Monthly Archives: July 2011

WORDS

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The choice of words used by the BBC in the heading is instructive; “Murdoch defends hacking handling”. Click through to the story and read about the audacity of Murdoch as he defends how his company has handled the charges leveled against it. None of this has any meaning to the BBC however since it has long since determined the guilt of all involved. Guity until proven innocent if one works for NewsCorp, as opposed to innocent until proven guilty if one is, for example, a Gitmo inmate. The bigger theme for the BBC is how this is “developing” in the USA with all those heavyweight politicians weighing in (Assorted Democrat loons + Peter “I heart Gerry Adams” King) to get a full investigation on Murdoch’s empire aka Smash Fox.

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U.S. Government Shut Down Blues – A Dishonest BBC Song, Part 2

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UPDATE: A stealth edit? The BBC article now includes MillerCoors’ statement that they filed the paperwork beforehand. They don’t tell quite the full story, but this more or less negates my claim. News Sniffer doesn’t have it yet, so I can’t prove anything as I didn’t take a screenshot.

In case there are any lingering doubts, here’s more proof of the BBC’s bias and dishonesty when it comes to reporting on the budget crisis in the US. They’ve put up a report about a problem caused by Minnesota’s shut down f the state government.

Minnesota shutdown puts MillerCoors beer sales in doubt

Beer giant MillerCoors may be forced to stop selling 39 popular beers in stores and bars in Minnesota because of the state’s ongoing government shutdown.

The company failed to renew their brand label registration before a budget dispute prompted a shutdown on 1 July.

This is in fact serious business. They’re going to have to start actually removing product from shells state-wide, which is a very, very costly undertaking on top of the revenue loss. Now, being fan of real ale and proper beer in general, I’m the last person to shed a tear over people being deprived of this cheap swill, and the possible boost in business for real craft brews, of which there are plenty in the region. But that’s beside the point. What I’m complaining about here is the reason the BBC reports for this happening:

State employees who process alcohol licence renewals were laid off when the government shut down, Minnesota official Doug Neville said.

Oh, did he, now? Since this is a US issue, my first instinct is not to believe what the BBC reports when it comes to obviously partisan politics. Neville could be merely protecting a Democrat government. So let’s see what the local paper has to say about it:

The company tried to renew in mid-June, but the process got delayed when they wrote a check for too much money. Green said they sent in a new check, which the state received on June 27, but nonetheless got a letter three days later saying their brand licenses had expired.

“We believe we’ve followed all applicable state laws on this,” Green said.

In other words, this is happening not because the state employees who process the paperwork were laid off due to a government shut down (caused by nasty old Republicans preventing saintly Democrats from saving the state, no doubt), but by general incompetence on both sides. The BBC is in no doubt whose fault it is, and they don’t want you to have any doubts either:

The government shutdown in Minnesota began over a budget impasse.

The state’s Democratic Governor, Mark Dayton, had called for spending cuts and tax increases, while the Republican-led legislature rejected higher taxes.

Well, at least they don’t call the Republicans “newly empowered” this time. Must look into getting that style guide updated. In any case, the BBC reports that Neville claimed that the paperwork wasn’t done because the employees were laid off, but clearly that’s not what happened. In fact, this looks an awful lot like the Minnesota state government deliberately obstructed the license renewal and is damaging businesses across the state to score political points.

What Neville really means is that the paperwork can’t be redone now (or since the day after MillerCoors got their expiration notice) because the employees are laid off. But that’s not why it got canceled in the first place. Except you don’t know that because the BBC didn’t give you the information you need.

Why did the BBC leave it out of context like this? Don’t they know what actually happened? Or do they know all too well, but censored the facts out in order to support their Narrative? The “More on this story” links at the bottom currently go to national sources, not local ones. Yes, I realize these change as they are updated on some schedule, but the only valid links should be local papers. Both the Time and CNN items actually tell the truth, so why can’t the BBC? It’s not good enough to lie in the report and only put a link to the truth at the bottom. Curiously one wire report has the Neville quote about the employees being laid off.

Once again the BBC reports on a US issue from the anti-Republican perspective, even allowing a little white lie in the process. And hey: if this is really down to sloppy churnalism necessitated by the 24/7 news cycle we demand from them, then what’s the point of it? Once again I say that the BBC can just shut down its entire newsgathering service on the US and simply replace them all with a news aggregator. You’d get more information that way, and less bias.

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BIASED BBC CALLING

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I would like to take this opportunity to invite any BBC staff who think we are unfair or plain wrong in our view of your employer to come along and express your opinions. You will receive a courteous and pleasant welcome from me. Biased BBC takes issue with much of the output the BBC produces and is unapologetic in flagging these concerns up. However we realise that there are many people who are passionate about the work they do for the BBC and this is a chance to engage with your fiercest critics in a civil manner. So, please feel free to comment here (I know more than a few of you do visit these pages) and help deepen the engagement.

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U.S. Government Shut Down Blues – A Dishonest BBC Song

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The BBC keeps reporting on the debt and budget talks between the President and the Republicans in the House of Representatives. The latest report covers the announcement by Moody’s that they’re going to review the US credit rating with an eye to downgrade it to a default risk.

My position is that the BBC has an ideological stance when it comes to government borrowing, spending, and debt. Stephanie Flanders has trumpeted the Keynesian solution on a number of occasions (just search her name on this blog and read the links to her pearls of wisdom), thinks the Greek bailout worked (yeah, I know, which one?) and at one point even told us that the US would never default.

With this in mind, let’s look at the BBC’s report on the Moody’s news. As everyone here knows, the problem is that the US is at an impasse regarding the debt ceiling. We either have to raise it, or do some serious cutting in spending right now. There are ideological opponents on each side, but there are also hard facts which are not debatable. The BBC says this about the President’s side of the argument:

He has said he is willing to countenance cuts to social safety-net programmes dear to Democrats, as long as there are tax rises for the rich.

Republicans have rejected the latter proposal, saying that would stifle investment and job growth.

This is false. In fact, it’s more than the class war stuff. As I posted the other day, the President said Himself that He wants to raise taxes on a lot more in 2013, which, you know, is what the whole budget deal is about. Yeah, the BBC censored that bit out of the speech video they showed you. So all you know is that Republicans are holding the country hostage over protecting the evil rich. But since it’s the White House Narrative, that’s what they’re going to report.

Now, about that debt ceiling:

When it came to the crunch in the past, Congress regularly voted to raise the debt ceiling, giving government access to the cash it needed.

How about some context, BBC? The current situation is unprecedented, and Congress never rubber-stamped (that’s implied by the BBC sub-editor’s choice of words) an increase when the country’s finances were in such dire straits. It’s completely dishonest to compare today with the past, and act as if the Republicans are somehow an anomaly and not the situation itself. But they do it anyway.

This year, however, newly empowered Republicans have demanded steep cuts in government spending in return for raising the limit.

“Newly empowered”, eh, BBC? I think we all know what that means: Evil Tea Party Influence. It’s funny, because the BBC and Obamessiah worshiper Mark Mardell initially claimed that the Tea Party hurt the Republicans in the mid-terms. But never mind that. I don’t need to remind anyone here what the Tea Party movement represents to the Beeboids. So back to BBC dishonesty.

Mr Obama has proposed a package of up to $4 trillion in budget deficit reduction over the next 10 years, but Republicans have rejected that and other proposals because it calls for raising taxes.

Again, false. I posted a few days ago about how this White House/BBC Narrative is also false. He’s not giving in on the entitlements at all. But the BBC doesn’t care, they just keep spinning for the leader of a foreign country. Notice also the appearance of “newly empowered Republicans” in a previous BBC propaganda piece report about the budget talks. I’d say this code for “Evil Tea Party Influence” has made its way into the BBC style guide, but it’s probably just the same Beeboid writing it. But still: Narrative? What Narrative, eh?

And then Keynes raises his ugly head again, in the form of Ben Bernanke.

In his testimony to Congress, Mr Bernanke said the Fed would renew stimulus efforts if the economy remained weak.

The Fed’s second quantitative easing programme (QE2) ended two weeks ago, and there has been much speculation about whether a QE3 programme is on the cards.

Now, to someone who is trying to follow reality and is not ideologically locked into policy, this might sound like the captain of the Titanic saying that he’s just going to cut another hole in the hull to help the water flow out the other side. At least the BBC didn’t censor news that people in the real world see it that way:

The dollar extended earlier losses against the euro following Mr Bernanke’s comments, with the euro rising more than a cent to $1.4088.

Now, if, as we heard before from the BBC, printing money and throwing it around increasing borrowing for more stimulus works, why would the dollar tank against a currency that’s the shakiest thing going when the Fed suggests more of it?

Analysts said that Mr Bernanke had only raised the possibility of a further stimulus, and was not saying that it was necessary.

Oh, right, it’s not really his fault, just stupid speculators over-reacting.

Alternatively, it could be because the previous “stimulus” efforts failed and only added another couple trillion dollars to the debt.

Morning Bell: Why Obama’s Stimulus Failed

Oops, my bad. That’s about how the first stimulus failed. Here’s something on QE2:

Obama’s People Admit Stimulus Failed Miserably In Creating Jobs

So we can see how….hang on…what the hell is this?

Democrats Press Obama to Include Stimulus in Debt Deal After Jobs Report

Democrats pressed for some form of economic stimulus in the debt deal President Barack Obama is negotiating with Republicans following a U.S. Labor Department report yesterday showing job growth slowing.

Senator Charles Schumer of New York, the chamber’s third- ranking Democrat, called for an “immediate jolt” to the economy by extending and enlarging a one-year payroll-tax cut that’s set to expire Dec. 31. He asked for action “as quickly as possible by including it in the final debt-limit agreement.”

You have got to be kidding me. No wonder we’re heading towards a Weimar-type situation. So it’s not Republican intransigence to protect the evil rich at all. And the BBC has told you none of this. All you know is the heroic Obamessiah has been trying to save us from ourselves.

Don’t trust the BBC on US issues.

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Obama Signals Move Against Murdoch/Fox – BBC Playing Its Role Perfectly…

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As David pointed out earlier the BBC’s Jonny Dymond has been sounding out some of the usual suspects from the US liberal left over their reaction to the News of the World phone hacking affair.

The top brass at the Beeb have obviously got the nod from their friends at the New York Times (“the Democratic Party at prayer”) that the Obama machine is very interested in the possibility of slipping a knife between Murdoch’s ribs and defenestrating Fox News. Dymond, therefore, was temporarily withdrawn from the Tea Party=militias=KKK =racism desk at AgitProp HQ and ordered to link up with the planners at Operation Fox Hunter.

Washington correspondent Jonny Dymond reports on whether any “bad habits have slipped over to the Atlantic”

Jonny isn’t talking about his own bad habits of slipping things across borders… Lithuanian customs officers still have him on file. Nor was he talking about CNN’s Piers Morgan’s habits because, so far, the BBC doesn’t appear to be too interested in a left wing tabloid not owned by Murdoch.

No – we are now reaching what I predicted was the most important item on the agenda…..the preparation of a full frontal attack on Fox News.

Others with noses closer to the DC beltway have also been sniffing the air, particularly the UK Telegraph’s Toby Harnden. He tried for ages to get a feel on the Murdoch/USA issue from Obama apparatchiks in Congress and the White House but kept on getting blanked.

They were all waiting for Valerie Jarrett to tell Obama what his decision would be.

It was a go.

Straight away Sen Jay Rockefeller had new batteries inserted and was wheeled out to transmit the official party line.

SEIU is almost certainly being fed more Soros money to add to it’s taxpayer funded coffers in order to organise “spontaneous” demonstrations of anger outside Fox properties. “Independent” op-ed scribblers at NYT and WaPo have received templates for their thoughtful “fairness” pieces.

I called this Dan Rather’s revenge not because it was Fox that pulled that neat little trick. Fox is too timid to operate behind enemy lines like the right blogosphere. Fox’s importance is to act, like the UK’s Mail and Sun, as a counter balance to the distortion of the news as it is passed through the left wing filters of the establishment media. The right blogosphere’s role is to dig up the evidence for the lies, corruption and hypocrisy of the left’s mouthpieces in New York, Hollywood and elsewhere.

Unlike Chappaquidick and the NYT/Guardian Wikileaks campaign nobody has been killed as a result of News of the World phone hacking. Yes it was unsavoury and seedy – but that is the nature of journalism. It’s a competitive dog eat dog world where you are only as good as your last story – just like Hollywood, politics and drug dealing. So the key to fighting the forthcoming onslaught is not to excuse the activities that took place several years ago under the Blair/Brown Labour government that refused to take action because at the time they were supported by the Murdoch press.

The line to take is to condemn all dirty tricks then follow up with just a representative sample of nefarious activities undertaken by the Democrats and their surrogates over the last ten years….you’ll be spoiled for choice.

Then, as was once suggested by a certain Chicago Light Bringer, get in their faces.

The big question is – what will the GOP political/media”leadership” do over this? Surely it won’t bolt for cover and hide under the table with its thumb in its mouth while the mob is baying outside the door….will it?

Surely there will be someone who will run to the fight – with a smile and a rapier….

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ALL QUIET ON THE MUMBAI FRONT…

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Multiple explosions. Mass murder of innocents. Mumbai. Interesting to see the BBC provide space to Jason Burke, south Asia correspondent of the Guardian (who else?) and expert on Islamic militancy, reflects on the impact of the bombing and why it is “very unlikely” to have been al-Qaeda. Islam has no shortages of dhimmis shilling for it and no greater friend than the State Broadcaster. I mean, it’s not as if  Islam has targeted Mumbai before, is it?

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Delingpole Gets It

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Hacking into voicemails is not so different from scrabbling around in dustbins searching for something to whip up into a scandal; well, perhaps one step further. The press may well be reflecting our appetite for tittle-tattle, but they created it in the first place and exploited it cynically and self-servingly ever since. Hacking into Milly Dowler’s voicemail when they knew she had probably been murdered, or interfering with serious police investigations was undoubtedly a step too far, but don’t let them pretend that the steps leading up to the extreme, grotesque intrusion we have now weren’t leading in exactly the same direction all along.

I’m sure this whole business is getting on everyone’s nerves. We’re all fed up with watching hacks, celebrities and broadcasters precariously balancing on their moral high horses. They’re blinded by the sanctimonious superiority they’ve suddenly adopted, so they don’t understand that their self-appointed mandate to moralise on behalf of the ‘victims’ makes you want to punch them in the face.
As soon as the media filters the news through its intrinsic limitations, in terms of education and attitude, there’s a danger of distortion, be it deliberate or not. So we need choice. If the BBC is campaigning for its own monopoly, that’s very wrong.

James Delingpole (H/T George R, thread on similar topic, below) sums it all up really well.

The BBC is at Least a Thousand Times More Evil and Dangerous than Rupert Murdoch

“And of course, the house leftists at the BBC (most of them recruited through the pages of the left-wing Guardian newspaper, which BBC employees tend to believe is also the ONLY newspaper) want to keep it that way. That’s why they have been pushing the “scandalous” Murdoch revelations so hard; that’s why Labour leader Ed Miliband and Tony Blair’s ex-enforcer Alastair Campbell and socialist ex-Prime-Minister Gordon Brown and the pathologically left-wing Twittersphere and, yes, the Guardian newspaper have been so eager to join in the fray. Sure they hate Murdoch, that’s a given. But what they hate far, far more – because they fear it – is the possibility that British audiences should be exposed as US audiences are to dangerously conservative concepts like freedom and small government.”

Please do read it all.

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THE KINGS OF CANT

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“While the BBCare celebrating the Nakba and the genocidal anti-Semitic desires of a whoppingchunk of the Muslim/Arab world, we may at least take small consolation  in celebrating the ‘nabbed ya’.”

Please enjoy the following exquisite moment of BBC humbuggery in the current OT:-
Jon S:
How can an organisation so full of gays and dykes beimpartial?
David Gregory:
Well as a rule of thumb being gay doesn’t actually impact onmy reporting on peregrine falcons or windfarms. But you know, it’s a struggle obviously.
hippiepooter:
There again David, I’m sure being homosexual didn’t do youany harm in getting a job at the BBC,what with its huge imbalance in the number of homosexuals who work there, whichI’m sure has nothing to do with discrimination. ‘Hideously homosexual’?  Forfend.
David Gregory:
It didn’t do any harm (but then why should it?) or any goodI would have thought.  I guess whenlooking for a BBC science reportermy PhD and body of work carried more weight. Do you think I should wear a tighter shirt for my next interview?
Well, as someone pointed out, it seems he already hasdone.  From David Gregory’s BBC bio:-
Atthe same time he was getting more and more freelance work for BBC Radio 5Live,until shameless flirting in a job interview secured David his first full timejob as 5 Live’s Science Specialist.
Let’s hope this isn’t pulled before it goes live on B-BBC!
One must give David Gregory his due though, unlike Dez/Scotthe does manage to express his views here in support of his employer the BBC with some grace and intelligence, and isn’tknown to have the hots for any genocidal anti-Semitic terrorists.
H/t to David Preiser for the ‘spot’, who no doubt would wantit stressed that he doesn’t want this post to lead to any bigoted commentsagainst homosexuals in general. 

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THE GLEE CLUB

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I’ve been away for the past few days but decided to tune into the Today programme as is my wont. For a moment, I thought I had accidentally tuned into Glee. The BBC is exultant at the inevitable decision by Murdoch not to pursue the BSkyB takeover at this time. Throughout the morning we were treated to the delight in the voices of the presenters with little in-jokes about Murdoch and co being taken to the Tower, for example. The main8.10am interview with Clegg was used as an opportunity to imply that the Murdochs and Wade are not fit and proper persons to be running any media outlet (unlike the wise and kindly BBC) and our old pal Johnny Diamond got to explore how the US is now also turning on Murdoch. Emboldened by the demise of NOTW and the commercial decision not to continue with the BSkyB bid, the BBC sniffs blood. It wants to see the destruction of NewsCorp and the decimation if not imprisonment of all who held senior office. The globalised hypocrisy of the BBC is truly stomach-churning on this issue and any pretence of impartiality is out the window. Less commerical competition in the UK and indeed elsewhere combined with the removal of choice for readers/viewers is a key BBC objective and my goodness isn’t it pursuing it with relish?

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HERO OF THE HOUR

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Let’s be clear. The EU Common Fisheries is a disaster that has wrecked the UK fishing fleet, created and has condoned for decades the practice of “discards” (EU-speak for compelling fishermen to throw billions of edible dead fish back into the sea) and has facilitated the systematic pillaging of UK fish stocks by rapacious French and Spanish fishermen. But for the BBC, which has under-and mis-reported EU affairs ever since it played a decisive role in rigging the 1975 EEC referendum, the European Commission is now the hero of the hour. It’s going to get rid of discards and reform the fishing policy to prevent “over-fishing”. As usual in this farce of reporting, there’s nothing from those who have been hurt by EU’s dictatorial, fascist meddling. All that counts is the view of greenies who want to perpetuate the lie that it’s the fishermen who are to blame.

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