Pleased to see that Biased BBC gets a mention here in the always excellent Newsbusters with regard to the behaviour of a Question Time audience on the topic of Bin Laden’s exit of planet Earth;
By total contrast, when Douglas Murray, the associate director of the Henry Jackson Society, told the BBC’s flagship program Question Time last Thursday that he felt “elated” at the news, he was booed, heckled, and almost shouted down. Another panelist, the writer Yasmin Alibhai Brown, was applauded when she said she was “depressed” by the killing, as it “demeans a democracy and a president who has shown himself to be the Ugly American. He’s degraded American democracy, which had already degraded itself with torture and rendition.” The former Liberal Party leader Paddy Ashdown was then cheered when he said: “I cannot rejoice on the killing of any man. I belong to a country that is founded on the principle of exercise of due process of law,” as though the United States was founded on some other idea.
In a sense, this edition of Question Time is the perfect book mark to the notorious episode broadcast a few days after 9/11 when the US Ambassador was jeered by the BBC audience and almost reduced to tears. Ten years on, the BBC audience applauds those “depressed” by the death of the 9/11 mastermind and attacks those who take comfort in his death.
would the audience reaction represent the majority view in this country?If not, then it might suggest that this is a specially chosen audience of “left” thinking people.
Have you ever tried filling in an ‘application form’ for this awful excuse for a programme?
Absolute joke!
Let me guess: it will ask if you are black’n’asian. (And possibly also if you are a follower of Mohamed.)
Edward,
Heaven forbid, what a terrible thought !
It was ever thus…
When Shirley Williams on QT deplored the awarding of a knighthood to Salman Rushdie (“it offends Moslems”) she was loudly applauded by the audience. Christopher Hitchens, in response, attacked Williams for, among other things, moral cowardice. He received (as Hichens noted at the time) a sullen reproachful response from that audience. For all I know it’s the same audience: certainly the criteria of those at the BBC who select the audience are the same.
While there were indeed a majority in the audience who heckled and hissed at Douglas Murray, I thought he also had a fair bit of support from the QT audience. That episode wasn’t even in the same league as the post 9/11 episode.
With respect, a bookmark is not a mirror. I thought it a very poignant and apt turn of phrase. Personally, I have found the best way to bookmark 9/11 with the death of bin Laden is to slip on Team America – F*** Yeah!
This week’s Question Time as usual was a disgrace. From Sheffield. With the audience baiting and baying for blood from the Conservative and LD members of the panel – with help from the esteemed Chairman. I don’t remember when Labour were in power the Government been held to account in the same way (it is the new justification for biased audiences). In fact I remember the bias being pretty much as it is now.
The bias is always anti-Conservative and pro-Labour, anti-USA and pro-radicals, anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian. as for David Dimbleby, this explain much – http://notasheepmaybeagoat.blogspot.com/2009/07/bbclabour-relationship-in-one-video.html
I remember arguing in the early 90s with a left-thinking colleague, that the BBC was totally biased against the then Conservative Government. He replied that they weren’t biased, just holding the government to account and would have been the same whichever party was in power. I ponted out to him that they were not the same under the previous Labour disaster of Wlison/Callaghan – but he didn’t believe me.
Of course, by the time Labour came back I was no longer working with him so couldn’t remind him and point out how slavishly supine the BBC had become to the new government and how they now attacked, relentlessly, the opposition.
Now of course they are “holding the government to account” once more. Dimbleby was always one of the worst and most biased of the Beeboids. And the way they select the QT audience is breathtaking, with the certain arrogance that they know they will not be held to account for it.
Audience selection and programme production values is one thing, but personally, I have always found David Dimbleby an impeccable example of what the BBC is supposed to be.
An extension an voice of the Labour Party you mean ?
Hippie,
I assume you are being sarcastic ???
No.
Hippie,
Oh dear !
Does anyone have the infamous 9/11 Question Time (tape or digital)? I’ve been trying to get it for years, but the Beeb are obviously reluctant.
Would like the News Quiz form the same week too. The one with Jeremy Hardy’s vile comments.
FOI it?
Oh yes, silly me. Despite suckling at the public teat the BBC is a ‘commercial organisation’ and isn’t subject to the FOI.
Time to privatise and make it a proper ‘commercial organisation’.
I had the misfortune to catch the first few minutes of the News Quiz last Friday to hear Jeremy Hardy opine: “We’re all supposed to be rejoicing in the death of Osama bin Laden, but every man’s death diminishes me because I’m involved in mankind.”
I loathe the supercilious prick anyway, but it galls that my licence fee pays for this sanctimonious knob-end.
Damn him for quoting John Donne! Why, the very idea!
Damn, indeed; you know what:
“The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
An evil soul producing holy witness
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,
A goodly apple rotten at the heart:
O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!”
Merchant of Venice
Well, we’re obviously going to disagree as to who would be a “devil” in such circumstances. Personally, I think that a rabidly paranoid delusional conspiracy theorist who spends their entire time hiding behind a pseudonym ripped from Viz Magazine on an Internet forum would be a prime candidate, but I daresay you’d have your own reasons for disagreeing with that hypothesis…
That would be the one citing scripture to appear holy, geddit?
And you’re wrong on the second count too. It was a little joke that I had with someone during a discussion here), a play on words, or rather, a word that is a favourite of the Beeboids. I’m sure you’ve heard it often: militant. Hence Millie Tant. Geddit? 😀
PS: I am awfully flattered that you think so well of me. :*
Scott is so busy wanking off over photos of izlamofascist terrorists during the week he only pops up(so to speak) at weekends to devastate us with his incisive wit (or is that half of it?) just before he heads off to the gay bar
for bBC research purposes of course
Halfwit! 😀
I think he secretly likes us. Can’t keep away. All those compliments he pays us. 😉
I hardly think John Donne’s poetry counts as scripture, myself. But hey, when someone at Biased BBC is intent on moving goalposts,who knows where they’re going to end up?
No, duck, although he was a divine who did write holy sonnets, come to think of it, but you can have a devil invoking the noble sentiments of scripture to make himself out to be somewhat noble himself, see?
Ermm, hallo Dez/Scott! 😀
Scott, why do the left support gay hating Islam fascists? Shouldn’t you by trying to move the world to your progressive agenda.
Supporting alibaba Brown and her defence of mass murderers is a bit daft.
How long do you think bin bag would have let you survive in his caliphate?
How come qi’s luvvy arseholes can talk about pissing and dancing on thatchers grave and yet when the yanks off a murderous bastard they should just nod and move on?
So many stupid assumptions in one paragraph. Are you sure you and hippiepooter aren’t one and the same? There’s certainly a common lack of intelligence going on…
For the record, what you think of as “the left” is not a single amorphous collective that all thinks the same – particularly as Biased BBC commenters seem to think that “the left” means “anyone who’s not as batsh*t crazy as us”.
As for your other nonsense, it’s so stupid it doesn’t even deserve entertaining with a response.
‘doesn’t even deserve entertaining with a response.’
One lives in hope.
Congrats on the Tourettes-style repeating of the word ‘stupid’, which really frames the argument well. Perhaps in being parroted so much, it’s a word heard a lot?
Animal,
Funny, I never thought of that vermin Hardy as a member of the human race.
Have been looking for that episode of Question Time on the net today. There is only a carefully edited snippet on the BBC website. So BBC censorship must be in full control.
From what I remember the audience was filled with women in burkas, at the time everyone I knew was saying that they did not know their own country anymore.
I have the full edition of the post 911 Question Time. It is horrendous. No wonder the BBC are not keen for anyone to see it.
Can you upload it to youtube? Be educational to see it.
Will see what I can do, am not too good at youtube tho…if someone can help please pm me
I’ve never tried to upload to youtube but I imagine it’s not too hard. I’ll try to get someone to come back to you on it. If it can be done it will be good news for a great number of people.
I recommend using EyeTube instead. The BBC can get YouTube to remove it (which they already have done, since it used to be up there), but the All Seeing Eye will stand up to them.
Youtube has a far bigger audience, though.
EyeTube is not supposed to be a rival or even have an audience at all. The point of it is that you can embed a video on here from there which might have been taken down if it was put on YouTube.
So all readers of B-BBC, for example, could watch it here not even knowing what the source site was called. But B-BBC could embed it knowing that it wouldn’t randomly disappear.
People who want to keep a vid safe from censorship can upload it there and know that it won’t be taken down.
Can’t watch any videos on EyeTube. Buffers and then fails.
I guess middle class socialist, Jeremy Hardy, learnt his poetry when he was at school at Farnham College. The working class children, who the likes of Hardy condemn to sink Comprehensive schools, don’t have his priviledged upbringing and education.
You would almost think Socialists are hypocrites.
If techy stars are on the case, if they could also snippet the bit from HIGNFY where Mr. Pickles corrects Mr. Not very nice and Dim on a total factual cock-up, and who far from apologising waffles defensively, that would be nice.
Good on you Sue for getting our message across to Newsbusters, one of America’s most popular political blogs (and popular with me too).
Yes; invariably BBC-NUJ audiences are composed of people who largely support its own political agenda.
BBC-NUJ has refined cherry-picking its audiences on e.g. ‘QT’ down to a political fine art. Weekly analysis of ‘boos and applause’ easily confirms this weekly.