BIASED BBC EAST MIDLANDS

Rather fascinating case  leading to an apology from BBC East Midlands for this;

“Back in January 2010, on the second day of the book injunction trial in Lisbon, BBC East Midlands reporter Mike O’ Sullivan asked the former Judiciary Police coordinator Gonçalo Amaral if his book was hurting the McCanns, Amaral’s answer was “Não, fale com os McCann”, which literally translated means “No, speak with the McCanns”. 

In what appeared to be a pathetic attempt to smear Amaral’s character, Mike O’Sullivan, who clearly doesn’t know Portuguese, decided to bleep Amaral’s reply (see the above video at 0:30) and broadcast to the world that Amaral had said “F*ck the McCanns”. Though several other UK, Portuguese, Spanish reporters were present at the book banning trial Mike O’Sullivan was the only one who made that (intentional?) assumption. It took 16 months and several complaints to the BBC complaints department, to the PCC, and to Ofcom for the BBC to finally admit that Mike O’ Sullivan was wrong [see bellow] and that Gonçalo Amaral reply was twisted, however no formal apology was issued.”

Read the case details here. My thanks to Joana Morais. 

LABOUR 1 CITY O


Oh my. BBC favourite Chuka Umunna seemed almost embarrassed when the issue of RBS CEO Stephen Hester’s rejection of the Bonus to which he was contractually entitled was introduced as “Labour 1, City 0.” The BBC has done everything possible to portray this decision by Mr Hester as some sort of “victory” for Miliband – remarkable when one considers which political party put in place the circumstances which lead to the Bonus concerned! Umunna advances the current war on capitalism and the BBC does nor challenge his spurious commentary. For example, towards the end of the interview, he moans about “other” public sector workers having to take a cut.What about this then, BBC? Some bonus payments more equal than others, perhaps?

BLACK SUSTAINABILITY

American Thinker neatly nails here the Nazi roots that underpin the insidious moonshine about sustainable development. There’s been a seamless evolution pioneered by actual Nazis who escaped the Nurmeberg gallows in the ideas that say we need to get back to nature and stop doing nasty things with fossil fuels. The heirs of these lunatics are now enthroned in the fascist kleptocracy that calls itself the UN. As their latest assault on the enterprise and economic development that has improved the lives of billions who live on the planet, the sinisterly-named High Level Panel on Sustainability has published today a report which, if adopted by the Rio Summit this year, could lead to the systematic dismantling of civilized living, including the ending of all subsidies on fossil fuel. Richard Black, of course, does not see a problem. He sings the report’s praises with unmoderated enthusiasm, rounding it all off with an ecstatic quote from the Stakeholder Forum, a bunch of eco-crazed nutters who are led by one Felix Dodds, who claims his many credentials include “writing for the BBC website”. How very apt.

Responding To A Defender Of The Indefensible

This is regarding a comment from Dez on an open thread which had already dropped off the main page by the time I noticed it. I haven’t had time to put together the response his comment deserves, and since I think there is an important point to be made here, I’m making it a main post rather than continuing the discussion in the middle of an old thread.

A week ago on a previous Open Thread, John Horne Tooke commented in response to a criticism of BBC reporting by “As I See It” that the BBC’s biased coverage of the US had convinced his college-educated daughter that Republicans “do not believe in science”. It was on Page 7 of this Open Thread (Js-kit/Echo won’t allow linking directly to a comment).

That’s obviously about either Creationsim or Warmism, or both, on which the BBC has form. Basically this is based on the assumption that all Republicans are “climate deniers” and Christians who believe that the Earth is 6000 years old. The BBC has declared that skepticism that human activity is the driving factor in Global Warming is “anti-science”,  and so all Republicans get tarred with that epithet, even though there are plenty who buy into Warmism. As for Creationsim,  people like Justin Webb and Nicky Campbell (R5L Sept. 8, 2011) have conflated a belief in God as Creator (a very broad term) with the belief that the Earth is only 6000 years old, and suggested that, for example, both Sarah Palin and Rick Perry are unfit for high public office because of it. In the case of JHT’s daughter, she got it from Chris Evans. There’s probably also something there about opposition to embryonic stem-cell research being anti-science. It’s easy for the BBC audience to assume that this is the case for all Republicans, since the Beeboids themselves keep reinforcing that opinion. In short, biased BBC reporting, along with constant partisan attacks from BBC Light Entertainment personalities, forms incorrect opinions.

So I extrapolated from that to a pet peeve of mine, and replied that if JHT’s daughter also thought that the Tea Party movement was driven by crypto-racism, he’d know whom to blame. I was of course referring to the BBC US President, Mark Mardell, along with the fact that the majority of BBC reporting about the Tea Party movement has suggested that opposition to the President was based more on the color of his skin than on any policies. There’s plenty of evidence for this, which I’ll get to in due course. Dez disagreed with me. His comment in full is below the fold.

Hell Yeah! Because it can’t be anything to do with the idiots pictured here:
http://snotrockets.net/politics/tea-party/the-tea-party-are-a-bunch-of-racists-there-ive-said-it/

And it can’t be anything to do with The Patriot Freedom Alliance:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2073094/Racism-row-erupts-Tea-Party-calls-Barack-Obama-skunk.html

Or Marilyn Davenport:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1378380/Official-apologizes-Obama-chimpanzee-email-Tea-party-member-fired.html

No! It’s all the fault of Mark Mardell because he told the BBC College of Journalism that; “I’ve been to lots of Tea Party meetings and I honestly don’t think most of them are racist… I think for them it is about the Government spending their money…”

Bascially, Dez’s argument is that since others besides the BBC have pointed to fringe elements and isolated incidents, the BBC cannot be blamed for influencing public opinion on this matter. I won’t put words in his mouth and say that Dez also believes that the Tea Party is driven by racism. I think he does, although I’m happy to be corrected if he chooses to explain himself. Furthermore, he’s also misrepresenting what Mardell actually said at the BBC  CoJ.

First of all, let’s discuss who influences public opinion. 50% of the UK public watch the BBC for their news. The BBC has far more influence there than any other television news organization. BBC News Online is Britain’s most popular news website, especially seeing a 109% boost in visitors during the last two years from that desirable 18-24 year old demographic. Nobody has as much influence in online news as the BBC. Outside of that, while Radio 4 has lost some of its audience share, Chris Evans has nearly 9 million listeners. So when he says the Tea Party is racist, he reaches more people at the same time – including JHT’s daughter – than just about anyone else in Britain who isn’t an athlete, royalty, or on X/Strictly whatever. Then there are all the Left-wing comedy programmes and news quizzes, on both radio and tv. The Beeboids at the Today Programme believe they set the agenda for the nation’s news each day. No other media organization has anything like the number of channels or online presence or audience figures of the BBC. It’s not even close. The BBC has by far more influence on public opinion than the rest of them.

The Daily Mail may have passed the New York Times as the top online news source, but how much is that due to celebrity gossip and photos of women in bikinis, never mind the fact that the NY Times has a pay wall which cuts readership short?  The Mail got 45.3 million unique visitors in December,  Those figures are worldwide, not only British readers. The BBC suggests that’s more about “popular journalism”, big photos, an search engine optimization than the quality of the actual hard news, so it’s difficult to claim that the Mail has more influence on public opinion than the BBC.  Sure, the Mail can raise a fuss sometimes and affect a tiny bit of change, as Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross found out. But do 50% of the public get their serious news from the Mail, or do more of the British public read their website for news than BBC? Clearly not.

So I think it’s fair to say that the BBC has more influence on public opinion than any other media outlet. Does the BBC overwhelmingly try to tell you that the Tea Party movement is racist, inspired by racism, or is filled with racists? Yes. The list is seemingly endless.

Jonny Dymond recently made a dishonest report about how hate groups are on the rise because there’s a black President. This was part of the BBC Narrative which began in 2008, that opposition to The Obamessiah can be due only to skin color and not policy.

In one of his earliest blog posts since taking over for Justin Webb, Mark Mardell was openly asking if opposition to the President was driven by racism. He said that, considering how important racism has been in US political history, “it would be strange if it now mattered not a jot”. In his first weeks on the job, Mardell was already ignoring the main economic policy points of the Tea Party movement and Republican opposition to a Democrat President, and focusing instead on a suspicion he has, based on small evidence.

Not long after that, Kevin “Teabagger” Connolly was pushing the same Maureen Dowd article from the NY Times that Mardell waas. In that same post, David Vance also tells us about Gavin Essler in the Daily Mail scowling at those Hitler signs, and whipping up fear that someone might assassinate the President. So even if the Mail does have a negative influence on the public, we can partly blame Beeboids for that, too.

There have been plenty of comments on this blog about Richard Bacon and Victoria Derbyshire pushing this same Narrative, never mind all those edgy comedians who make a good living working the Left-wing tropes.

The next issue is whether or not Dez is correct that the outliers his examples highlight are enough to convince someone that the Tea Party movement is, in fact, racist. I’ve spent a lot of time on this blog trying to show that, contrary to BBC reporting, the movement is actually driven by people’s unhappiness with the President’s and the Democrats’ economic policies, and there’s no need to get into all that here.

The short answer is that every large gathering and movement is going to have its parasitical fringe element, people who ride the coat tails of the larger movement to push their own issues. It’s become a cliché that every Left-wing protest march will feature someone with a “Free Palestine” sign or a “Troops out of Iraq” placard or a hoodie with that “A” for Anarchy symbol, regardless of the issue of the day.  But we don’t say that the student riots protests against tuition fees were driven by support for the Palestinian cause. The same thing goes for Right-wing gatherings and pro-life supporters or similar. So there are obviously going to be some racists somewhere who see protests against the President as an opportunity to bare their own racist grievances. It can’t be helped. Hell, there might even be people who actually are racist, but are also legitimately concerned about the destructive economic policies.

However, I’d say that it’s impossible for a grassroots movement which grew into a national phenomenon to be largely driven by racism if Herman Cain and Col. Allen West got so much support from them. The second Tea Party protest I attended back in 2009 was hosted by a black man. And how racist can people be who vote for Bobby Jindal or Marco Rubio? Or are there actual racists who hate black people but have no problem with Indians or Hispanics?

But I think it would me more informative to instead answer a question with a question.

If we’re supposed to accept that the Tea Party movement is driven by racism based on a few outliers and isolated incidents, would Mardell and Connolly and John Horne Tooke’s daugher and Dez equally say that the Occupy Wall St. movement is driven by anti-Semitism if I provided several examples? Would they do what we’re so often instructed not to about Muslims and extremism or young black men and crime, and stain the majority for the behavior of the few?  Would, then, the following be enough evidence to declare that anti-Jewish sentiment does matter a jot in the Occupy movement:

Anti-Semitic Protester at Occupy Wall St LA


Occupier shouting “Go back to Israel” to a Jew

The Hate in Zuccotti

Pete Sutherland traveled to Zuccotti Park all the way from Georgia Friday, shivering as he wielded a handmade sign that read, “The Reason the Arabs Hate Us.”

“Jews are the smartest people in the world,” said Sutherland, 79. Not in a good way.


“They control the media.”


But no one tells the truth about the Hebrew people, as he sees it, because “the media doesn’t want to commit suicide by losing the Jewish advertisers.’’


“I’m not anti-Semitic,” he finished.

The New York Times thought the Occupy movement was getting such a bad reputation that they went out to make a story defending them. The Times instructs us not to smear the majority for the acts of a few.


Occupy Wall Street Has an Anti-Semitism Problem

A quick sampling of the anti-Semitism on display among the Occupy Wall Street set yields the flamboyant and aggressive protester who yells,“You’re a bum, Jew” at his yarmulke-wearing interlocutor; the conspiracy theorist who laments that “Jewish money controls American politics,” and warns the Russians not to let the Jews take over Russia too; and  the self-described Nazi with the swastika tattoo who regrets that America has been handed over to “other people.” Ah, people power.

I could go on. So do we declare that the Occupy movement is mainly anti-Semitic, or that it’s fair for people to get that idea?  I didn’t say so after my encounter with the Occupiers at Zuccotti. In fact, I said that, despite the videos I’d seen and reports I’d read, I hadn’t seen any real anti-Semitism there, and so wouldn’t declare the entire movement tainted. Which brings me to my final point: Dez’s misrepresentation of Mardell’s CoJ appearance and misunderstanding and mischaracterization of my comment.

You can watch Mardell speak for himself here. (@ around 54:20 if the link isn’t direct)

Mardell mocks a Southern white woman while confirming his off-camera colleague’s opinion that racism was certainly a factor in the 2008 election. “You knew exactly what it was,” he chortles. He then says that he doesn’t think “most” of the people at Tea Party protests he’s been to are racists. “Certainly not in a straightforward sense.”  Dez conveniently elided that bit. Which leads to his error about what I said. Mardell isn’t saying that most of us aren’t racists, he’s saying that it’s there underneath the surface of the economic issues. “Deeper than that, it’s about the Government spending their money on people who are not like them.”  Dez conveniently elided that bit as well. Dishonesty? Or a simple mistake? Only Dez can tell us.

I said at the time, and have repeated many times since, that Mardell believes the Tea Party movement to be driven by crypto-racism. His own words tell you so. Now, I’m not blaming Mardell’s appearance at the CoJ for people being misinformed. That’s a misunderstanding on Dez’s part. What I am saying is that Mardell, the BBC’s top man in the US, believes it to be true, and that it influences his and his fellow Beeboids’ reporting. The question from his colleague presupposes that racism is a factor, and Mardell confirms it. This tells us the editorial opinion of and the conventional wisdom at the BBC, which informs all their reporting on the issue. In other words, they already thought that, long before Mardell’s appearance at the BBC CoJ. This is a problem. Aside from the smear factor, it also causes them to ignore or play down the real economic issues behind the opposition to the President’s and the Democrats’ agenda. Mardell can acknowledge that excessive government spending is a concern, but deep down it’s driven by racism. Even when writing about Herman Cain’s popularity, he actually thinks it’s important to ask if the man’s black skin would “bother any right-wingers”. So Dez’s portrayal of Mardell is absolutely false.

Of course there’s no memo going out telling everyone to push the racism angle or anything. It’s just groupthink, reinforced from the top. They read it in the Washington Post and the New York Times and the HuffingtonPost, and they hear it from their Left-wing associates and friends, and laugh at it with their favorite Left-wing comedians. It’s visceral, and is spread throughout the BBC.  That’s why you hear it not only from Mardell and Dymond, but from Bacon and Campbell and all the rest of them.

And that’s why 50% of the public who watch BBC News, as well as heavens knows how many more who rely on BBC News Online – who combined make up the majority of the population – think the Tea Party movement is driven by crypto-racism.

SMART-ARSE SLAPPED

Here’s Conservative MP Graham Stuart responding to a cheap shot from Nicky Campbell on Radio Five Live’s Breakfast show this morning.

GRAHAM STUART/NICKY CAMPBELL (mp3)

Nicky Campbell: For the first time MPs on the Education Select Committee want you to provide the questions when they go head-to head with Michael Gove next Tuesday. They’re asking for suggestions via Twitter. LOL. And it’s going to be with the hashtag “AskGove”. The Conservative MP Graham Stuart is the chair of the Education Committee. Good morning.

Graham Stuart: Good morning, Nicky.

Nicky Campbell: Tell us a little bit more about this, getting other people to do your hard work for you. Great idea – you can go and have lunch in your subsidised canteen. [Smug chortle]

Graham Stuart: Thanks for that low remark. You of course struggle by on a fraction of what MPs are paid Nicky so it’s nice to have someone like you standing up for low earners…

Nicky Campbell: Absolutely, well said!

Graham Stuart: … and the unsubsidised while working for the BBC, but never mind – we won’t worry about your hypocrisy.

After that put-down Campbell steered clear of the wisecracks and concentrated on the topic at hand.

NOTHING MORE DANGEROUS THAT STUPIDITY

With BBC news coverage of the US Presidential race hotting up, it is quite useful to consider what B-BBC’s Alan has to say here;


“Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity”
Martin Luther King, Jr., registered Republican….or to put another way to describe the BBC’s news output….’Villainy wears many masks, none so dangerous as the mask of virtue.’ I have just been reminded that Martin Luther King was Republican….as were most Blacks of his era. Why would they be Republican? maybe Mark Mardell would like to explain and expand on that…and maybe not?

Possibly because the Democrats were the people that invented the Klu Klux Klan and opposed all anti-slavery legislation…and later were against much of the civil rights legislation as well. Democrats fought to prevent the passage of every piece of civil rights legislation from the 1860’s to the 1960’s.
http://images.nbra.info/docs/library/NationalBlackRepublicanAssociation2009/NBRA%20Civil%20Rights%20Newsletter%202Feb11.pdf

http://www.nbra.info/

‘History of civil rights – In a nutshell
• The Republican Party – From its founding in 1854 as the anti-slavery party until today, the Republican Party has championed freedom and civil rights for blacks.

• The Democratic Party – As author Michael Scheuer stated, the Democratic Party is the party of the four S’s: slavery, secession, segregation and now socialism.
Slavery – Democrats fought to expand it, Republicans fought to ban it
Democrats formed the Confederacy, seceded from the Union and fought a Civil War (1861 to 1865) – a war where over 600,000 citizens were killed, including many thousands of blacks – in order to keep blacks in slavery because the Democrats had built their economic base on the backs of black slaves.
Democrats enacted Fugitive Slave laws to keep blacks from escaping from plantations
and instigated the 1856 Dred Scott decision which legally classified blacks as property.

The Party of Lincoln
The Republican Party was started in 1854 as the anti-slavery party by abolitionists opposed to keeping blacks in human bondage, and Republicans, under the leadership of President Abraham Lincoln, fought to free blacks from slavery.
After the Civil War, Republicans amended the US Constitution to grant blacks freedom (13th Amendment), citizenship (14th Amendment) and the right to vote (15th Amendment).
Democrats started the Ku Klux Klan in 1866 to lynch and terrorize Republicans -black and white and drive Republicans out of the South.

ROCKET MAN…

Yes, well, the minute GOP Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich suggested that there could be a manned lunar base which would be American, then this was going to go disputed by the BBC. I laughed at the blatant way in which the BBC sets up Gingrich in this item  Of course when John F Kennedy made pretty much the same sort of speech in 1962, that is hailed by the likes of the BBC as “visionary” whereas when Gingrich makes it then it “delusionary”. But no bias, no sirreee!

A LOAD OF BULL…?

A Biased BBC reader contacted me with regard to what he sees is the BBC’s biased attitude to the dog owning community. 

The BBC’s programme, Death Row Dogs, 24th January has raised several hackles, including complaints from Dr Roger Mugford, an eminent expert on canine behaviour who says:

“The BBC should not have screened this programme because it did not inform, entertain or meet any of the other accepted objectives for public broadcast television. Rather, it mislead the viewer into believing that bull breeds and owners of bull breeds were in some sense inferior to the rest of society. Some of the cases they showed had welfare implications and were not your “average” bull breed owner. They chose not to depict any of the ordinary or more affluent Midlanders who take pride in their Staffordshire Bull Terriers and its numerous cross-bred combinations. Significantly, no dangerous dogs (i.e. Section 3) featured in this BBC film, and this was a massively biased defence of the ill-conceived Section 1 breed specific legislation.”

Now, I don’t have a dog in this fight myself, but I am always happy to provide a platform to those concerned about BBC bias.

NARY A CAREY IN SIGHT, OR SOUND

Biased BBC contributor Alan notes;
Attack: Lord Carey has blasted the bishops who tried to derail the Government's £26,000-a-year benefit cap
“Had the former Arch-Bishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey, said Banker’s behaviour was the greatest moral scandal of our time I’m certain the BBC would have trumpeted it like some avenging Herald….but he didn’t say that which is why his words have been sunk in obscurity with no fanfare what so ever by the BBC. Although his comments were in the Daily Mail yesterday morning there has been a blanket silence across the BBC despite his powerful condemnation of the Bishop’s who opposed the cap on benefits….and not even a peep out of the Today programme.”

‘Archbishop blasts clerics who oppose welfare reform and declares the REAL moral scandal is our £1TRILLION debt’

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2091331/Welfare-reform-Ex-Archbishop-Canterbury-Lord-Carey-blasts-clerics-oppose-benefits-cap.html#ixzz1kUBHGMsK