Regular readers of this blog will know that David Preiser, DB and myself (in the comments) have had our purely metaphorical cross hairs trained on Katie Connolly – the lead reporter at BBC Online’s Washington bureau – for quite some time now.
She was headhunted from Newsweek in the Spring of 2010 to head a new team that (we discovered) also included an enthusiastic Obama 2008 campaigner called Matt Danzico (remember ‘Llamas Heart Obama’?). We noticed that the new online unit began pumping out a lot of heavily-biased reports, generally favouring Democrat positions and undermining Republican ones. Katie Connolly was responsible for quite a few of those articles.
The unit seems to have gone oddly quiet in recent weeks and it now transpires that Katie Connolly has a new job. According to her updated strap line on Twitter she is now a Senior Project Director at the Benenson Strategy Group. They are usually described as Democratic Party pollsters but also help devise campaign strategies for a large number of Democrat politicians and trades unions, playing a major role in the 2008 Obama Campaign and even helping Gordon Brown during the 2010 UK general election. (That went well, didn’t it?) .
So a BBC reporter we’ve long suspected of being biased towards the Democrats leaves to join a firm of Democrat Party strategists.
Who’d have thunk it?
A question BBC-Democrat Marr could have asked Obamessiah on show to go out tomorrow:
‘Mr President, there are several people including Fox News’ Glenn Beck who say that you returned the gift of the bust of Winston Churchill to Britain in deference to your Mau Mau supporting Kenyan father.
‘Is it true that you would have accepted a bust of Kenya’s ex-Mau Mau leader, Jomo Kenyatta instead?’
“Glenn Beck- The Reason Behind Obama’s Disdain For Great Britain”
( 7 min video).
Supplementary; an insight into ideology of Obama-BBC Democrats:
“Glenn Beck : Explains Obama Part 2”
(7 min video).
So she’s doing the same job as before, just for a different organization.
So Tea Party-inspired Republican Herman Cain is announcing his candidature for the 2012 presidential election today. Wonder how the BBC will report this.
So far (as a search of their website reveals) they’ve been very coy about mentioning him at all, even censoring him out of one story, as shown here. To quote David P., “Why censor the news about Mr. Cain, BBC? Is it ’cause he is black?”
I don’t undrstand; Herman Cain is Black and a Tea Party linked Republican, how can this be when the BBC keep telling us that the Tea Party are racists?
Yep, they censored news of Col. Alan West when he was running for Congress in Florida as well. A News Online sub-editor slipped his name into one article only a couple days before the election. West won, of course, with Tea Party backing. As he wasn’t Sarah Palin or a white Christian running against a sainted Democrat, they felt it wasn’t important for that rapport with the US the BBC wants to create for you.
Nothing short of a McCarthyist purge can salvage the BBC.
And we’ve got Fat Pang.
We see now in the UK a whole generation of journalists and newsreaders who’s compass points only Left. Not just at the BBC – they are everywhere. It’s a hive-mind, coming from the Guardian/Indy world view and somewhere across the water, the same left-pointing media NYT/ WT/ HufPo.
Socialism an Intellectually Transmitted Disease. It quite resistant to treatment by common sense or BBC Guidelines on impartiality. The only cure is a full frontal lobotomy and start again.
The ubiquity of the liberal-left viewpoint is one of my biggest gripes. I long ago stopped watching BBC news (and Ch4, come to that), and now get online for more accurate reportage. I also check the Guardian and Independent whenever I’m in a perverse mood.
But it’s not just the MSM. The boneheaded wrongness of the lefty view infests, and impacts negatively, on every area of public life: the arts, education, NHS, criminal justice system, and international policy.
This hydra needs decapitating with extreme prejudice, but we’ll wait in vain for the invertebrates in government to load up the weapons.
Great sleuthing yet again Craig! I wonder if Obama will appoint Mardell as his UK Ambassador? Oops! Sorry, he already is!
A thought on a related note: which came first – Matt Frei’s decision to leave the BBC or the BBC’s decision to give the Obama interview to Andrew Marr?
Frei interviewed the last US president and it would have not been unreasonable of him to expect first dibs on Obama – unless, of course, he’d already told the BBC he was going to C4. No way they could give a soon-to-be rival the kudos of such a big gig. However, is it possible that things worked the other way round and Marr demanded the Obama interview, proving to be the final straw for an unhappy Frei?
Then again, if Frei had already told his bosses he was going wouldn’t Katty Kay, his replacement, be the obvious choice of interviewer given the BBC’s attempts to raise its profile in the American market? Maybe they didn’t want any hassle over her close ties to the current White House press secretary (as revealed on a certain blog which monitors bias at the BBC).
And where was Mark Mardell in all these calculations? (I’m joking, of course.)
Rewarding Marr with the Obama interview so soon after all the ridicule he brought on himself and the BBC over his super injunction must have put a few journalists noses out of joint at the Corporation.
Perhaps it all came down to aesthetics – BBC bosses simply wanted the visual symmetry of two guys with jug ears.
They’re “simulcasting” the Obama/Marr interview – Broadcasting House on R4 is running it at the same time. i guees that makes it, like, a really big deal or something.
Incidentally, that report comes from the BBC’s in-house magazine Ariel. How long has it been available online? Love the letters page:
At a time when many of us are feeling ever so slightly nervous about 1) our jobs at the BBC and 2) the planet, I was quite shocked on a recent visit to BBC Scotland in Glasgow to see how many lights were left on at night.
The second letter on Ariel (see above link) expresses anger towards BBC pension fund trustees over their concern for licence fee payers:
“Surely the rules say that their duty is to look after the best interests of the scheme members at all times, not those of the licence fee payers.”
What do we want? More money for our pensions. When do we want it? Now, from the licence fee.
@ Ariel
Yes, it’s like town twinning, a shared foible : BBC Bush House and BBC Glasgow – Lights on but no one at home.
Ooh, The Planet, no less! Yes, the planet must be in jeopardy, all because of the Beeboid Corporation…delicious. 😀
Never mind the planet: what about the waste of our money, Beeboids? They have money to burn, we know, and it’s ours. What a thought.
So we paid some underling Beeboids airfare to Scotland. They are shocked McBeeb leaves the lights on. Hope they wear the right wristbands too. I expect they wrote to Ariel in company time. Its sooo Public Sector.
Justin Webb got to interview the President some time ago, before ol’ Justin ascended to the Today chair. I suspect Frei Boy quit the BBC because they killed his sandbox at BBC America.
The Webb Monster when he was the North America Editor got the first interview with The One. Mardell is his successor but I suppose Marr has got it so that they can promote and showcase The One in advance of his arrival, and the Marr prog at the same time. Oh look at this big coup we’ve pulled off.
Coo ee…!
Oh, and as regards Frei Boy, well just look who popped up the other day to crow about their newest acquisition. Why, it’s none other than the former controller of BBC1 and now chief creative officer of C 4, one Jay Hunt! So how long has that a-wooing been going on? Maybe long before this Obamessiah lark came up. I doubt it has anything to do with that.