Monthly Archives: June 2011

BBC: A Woman’s Greatest Achievement Is Marrying A Powerful Man

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I am disgusted by the way the BBC is hyping Michelle Obama’s supposed “message” that one can achieve great things if one is “ambitious and works hard”. Huw Edwards is holding a love-fest over her visit to some non-white school in London (BBC race-obsessed as always) and some speech she just did about preventing AIDS and inspiring women in Soweto. But it’s not the message in the abstract that’s the problem: it’s the way the BBC celebrates having a powerful husband as some kind of achievement to which women should aspire.

Edwards asks what the girls learned, and they gushed that they’ll take “her message” about achievement with them for the rest of their lives. Did they do this much for Laura Bush? Of course not, as she didn’t marry the right man.

It disgusts me that marrying a powerful man is considered a substantial achievement. This is sexism of the highest order. It actually belittles the real achievements of women. Yet cos she (and He) is black, the BBC can’t stick their collective tongues far enough up her backside.

“She’s married to America’s first black President, so that’s a very powerful statement as well,” says Huw.

Quite.

Laud her work for this charity or that cause, fine. But don’t tell me marrying someone and going along on his ride to power is a massive achievement that should inspire a generation of young girls. I guess the advancement of women means something different to the otherwise progressive BBC. All their usual values go out the window when it comes to Obamessiah worship.

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BBC Admits Editorial Breach Over McWhirter (Eventually)

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From the Telegraph: “BBC apology over suggestion that Norris McWhirter was a fascist” “David Baddiel and Alan Davies discussion about Norris McWhirter on Radio Five Live was in breach of the BBC’s editorial guidelines.”

Cranmer points out that when he and others complained to the BBC about the comments they were informed: “The Alan Davies Show is a live, light hearted, entertainment programme and in this context we are satisfied that no broadcasting guidelines were broken.” One can just imagine the conversation at the BBC: “Bunch of f***ing right-wingers – fob ’em off with any old crap.”

It was only following the intervention of MPs that the BBC looked into the matter further and admitted its guidelines had indeed been breached. Cranmer asks: “Will the BBC now be apologising to those of us whose complaints they summarily dismissed out of hand?” Don’t hold your breath, Your Grace.

(H/t George R)

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Mangold on Panorama

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Not sure if this was mentioned in the comments, but ex-Panorama journalist Tom Mangold unloaded on his former employer in Sunday’s Independent:

Primark’s objections were investigated by the BBC’s internal Editorial Complaints Unit (ECU); its admirable report, completed last summer, was, at the request of Primark, never published – because the retailer thought it would jeopardise its appeal to the BBC Trust. Remarkably, senior BBC managers used that decision to put an aggressive public relations operation into action: someone authorised the press office to brief several newspapers that Panorama had been exonerated, when, in fact, the report had done nothing of the sort. In fact, the ECU, set up after the Hutton inquiry, specifically highlighted the suspicious nature of the footage in question.

It is only now, three years after the programme was broadcast, that the BBC Trust has forced Panorama to admit the error of its ways. In the meantime, the BBC’s arrogant refusal to admit it was wrong has resulted in an editorial catastrophe not only for Panorama, the flagship, but for all the corporation’s journalism.

And this from Tim Black on the self-righteous moralising behind the Panorama programme is good too:

That ethical consumerism is almost solely concerned with using the lives of the world’s impoverished to chastise those crowding the aisles of Tesco or Primark was clear from a particular segment in On the Rack. There, Panorama reporter Tom Heap confronted shoppers across Britain with the now infamous child-labour footage. This, as Daniel Ben-Ami remarked at the time on spiked, was ‘the contemporary equivalent of forcing someone to confess a sin’. It was a moment that captured the deeply elitist, profoundly snobbish core of ethical consumption. That is, it’s all about elevating those who shop ethically above those who shop on a budget: the masses can have their cheap chic, runs the barely concealed logic, they can even look good – but we are better than them.

So sure of their superiority, in fact, that they think it’s OK to fake a crucial scene and then bullshit the papers about it later.

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The BBC Hits Obama Hard – Only Joking….

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Remember how the BBC regularly hit us hard every day with stories about the arrogance and inefficiency of the Bush presidency? So hard, in fact, that you would have thought we had become the 51st (or, according to Obama, the 58th) state of the union. Also how any mistake made by an officer of the administration was the President’s responsibility?

How times change.

Not much from the Beeb about the Gunrunner scandal involving the ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives) allowing Mexican drug cartel operatives to buy firearms from US gunshops, ostensibly to track smuggling routes.

Some terribly nasty people say that DoJ Eric Holder, who supervises the ATF was really looking for some juicy soundbites to boost the Obama administration ambition of imposing stricter gun controls in the US.

Dear me – how unchivalrous.

Naturally Holder and Obama knew nothing about Gunrunner – just as, apparently, the BBC knows nothing about Holder and the Black Panthers voter intimidation incident in the 2008 election.

Then there are those Congressional concerns about the legality of America’s involvement in Libya’s civil war. Not much at all apart from this classic from the highly professional and even handed Mark Mardell, highlighted by David Preiser recently at bBBC.

However the US media has been fairly slow to unleash much shoe-leather on both these stories, until recently – and it has been said that the BBC takes all its US cues from the New York Times and Washington Post.

So, whatever the reason we all know that it can’t be because the Beeb is still in the tank for Obama……that can’t possibly be the case…can it?

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MORE LAME BBC U.S. COVERAGE

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Check out this BBC article about the Obama impersonator whose act at the Republican Leadership Conference was cut short. It’s basically an excuse for an unnamed anti-Republican BBC hack (ie any BBC journalist covering US affairs) to reproduce some jokes at the expense of the leadership contenders, but it’s also noteworthy for this piece of anti-Tea Party propaganda:

The ultra-conservative Tea Party wing of the Republican Party had questioned the legitimacy of Mr Obama’s presidency, claiming he had been born outside the US and was thus ineligible to hold the highest office in the land, as mandated under the constitution.

The, ahem, “ultra-conservative” Tea Party (Wiki offers the somewhat less loaded “conservative and libertarian“) is not a birther movement. Linking the two is a ploy by opponents (eg lame comedians, lefty hacks) to discredit the Tea Party – which is of course why the anonymous lazy biased idiot who wrote the piece included it. There are undoubtedly some birthers who would also call themselves Tea Party supporters but Obama’s citizenship is a fringe issue and has never been central to the small government movement. It’s worth remembering that the midwife of birtherism was the contest for the Democrat nomination between Barack and Hillary, but you won’t find a BBC article which makes sweeping birther generalisations about Clinton supporters. That’s because they’re Democrats – the good-guy Americans – and BBC journalists are only interested in making the American Right [cue scary music] look bad.

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Mark Mardell and Andrew North Caught Spinning For The White House

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Just the other day, both Mark Mardell and Andrew North defended the President’s position that the current US involvement in the war against Libya is legal and He doesn’t need Congress’s permission to continue. Mardell’s contention was that it was just a political attack by His enemies, those nasty Republicans, looking for a cheap attack line. To further push the Narrative that there is no legal problem and it’s just a partisan talking point, Mardell suggested that Speaker Boehner was merely reacting to the Republican candidates bringing it up in the recent debate. In other words, the BBC’s explanation is: Republican monkey see, Republican monkey do. Nothing to see here, move along.

I commented on Mardell’s spin in a previous open thread here, and Craig pointed out in a reply that North took the same Narrative in another report.

Except as it turns out, there really is a legal issue. Both the Pentagon General Counsel and the State Justice Dept.’s (h/t John Anderson) legal adviser told the President that we’re in too deep, and that the situation meets the legal definition of “hostilities”. And The Obamessiah, He who was supposed to end Bush’s illegal wars and redeem the US, blew them off. He says He doesn’t need anyone’s permission to continue bombing the crap out of any Muslim He chooses. The silence from the anti-war crowd is deafening, as is the silence from the BBC asking why that is. But I digress.

It’s so bad that, not only has the New York Times reported it, but reality has once again forced the BBC to report it as well, Read this article and ask yourselves if it doesn’t mean that Mardell and North were lying. They’ve been caught disseminating White House talking points.

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LEAVE OF ABSENCE!

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Just to say that I will be away on holidays for the next week and unlikely to blog! Hope my fellow writers can keep the momentum going by providing you with further red meat on the topic of BBC bias and I will talk to you again in around 8 days time. Hope to return refreshed and ready for the fray!

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THEY LOVE DEATH LIKE WE LOVE LIFE

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I’m not talking Jihadists but rather the BBC. Interesting interview here with Baroness Finlay of Llandaff. Along with some other peers, she has stated in a letter to The Times that the BBC is “running an orchestrated campaign” to change the law on euthanasia. Justin Webb sounds decidedly hostile to the contention put forward by the Baroness and after contradicting her position himself, he then plays back comments from another BBC spokesperson on the subject. The truth of the matter is that the BBC is very much on-board with the assisted suicide narrative and it gets annoyed when those such as Baroness Finlay and her colleagues simply point out their bias!

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