Time for a new Open Thread, folks. BBC loving have a go at Sky’s Richard Keyes & Andy Gray (some private conservations are OK, it appears, it just depends WHO). They have the Jihad at Moscow Airport and so much more to spin…the floor is yours….
OPEN THREAD
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In a sense of fair play the broadcasters, inclusing the bBC, have been told by Tom Baldwin, to refer to the gov as ‘Conservative led governement’. So the bBCto be fair, it’s in their DNA you know, then they should be refer to Liebour as ‘Union funded Opposition’.
As far as I’m aware this is still just a submission to the media by Ed Miliband’s press secretary. He sets out a well argued case in my view. It is of course incumbent for all relevant media outlets to ask the views of the respective Coalition press secretaries and come to their own views.
Will be interesting to see how this plays out.
HA HA HA! The bBC jump to their master’s voice.
The Treasury submission to Parliament that gov dept spending – suppressed.
The disasterous PFI contracts and the £220B debt legacy – suppressed
The Huyton PFI school closed after 2 years – suppressed.
The Phillybustering in the Lords – suppressed.
I see the so called military experts at the bbC are showing yet again they don’t know their arses from their elbows:
China stealth fighter ‘copied parts from downed US jet’
The technology behind China’s J-20 stealth fighter may have come from a US plane shot down during the Kosovo war, Balkan military sources say.Adm Davor Domazet-Loso, Croatia’s military chief of staff at the time, claims Chinese agents took parts of a downed F-117 stealth jet in 1999…Currently, the United States is the only nation with a fully operational stealth plane.
And here is what the so called defence experts don’t know about the Chinese J20. The chinese have never invented anything instead they copy. Be it planes,tanks or even aircraft carriers they copy. Which is why its latest J10 is based on the cancelled Israeli Lavi and the J20 is most likely based on the cancelled Mig 1.42 and not the F117. (of which it looks nothing like)
and for all those bbC clones who come on here, here is something i knocked up over the weekend on the very subject. Thing is I don’t tax folks over £130 a year for the privilege. But hey feel free to report something which your wheel chair based defence experts haven’t.
Oh as for the last part in the bBC joke of an article, the US also operates the B2, (having retired the F117, but which is still flying)last year so instead of singular ‘plane’ that should be a plural ‘Planes’.
The BBC won’t report negatively on this wonderful Chinese accomplishment unless it bruises a Tibetan.
If I were the chinks I wouldn’t want to be building an aircraft based on technology the yanks developed back in the 1960’s and early 70’s.
This whole stealth jet thing is a red herring anyway. If the Chinese want to do real damage they do it with cyber war and putting malware in the harddrives and motherboards our military uses.
The BBCs stunning ignorance on this issue is copied by the MSM, the F117 is a completely different beast with different avionics and flight suraces being subsonic with different engines and intakes.
The entire design takes nothing but perhaps the skin which is radar absorbant but even this one aspect is different because the F117 is subsonic and the J20 is supersonic, whether it is capable of supercruise is not known.
Stealth? The BBC does not even know the real meaning of it. There is no such thing as invisible to radar planes, they do not exist and possibly never will. What designers try to do is minimize the radar signature of a plane to make it more difficult to detect at longer ranges and the J20 looks like it will still have a pretty big radar profile compared to the F117 and the F22.
The J20 is a big heavy long range missile carrier, (smart bombs?) and looks capable of carrying cruise but can it carry their version of the smart bombs? Stand off missile deployment and interception doesnt really need stealth but deep intrusion with lazer guided smart bombs does.
So all in all the BBC reporting is ill informed and wilfully ignorant, there is no desire to tell a story using all relevant detials, its dumbed down news cycle trash.
BTW most modern anti aircraft batteries are now advanced enough to ‘see’ stealth aircraft, the best stealth jets have a radar signature of a duck or sparrow but even the fastest duck or sparrow cannot fly at several hundred MPH!
Stealth is mainly the inclusion of passive radar avoidance software which sense radar coverage and flies the jet around these patches of detection but do the Chinese have such technology?
The BBC is lazy and ill informed and it costs a fortune.
I don’t know who much truth there is to it but an old associate who worked for MBDA said that at Farnborough air show that they use to track ahead of the F117 an B2 flybys to gather Intel and tweak the missiles capability’s and as all the other weapons manufactures are there they may have been up to the same trick !lol
Matthew that sounds about right and also explains why when the B2 flew from the states to the Uk and back it was escorted over the Uk by a couple F15s.
Cassandra eloquently put, here is a photo taken 2006 of then J20 stealth aircraft notice where its air intakes are:
Don’t understand what you military people are talking about, so I shall just rely on the BBC’s Defence Correspondent, Caroline Wyatt, to explain it all to me.
what can I say – that bombing at Moscow airport has to have been done by a man. I mean, women are just shit at jihad…
When it comes to terrorism islam does not discriminate.
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2914086/Faces-of-the-Black-Widow-Moscow-bombers-revealed.html
Like all terrorism – “brave” men skulk in the background while misguided tools carry out their evil deeds.
I hear he was from “the Caucuses”, a.k.a Chechnya…
Well, in the mind of a Beeboid he might be a Georgian or an Armenian, you never know……
BBC website describes the terrorists as “militants from the North Caucuses “.
The BBC just can’t bring themselves to say it ” It is these damn Buddhists again “.
Seeing as how (1) Al-Beeb just loves the Tea Party movement and (2) Republican Congresswoman Michelle Bachman is currently spending a lot of time in Iowa weighing up the possibility of a presidential run, I suppose we should be grateful that Al-Beeb isn’t linking the Moscow bomb to the Iowa Caucuses.
Just give ’em time……….
Horizon tonight is a joke, it’s just a beeboid pathetic attempt to defend the climate change scam.
Deniers
Doubters
Let’s put the Joos in the oven shall we BBC?
I notice Sir prat said that the CRU emails were ‘taken’ from the servers. Has he proof of that?
Anyway in the Wikileaks world isn’t that good?
Oh and FOI’s should NOT be ignored, just publish all your data online and the FOI’s will go away. What are they hiding.
I agree with the GM Crops though. We are going to need them.
GM is already used around the world
Anglo Saxon Chronicle doesn’t believe Prof. Nurse watched Sputnik from the streets of London.
BTW how spooky is this?
He always has had magnificent eyesight, it goes with his tremendous foresight. 😀
Dellers column ran this story the other day. Effectively he gave a three hour interview on the subject only to have the key few minutes shown. So much for the curious scientist bit eh?
Interesting as the other week on Horizon they had ‘Big Bang deniers’ on, who think that there are flaws in the Big Bang theory and that other theories may be plausible.
The BBC did not see the need to ridicule them on the programme, even though some of them had little to back up their theory.
I’m far from being a creationist (I’m a moderate atheist) and I’m not a scientist. However, there are various things about the Big Bang theory which make no sense, such as “If the Universe is expanding, where is it getting the extra space from?” etc.
However, the BBC will eventually challenge anyone with a different opinion to their orthodoxy on this as they do with AGW. Give them time.
Demon,
Thank God you are not a fundamentalist atheist !
Fundamentalist atheists are as bad as religious fundamentalists – they don’t allow that anyone can have a different opinion to them. That’s why I don’t like the BBC’s “Thou shalt only believe what we want you to believe” commandment.
That’s also why I’m open to have someone explain how the Big Bang Theory goes against all known laws of physics. I am genuinely interested. I do have further theories of my own but am not a scientist and this is not the right forum to discuss it.
Deniers eh? Why cant they just get in line and toe the line and believe what they are told to believe eh?
Why do these deniers refuse to comply and obey the dogma? I know lets try the old trick of insulting and demeaning them as anti social elemens and counter revolutionary elements, lets turn on them and isolate and misrepresent them!
So there you have the BBC attitude in a nutshell and the tactics go back to the days of the USSR and nazi Germany, the enemy of the people are those who dare to contradict the state orthodoxy an so the state turns on these enemies and uses any means to destroy them.
BBC horizon is nothing more than a show trial from the 30s.
Martin,
“The BBC did not see the need to ridicule them on the programme,”
No one was ridiculed on “Horizon: Science Under Attack”; apart from Delingpole who successfully ridiculed him self.
Nurse took 3 hrs. of interview which was cut down to a couple of comments and who picked the comments ?set the preface? and got to chose the final direction of the program ?
“ successfully ridiculed him self” it must be great for you to use that phrase for a change instead of others saying it about you!
Caught a trailer on R4 about an upcoming series where Evan Davis will be interviewing business leaders. He says they are often quite nervous when they come into the studio, so he puts them at their ease by saying he “won’t say anything to make you seem stupid”.
Obviously no chance of any of them saying anything to make business super-guru Evan seem stupid.
Sadly for Ivan though nothing they say will make him look less stupid either!
BBC – How to differentiate between a militant and a terrorist
This is a militant
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1302316/Bob-Crows-12-pay-increase-RMTs-militant-leader-pockets-10k.html
This is a terrorist
http://www.ict.org.il/Articles/tabid/66/Articlsid/590/currentpage/1/Default.aspx
As are these splendid chaps
http://www.quikmaneuvers.com/ira_terrorism.html
Notice the givaway sign .
You could sit safely next to a militant in a terminal building. But you would not do the same with terrorists. Bear that in mind Mr Steve Rosenberg when taking a plane.
Oh and by the way this is a “rebel”.
http://www.thestranger.com/images/blogimages/2010/01/16/1263681209-6601_rebel_without_a_cause_jigsaw_puzzle_lg.jpg
Here is Tuesday’s instalment of the Peter Sissons disclosures about all the bias he saw at the BBC over many many years.
This time – Climate Change. A superb antidote to tonight’s Horizon programme.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1350206/BBC-propaganda-machine-climate-change-says-Peter-Sissons.html
and Sissons is pointing the finger at the BBC’s environmental correspondents including Harrabin, as well as supine BBC news managers.
“A week after this interview [with Lucas], I went into work and picked up my mail from my pigeon hole. Among the envelopes was a small Jiffy Bag, which I opened. It contained a substantial amount of faeces wrapped in several sheets of toilet paper.”
Unbeliveable!!
It was probably his next editorial guidance. At least it was an improvement on the Guardian
The beeboids haven’t swung into action so far, no ‘bitter’ comments on twitter. Perhaps they are awaiting instructions?
The BBC are doing their best to ignore the serialisation, even more than the Peter Watt book last year. One of my complaints is not only of bias but bias by omission, they are experts when it comes to that.
Yesterday the Mail said the ‘Climate’ instalment would be the last, but today they say there’s another instalment tomorrow. Joy of joys!
I think we need a new term for anti-Sissons beeboids who don’t see the BBC’s bias, how about “Sissons deniers”?
You would swaer that Sissons had been reading this blog for the last several years.
I notice that Scott and Dez are MIA
Martin,
Yep, we have posted that over the last few days. A bad week for Beeboid/Lefties and Dezzie and Scottie go to ground. On the other hand , maybe they have gone on holiday together.
Dezzie and Scottie on holiday together ? What a gruesome thought !
Eeew the thought of it.
Aww, it’s so sweet that you’ve all missed me so much.
I know we really missed having a village idiot on here !.
Scott/Dez are still circling the Sissons’ tree looking for any low hanging fruit.
Newsnight. Wark soon silenced the deputy PM of Jordan when he defended the Queen of Jordan’s opposition to the treatment of women in her country. Not quite what she wanted to hear. Not in line with the current BBC lauding of the heroic struggle in the Arab world to introduce a main course of “democracy’ with a side dish of sharia.
“Newsnight. Wark soon silenced the deputy PM of Jordan when he defended the Queen of Jordan’s opposition to the treatment of women in her country.”
No she didn’t. She let him rabbit on endlessly and sacrificed the usual “look at the morning papers”, just to give him more air-time.
Ah now you see you give yourself and your bias away with the
” rabbit on endlessly ” this man was talking about about the treatment of women and you whine about the grundian review being
“sacrificed” nice to meet some one so politically committed !
The Telegraph’s lead story today covers an investigation into the pernicious effects of Private Finance Initiative (PFI) schemes – Gordon Brown’s favourite method of trying to reduce the true extent of public debt. We will be paying for PFI schemes for up to 60 years.
I was rather surprised that in the first review of the papers on the Today programme James Naughtie referred to the Telegraph story. But his reference was to blame “The Government” for the PFI disaster. Implying the current Coalition Government – when it was the Labour Government that approved all manner of excessive PFI schemes.
Today’s Telegraph report looks like the start of a series, with damning details about the profligacy and excessive private profits that Labour endorsed:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/8279974/Private-Finance-Initiative-hospitals-will-bring-taxpayers-60-years-of-pain.html
Among all of the disasters visited on the British people by Gordon the Moron, PFI is probably the most damaging.
The man is either pure evil or mentally deranged or both.
I am surprised he hasn’t announced some high-flying international non-job yet. Is it because his personality is so repulsive no-one wants to work with him ?
Just finished listening to Nicky Campbell’s phone-in this morning on Murdo. As impeccably even-handed as I’d expected (if anything the tenor was tilted in favour of Murdo).
One of Campbell’s comments was that if right wing people want their own news channel they should have a perfect right to have it.
Still trying to fathom why Campbo is such a hate figure on this site.
You obviously don’t watch Dame nikki on a Sunday!!!
… or listened when he asked,
‘Give me one word to describe Osama Bin Laden’,
and answered (his own question) with,
‘Charismatic’.
What? Their own broadcasting corporation compulsorily funded by the public? Yes, why not? After all, there needs to be some balance somewhere in publicly funded broadcasting.
INBBC and Moscow airport murders.
1.) INBBC confines itself to reporting the event, censoring analysis of who the perpetrators may be (only hints at some ‘militants’):
“Russia bomb: Medvedev blames airport ‘breaches'”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12273145
2.) ‘FrontPagemag’, in contrast, has this (2 pages):
“Mayhem in Moscow”
http://frontpagemag.com/2011/01/25/mayhem-in-moscow/2/
I may be a little odd, but I found the Today programme this morning interesting as it presented a fairly rare opportunity to examine the core instincts of the presenting and editorial team. The News Corp / Sky news was broken during the show.
We went almost immediately to an interview with Peston, and Humphries was straight on the left wing attack on Jeremy Hunt. Indeed some of his questions were barely questions. To Peston’s credit he did try a bit to present both views but not very hard.
The first news summary after that focussed on the fact that the minister had stated he would get Sky’s mitigation arguements before referring the lot to the monopolies review. So the gut editorial instinct was to lean this way.
The next news summary, with more time to consider, was more balanced, focussing on the news of the News Corp announcement first and the Jeremy Hunt decision second.
I personally found the flow of editorial change interesting.
I heard Peston on 5Live. No complaints for me there. The Humphrys/Peston exchange is approx 1hr 15mins below.
“It does appear Jeremy Hunt is bending over backwards to help News International”. Robert Peston.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/b006qj9z/console
“It does appear Jeremy Hunt is bending over backwards to help News International”. Robert Peston.
how would he know what the looks like? as he only ever spent his time bending over forwards for Labour??
Exactly. It’s a bit rich for Gordon Brown’s biographer and champion of his economic policies to be pointing fingers.
Guardian Apparatchik and BBC Auntie Tom Polly Toynbee, lamely lays into Peter Sissions revelations and tries to defend the BBC.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/24/bbc-under-attack-conservatives-public-loyalty
Wow. Quel suprise. The BBC’s left-wing ex-Social Affairs Correspondent and constant pundit on the BBC defending it against accusations of left-wing bias. No grounds there to vindicate what Sissons has said.
She does make one good point, that the conservative ‘down’ on the BBC can be seen as an ideological axe to grind because they only believe market forces should operate in the media.
I and others have often said that harping on about tehe two separate issues of the license fee and bias is very detrimental. We only give grist to the mill to unpleasant partisans like Polly Toynbee to deflect attention from the bias she knows is endemic.
I got this far before deciding this harridan really is not even worth the sport of toying with…
‘…the public trust and will always defend it against looming depredations’
That she, and her merry crew of groupies, so easily mesh with the oft-claimed BBC notion of 100% ‘public’ adoration is so facile it hardly bears dismissing.
The silly bint didn’t even try to move beyond cut and pasting old press releases by the BBC, about the BBC for the BBC.
For the people running this site, before it gets lost I think you could add some quotes from Sissons’ first article to the side bar. There were many choice quotes to be had.
Demon,
Quite agree and hope the website gurus take it up.
I wanted to discuss the licence fee payed by UK citizens, as someone who lives in the Netherlands I pay to view BBC1-2-3-4 & BBC Entertainment the yearly cost to me is 150 euro. From contrasting the Dutch / Belgian / German state broadcasters, I would suggest that the BBC should be a subscription only service. My reason for stating this is the complete lack of impartiality on display in the news and current affairs section of the BBC.
A clear example of this lack of impartiality is the constant narrative of Conservative cuts v Labour savings which is embeded throughout the entire BBC news divison. It might come as a surprise to many UK citizens that outside of the island the conservatives economic policy has been generally held up as being the right approach but not strong enough!. I could give many other examples of biased reporting by the BBC, however, other posters have made point much more subtely than I.
The licence fee enables the BBC to be free from commercial pressures, providing people with ‘quality’ content at a relatively cheap price. However, this comes at a cost of individual freedom and choice, which is of particular concern with the possibilities of censorship and political bias.
The BBC and its supporters are always crowing about their impartiality but the other news organisations are not funded by indirect taxation. The public have a right to expect higher standards of the BBC but the BBC seems to follow a more tabloid agenda by the day.
Every time I look on the website or teletext I see headlines which do not convey the subject matter accurately but merely put a news spin on it.
BBC was once a role model of professional journalism but now it is only a role model for left-leaning liberals and it sets up new leftist standards to follow. There is little impartiality from your old good years. It could be seen by the difference between the number of letters complaining about left-wing bias and the letters complaining about right-wing bias. Has anybody complained about right-wing bias of BBC? I don’t think so. But the BBC is constantly accused of leftist bias so it means something and it should be better that this is acknowledged and do something about this.
People who praise BBC are in most cases liberals so it is no surprise that you get some encomium but the BBCs job is to serve all society not only liberals. The BBCs job is to present balanced view without any favor to any side even if it is about multiculturalism, liberalism or whatever.
I apologise for any mistakes with my English, but I felt that I should add my twopennies worth to the debate.
Tot straks
Joseph thanks a very well thought out post! hope to see more.
No mistakes in your English I could see, if there were, probably less than my own! 🙂
One point I’d add to the Polly Toynbee apologia linked to above, when I was in my teens in the late 70’s there were constant complaints of bias against the BBC by the left. Now there are hardly any. Why is that Polly? Sneer your way out of that one.
“fewer”? Sorry, couldn’t resist it!
I recommend euronews if you want to know what’s really going on in the world. The Russian and Chinese news programmes (also on satellite) are also excellent at presenting facts without in-house opinion added in an attempt to shape the viewer’s interpretation.
Now there’s a thing…
Joseph,
Excellent post, superb summing up and great to have a view from outside the UK. I always wish more people from overseas would post here.
As for your english, better than most British school-leavers and MPs, but you have a long way to go before it is as good as John Prescott’s.
hippiepooter
As Joseph Sanderson implies the issues of bias and the licence fee are inextricably linked: arguably the bias occurs because of the licence fee. Even so, I don’t think the bias would disappear the moment the fee disappeared. The example of the US is instructive here. The news offerings of the big free to air stations (ABC etc) as well as PBS still toe the liberal New York Times/East Coast establishment line and it seems that only Fox – which is a cable channel – relays news and opinion which might be unwelcome to the US equivalent of our political class.
BTW, I can get some of Fox News Live over the internet but am I right in thinking that no cable provider in the UK provides access to Fox? VirginMedia carries CNN, CNBC and Euronews but either Fox isn’t interested or, more likely, VM isn’t.
The mainstream national networks do only one national news broadcast per day. Even though they still draw an audience, I don’t think they have much influence these days. Fox and the cable networks do various news items in various formats all day. Then there’s radio.
Local news, while being produced by local stations which may be affiliated a major network, they are independently managed and are in control of their own news programming. The network affiliation allows local channels to share programming, news footage, and advertizing across the board, similar to how BBC News and Worldwide share news segements and programming. The difference is that, unlike the BBC, the editorial agenda is not shared. Local stations in the US generally do their own thing. They’re franchises, not tentacles. Even the local Fox affiliates are not chain outlets whose strings are pulled by nasty Uncle Rupert.
As for watching Fox in the UK, I assumed it was verboten. Nasty Uncle Rupert allowed two different news channels? It would be considered The Apocalypse, I’m sure, Britain plunged immediately back to its darkest Dickensian days. Best you can do is watch the live feed on the website, I guess.
As if on cue, the BBC News Channel just did a segment on Ofcom’s statement that it would be wrong for News Corp. to buy BSkyB. No prizes for guessing the Narrative of the BBC’s coverage.
Common Purpose maven and Gordon Brown biographer Robert Peston was brought in to explain why Ofcom was right….er….I mean provide expert analysis. He said that the problem was that Nasty Uncle Rupert is too close to the Tory Party, although “of course he would denyyyyyy that”.
Nasty Uncle Rupert controls “vast amounts” of media in the UK already. Somehow buying BskyB would impact the independence of Sky. Basically Peston is telling you how correct Ofcom is, and how wrong News Corp.’s complaints are. Peston says the only way they could be allowed to by BSkyB is if they sold Sky. He then says that isn’t likely to happen because (do I detect a little joy behind the way he’s spitting out the words?) it doesn’t make a profit.
Then we get another talking head on screen. He thinks it won’t work either. The only possible solution, he says, would be to put a “layer of independent directors” in between the two networks to insure independence. Will it be enough, asks the Beeboid. Answer: No. Nasty Uncle Rupert has form on breaking promises of independence in the past when he bought a couple of newspapers.
Summary: Rupert Murdoch is bad news, and not to be trusted. He must not be allowed to own both Sky and BSkyB. No other viewpoints offered.
DP
Thanks for that. I suspected that maybe Rupe wouldn’t want any competition to Sky (even from himself).
I must admit when I was in the US I didn’t pay all that attention to the news or, rather, the news delivery. The national news was unbelievably pompous and de haut en bas and the local news was tedious and really local. Daily I read the WSJ and, yes, the NYT which, when it wasn’t being political, gave good international and (US) national coverage.
For someone who claims to know something about “business” Peston (and OfCom for that matter) apparently has no idea that “control” doesn’t necessarily mean owning all the shares. Murdoch already controls BSkyB, he doesn’t actually need the shares to effect control although I’m sure he would prefer it all in a neat parcel sitting in the corner of his office.
Umbungo, I’m 46 and am old enough to remember when the license payer got bang for their buck with BBC impartiality.
We now have the Gramscian domination due to lack of vigilance.
Certainly Major dispensing with MI5 vetting of BBC staff to ‘get on down and jiggy with it with the happening people’ didn’t help matters.
An argument that can certainly be used about the license fee is for or against, it is one very powerful reason why the BBC should be that more careful to observe its Charter and Agreement.
Frankly, what the license fee does also offer is the potential of a great campaign of civil disobedience over not paying it because of the bias.
I’m talking about accepting one has broken the law and going guilty in Court and taking ones desserts, but stating one’s mitigation as well.
What would completely undercut such notional protest is if it turned into a protest against the license fee, not the bias.
This is only worthwile in my view if you get say 10,000 people committing to it.
One way to conduct it would be for the notional 10,000 to write not to the BBC (copy them in, certainly) but to HMG advising of their witholding the license fee until there is a public inquiry into BBC bias.
The more that could sign on to something like this of course, the merrier. Unfortunately I couldn’t, not where I am in Barcelona, and if I was in Blighty, I’d only do it with a ‘critical mass’ number signed up to it, as I’m not really into empty and wasteful gestures.
A programme on Radio 4 called The Glasgow Effect discussed the reasons why the residents of some areas of Glasgow have a life expectancy of 53 years of age, a bit shy of the Gaza Strip and Somalia.
Being al-beeb, that there might be an orderly queue of contributorrrrrs shouting ‘Thatcher’ should be no surprise.
That there was not a single contributor to shout, ‘Don’t be so ridiculous’, again, should not surprise.
Stacking the deck – it’s what we do.
I think they were trying to pin the Highland Clearances on Thatcher also.
Deep fried Mars Bars and Irn Bru. Looking at it here from Edinburgh, 53 years is too much.
In reply to Charlie (because I don’t seem to be able to directly reply to his comment…)
No, that one’s down to global warming…
“That there was not a single contributor to shout, ‘Don’t be so ridiculous’, again, should not surprise.”
Yeah right. Except that if you actually listened to the programme you would know that it highlighted that Liverpool suffered just as much as Glasgow in the Thatcher years but without the same drop in life expectancy.
How come you never heard that bit? DO YOU NEED EVERYTHING TO BE SHOUTED AT YOU? (sorry) 😛
On BBC 24: Live coverage of the bleeding Oscar nominations. For half an hour.
Your license fee hard at work.
OH MY GOD! “Half an Hour”! How on earth did you manage to survive for so long without switching channels to watch it on Sky News instead?
Dez, I’m glad you agree that half an hour of light entertainment drivel was fit for purpose for BBC News, as opposed to non-news outlets like Radio1 or BBC1.
I don’t pay a subscription to Sky, so thay can broadcast any drivel they want. But, I pay a compulsory tax to the BBC and I don’t want it to fund the trashy , dumbed down output from that pernicious organisation.
And it is ony the Oscar “nominations”, for God’s sake. The “ceremony” is still to come.
I am I alone in thinking the Oscars come round about 4 times a year ?
I think they should be held in Siberia in winter. Then the BBC wouldn’t waste money on covering this mindless trash.
“ony” should read “only”.
The Radio 5 phone in this morning with Dame Nikki was a farce.
First caller was a hoot (but highlighted something we all knew that the BBC only call back on callers who text in what they want to agree with) he was a swivel eyed Moozlum loon (OK I know there are 1.5 billion of the on Earth but this was one ‘special’), even Dame Nikki seemed taken a back for once.
But then the BBC rolled out caller after caller attacking sky, Murdoch, Fox News and I disagree with HP who commented above, Dame Nikki should have had a guest on to defend Sky, they did get Kelvin Mackenzie on, but I’d have rather had someone who didn’t just do the normal rants.
But worst of all was human shit Alistair Campbell, who was allowed to spout utter shit by Dame Nikki, the Liebour party are scum, they happily sucked on Murdoch’s penis for 13 years and in all that time the BBC never complained about the ‘Murdoch press’ having too much power, yet now it seems to be a problem.
Dame Nikki then lied when he stated to a caller that they must have done a phone in on the BBC having too much power, um no you haven’t Dame Nikki.
but worst of all is that Alistair Campbell is on with mincer Richard Bacon again this afternoon.
Do we have to be subjected to this shit bag again?
The Radio 5 phone in was one sided crap for the most part with deranged women and northern leftists ranting on about Fox News, failing to point out MSNBC and so on.
One caller did mention the other news channels on Sky like Press TV and Al Jazeera, but for the most part it was the usual one sided crap.
For example Dame Nikki allowed people to complain that Murdoch has nearly 40% market share in papers by sales, um well yes BBC that’s because his papers are bought by lots of people, why is that his fault?
The fact that shit like the Guardian has a circulation of 20 people is because theGuardian is shit and no one wants to read it outside of the BBC.
I look forward to the BBC doing a phone in on why the BBC is left wing pro warmist Moozlum loving network that hates white English males.
I won’t hold my breath.
Martin, you are completely pathological about Nicky Campbell.
“First caller was a hoot (but highlighted something we all knew that the BBC only call back on callers who text in what they want to agree with)”
Erm, Martin. This caller told the call screener he was in favour of Murdoch! He then went on a rant about Murdoch being a Zionist lackey. Nicky C clearly thought the guy was screwy and referred to him afterwards ‘Head of the Mel Gibson fan club’.
Kelvin Mackenzie was the media counter-balance to Campbell (Alastair). He got as much of a free rein as AC did.
Below is the link to the show’s recording. Judge for yourself whose take on this morning’s phone-in is closer to the truth (mine was posted just after 10:00am UK time):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00xwlj6/5_live_Breakfast_Your_Call_Is_Murdoch_Good_for_Britain/
06:25 is when the Mozzie nutter comes on. “If I’d sent a text message in favour of knocking Rupert Murdoch you wouldn’t let me on”.
Forgot. Martin wrote: “Dame Nikki then lied when he stated to a caller that they must have done a phone in on the BBC having too much power, um no you haven’t Dame Nikki.”
No he didn’t lie, he said that the BBC had had its phone-ins if the BBC is to big and powerful but then he cast doubt on whether his memory served him right.
I want to see an impartial BBC because I believe in fairness.
Are you being fair to Nicky Campbell, Martin?
The BBC headline all day has been that the economy is shrinking, no it’s not it’s growth has slowed and as has been pointed out 90% of that was down to the weather.
Needless to say this has allowed the BBC to run the Tories down and big up Ed Bollock Chops.
Remember when we were in recession, every month the BBC was claiming that we were out of recession when in fact we were sinking further in.
Funny that BBC…
Hey, BBC, while you’re supporting the Labour line that the economy shrinkning is due to nasty Tory policies, how about suggesting some real causes for the minor decline instead of dismissing the excuse of bad weather and then hinting that the economy could actually be even worse once the full figures come out next month. What happened to blaming the global downturn like you did all the time when Gordon Brown was in charge? No Labour policies ever at fault then, eh?
Any BBC thoughts on the negative impact on the economy of the various rail and union strikes, the student anarchist violence harming local trade, or, you know, the shrinking pound?
No, instead we get BBC correspondent Hugh Pym speculating that it will probably be worse, then some talking head who supports the Labour line. No other viewpoints offered.
Oh no not the colossus of the Pyms a man who stood for the liberal democrats in 2001 and lost to a Tory so no bitterness there then !and is well know for his book
Gordon Brown ‘ the fist [sorry first !] year in power ‘
In which Gordon Brown, Ed Balls and many colleagues in the first Brown Treasury gave Nick Kochan and Hugh Pym many interviews to assist their research for this book. These interviews provide highly revealing insights into the early thinking of Brown and his coterie !
God he must hate being on the outside like Preston now !!
Actually Hugh Pym always does a good impersonation of a man who is not very bright….. It is a credit to him that he maintains this impersonation so consistently
So the football commentators who are getting slammed for making some casual sexist remark about a female official made their statements off air? Nobody actually heard them and this is in reality just another fuss raised by the Wail and Current Bun, eh? Oh, wait, funny how the BBC doesn’t describe it this way, as opposed to the way they reported Brand and Ross or Carol Thatcher. Hypocrites.
Yes it’s got a bit worse than that. Andy Gray has form apparently. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-1350425/Andy-Gray-lewd-behaviour-video-cost-job-Sky-Sports.html
I think they’ve got this wrong. Surely the issue is why Sky were employing such a thick bugger in the first place. I’ve asked several women whether they were offended by the comments and they all said ‘no’. The general gist was that their self confidence is not likely to be damaged by a bloke with no credibility.
any one notice that on R4 news at 1 o’clock the bbc always have the liebore bod in the studio and the lib/cons on a phone line.Is it so that they can do@ I,M sorry its a bad line etc@…then haave more time for the liebore bods when the line goes dead.
It was the same during the conference season never a glitch when the liebore bods were on ,only when the lib/cons were on…biased its in our genes…
Vince Cable committing political suicide at the moment. The BBC assumption is that Britain is now entering – as Labour predicted, we’re reminded – the dreaded “double-dip recession”. With this in mind, Sopel asks Cable if there is a Plan B since current plans aren’t working. Cable says there’s no need for one because the current one is, in fact, working. He babbles on, making little sense, allowing Sopel to quote the Labour talking point that the Coalition has no coherent plan.
Maybe he’s good at financial trading and reading bottom lines, but he is crap at this vision thing. He sounds evasive and uncertain of what he’s saying. Sopel is kicking him good about banks now.
Oh god, Alistair Campbell is on Radio 5 now wanking on again, can’t he fall down a hole or something?
I swear I can hear Richard Bacon undoing Campbell’s trousers. Ugh!!
” Oh Alistair”
What is happening to this site? About 3:30 this afternoon I responded to David Preiser’s kind explanation concerning my query about Fox News reception in the UK. The response has now disappeared. Since it was basically a “thank you” and didn’t contain any 4 letter words or anything potentially libellous I assume it was just “wiped” automatically. But why?
Umbongo, don’t worry I posted a couple of posts and they vanished and then re-appeared, it’s the posts not updating I think.
Several comments seem to have vanished right around the time I posted one saying that the live video broadcast on the Fox News website (not the same as the TV version) was far superior to the way the BBC addresses issues. Far better range of opinions offered, better behavior from the presenters, who did not resort to partisan talking points. Vastly different to what I’ve seen on the BBC News Channel. (It’s a different format, sure, but I’m talking about the interview/discussion stuff.)
The Fox News anchor allowed a Democrat lunatic to spout all kinds of opinion without interruption, and made only calm, direct challenges to her statements. No shouting, no laughing, no sneering, no constant interruptions. Never seen that on the BBC.
Something else I’ve never seen on the BBC: both Fox News hosts I saw, who each hosted – on their own – an hour of political interviews and discussion, were black women.
Black women only make the tea at the BBC.
I have been having some strange experiences with posts over the last week or so. Don’t seem to get this with other websites, but I am not much of a computer bod, so don’t know why.
After two comments disappeared, now my last one was posted twice. I started having weirdness with the comments yesterday, and turned off a script blocker I use. After that my comments posted successfully, but now that it looks like that wasn’t the problem.
Echo/JS-kit servers acting up, I guess.
Yes it’s been sllllllllooooooooooowwwwwwww as well for the last few days.
Certainly puts me off doing a longish post.
Of course, why didn’t I realise it originally? To use a phrase that’s sunddenly become very unfashionable, it’s global warming causing all this upset in the comment thread: but then that’s the cause of everything
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2007/11/everything_is_caused_by_global.html
Telegraph article: BBC unveils £1.6 million pavement
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/8239081/BBC-unveils-1.6million-pavement.html
A totally unacceptable waste of public money.
I could make a decent science documentary (and some) for this amount of money!
I hadn’t realised the refurbishment cost 1 billion.
Stuart,
Shame you couldn’t be bothered to read all of the Telegraph article you linked to:
“This artwork was a mandatory part of the planning permission requirements set by Westminster City Council in 2003.”
Dez,
An excellent reason for removing the planning process from politicians altogether !
You’d rather that big companies be allowed to build any old stuff wherever they wanted? A ten story IKEA warehouse next to St. Pauls perhaps? Or in the plot of land next to your house, even better?
From the Telegraph:
Official inquiries into the ‘Climategate’ scandal ‘unsatisfactory’
From the Express:
MPS SLAM ‘SECRETIVE’ CLIMATEGATE PROBES
BBC:
ClimateGate: ‘Learn and move on’
Would have been interesting to see how it would go down if Mark Regev had used the phrase “Learn and Move On” wouldn’t it?
The BBC certainly demonstrates a ‘unique’ and selective take on ‘educate and inform’, certainly.
If it suits, it is ‘endlessly nag and rig in the edit suite’
If it doesn’t, it’s ‘ignore or distract’.
Strewth. The contrast in reporting could not be greater. “The establishment looking after its own” is a phrase the BBC would once have latched onto. Now they are the new Establishment, and these phrases get suppressed. Came from a Labour MP as well, which is very encouraging.
David,
Yup, those well known bastions of fair and un-biased reporting “The Telegraph” and “The Express”.
Why have you failed to mention the Daily Sport?
“Adele Still Tops for Sports Fans”
http://www.sundaysport.com
Totally ignored by the BBC…
Dez, I’m glad you agree that the BBC is biased in the opposite position of the nasty old Torygraph and Distress.
If the Telegraph are biased one way does that make it acceptable to be biased the other way? You don’t have to pay for The telegraph but the BBC….
Speaking what does and does not get ignored, and some that deserves to be, I am starting to find the blog thread hole-digging equivalent of Richard Black’s hypocritical ‘watertight oversight’ – coming over all dedicated to professionalism when there is an inconvenient issue but suddenly getting vague when there is an opportunity to wallow in the gutter – less amusing with each rerun.
After a long, welcome period of silence merely highlighting the prevalence of inexcusable massive examples of rampant basis, unprofessionalism and zero integrity, the glee clubber returns with a bumper crop of … nothing substantive: a classic foot-shooting ‘the BBC is there to counter views of those I don’t share’ (er, not its remit) and some daft, irrelevant analogies in an attempt to redirect attention.
The sad part is that this site and some claims made can benefit from sincere checks and balances, but the temptation to sneer and insult simply seems too irresistible for some. Pity.
The point is debate issues of bias at the BBC, not highlight how few and how poor the counters are.
And Dez, don’t forget that terrible right-wing rag The Times:
Climategate inquiries criticised
And that biased bastion of Climate Denialism the New Scientist:
Freedom of information still a Climategate sore point
Just as I thought, no low hanging fruit at all in this clincher on BBC bias for Dez/Scott to cling to. Instead, peculiarly enough for him, he gropes women’s tits instead. On the positive side, it appears his inability to refute BBC bias is helping to cure him of his homosexuality.
“Least Gray won’t have to worry his pretty little head about football now & has loads of time for housework cooking & baking.”
Tweets by rachelkennedy84
I am now going to report this sexist remark to the Board of Governers at the BBC and I expect her to be sacked immediatly.
Talking of outrageous BBC sexism, the presenter, all three of the pundits and both commentators on tonight’s Match of the Day (Arsenal v. Ipswich) are…brace yourselves!!…all men. Shocking! BBC heads must roll.
This lady does give an eye-opening insight into the mindset of the genetically impartial BBC at work, rest and play.
Even if she is from Venus.
“”Our thoughts on UK GDP thus far http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12272717”
Tweets by BBC_Joe_Lynam
“Our thoughts” – so its not news reporting then?
Checking his drivel stream, it’s rather easy to see where his ‘thought’s’ come from. Unidirectional much?
“There is only one genuine giant in news, according to Ofcom’s analysis of “reach” and “share of references” – not a Murdoch biz but the BBC”
Robert Peston
Tweets by Peston
I hope Peston is proud of the fact that the BBC got there due to the unfair, non-competitive business practice of being subsidized by the license fee, and a head-start of several decades.
Well, on the plus side it’s simply reporting, if selectively. But the absence of ‘analysis’ as to why such dominance is ‘good’ from those he is employed by and approves of vs. those he doesn’t… is striking. If a tad hypocritical.
Smelling salts were needed for Martine Croxall (BBC News Channel) after she nearly fainted with shock last night while interviewing Mark Littlewood of the “free-market think tank the Institute of Economic Affairs.” She was soon up in arms again though at his right-wing lunacy. She was fine with him agreeing with Sir Richard Lambert over his criticism of the government for not doing enough about economic growth, but when he began outlining the measures he believes will help, things rapidly went downhill.
He criticised the government’s plans to extend paternity leave: “It sounds a nice fluffy thing to do, but it makes it more expensive for businesses to take on employees…”.
At which point a clearly astonished Martine interrupted, saying, with a little too much conviction for a supposedly impartial interviewer, “New parents would regard it as anything but fluffy and cuddly! It was absolutely essential when you have a new baby because they’re the next generation”.
Mark Littlewood explained the Insider-Outsider problem to her (“There is a danger than we give more and more right to those who are in employment and we don’t actually consider how we’re going to get more and more people into unemployment“), but that didn’t stop her interrupting him again to protest “But that sounds like the lowest common denominator economics then really. Isn’t it better to raise the bar and get everybody to have the best?”
His sceptical reply was very quickly interrupted again. She was fired up now and launched a new line of attack: “You’re talking about scrapping the minimum wage. How’s that…? That’s incredibly regressive, surely!”
“I don’t think that’s regressive at all,” he replied. “The very small business I run, we’re probably at the margins, whether we could take on someone at about £8,000, £9,000 a year. We probably just could. It would be illegal. The minimum wage would preclude it and so…”
Martine (interrupting): “And quite rightly so!! How could anybody live on that kind of money?”
Mark: “In that case that person remains on welfare and not in unemployment. I’m not taking on an apprentice. We can’t afford to do so. It would be illegal. So that’s one other young person on the scrapheap of youth unemployment.”
The minimum wage didn’t exist until recently. Paternity leave likewise. Is it so unimaginable that they shouldn’t exist again if we are to re-grow a vibrant economy? For the BBC mindset, obviously it is now unimaginable.
The worst sign of Martine Croxall’s bias came at the very end when she said, “Mark Littlewood, you’ve said some very controversial things I’m sure for a lot of people”.
Good on him!!
Actually, there were two interviewees on the News Channel from “free market think tanks” yesterday to discuss the CBI chief’s criticisms. Eamonn Butler of the Adam Smith Institute was the other one.
These two voices from the Right were, however, ‘balanced’ – in true BBC fashion – by four voices from the Left –
John Denham, Labour MP
Chuka Umunna, Labour MP
Tim Page, senior policy officer TUC
Tony Greenwood, New Economic Foundation (merely described as a “think tank”, not as a “left-of-centre”, “green” or “anti-market” think tank).
The way think tanks are described is a fertile ground for monitoring bias; if only I had the time… Craig could you do a job on this one?
How did this country survive before paternity leave ?
It didn’t. It was a nasty, sexist place without enough “diversity” and run by effete toffs who exploited the working classes and shot things the rest of the time.
Since the average peasant/chimney-sweep/coal miner only had a life expectancy of about 22 (and had raised 6 or 7 successors by then, not counting the dozen or so that had died in infancy) there wasn’t a great deal of money in the country (apart from the toffs’ stonking great bank accounts) so we went round invading other (and better !) countries so that their peasants could fill up our national coffers whilst being racially abused, raped, murdered etc etc by the younger sons of the aforementioned toffs.
And nobody got paternity leave ‘cos with a dozen or so births per peasant they’d never have been able to do any work at all ever. Even the mothers used to drop out the latest sprog during the tea break at t’ mill so as not to interrupt productivity.
The End.
Signed: Yours sincerely,
Terry Jones.
The idea of paternity leave is just feminist guff to do away with the notion that a woman is incapacitated by pregnancy and taken out of the labour market leaving men the better option. It also seeks to destroy the notion that the mother, bearing the child, is the primary carer. O Brave New World. Meanwhile the developing world is overtaking us …
It is one of the more obvious examples of the denial of reality that afflicts current society. I wonder how long such denial can continue? Probably until we run out of money and resources and the new world that is coming forces us to change or perish.Modern liberalism is the luxury of the idle and the rich.
I am sure it would have driven my mum nuts if my dad had been hanging around the house for 8 months when I was a baby.
There is something unnatural about any man who would want to do that. It flies in the face of basic biology, leaving aside the economic cost to the Nation.
By the time lefties have wrought the destruction on our society their lunacy is causing they’ll turn to racism without the slightest hint of shame to recover our lost privilege.
Watch how the bBC anchorman questions a Pakistani member of parliament on her claims that Honour Killers in the country are protected by her fellow members of parliament. The way he goes about his task you’d think what she has to say is… Blasphemy
Investigating ‘honour killing’ in Pakistan
Police investigating the alleged ‘honour killing’ of a woman in Pakistan have charged four members of her family.
They believe Saimi Bibi was murdered by her father and three uncles after she ran away with a neighbour from her village. The case hit the headlines because the Prime Minister alleged she was electrocuted after a decision by a village council. The girl’s father has claimed that Saimi Bibi had killed herself by drinking poison.
George Alagiah spoke to Marvi Memon, from the opposition PML-Q party about ‘honour killing’ in the country
Alagaih’s surprise that people found guilty of honour killings in Pakistan are often not punished sums the BBC up. As indeed does his determination to get the conversation away from discussion of punishment, which Memon insists is the way to deal with the problem, and on to “education”. Much more in tune with the BBC mindset.
What planet is he from? How surprised can he be, really?
If Alagiah doesn’t know about it , he is stupid. If he does and tries to cover it up, he is a liar and a cheat. Either way, he is a third-rate journalist. Perfect for the third-rate BBC.
Here’s a Latina politician in the US the BBC will be censoring from its reporting:
New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez: We ‘are not under-taxed; the government has simply over-spent’
Yes, she’s a Republican. And female. And a minority. And invisible to the BBC.
Mark Mardell and Katty Kay have already shown us the BBC’s Narrative about the President’s ‘State of the Union’ address tonight. Katty, die-hard partisan advocate that she is, steams right through with a piece highlighting an Obamessiah supporter against an enemy…sorry…someone who doesn’t support Him.
What do voters want to hear from Barack Obama?
Notice the two photos: a black woman who is unemployed yet still supports Him, versus a white man who doesn’t. A subtle bit of race-baiting, but it’s there. The supporter gives the Democrat talking points: we must all work together, and we’ll fail if Republicans don’t work with Democrats.
That’s the exact same thing Mardell says, oddly enough. He even ups the ante by predicting that the President will still end up in a “street fight” in the days head. All because of nasty Republican enemies who simply refuse to work together with Democrats to save the country, right, Mark?
Naturally, we learn from Katty that the white guy – an independent small business owner – thinks the President is a Socialist. Did her producer call around to find someone willing to say that, turning down those who wouldn’t? Notice also how the sub-editor who put this text version together subtly tries to scuttle the man’s argument:
However, entrepreneur Bill Murphy is not convinced by the president’s business-friendly rhetoric, nor the administration’s newly named council on jobs and competitiveness, headed by General Electric chief executive Jeff Immelt.
“How can government innovate? It has to come from business,” he said, describing companies like his as the lifeblood of the US economy.
What business-friendly rhetoric was that? The BBC censored the fact that Immelt has instructed the employees of the TV networks GE owns to support the President and His agenda, nor that GE is in line to get government subsidies for green crap because of it, so the reader wouldn’t have any idea why the guy wouldn’t see Immelt’s joining the team as a positive development. So when he says that innovation must come from business, it appears to contradict what Katty claims about the President’s rhetoric and His jobs panel. Nicely done, BBC sub-editor.
‘Did her producer call around to find someone willing to say that, turning down those who wouldn’t? ‘
Who knows?
Well, maybe Dan Hannan, Peter Sisssons…
It’s not really ‘news’ is it?
It’s ‘unique’.
One other thing about the President’s SOTU address tonight that will send the Beeboids into apoplexy:
In addition to the usual rebuttal from the opposing Party, given this time by new Chairman of the House Budget Committe, Rep. Paul Ryan, Rep. Michell Bachmann is also going to give a Tea Party rebuttal. I wonder how the Beeboids doing the live coverage will handle it?
Close down ALL ‘BBC World Service’ NOW.
The UK Coalition government is making some small tentative steps to close down a few bits of this huge global operation, currently paid for by British taxpayers:
“BBC World Service to cut five language services”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-12277413
BBC ‘World Service’ puts out cultural and political propaganda paid for by British taxpayers. One particular costly element of such broadcasting which should be closed down forthwith is ‘BBC Arabic Service’, which includes the costly provision of its HQ at Broadcasting House, London, complete with prayer room, paid for by British taxpayers.
All BBC ‘World Service’ is scheduled to revert to control of domestic BBC in a couple of years. Of course, under such control, the role of the NUJ will be even greater.
Amusingly, the NUJ talks as though NUJ interests coincide with the national interests of the British people, but the interests of the two are diametrically opposed to each other.
A NUJ statement (from above propaganda ‘report) made without irony:
“The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) said it planned to hold a demonstration outside the World Service headquarters in central London on Wednesday.
“It has also written to the chairman of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs committee, Richard Ottaway, and the chairman of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, John Whittingdale, calling on them to review the plans.
“The NUJ said that if early reports were correct, the drastic cuts would ‘severely damage the national interest of the UK’.
“‘These ferocious cuts to a valued national service are ultimately the responsibility of the coalition government, whose policies are destroying quality public services in the UK,’ general secretary Jeremy Dear said.”
Of course, the BBC-NUJ branch routinely gives such large areas of uncontested propaganda to its NUJ chums who talk airily about how the BBC-NUJ interests are synomymous with ‘the British national interest’, so the NUJ lobbies for its BBC Arabic Serivce members at Broadcasting House, and supports the Turkish flotilla campaign against Israel. This not ‘the British national interest, BBC-NUJ.
CLOSE DOWN ALL BBC WORLD SERVICE NOW, inc ARABIC SERVICE.
No transfer of funding of it the British licencepayers.
They are axeing Serbia, Macedonia, Albania, english in the Caribbean and portuguese in Africa. not obvious how they arrived at this decision.
Why can’t Newsnight show us the front pages of the newspapers? It’s idiotic to pretend they are going to, only for Esssssler to show us one or two and then sit there shuffling the rest of them on the desk for his eyes only while reading out the headlines to us. We don’t get to see them. How incompetent is that? Pathetic. This is TV, not radio, you numpty. How hard is it for a television programme to show the papers? What a dope.
I fear that if they showed them on Newsnight people could see how much the stories selected for the next morning’s Today programme would differ from the flavour of the actual headlines.
I always check the Sky News site – they always show 11 or 12 front pages.
Good point re the selection!
I always look at the front pages on the Sky site too but tonight I switched on the TV to catch the tail end of Newsnight and I was infuriated at the shuffling and reading out instead of showing them.
They used to show the front pages but have stopped doing so, for no good reason. On a possibly related point, I counted up the mentions for each newspaper on Newsnight‘s paper review for seven weeks early last year. The results:
1. The Guardian – 31 mentions
2. The Daily Telegraph – 24 mentions
3. The Independent and Financial Times – 22 mentions each
4. The Times – 13 mentions
5. The Daily Mail – 12 mentions
6. The Sun – 3 mentions
7. The Daily Express – 2 mentions
8. The Daily Star – 1 mention
And, at the end of those 7 weeks, the answer to the question ‘Which is the newspaper Newsnight most often begins its front pages review with?’ resulted in:
1. The Guardian – 12 first mentions
2. The Independent and The Times and The Financial Times – 5 first mentions each
3. The Daily Telegraph – 4 first mentions
I’d have expected The Times to be higher than No. 4 in the league table of mentions. Perhaps there is a reason for its poor showing relative to the others, including The Daily Telegraph. Heh. How did the latter come to enjoy such favour? /rhetorical
Because we would then see the bias involved in deciding what headlines to mention…
Typical BBC anti-Israel bias in the latest piece on the “leaked” negotiation documents.
They cherry-picked three alleged concessions the Palestinians offered but Israel turned down, to give the impression that Fatah offered Israel practically the entire farm, but nasty old Israel said no. But that’s not even the bias I’m talking about. It was in the way the BBC News Online sub-editor described one of the concessions:
an international committee to take over Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, which houses the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque – Islam’s third holiest site
The BBC makes sure to point out just how important the site is to Mohammedans, but does not mention that it’s Judaism’s only holy site. Ever. As always, the BBC bends over backwards to accomodate Islam but makes no effort the other way.
I’m not even going to get into how this report backs up my assertion that the BBC is spinning these documents as making Israel look bad more than anyting else.
and the BBC never makes it clear that the Israelis give freedom of worship to Muslims at the site – but no Jew can worship in the site of the Biblical Temple – the nearest they can worship is at the Wailing Wall ?
That’s the give-and-take of the Arabs and Islam – others give, they take
It would never occur to a Beeboid that the “Temple Mount” would be anything other than a Mohammedan holy site first and a Jewish holy site a far distant second. Even the departed useful Jews (Tim Franks and Katya Adler) reported from this perspective. That’s why they were allowed in.
So – according to Beeboid logic – it’s only natural to give preeminence to the Mohammedan structure in place. But the Israelis are still nasty old racists who destroy Arab dreams at the drop of a hat.
The Temple Mount is indeed ‘Islam’s third holiest site’ as the BBC love to remind us. It is also Judaism’s holiest site but the BBC prefer to keep that quiet. Whilst Jordan occupied Jerusalem between 1948 and 1967 Israelis were no allowed into the Jewish holy sites, Jews were restricted and Jewish religious sites were treated with a lack of respect and in at least one case as an army latrine. By way of contrast Israel has not restricted access for Muslims to the Dome of the Rock & the Al-Aqsa Mosque despite them being partly built on top of the site of ‘the Temple’; what would be the holiest site in Judaism had it not been destroyed. Indeed the Western (‘Wailing’) Wall is all that remains of the Second Temple.
It is interesting that Israel, the only Jewish state and one often derided as an ‘apartheid state’, has left Islamic holy sites even those that sit on top of Jewish ones alone. Of the Islamic states that surround Israel, how many have done the same for their sites of Jewish religious or historical importance?
http://notasheepmaybeagoat.blogspot.com/2011/01/bbc-palestinians-and-israel.html
I watched Charlie Brookers “How TV Ruined Your Life” on BBC2 last night. The basis of the show was that TV makes your frightened of things that have very little chance of happening. This was illustrated with clips from a few BBC shows (Crimewatch , 999) but mostly US shows made unsurprisingly by Fox. I was waiting of a section on how TV scares people with stories of environmental doom but oddly Charlie never covered that – I wonder why ?
Incidentally one programme that came in for extended criticism was National Geographics Air Crash Investigation which was described as porn and illustrated with a couple of out of context clips shown in a loop. A bit rich really since a single episode of that show contains more information on science and engineering than an entire series of Horizon.
What the hell is he on about? I have spent many hours in aircraft accident research [mainly ww2 ] and I know the program had it’s faults mainly with the drama reconstructions [something the beeb loves to do also Charlie!] are a bit off putting and yes C4’s ‘Black box’ was better but as the BBC don’t do science just ecowhack it’s the best I’m going to get!, also Brooker should be told it’s rank hypocrisy after the BBC’s ‘end day’ series to call out others for disaster porn !
Yes, the drama bits of the shows are often not very accurate but are there to simply link the technical parts.
‘…it’s rank hypocrisy after the BBC’s ‘end day’ series to call out others..’
Just back after a jaunt and being subjected to the daily irony failure that is the Jeremy Vine ‘Ratings Are All We Want (& Your Views)’ Show.
They excelled themselves on this one, raising double standards in other media, using the ‘mention Rupert Murdoch’ card all over the show for bonus points… ‘Richard Murdoch’s Sun and, did we mention, Richard Musrdochs’ SKY…’
In the blue rinse corner and, amazingly for voices Aunty approves of, in the cosy studio with our Jezza, Mano a Saddo, some ‘comedienne’ I had never heard of, setting back the cause of sensible feminism to prior to the Greer Years.
And in the red (that’s for ‘angry’, but Mr. Black and his glee club may soon be arguing it’s a calming colour) corner we had some frothing ‘man of the people’, it appeared calling in from the bar phone of a lap-dancing club… for ‘balance’.
It was funny mind, if in a train wreck way, especially for the tattered remnants of the BBC’s po, and two-faced ‘who, us?’ leaping on others for what they do daily, and worse.
Balls,Balls everywhere over the BBC, Sian Williams was wet with excitement with the prospect of Balls appearing on Breaklfast after 8 ‘o clock.
Like the Spoonerism!
Oh does that mean he will be whitling away in Flanders feilds later ?
Last night Ed Balls claimed that our current inflation had been cuased by the fall in sterling over the past year. Of course Gavin Esler nodded and moved on and none of the BBC so-called economics experts pointed out that it only fell by 0.005% in 2010 and that falls in the currency according to the Bank of England take several years to have an impact.
So more unadjusted Balls from the BBC…
Yes it’s wall to wall Balls on BBC radio and TV. You would think that labour had won the election.
Aren’t polar bears clever?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/8280904/Polar-bear-tracked-during-nine-day-swim.html
But of course it’s still bad news.
The BBC’s live web coverage of the State Of The Union address was hosted by blog favourite Katie Connolly.
We get such lines from Katie herself as ” After the shooting of Congresswoman Gabby Giffords in Tucson, which some commentators linked to an increase in rancorous partisanship…”. Which commentators, Katie? Pro-Democrat, left-wing ones maybe? And there’s the customary gush for Michelle: “Michelle Obama enters the chamber, looking resplendent in a silvery grey dress”. Joe “You lie!” Wilson is, inevitably, mentioned. On the official Republican response from Paul Ryan, Katie says “Mr Ryan, who is well known for controversial proposals like replacing Medicare with a voucher system…” Another BBC use of “controversial”, odd in context because Obama’s health care reforms have been extremely “controversial”!
“We will also be rounding up the best reaction from around the web – including from Facebook and Twitter”, says Katie at the start. In fact, only Twitter was rounded up. There are tweets from ordinary Obama supporters, Obama’s twitter site, liberal commentators, a Democrat senator, and various MSM reporters. No-one from the Republican/conservative side, so far as I can see. That’s even worse than the usual policy of quoting a whole stream of Journalistas, interspersed with a comment from Erik Erickson (for balance!) Not a criticism of Obama from any of them.
The only negative comment in these tweets was about ‘Tea Party favourite’ Michelle Bachmann. Given the BBC’s distaste for conservative female American politicians, you won’t be surprised (and David P knew this was coming!) that her speech in response to the SOTU was given very short shrift:
2255: Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann is giving a unofficial Republican response now. She is speaking on behalf of the Tea Party movement.
2257: Ms Bachmann says that the Tea Party is a “history-making” movement which is just starting to “undo the damage” done over the last few years. She criticizes cap-and-trade and health insurance reform.
And that’s it!
The only comment on her speech is this negative tweet:
2301: @pwire tweets: Republicans have to be angry that Bachmann distracted from the “official” response.
And her speech is trailed with this typical piece of biased Katie Connolly reporting:
2055: Tonight, for the first time, the Tea Party will have an official response. It will be delivered by a fiery conservative favourite, Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachmann from Minnesota. Ms Bachmann has attracted criticism in recent days for a speech she gave last week where she appeared to have her facts wrong about slavery and racism in America. (The link she gives to back this up doesn’t work, so we don’t know who was doing the criticising. Pro-Democrat left-wingers, would be my guess).
Talking of “getting her facts wrong”, spot Katie’s own clanger here:
2012: More SOTU facts: President Harry Truman in 1940 gave the longest SOTU in history.
I’d better stop before this becomes the longest comment in B-BBC history!
Anything Beeboids disagree with is “controversial”.
Agreed, the BBC usually create the ‘fuss’ to start with, then refer to it anonymously afterwards in their own reports!!!
In the parallel universe occupied by Beeboids, Lefties are never “fiery” or “firebrands “.
…or even “controversial”. Goodness me, how could one ever say that Toynbee or Monbiot, the whole Journalista mob – or other leftie favourites of the BBC were “controversial”.
Nope your right John they will never be “controversial” they are now the establishment lol and are just playing at being rebels ! god it must kill them to know the world has stopped listening !!
Nice one, Craig.
Take home message from this:
http://tinyurl.com/6zyb5fo
1600 people to run a website????