I was sent this link by one of our regulars. It concerns Justin Webb – he who is a key presenter on the BBC’s political flagship “Today” programme. Here is Justin writing in The Mirror (natch!) today…
America is a nation of white picket fences, neat flags and have-a-nice-day smiles.
So why do they appear to hate each other so much?
Shortly before Barack Obama was elected, I spoke to a woman outside a Republican rally.
“Why do you dislike Obama?” I asked. “Because he’s a baby killer!” she replied.
The woman’s hatred was bizarre, chilling – and a sign of what was to come.
The right-wing Tea Party Movement is a symptom of this crisis but I do not believe it is necessarily the cause.
Some Tea Party folk hate Obama, but the movement is a symptom of something much deeper and more worrying for all Americans: they kinda hate themselves.
Well, not as much as we hate your rancid bias, Justin. I suggest that with this overt antipathy towards the Tea Party movement, Webb is entirely unfit to be presenting news. His lack of professionalism, combined with his quest for cash (How much did the Mirror pay him for this gibberish?) once more evidences just how removed from reality Helen “Impartiality is In our Genes” Boaden is. Or perhaps it proves how arrogant she, Justin and the rest of the crew really are.
Wow! ‘The BBC, we report the news… kind of.’
Just when you think the bias cannot get any worse. The BBC out of control and do not give a damn about impartiality. Boaden must have been looking down someone elses jeans.
“Us broadcasters can say anything they want about politics, and they make full use of that freedom while seeing British impartiality rules as an attack on freedom of speech.”
Is he joking? Imaprtiality in the Mirror?
“Maintaining Impartiality
BBC Staff, BBC Correspondents on non-staff contracts and freelances primarily known as BBC news and current affairs presenters or reporters
It is essential that BBC staff, BBC correspondents on non staff contracts and freelances known to the public primarily as presenters or reporters on BBC news or current affairs programmes do not undertake any off-air activities which could undermine the BBC’s reputation for impartiality. Nothing they do or say should bring the BBC into disrepute. No off-air activity, including writing for newspapers, magazines or websites, writing books, giving interviews, making speeches or chairing conferences should lead to any doubt about the objectivity or integrity of their work for the BBC. If BBC journalists, presenters or reporters publicly express personal views off-air on controversial issues, then their editorial or on-air role may be severely compromised.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/editorialguidelines/page/guidance-conflicts-off-air
Appallingly partisan comments from Justin Webb. The worse thing is, he’s actually brought some balance to TODAY.
Politics is a contact sport and if this numbnuts is so patronising to infer that Americans can’t tell the difference between free speech and crime then that’s probably quite rude.
The BBC goes from bad to worse (if possible)
Some has to say it, and I’m delighted to be the one: what is the % of killings involving Tea Party members versus, say, inner city blacks in Britain? And is there any chance of any Beeboid *ever* publishing a post about how blacks ‘kind of hate themselves’ complete with unlikely anecdotes about meeting guys ranting about how they’re being ‘dissed’?
Would ol’ Justin say that all those Leftoids who moaned about leaving the country if Bush got re-elected and then spent the next four years gnashing their teeth over how horrible the country was “hate themselves”? Answers on the head of a pin……
Justin Webb defending his impartiality on Cash in the Celebrity Attic @10:10 link below. Seems he needs a purpose to his impartiality. (Yeh ???)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00xc5by/Cash_in_the_Celebrity_Attic_Series_6_Justin_Webb/
It is funny that BBC News is accusing others of brainwashing people into saying & doing stupid things.
I’m still scarred from when I was programmed by the BBC.
Oh, and Mark Mardell was mentioned on a previous thread. Don’t get me started on him! The man that famously failed to report Dan Hannan’s roasting of Gordon Brown. Remember that? The viral web video of which became the most viewed UK political video ever. Mark wanted us to move along because there was nothing to see. He isn’t a bad journalist because he isn’t a journalist.
Charles Krauthammer – the top-flight political commentator whom the BBC studiously avoids – had his original training in psychiatry. He summarises why the gunman’s actions had nothing to do with political rhetoric, the guy was a delusional schizophrenic.
His closing point is that the people like BBC favourite Paul Krugman of the NYT who have in effect accused Palin and others on the right of being accessories to multiple murder are themselves delusional.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/11/AR2011011106068.html?nav=hcmoduletmv
It appears that a majority of Americans reject the idea that the gunman was motivated by political rhetoric, and more and more evidence is coming through about the gunman’s detachment from reality, his avoidance of TV and talk radio etc, his long-standing gripe about the Congresswoman, his known threats of violence that the local police failed to deal with properly. The CBS poll findings are now supported by a Rasmussen poll. People like Krugman are being recognised as being more vitriolic than the people they have attacked – and totally wrong in their analysis of the true causes of the shootings.
It was immediately apparent that there were 3 real causes. 1 – the gunman is a nutcase. 2 The gunman is a nutcase. 3 The gunman is a nutcase. It didn’t need Krauthammer’s more clinical diagnosis to see this. And since Saturday, there is now a mountain of evidence about the prior actions and delusional behavious and mindset of the gunman.
But instead – the BBC has joined the American left in wallowing in a rush to judgment, trying to play the blame game to “get” Palin, Beck, Limbaugh, the Tea Party. Gutter-press behaviour.
Why has the BBC performed like this, rushing to judgment, showing utter bias and refusing to spell out the known facts ? It is back to the Journalista thing – BBC people always take their lead from the American left. Because the BBC itself is endemically leftist in outlook.
This PajamaMedia video clip is a palate-cleanser. I especially like Bill Whittle’s comments that the established media claim that “news” should be left to them, because they check and double-check, because they have layers of editorial control, so they can always be trusted. Outfits like the bankrupt New York Times have totally forfeited any right to such trust – and the BBC is right down there with them.
And is it not a supposed axiom of BBC news management that the BBC does not rush to judgment, that it does not try to be “the first with the news”, that it tries to report in a measured and balanced way? This whole affair proves that the BBC is a whited sepulchre.
(Things have been so bad this week – it could be argued that the reporting of various BBC journalists are potentially actionable. It won’t happen – but given the vulnerability of the media to current UK libel law, I would love to see someone sue the BBC to nail their lies and expose their endemic bias.)
Further to the “aside” at the end of my comments – I can’t see any likelihood of Palin suing the BBC for the libels they have thrown at her, nor could there be any action by the amorphous Tea Party, not enough “locus standi” ?. But how about Glenn Beck ? Or even Fox News ! It would not have to proceed to full action in the courts – but there has been a disgraceful pattern in the BBC coverage, surely stacks of evidence to justify a very fierce letter from lawyers. Not so much to gain a court judgment or the huge damages that could flow from any judgment – but to act as a very serious warning to the BBC that it needs to get its act together, to exercise proper editorial control over some of the loose talk that BBC “reporters” and presenters have been showing this week. And it would be juicy to have Obama’s address yesterday as a supporting argument against the BBC descent into its own political rhetoric.
Hannity says the left’s Big Smear is coming apart brick by brick. The American people can see through it.
Hopefully it will backfire on the left – the Krugman’s who started writing the false accusations (effectively of accessory to murder) when the casualties were still arriving in ER.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2011/01/12/hannity_reckless_hoax_coming_apart_brick_by_brick.html
But what about public views in Britain – after a ceaseless barrage of lies by the BBC for many days ? Coupled with Justin Webb’s simplistic sneering at the US people ? I fear the damage has been done. The BBC has been runing a vendetta against Palin since she first appeared on the scene – and led on to run a similar vendetta against the Tea Party. Palin Derangement Syndrome is as bad at the BBC as at any major news organisation. Right now, as the Today programme starts – the BBC is pushing the “violent US” story above news items far more important to its audience – for instance, the Australian floods affecting many people of British stock, the serious risk of conflict in the Lebanon, a significant by-election etc.
Today their theme is “Obama is a political genius” plus continued sideswipes at the US right. BBC “reporters” and presenters are still failing to report the FACTS about the killings, about the gunman.
As a matter of interest, how does the rate of reported and recorded ( not necessarily the same thing ) violent crime, per capita, compare between the UK and the US ?
‘Shortly before Barack Obama was elected, I spoke to a woman outside a Republican rally.’
The BBC ‘source’/vox pop technique of ‘I once met a man, who’s danced with a girl, who’s danced with the Prince of Wales’ to bascially hide behind anything they make up without substantiation to get across anything they want with impunity… is risible. This makes Cricky and Robinson seem like Woodward and Bernstein.
But they are all at it. I just watched Eammon Holmes and James Whale on SKY dig their ‘professions’ (teleprompter reader and talk show thug respectively) into (further) credibility oblivion on this issue by misunderstanding each other and actually confirming everything they were accusing each other, and hypocritical media bottom feeders of, in a few brief sentences. Hilarious.
Thing is, one is a morning breakfast joke and the other is only employed to be an IQ bereft audience ratings raving nutter, so you tolerate them in passing on that basis. Because you know what to expect and can punish the channel when they go too far.
But in-theory genetically impartial ‘news’ ‘journalists’ one is forced to pay for to share information via the national broadcasting system one expects more of. Not mor on.
This is supposed to be the British Broadcasting Corporation. A representative of what is best about this country. Fair. Balanced. Objective. Professional. With integrity.
Not a personal, vastly overfunded, impossible to be ejected from private club to enable lightweights to air snide prejudices or push their petty social engineering agendas at every turn.
Guest Who,
Should that not read “what WAS best about this country” ?
Lots of ‘liberal’ news BBC staff appear seem full of hate too. They’d deny it of course. They call it ‘analysis’ and are proud of it.
I have logged in briefly a few times today to B-BBC and, every time, that horrible photo of Justin pops up. Generally, I am against censorship ( unlike the BBC which thrives on it ), but there are limits !