OPEN THREAD


Monday morning, a fresh week, and a brand new OPEN thread for you to detail what is annoying you about BBC coverage. If the bias is there, please expose it here!

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178 Responses to OPEN THREAD

  1. George R says:

    JONATHAN DIMBLEBY uses BBC licencepayers’ funds to go on South America trip, advocating legalisation of HARD DRUGS.  
     
     
    “‘I’ve tried cocaine. It made me sneeze’: Jonathan Dimbleby reveals carefree past as he calls for hard drugs to be legalised ”  
     
     
    Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2039537/Jonathan-Dimbleby-reveals-tried-cocaine-calls-hard-drugs-legalised.html#ixzz1YVtSIuIB
     
     
     
    Apparently Beeboids are campaigning for a Hard Drugs Party to counter the growth of British Tea Party.

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    • Dez says:

      George R,  

      “JONATHAN DIMBLEBY… …advocating legalisation of HARD DRUGS.”

      “Jonathan Dimbleby reveals carefree past as he calls for hard drugs to be legalised” 

      Oh, except that he didn’t.  

      Yet more lies George? What a surprise.

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      • David Preiser (USA) says:

        Dez, it’s in the headline of the Mail article that Dimbleby says the war on drugs is a waste.  If you want to say that the Mail is lying and made up all the quotes, that’s one thing.  But unless I’ve missed something, you can’t be accusing George of lying.

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        • Scott M says:

          The relationship between a headline and content of a story can be nebulous at best – not just in the Daily Mail. It’s unusual within standard news orgs for the writer of a story to write the headline – it’s more usually the role of a subeditor.

          I know this issue has come up in the past, where Biased BBC commenters have berated the BBC for not putting what they see as pertinent facts in the headline, even though those facts appear very high up in the story itself. If the BBC can be accused of misrepresenting stories in its headlines, the same can definitely be said of other news orgs.

          Within the story (you do have to scroll, but I assume Biased BBC readers are capable of doing so) Dimbleby does say:

          “I wasn’t calling for [decriminalisation]. I am not calling for anything. That’s not my role in life, to call for things.


          “I think that it is legitimate for me to raise the issue because of the misery that is caused.


          “Because that experience has been so horrific… where it seems clear that the war is not working, we have to think of another way.


          “One of those other ways is clearly decriminalisation. I am not saying we have to decriminalise, that’s not my job.


          “I am saying that has to be one of the options that, for instance, Kofi Annan has advocated.”

          So he’s not advocating legalisation, as George R said in his summary. He’s saying that the war on drugs isn’t working, and within South American countries it’s actually harming people – so alternative approaches ought to be considered. Whether or not you agree with decriminalisation is by the by.

          So in that sense, if you’re uncomfortable with George R being accused of lying, he was certainly misrepresenting. The Daily Mail did in its headline writing, and George – as his wont, as anybody who reads his frequent links will note – puts his own, shall we euphemistically call ‘unique’, perspective on things.

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          • David Preiser (USA) says:

            Fair point, Scott, but surely Dimbleby is being disingenuous when he says that the war on drugs is a waste, and how great a time he had doing drugs, but then says he doesn’t mean it should be legalized.  And what “alternative approaches” would there be besides legalization that would stop the so-called harm to the poor dears in South America?  Treatment and community service doesn’t stop the trafficking, so let’s get real here.

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  2. George R says:

    Question for INBBC.

    ‘Jihadwatch’:

    “Which causes more global outrage: a cartoon of a turban bomb, or real turban bombs causing real casualties?”

    Former Afghan president killed in latest turban bombing

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  3. john says:

    I’ve been thinking about this for at least 3 minutes :
    How about a B-BBC 2011 Award for Most Disingenuous BBC Reporter of the Year ?
    Clearly, the frenzy of nominations could well crash this site, so if the likes of, say Craig, have any ideas as how to collate votes cast between, say, November 1st and December 31st, wouldn’t it be interesting to see who gets what they deserve on New Year’s day ?

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    • David Preiser (USA) says:

      Anyone with “editor” next to their name…..

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      • My Site (click to edit) says:

        I have created the acronym ‘RACE’, for ‘Reporter, Analyst, Correspondent or Editor, as in ‘hustlers’, as any professional integrity in journalism is a submarine long sunk.

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  4. Jonathan S says:

    at the next Conservative Party Conference, i really hope that someone highlights the left wing bias/bullshit/hypocrisy that the BBC spouts in all it’s output 

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  5. David Preiser (USA) says:

    I missed Chris Huhne’s idiotic remarks that Daniel Hannan talks about here:

    When he lays into the ‘Tory Tea Party tendency’, I’m guessing that Chris Huhne means me. I am, as far as I know, the only elected Conservative actually to have organised a Tea Party – that is, an anti-tax rally (see here). Not that the Environment Secretary seems to have our views about tax in mind. Rather, he is using ‘Tea Partiers’ in the sense that most British Lefties do, to mean ‘horrid people’. The Environment Secretary usually claims that his opponents are like Nazis. This time, though, he’s taking off the gloves. Never mind Adolf Hitler; these Right-wing Tories are like… like… Sarah Palin!

    Of course Huhne and the rest of the LibDims have to say stuff like this to reassure their three remaining voters that they really, really aren’t useless.  But even though Hannan seems to be echoing this blog, he’s wrong on one major count.  The real Tea Party movement was started by an ordinary housewife, and was spearheaded and spread spontaneously by ordinary people, many of whom had never even though about being politically active before, never mind organizing and getting out in the street and actually changing the course of local, city, and state elections.  The whole point was that we were fed up with letting politicians lead us around by the nose.  No politicians were in charge, no politicians organized anything no politicians did anything at all except try to jump on the bandwagon.  It was only after the movement had become a phenomenon that woke up the country – and even the BBC, eventually – that politicians and ex-politicians started really showing up and trying to get in on the action.

    Hannan should stick to trying to start a British Tea Party Caucus with his fellow pols, not trying to rouse the rabble.  Leave the citizens to do it themselves, or it will never work properly.

    Having said that, I enjoyed this bit:


    The Tea Party, perhaps more than any other contemporary movement, brings out the ‘Yeah, but what they’re really saying…’ tendency. The ‘tea’ stands for ‘Taxed Enough Already’ but, if you relied on the BBC and the Guardian for your information, you might not know it.

    Do tell, Dan.  Do tell.  He may as well have copied and pasted that from this blog, and just added “and the Guardian”.  Still, it’s nice to know that not all the non-Left politicians in Britain have drunk the Koolaid.

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    • My Site (click to edit) says:

      I missed Chris Huhne’s idiotic remarks’

      There have been so many, it’s a wonder.

      That this hopeless, inept, lying creep is not only not in jail, but still in power, says all needed about the state of the politico-media establishment.

      Even media not totally committed to his policies and hence his personal black hole of a personal and professional life indulge him for the colourful aspects his circumlutions offer (despite being as dull as ditchwater as a grey suit) to liven up the 24/7 news maw.

      I saw him ‘interviewed’ on SKY earlier and allowed to get away with such as “My ex-wife is not used to the limelight’ in an attempt to make her out to be some loppy wimmin unable to handle the stress of publicity. 

      Vicky Pryce is never off SKY as a talking head. 

      Gte real Huhne. Gte some balls Cameron. And get some integrity, MSM.

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      • My Site (click to edit) says:

        Just listened to Paxman’s i/v with the guy. A rare instance where I can ally with the former, though his style missed so many chances more to fillet the weasel.

        Gudio’s assessment of Huhne is spot-on; the man is deranged.

        We have another Brownian ‘leader’ dragging the country into slow hari-kiri, with superiors and colleagues powerless, and special interest groups so bound to his green suicide pact they have to support him

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  6. Matthew says:

    Piece on 50 years of private eye covers http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14969672
    manages to get in three attacks on GW Bush, and starts by comparing Jeffrey Archer to Saddam Hussein: ‘It’s home to the great, the good and the not so good. Margaret Thatcher has made 95 appearances, the Queen 62, while Jeffrey Archer and Saddam Hussein are both into double figures.’

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  7. My Site (click to edit) says:

    At first glance, OT…

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2011/sep/20/wales-climate-change-schools-education

    But then I read on…

    The forward is by ‘Derek Brockway, BBC Weather Forecaster and Presenter’

    Cosy little axis of weevills shaping up.

    Notice also the ‘Hypocrisy Herlad’ raises this about an earlier outing:

    ‘Earlier this year, for example, we heard from Johnny Ball, the veteran children’s television presenter, who claimed that pupils are being made to watch films about climate change at school which are “unscientific, alarmist nonsense”. I asked him, and the Department of Education, to expand on this – and I also asked readers to provide examples – but I wasn’t exactly overwhelmed with concrete evidence of this actually being the case.’

    In that, especially on the cited piece, the Graun mods pulled a ‘failed to meet community standards’ (a bit like BBC House Rules) on anything that didn’t suit, that is a bit rich.

    ps: See Johnny Ball on SKY this morning. The guy getting the big bucks, the ‘interviewer’, whined that ‘maths is boring, and no use to anyone’. That is the state of media, and science in this country now. Overseen by such as Mess. Huhne and Cameron etc.

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    • Martin says:

      The majority of people who work in the media and politics are arty farty luvvies. They don’t see the point to science or engineering. Last night on the BBC some beeboid twat reported on some tosser bringing back a load of rocks to float around the south coast for the Olympics or something “it’s art” said excited beeboid twat.

      No it’s a waste of sodding money ands we should be spending more on the things that will rebuild our economy, like making things.

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  8. George R says:

    Yes, of course, BBC’s ‘greenie’ Mr Black blames Murdoch for GREENLAND climate map, not ‘man-made warming’ scientists.

    Compare the approach of Christopher Booker, with that of Black:

    1.) Booker:

    “Global warming and the twisting of our children’s minds”

    Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2039797/Global-warming-twisting-childrens-minds.html#ixzz1Ya015cYk

    2.) BBC ‘greenie’ and anti-Murdoch, Mr Black:

    “Greenland ice: Are the Times a-changing?”

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14983410

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    • David Preiser (USA) says:

      Black seems to be saying that the Times Atlas statistics were fake, but accurate.

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      • My Site (click to edit) says:

        His thread has long become a joke, but it has farce too.

        He evidently now has to get his mates on the BBC intranet to ‘dislike’ any comments that point out the calibre of his ‘reports’.

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    • London Calling says:

      Passing through Foyles Charing Cross Road Bookshop today in search of “Skeptical reading” I found the so called “Climate Change” Section on the 2nd floor. Six metres of shelving dedicated to books on Climate Change – I reckon may be 2-300  books in all. Scanning the titles, every one pedding alarmist tosh, except all on its own, one skeptical title by God bless him, Christopher Booker.

      The science may not be settled, but the publishing industry certainly is. Alarm sells.

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  9. George R says:

    Addendum for BBC -NUJ report:  
     
    ‘Jihadwatch’:  
     
     
    U.K.: Jihadist hate preacher Anjem Choudary says singer Cheryl Cole a prime jihadist target for visiting British troops in Afghanistan  
     


    BBC-NUJ report.

     
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-14948186  
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

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    • jarwill101 says:

      How will the ‘nation’s sweetheart’ make amends to the Crescent Moonies? In these deranged times an attack on our Cheryl would probably be the catalyst that triggered a muslim/Kuffar war in the UK. If anybody is left to write the history books they’ll be pondering the fallout from ‘The War Of Cole’s Pout’.

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  10. hippiepooter says:

    I’m sure Richard Black is typing up a carefully considered, impartial analysis of this as I write:-  
     
    http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/214181/20110915/ivar-giaever-global-warming-climate-change-al-gore-ipcc-hoax-dissent-nobel-prize-winner-physicist-re.htm
     
     
    Thanks to the irrepresible Mel P for carrying this link.

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  11. Deborah says:

    On Look North last night there was a brief mention that Mr Eliot Morley the ex minister had been released from jail.  I listened very hard and never once heard that he had been a member of the Labour government when the crime took place.  Funny that.

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  12. hippiepooter says:

    Benny Peiser interviewed just now by a BBC Correspondent on R5L’s Shelagh Fogarty on gas drilling (‘frakking”) off the British coast and the impact on the environment.  He was introduced as “from the Global Warming Policy Foundation”. Global warming had nothing to do with the theme at hand, and I strongly suspect that the lay listener would not be aware that despite the name ‘Global Warming Policy Foundation’, it is AGW Sceptic.  Subliminally, by introducing Benny Peiser as being from this organisation and signing him off as being from this organisation when the interview had nothing to do with the subject matter, the BBC were reinforcing the notion of AGW at the expense of one of its prominent sceptics.

    Mr Peiser is also founder and adviser to ‘Energy & Environment’ that amongst other things covers “direct and indirect environmental impacts of energy acquisition”.  I’m sure the BBC had it’s reasons for not introducing him as being from the organistion relevant to the subject matter of the interview.

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  13. My Site (click to edit) says:

    Apropos nothing at all, and as one not keen on bannings or moddings, might I suggest a special side bar is created to house the offerings of those who accuse others of lying, especially with no or inaccuarte support for such accusations, and who turn out to be, at best, poorly informed if not simply petty and malcious trolls-ing chancers?

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    • Millie Tant says:

      Are they stupid or simply malicious? Either way, it reflects badly on them to post an accusation of lying that cannot be substantiated. Even if there was something wrong with what was posted (which, incidentally, hasn’t been made out), it is obvious to anyone who is capable of a moment’s thought that someone could post something in error but nevertheless in good faith.

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  14. Martin says:

    Richard Bacon is giving Alistair Darling a blow job live on the radio right now.

    I’m sure he wants to marry him ***swoons my hero***

    It’s pathetic.

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  15. David Preiser (USA) says:

    So the President is at the UN right now to tell the UN that the Palestinian end-run is not the way to go, and that the only proper way to peace and a two-state solution is direct negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian leadership.

    Here’s hoping He has more success than all the other times He swanned in to an international forum hoping to get His way, like the Chicago Olympics fail, the Warmist deal in Copenhagen with China fail, or that missile deal with Russia fail.

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  16. David Preiser (USA) says:

    The BBC is still censoring news of that new book out about infighting and incompetence in the White House economic team.  I know the White House is not happy because not only has the President spoken out against it, and several of His former minions have tried to distance themselves from quotes, but yesterday MSNBC (owned by GE, whose CEO is the President’s Jobs Chair) spent at least an hour yelling and screaming about how it’s all false and a hatchet job.

    MSNBC has been the White House propaganda network since He was elected, and the attack dogs are out.  It’s another hit to the President’s aura, so no wonder the BBC is censoring all news of it, even though as Craig showed on my initial post about this they had no problem telling you about a book about Bush by the same author.

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  17. Martin says:

    So what has the BBC achieved this week? Well if you all remember when the IMF first came out in support of George Osborne’s plan the BBC went on the attack looking for anyone who would provide an opposing view. But now the BBC seem to love the IMF, I wonder why?

    Then we have Toenails making a total tit of himself once again. Last night he was telling us that he’s been PERSONALLY briefed that the Government were going to increase public spending, but when he challenged the Lib Dems they claimed they knew nothing. Ah hah! another split was Robinson’s claim!

    Well not quite as Toenails has sort of rolled back on what he said, even John Pinhead on Radio 5 said there wasn’t much to that claim and it was more the personal thoughts of a couple of Tory Ministers. Once again Toenails Robinson over eggs a claim to try to pretend a split exists where one doesn’t.

    I’m looking forward to the BBC wheeling out economists who disagree with the IMF this time and think more spending cuts are needed. I think I will have to wait a long time for that.

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  18. deegee says:

    Apologies for a possibnle double post but the original seems to have been swallowed up.

    Sometimes the throw-away last paragraph on a BBC report says as much about BBC attitudes as the whole article. 
    Troy Davis is executed in Georgia for shooting a policeman 
     
    Troy Davis may well be innocent although the BBC obscures the fact that in 20 years of appeals not one court has accepted that. As late as 2009 the US District Court for the Southern District of Georgia considered the case and new evidence (change or recantation by some witnesses) and in an 150 page ruling declared the other evidence was sufficient to justify a guilty verdict. Surely the BBC has a journalistic responsibility to inform the reader/listener of that? 
     
    The last two sentences read: 

    Meanwhile in the US state of Texas another death row inmate, Lawrence Russell Brewer, was executed on Wednesday evening – in a very different case. 

    In 1998, white supremacist gang member Brewer, 44, dragged a black man chained to the back of a pick-up truck along a road until he died. 

    Why was the case different?

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  19. deegee says:

    … Why was the case different?

     The BBC leaves us hanging (figuratively speaking). Is it because Brewer was definitely and indisputably guilty? Is it because Brewer confessed? (For the record, Brewer admitted being at the scene but denied participating). Is it because Brewer was white? Is it because the jury that decided Brewer’s fate was all-white and not 7 blacks and 5 whites that Davis had? Is it because Brewer suffered 23 years waiting for execution and Davis only 22? Is it because the death penalty is OK when applied to white racists? 

    The BBC wrote about Brewer in 1999 Death sentence for Texas racist  Note the lack of quotes around the word racist.

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    • Roland Deschain says:

      When I’ve heard the story on the BBC it’s been because several witnesses have recanted their testimony.

      And that’s it.  Wouldn’t it be hightly pertinent to ask WHY so many recanted? It was my first thought.  Did they somehow all imagine they had all seen the same wrong thing and realise the error of their ways?  Had they all been bribed to give false testimony?  Or had they or their families been threatened by gangs?  The BBC doesn’t think to tell us.  I don’t know if it’s bias but it’s certainly shoddy reporting.

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    • Millie Tant says:

      Was Troy Davis a black man?

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  20. Bupendra Bhakta says:

    And in half an hour on Radio 4worththelicencefeealone; following on from last week’s Costing The Earth, in which some permanent gap year students masquerading as ‘broadcasters’ were shilling for man made global-warming, this week we’ll again be featuring permanent gap year students masquerading as ‘broadcasters’ who will again be shilling for man made global-warming.  Next week, you guessed it, more of the same.

    Parental Advisory:  If your child is over the age of four and/or has an IQ that registers a score they will feel patronised and talked down to.

    Utter dross, and embarrassing with it.

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  21. Roger C says:

    I note that the BBC has airbrushed any referance to Labour in reporting that the “Cage Fight” took place in a Preston Labour club. The BBC protecting its own.

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  22. Millie Tant says:

    I notice that the filing system on this blog is so super efficient that the Open Thread keeps going off the front page into some back-office filing cabinet.

     So far I’ve managed to retrieve it by clicking on any Open Thread post showing up in the left-hand side Recent Comments column.

    Otherwise to find it, one would need to know the date it was opened or else do a search among all recent dates, hoping to come across it fairly quickly.

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  23. Millie Tant says:

    Peter Hitchens on the Beeboid Corporation’s metric bias, which apparently now even extends to replacing pounds with Euros:

    On University Challenge, Jeremy Paxman referred to a date as being Common Era, rather than AD. This nasty formulation is designed to write Christianity out of our culture. Given the allegedly ferocious Mr Paxman’s schoolgirlish, groupie-like treatment of various prominent atheists in recent interviews, maybe he favours this far-from-impartial view.
    Then on Thursday morning, the Today programme’s Justin Webb referred to a ‘multi-billion-euro’ project to build a space telescope.

    It’s touching, in a way, that deep in the BBC they still believe in the wretched and disastrous single currency. But why couldn’t he have used pounds?

    The figure wasn’t precise; the meaning would have been the same. I expect it was for the same reason that the BBC now incessantly uses the metric system instead of customary British measures, often making hilarious mistakes as a result. My favourite remains the day when Lionel Kelleway, distinguished presenter of natural history programmes, announced that some cliffs (actually 600 feet high) were 2,000 metres high (6,560 feet).

    Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2038675/Fiona-Pilkington-case-Read-awful-story-THEN-accuse-moral-panic.html#ixzz1YgImYpKS

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  24. My Site (click to edit) says:

    Amongst many things, a minor niggle is the BBC and its finest’s ‘cake & eat it’ philosophy.

    Was listenening to the J Vine show earlier in the car, and there was a slot on a ‘haveagohero’ who suffered the consequences of intervening.

    It was a pretty awful tale, and the guy was rightly lauded.

    But then our Jezza got onto why ‘others’ don’t leap in to help in such cases, whilst studiously avoiding much interest in the ‘motivations’ of the attackers.

    One big reason Jezza, is thugs like this are pretty much given free rein to create mayhem without consequence in the first place thanks to the bleating of you and yours, and if anyone did go Bronson on any of these poor darlings, you and yours would be unchaining from Dale Farm and demanding they be held to account before you could say ‘two-faced metro hypocrites’.

    ps: Agree. Letting the open thread fall off the home page… not optimal.

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  25. My Site (click to edit) says:

    http://www.spectator.co.uk/spectator/thisweek/7256618/the-great-euro-swindle.thtml

    ‘Now let’s turn to the BBC. In our Centre for Policy Studies pamphlet, Guilty Men, we expose in detail how the BBC betrayed its charter commitment, lost its sense of fair-mindedness and became in effect a partisan player in a great national debate — all the more insidious because of its pretence at neutrality.

    There is only space here to deal with a small amount of our evidence, but this is one example of BBC bias. In the nine weeks leading to 21 July 2000, when the argument over the euro was at its height, the Today programme featured 121 speakers on the topic. Some 87 were pro-euro compared to 34 who were anti. The case for the euro was represented by twice as many figures, interviews and soundbites as the case against. BBC broadcasters tended to present the pro-euro position itself as centre ground, thus defining even moderately Eurosceptic voices as extreme, meaning that they were defeated even before they had entered the debate.’

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    • My Site (click to edit) says:

      Where’s Craig when you need to further laud him?

      Doesn’t seem the best way to operate a supposedly functioning democracy.

      But certainly ‘unique’.

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