heard in 11 years of monitoring BBC output for a living. I urge you to listen to it, if you have the stomach to do so.

It was so astonishingly one-sided that it’s difficult to know where to begin. But the theme was that governments are not doing enough to save us from being poisoned by carbon, or from flooding, or from heat, so the fate of the world is now in the hands of wonderful environmental lawyers who are battling heroically to save us all. Seriously, folks.

Mr Heap treated all these greeedy, chancer nutcases with breathless reverence as one by one, they spelled out their strategy. His profiles included a legal warrior in New Orleans who wants money for his house that he claims was destroyed by hurricane Katrina, because that was unquestionably caused by climate change. This was followed by an outraged Inuit who wanted millions because the Alaskan coastline is being inundated by unquestionably rising sea levels (not “seal” levels, as I previously had!: h/t Roland Deschain). Next stop was Europe, where a hero legal-eagle was invoking the chilling EU Aaarhus ruling to ensure that every green activist who believes they are affected by climate change can sue whomever is held responsible.

Mr Heap followed with a UK woman who has blown £150,000 of her own money heroically fighting a court battle to stop a cement works being built because it plans to use nasty fossil fuels for power. The programme then took on an almost surreal air as environmental camapigners entered the frame. There was an interview with a woman from an organisation called Gaia, who wanted legal rights for trees, and an end to the Western tradition of law because it did not recognise that Mother Earth needed its own charter so that in future, nothing could be done that could be seen to cause harm to ecology. And finally, there was a British lawyer who is campaigning relentlessly to bring in a new international law called “eco-cide”, to stand alongside genocide in seriousness. Under it, anyone who transgresses against the environment will be put on trial in the Hague, or wherever, just like the Nazis. She stopped short of calling for the death penalty for offenders – but that was clearly on her mind.

In this 30 minutes of eco-buffonery, Mr Heap never once questioned any element of the claims about man-made climate change. It was an unmoderated, unsubtle, one-sided, preposterous pitch in favour of lawyers becoming all-powerful in suing, jailing, and generally nailing everyone and anyone who commits an eco-crime. By giving them such a platform, he clearly supported the idea that those affected by climate change should be awarded billions of pounds in compensation, and for lawyers to have instant powers to jack boot us all into nature worship. Under this regime, any burning of fossil fuel, any cutting down of trees, any human action that was deemed to interfere with nature would be punishable.

The so-called climate experts (all warmists, naturally) he called on to confirm that damage is being perpetrated, and to show how it might be calibrated, did concede that everything they did is based on modelling, and that precise measurements of the actual impact of climate change were therefore difficult. But Mr Heap cheerfully glossed over this little difficulty and told us that it would no doubt be overcome in the near future.

This was a full-scale pitch of the BBC eco-creed. They may not be sending an army to Cancun, like they did to Copenhagen, but inside the corridors of Portland Place, Television Centre, White City and Salford Quays, they are clearly planning how climate sceptics will be put on trial, and all industrial activity involving fossil fuel will be suspended and so much bound in red tape that it will become impossible. And one thing is for sure. There will be whole battallions of BBC staff at the eco-cide show trials.

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PETER ALLEN: TEA PARTIES "BIT STRONG FOR OUR TASTES"

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The BBC’s Kevin Connolly has been doing a series of reports from Missouri this week for Radio Five Live Drive. Yesterday he spoke to Reed Chambers, a Tea Party activist in the city of Independence. In response to a series of quick-fire questions Chambers said that he wanted lower taxes, federal government to keep out of healthcare, less gun control, that he backed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (adding “any war should be prosecuted to the fullest effect of our military until the opponent is crushed”), and was personally against abortion. He said Obama was a horrific president (which Connolly misheard as “terrific”, much to his own amusement) with a leftist agenda. Peter Allen in London couldn’t believe what he was hearing, so alien to his mindset were these opinions: [Read More…]

“Listen Kevin, are you searching around the country and finding these people or just… are they…(laughing)… are you quite legitimately just bumping into them? (More laughter).”

When Connolly said that the views weren’t out of the ordinary, Allen responded:

“The Tea Party. I dunno – they’re a bit strong for our tastes.”

“our tastes”. The conventional wisdom of the BBC echo-chamber.

From the BBC’s new editorial guidelines, section 4 – Impartiality (News, Current Affairs and Factual Output):

4.4.12 News in whatever form must be treated with due impartiality, giving due weight to events, opinion and main strands of argument.  The approach and tone of news stories must always reflect our editorial values, including our commitment to impartiality.
—
4.4.19 We must challenge our own assumptions and experiences and also those which may be commonly held by parts of our audience.  BBC output should avoid reinforcing generalisations which lack relevant evidence, especially when applying them to specific circumstances.

The BBC is delivering 16,500 copies of its new guidelines to staff and freelancers. I can only assume that they’re printed on toilet paper, the easier for journalists like Peter Allen to wipe their backsides with them.

(Listen Again available for one week. Skip to approx 2 hr 27. H/t Martin & mphousehold in the comments.)

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Question Time LiveBlog 14th October 2010

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Question Time tonight comes from Cheltenham, birthplace of Eddie ‘the Eagle’ Edwards and Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris. It has 3 councillors representing the “People Against Bureaucracy” Party.

On the panel tonight we have David Willetts MP, Tessa Jowell MP, Phil Willis, Sir Max Hastings and race-obsessed historian Dr Maria Misra who writes for the Guardian and the New Statesman about how nasty the Raj was. She has form on QT.

For those playing the Buzzword Bingo, we’ll be playing the Thatcher Rules which means that congratulations on her 85th birthday when combined with your Iron Lady joker are an immediate win. However normal points only will be scored if it is combined with decline of industry, cuts, sleaze, doom or misery. Biased-BBC is giving away a free blog mug and t-shirt for any references to Dennis MacShane being expelled from the Labour Party today for claiming office expenses of £125,000 for a shed.

The LiveBlog will also cover the entertainingly awful This Week, presented by Brillo and Michael Portillo. Rumours that the pie-crazed co-presenter Diane Abbott was history after her surreal elevation to a Shadow Spokesman job preaching against obesity seem to be wide of the mark and she’s still on the list.

David Vance, TheEye and David Mosque will be slashing the Quango State here from 10:30pm.

UPDATE: Nigel Farage was supposed to be on tonight. More details about the BBC cancelling him are in the comments.

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THE AXEING OF THE QUANGOS

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Listen to this interview by Sarah Montague and in particular focus on her tone when she engages with Conservative Francis Maude. The glacial edge is so obvious, hostility barely disguised when she gets going. I can’t understand why the Conservatives indulge the BBC, treating it as some sort of benign national treasurer when in fact it is an international malignancy.  

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SAY FAIRNESS, THINK WELFARE.

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It’s the big issue of the day. Well, it is the BBC big issue of the day. Are immigrants “drawn” to Britain because it is a fair society? Do they think they will be treated fairly, investigates John Humphrys. Mmm – I suppose if one translates “fairness” as meaning instant access to welfare largesse and an acceptance that assimilation is not required, then there’s not a fairer country in the world?

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WHAT ABOUT THE VICTIMS?

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One of the new causes that the BBC is fervently supporting is the mantra that prisons don’t work. During the Labour years, the corporation was virtually silent on this issue, mainly because Blair, Straw, Brown and their lackeys clearly diasagreed.

But now that the Cleggerons seem hell bent on reducing the prison population sharply, our nice BBC reporter friends are on a full-scale hunt for every snippet that will support their case. Today it’s a platform for those perennial do-gooders the Howard league for penal reform to trumpet that only 6% of prison governors believe that short prison sentences work in helping to rehabilitate prisoners. Well hang on. Short prison sentences are not, and have never been intended to rehabilitate as a primary purpose. They’re there to send the message that in a civilised society, certain anti-social, irresponsible behaviour leads to a loss of liberty and all the inconveniences that go with it. It’s also a way of protecting the public and of spreading the reassuring message that if you do bad things, bad things happen to you.

The survey question was as inane as asking whether hanging would help in rehabiliating someone. I note that in the article that there is not a peep from anyone who supports jail as a deterrent or from those (like me) who are deeply uneasy about further ill-considered liberal experimentation in this complex area. Of course, we would all like more effective ways of rehabilitating people, but there is no sign that anything like this is being offered; the alternative to jail seems to be to not jail them – because it saves money – and/or give offenders community sentences (which are so circumscribed by human rights restrictions as to be a useless joke). Note also the careful selection of a quote from a supposed university expert saying that we should “address the needs of offenders”. Right on. Exactly the BBC mentality. But what about the victims of crime? And public safety?

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