Further to David Preiser’s recent point ‘Imagine if one were to accuse the BBC of an institutional Left-wing bias.’ Another of our B-BBC correspondents, Alan, ponders…
The BBC are no doubt revelling in the latest allegations of racism against some police officers. This is the way the Liberal elite seek to whip in their arch enemy with constant politically motivated legal assaults. No doubt some officers are racist…claims that the ‘police’ are institutionally racist is a nonsense unsupported by evidence.
However those who live by the sword die by the sword. If the police can be institutionally racist in the eyes of the legal establishment then so can other organisations.
The BBC for instance.
Lawyer Stephen Sugar attempted to force the BBC to release the Balen Report by means of a freedom of information request. Perhaps that was the wrong approach.
What if it could be shown that Jews died because of BBC anti-Israeli reporting? What if the BBC were ‘Institutionally racist’ or even guilty of inciting terrorism?
Perhaps a call to the Equality and Human Rights Commission calling for an investigation into the BBC’s racism in reporting on the Israel/Palestine conflict might have not only forced the release of the Balen Report but put a few of the BBC reporters and their bosses in the dock.
The BBC are hiding something big. What is the definition of ‘Institutional racism’?
The Macpherson report;
“The collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture, or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people.”
A. Sivanandan, Director, Institute of Race Relations “Institutional racism is that which, covertly or overtly, resides in the policies, procedures, operations and culture of public or private institutions – reinforcing individual prejudices and being reinforced by them in turn.”
The Commission for Racial Equality; “If racist consequences accrue to institutional laws, customs or practices, that institution is racist whether or not the individuals maintaining those practices have racial intentions.”
What would constitute inciting others to commit terrorism?
Terrorism Act 2006
(2) A person commits an offence if—
(a) he publishes a statement to which this section applies or causes another to publish such a statement; and (b) at the time he publishes it or causes it to be published, he…..(ii) is reckless as to whether members of the public will be directly or indirectly encouraged or otherwise induced by the statement to commit, prepare or instigate such acts or offences.
Could the BBC’s coverage fall within those parameters?
If phone hacking a few celebrities almost takes down a company as big as News International just image what confirmation of the BBC’s coverage encouraging attacks on Jews and inciting terrorism would do. The BBC, quite a few senior journalists and their bosses would be toast.
What if Muslim terrorism could be shown to be a response in part not to the rhetoric of right wing politicians but left wing journalism….a result of encouraging, excusing and inciting Muslim anger, discontent and militancy.
What if the Jewish people and French soldiers died in France recently because Mohamed Mehra took his justification from the Leftwing media’s continual stoking of his ‘grievances’ and belief that he was a victim of the Western society and culture…because that is what some like the BBC told him…as John Simpson says….’the riots in France by the Muslim immigrants were due to Muslim’s fury and resentment, bitter grievances, ignored and demeaned, kept in poverty by a system which cares very little about them.’
What if?
Oy vey. Your incitement points are utterly absurd and represent a misunderstanding of what incitement entails.
The institutional racism analogy is interesting. The argument would be that the BBC has a set of processes and attitudes that unwittingly [nb crucial term] militate against it providing anything other than a left wing slant to its news coverage. This is the sensible view of some posters on b-BBC. Others however see it has a vast integrated conspiracy where there is a strictly informed editorial policy (so eg ‘x didn’t receive the memo). I was interested some time ago by Dan Hannan’s farewell piece to Mark Mardell where he expressed high respect for his fairness and skill as a journalist, but said he was stuck in a set of a priori assumptions that the eu was a good thing.
Not saying I agree ( although I do in some limited respects), but it’s an interesting point.
You don’t half type some unfounded, convoluted, poorly thought-out, poorly worded nonsense Jim. I would hate to be your thesis tutor; I’d be asleep after twenty minutes
I’m new to this, but will try to learn from you.
lol
Merlin, would you like to demonstrate the flaws as you see them in Jim’s argumentation?
I think that would be the constructive thing to do instead of making personal attacks on someone because they dont see things the way you do.
‘hippiepooter – making personal attacks on someone because they dont see things the way you do.’
Take your point, but I can’t see a personal attack anywhere in that robust content critique… and while facts and forensic argument are great, views can have their place.
Especially when prompted by a post with the first comment one reads from this ‘he’s not as bad as..’ Dr. G substitute for those desperate to have at least one (sometimes) lucid counter-poster being: ‘points are utterly absurd’. One possibly meant to be softened by a popular exclamation from a minority culture.
Constructive-wise.
Unless it is felt greater slack and ignoring hypocrisy is advocated selectively on a ‘unique’ basis. Not unheard of, I suppose.
No I wouldn’t thank you very much. I have enough critical reading to do during the week without having to participate in a pseudo-intellectual debate with Jim thank you very much.
I think the BBC has a problem which it seems to avoid. It is in the very nature of the organisation and it’s recruitmernt policy. Like favours like so unwittingly it tends to employ the likeminded. Which given our current educational and media domination by liberalism( the current meaning of that word) inevitably means those of an independent mind and contrary approach never make it to an interview. If they do they probably find that they are assumed to share this core liberalism and one wrong word is enough to scupper their chances.
Since the 1960s it has been assumed that to be educated means that you subscribe to liberalism and that if you do not you are being perverse or downright bad. The only thing that will alter this is a collision with reality as the liberal world view is fundamentally flawed in that it places the world as a liberal wishes it to be over the world as it is, was and always will be. I always suggest a liberal reads Homer but he is sadly out of fashion.
If the truth does not support the left wing view of the BBC. Then the BBC regards the truth as controversial. And the BBC is very reluctant to give air time to anything or anyone it regards as controversial.
Ah, yes, speaking of what the Beeboid Corporation categorises as controversial reminds me of this from yesterday:
On Any Questions? the question “Is marriage owned by the State?” came up – see at 43mins 43secs in: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b01f6ch9
After some initial chat with the questioner, Jonathan Dimbleby immediately leaps on Ben Bradshaw at (44mins 16secs) with this: “Ben Bradshaw, you’ve been rather controversial about this because you…one might have thought you’d be really pleased that Cameron has done this but actually, you’ve dumped on him…”
So what had Ben Bradshaw done that is controversial? Nothing, in fact. He had however said that he didn’t think same-sex marriage was a priority or really needed, since the civil partnership had delivered equal rights etc. In Beeboidland, this is controversial.
Ah yes, ‘recruitment policy’. Would that be the published one or the one that’s ‘understood’ (nudge, nudge, wink, wink). Where do they advertise their vacancies, I wonder?
I agree, perhaps Mr Dandy should read Homer. He seems to mostly scorn the idea of the BBC being anything but a fair and apolitical national broadcaster. If this was the case, this site would not exist. He is on a hiding to nothing, poor deluded soul.
Hannan thought The Obamessiah was going to be a good President. Even when he later admitted his mistake in judgment, he hedged and only gently criticized the reality. Shows how much he knows about fairness and skill. Although he was right about Mardell’s assumptions informing his reporting. And I’d wager that if he had any idea about how Mardell has been reporting from his current assignment, Hannan would change his mind about that assessment of fairness.
Jim Dandy says “the BBC has a set of processes and attitudes that unwittingly [nb crucial term] militate against it providing anything other than a left wing slant to its news coverage.”
I can go for that but self-interest is there as well – if you live off state money, compulsorily levied, then you become statist in every respect, and increasingly so.
And when the state allows the BBC this year to take a billion pounds from licence fee money to plug a hole in the BBC’s Pension Fund (after last year’s staff strike over pensions) you know that is the vital component in the Corporation’s statism, which all staff adhere to at peril of their existence.
Jim – it is of course a fact that in some cases it is very witting indeed. Or do you think that all these Red Brick grads at the BBC are actually quite dim and have never heard of Antonio Gramsci?
Gramsci would argue the BBC was acting to protect the capitalist system. There are plenty today who argue that.
‘Gramsci would argue the BBC was acting to protect the capitalist system. There are plenty today who argue that.’
Despite the strident assuredness of your post, it only very tenuously relevant to my point (in that it mentions the same man). My point – that you have not addressed, Jim – is that whilst the institutional bias may indeed be unwitting rather than conspired, there are some who deliberately use their power at the BBC to push their political agenda, which appears to be universally leftwards.
…a misunderstanding of what incitement entails
Since you are one that fails to recognize the insidious output of the BBC, content instead to accept its propaganda EXACTLY as they meant you to do, it’s no surprise that you even think you can jeer at the points being made here.
Here’s some other ways to think about it, and I would also add EMPOWER as criminal if it furthers terrorism.
Thesaurus.com on synonyms for Incite
encourage, provoke
Synonyms: abet, activate, actuate, agitate, animate, arouse, coax, craze, drive, egg on, encourage, excite, exhort, fan the fire, foment, force, forward, further, get to, goad, impel, induce, inflame, influence, inspire, inspirit, instigate, juice*, key up, motivate, persuade, prick, promote, prompt, provoke, psych, push, put up to, raise, rouse, set, set off, solicit, spur, stimulate, stir up, talk into, taunt, trigger, urge, whip up, work up
Notes: incite means to provoke or stir
Merlin – you’re spot on.
Jim Dandy: “The argument would be that the BBC has a set of processes and attitudes that unwittingly [nb crucial term] militate against it providing anything other than a left wing slant to its news coverage.”
===
If you are a publicly funded organisation to the tune of £3bn to £4 bn a year, and bound by Charter obligation to be impartial, you cannot be unwitting about such things. In fact you’d better be ultra witting about that and everything else that you do.
Jim Dandy, are you a token (and possibly closet) BBC representative? You invariably disagree with almost everything and every comment on this site. You probably call it “balance” – I tend to think more “irritating”, but maybe irritation is what you get off on.
Do you want to read my post again?
No, once is enough for most of them, thank you.
I suspect Jim of “liking” his own posts. I can go to HuffPo anytime if I want to read those tendentious opinions.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/
Except I don’t.
I find myself increasingly flabbergasted by the niggardly ‘offence’ taken at JD’s posts. Any neutral observer coming to this site seeing the reaction to him would conclude our claims about BBC bias aren’t worth paying attention to.
It’s the mirror image of ‘offence tactis’ of subversives.
Conversely, one could regard your emotive reactions as evidence of JD bias Hippiedopesmoker. Now that would be highly ironic!
BBC employee doing a little unpaid freelance PR – betcha!
Oh, and not a newcomer to these pages, either.
The Happy Clappy` BBC or Crappy if you prefer is definitely institutionally alarmist. There are so many examples and its not just global warming nee climate change nee global weirding.
The BBC culture works actively against the interests of the majority of British people and undermines race relations.
Why would they give so much airtime to the leader of a party which got under 1% of the popular vote, no I don’t mean the disgraceful BNP(1.5%) but the fragrant Caroline Lucas leader of the ne’erdo well Green Party or Mean Party if you prefer 🙂
Yes, why does the BBC promote ‘Green’ ideas so assiduously?
Could Jim check and get back to us, please?
Mainly because a proportion of the BBC pension fund is ‘invested’ in green technology. In Parliament terms, ‘declaring an interest’ would be in order!
Previously on Biased BBC
http://biased-bbc.blogspot.co.uk/2010/02/fingers-in-pies.html
Although Caroline Lucas does sit as an MP. All the same, with her Goebbelsesque views on the State of Israel I’m sure they’d be some constituencies not far from Galloway willing to elect her too.
Just before last summers looting the BBC had wall to wall documentaries about how great the Brixton and Toxteth riots were. They also mentioned how evil the police were.
Is it a coincidence that the largest lootings occurred after these broadcasts. Surely that could be seen as incitement.
Add to that a background of endless BBC references to the so-called ‘anger’ at Tory Cuts. Hour after hour of Tahrir Square footage of demos accompanied with breathless approving commentary. Easy to forget that we have elections in this country and to think – lets take it to the streets.
And again did the BBC’s non-stop pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli propaganda influence the 7/7 bombings. The bombers in their recorded suicide statements mentioned Palestine being a factor.
Anders the Norwegian nut has admitted he made up the Knights Templar organisation. How ever this fictional organisation bears an uncanny resemblance to the organisation portrayed in the BBC’s BoneKickers. Did Anders see this programme and was he influenced by it?
Plenty of incitement to hatred here.
The BBC definitely creates the fertile soil in which terrorism grows.
In answer to your question Mr P!
Yes indeed they are…as well as institutionally “alarmist”, “”warmist” and all manner of PC -isms and -ists.
I reckon that we`ll be claiming the badge “racist” as one of pride-whether we actually are or not-at this rate.
Like women “reclaiming” their sl*t word, like rappers and their n***er word and like gays with their “qu**r” word.
It gets demeaned and denuded of meaning with blanket usage…”are we all to be racist now Father?” as Fr Crilly was once asked?
You all make excellent points. But you must see that we can’t win because the beeboids themselves think their positions are good and just. They simply do not understand that they should keep their views and opinions private. The facts? Well they are the first casualties in any attack on bias.
My original comment was about making that accusation of the BBC being institutionally Left-wing based on a few obviously biased tweets from the same amount of employees on which this racist charge against the police was made. Followers of this blog know all about the seemingly endless stream of biased tweets from BBC employees. Just do a search for Twitter. More will show up once the comments from the original site have been imported.
I’ve been making a collection, when time permits, of all the biased tweets posted here by DB and others (I think it could be a fun thing to e-publish on its own, but really should be one chapter in an eventual Biased-BBC book). It’s up to 40 different Beeboids so far, from different ranks and departments, all giving clear Left-wing opinions on a variety of topics. Yet if I were to make the accusation based solely on that, defenders of the indefensible would simply roll their eyes and laugh that it’s impossible to smear an organization of 25,000 people (or whatever the number is) based on such a small sample. And in any case, they’d tell me, the BBC is dedicated to impartiality, etc., and those Beeboids are perfectly capable of performing their jobs without letting their personal biases interfere.
The former Question Time producers, James Macintyre, casually dismisses the charge of institutional Left-wing bias at the BBC in just the way I describe:
There is nothing big or clever about arguing the old, disproved myth that BBC is “left”. I worked there. It’s too disorganised to be biased.
But a similar defense of the Met doesn’t hold water at the BBC, it seems. Instead, the incident of eight officers behaving badly is apparently a sign of a widespread malevolence.
Have there been other incidents of behavior by the police which, when added together, create a portrait of an institution with a problem of bias? Clearly there are people who think so at the BBC. Have there been other incidents of behavior by Beeboids which, when added together, create a portrait of an institution with a problem of bias? Clearly there are people here who think exactly that.
Personally, I agree in general with Jim’s understanding of a main tenet held by most people here: “that the BBC has a set of processes and attitudes that unwittingly [nb crucial term] militate against it providing anything other than a left wing slant to its news coverage.”
However, while “unwittingly” may be a crucial mitigating factor, I would submit that “processes” can be viewed as institutionalizing that bias. Mark Thompson’s own admission of bias out of a blinkered respect for immature Mohammedans (the soft racism of lowered expectations) can be viewed as one of those institutionalized biases. In that case, I say there was essentially a memo going round.
I wasn’t thinking of an anti-Israel bias when I made my comment yesterday, but Alan does make a good point on that. There has been a clear editorial policy – perhaps it’s just something in the style guide; I can’t be sure, of course – which makes BBC reporting on the Israel/Palestinian conflict slant against Israel.
It’s been documented here several times that either a BBC correspondent or a BBC News Online sub-editor will tack on a non sequitur bit of context about Israeli settlements being illegal under international opinion, or the ghoulish Body Count meme, even when the context of the article itself has nothing to do with either issue. They just do it automatically, and there is obviously boilerplate text copied and pasted, especially the bit about the settlements.
The most blatant example of this encoded bias would be the Body Count Narrative. Until a few months ago, whenever the BBC would report on some incident between Israel and Gaza, a sub-editor would always add on the casualty count from both sides. However, when giving the Israeli number – very small, of course, which is the point – care was taken to demarcate both the military and civilian casualties. Yet, the Palestinian body count was given as a single bloc figure of “Palestinians”, giving the impression that they were all innocent civilians. See here, here, and here, for just the tip of that iceberg.
This is the Body Count Narrative, and it was deliberately done to remind the reader of the evils of Israel’s “disproportionate” responses. I always wondered if there was then an acceptable level of Israeli dead over which Israel shouldn’t be allowed to retaliate, but that’s a debate for another time.
In any case, that’s not unwitting: it’s intentional, an institutional process which creates biased reporting. However, the BBC has been taking baby steps away from it over the last several months. I’ve noticed a real, albeit extremely minor, improvement on that score. What hasn’t improved is the apparent editorial policy that rockets and other militant attacks on Israel from Gaza aren’t newsworthy, and the story must always begin, “It all started when Israel hit back.” Again, that’s reporting based on decisions made by biased individuals.
Having said all that, what was originally a flippant comment now seems to me to be a bit more salient. I think if the Met can be charged with institutional bias based on the evidence presented, so can the BBC.
Mostly, rather than a series of sinister directives being handed down pushing these biases, I’d say the BBC’s hiring and training practices have more to do with it than anything else.
If the current crop of BBC hires in the US is anything to go by, journalism seems to have become a dramatic storytelling profession, or even an opportunity for activism. So no wonder it’s self-selecting.
Rant ends.
The Met, and police generally, are almost the last powerful employed element in UK society recruited from the working class – barristers’ clerks and City staff are the others, if waning.
That’s why the BBC can’t have them, even though the police are, like them, well-heeled public sector pensioners and statist inclined.
Firefighters have figured out how to survive any onslaught from Beeboids and the Guardian by being trade union militants and of course by definition heroes.
Chav is therefore the only prejudiced word (and Essex) permitted on air.
In Britain, we have started to put people in prison for what they say on Twitter. So it is now possible to put BBC staff in prison for what they say on Twitter if the will was there. But somehow I think that the judiciary share the same opinions as those BBC staff on Twitter. So no hope there.
And let’s not forget Greg Dykes’ racist observation that the bbc is hideously white. The fact that a person in such an elevated position in this entity could even think that, never mind utter it to the nation, is symptomatic of the racist thought processes that pervade the whole of the bbc.
No rant, extremely well considered, although I part company with you on ‘unwitting bias’ (although your in very good company on this view with Mel Phillips and Dan Hannan).
The bias exists because it is the intention and purpose of subversives who have infiltrated the BBC, looking to recruit their own kind to entrench the subversion, and – I would warrant – a lot of otherwise impartial or indifferent BBC journalists replicating this bias for the sake of a quiet life. Gramscian strategy is no accident.
JD throws out an interesting thought that there is a left wing view that Gramscians would view the BBC as an instrument of capitalism, but that, I would contend, is a wilful smokescreen to cover the level of their subversion and efforts to expand it.
Oh, and I might add, if the Police only recruited from the pages of the Telegraph their could be no doubt some sort of bias existed. The BBC have almost exclusively been recruiting from the Guardian among the nationals. Its a clear message ‘non leftists need not apply’.
I get the impression the public sector (of which I count the BBC a part) recruits almost exclusively through left-leaning publications. It could just be an impression, though.
I think the bias is both unwitting and deliberate. The bias of some Beeboids peeks through rather often, and since they’re never seriously called on it internally (“We’ve had complaints.” “Really? Oh, they do come out of the woodwork sometimes, don’t they”? “LOL. Keep up the good work.”), they keep on doing it.
‘since they’re never seriously called on it internally … they keep on doing it.’
There can be a lot of it about.
What do you reckon, stop calling on it?
No, GW, I’d recommend keeping on documenting the bias, and eventually putting together and publishing a single, comprehensive analysis with loads of detailed, supporting evidence, outlining how this bias is manifested across the spectrum of BBC output.
Let the public see an extensive, cogent case, covering all the key issues, backed up with substantial evidence. The BBC won’t be able to hide from it, and won’t be able to suppress it like they do with the Balen report or dismiss it like they do with individual complaints. If they claim they get complaints from both sides and so are getting it about right, they’ll have to put up or shut up.
Yes, in contrast to its political condemnation of the West (and of Christianity), INBBC is institutionally pro-Islamic, as indicated in compliant ‘reporting’ of Galloway and Livingstone.
“Playing the faith card is a risky game”
By Kelvin Mackenzie
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2126248/Playing-faith-card-risky-game-George-Galloway.html#ixzz1rMp3naDv
An interesting point, which, having lived and worked for many years in the Middle East and Sub Continent, always confuses me !
Suggest the average beeboid would run a mile from the reality of life in these places.
Here’s a relevant article from a Right-leaning journalist in the US about NBC’s deliberating editing of the George Zimmerman call to the police to support their bias that it was a racially motivated killing.
NBC made a disingenuous apology, and has since fired the producer responsible. The BBC, by the way, has censored all news of this.
The journalist, Jay Ambrose, says that he usually defends against charges that reporters tell lies due to their biases by saying that “they make mistakes and their biases pop through their reporting, but it’s not lying.” Oh, man, does that sound familiar. Read the whole thing and see just how much what he says reflects the arguments on this blog about problems with bias at the BBC.
Interesting piece… no doubt the BBC is guilty of similar ‘cut and paste ‘editing’ shall we say (especially when concerning Muslim terrorists and ‘value judgements’!)
The BBC did it to the President’s inauguration speech. They made a deliberate edit to make it appear more favorably Green.
They also knowingly copied and pasted a transcript of His special address to Congress about a new spending plan which censored His stupid factual error about Lincoln being the founder of the Republican Party (which none of the highly-paid, allegedly highly-qualified Beeboids live-blogging it noticed). The error was all over the news, but the BBC refused to fix it in their own reporting.
It’s not as bad as trying to incite a racial lynching, of course. But it is revealing of their standards and practices.
The NBC fake reporting is a huge story, but the BBC has ignored it. ‘Nuff said.
‘defends against charges that reporters tell lies due to their biases by saying that “they make mistakes and their biases pop through their reporting, but it’s not lying.” Oh, man, does that sound familiar. ‘
I also note this one, given the recent dissembling by the BBC and its apologists…
‘”an error made in the production process.”
ie: The deliberate enhancing of the narrative in the edit suite.
The recent dissembling by NBC and its apologists….
Actually…
Jim Dandy.
Yawn.
I love your comments but they do have a lethargy inducing quality.
Like Jimmy Stewart on Valium.
You could be The Man Who Wouldn’t Shoot Liberty Balance.
I read your comments, I read ’em all….but they are like Monty Python’s ‘The Funniest Joke in the World’…If I’m to stay awake I have to read ’em one word at a time and not necessarily in any particular order…..though that doesn’t seem to alter the sense of the comments in any way at all.
What you need Jim is vim, pizzazz, sell me the sizzle…yes Jim you need to sizzle.
Dez had it, but he can’t type now he’s back in the strait jacket.
Jim buck up your ideas.
We’ll forgive you for re-introducing that middle of the road transport system that costs a fortune, never works and everybody hates…the Tram, just get off the fence and sparkle, show some backbone, have some spirit and make a stand for what you believe in.
You are not David Cameron…are you?
Personally, I prefer Jim’s attempts to play the ball instead of the man above the usual string of ad homs from Dez or Scott, the former of which often has to be forced to provide substance behind the sneers.
If I’m going to be held accountable, I’d prefer that it was for the content and substance of my words rather than insults to my intelligence or personality.
I like trams. And at least we centrists always make them run on time.
You remind me of an ex girlfriend: ‘why do you always have to be so f**king reasonable’.
Anyway piss up a rope f**kstick.
Did she say reasonable or boring?
As I said have some balls…if you mean Fuck say Fuck.
Mr Vance don’t like no swearing.
Exactly.
You’re a rebel but only against whatever the boss says you can rebel against.
Thank you for making that point JD.
Alan, please stop acting like such an obnoxious moron and bringing discredit to this site.
Try not to let boorish right wing fanatics get to you JD. I very much welcome your posts here, as much as I usually disagree with them.
That’s a kind of oxymoronic statement isn’t it?
Typically Leftwing….telling someone not to be so nasty by calling them obnoxious and moronic….and boorish, rightwing, and fanatical to boot.
Nice.
Like those Muslims who claim they are the real vicitims of 7/7 and 9/11.
Cake and eat it comes to mind.
Alan, I don’t know about balls, but growing some ‘self-awareness’ might help you.
HippiePooter blocked the reply to his comment below….I guess he ran out of ideas….so ran out of the fight.
Maybe not….might just be a technical issue….my apologies to pooter.
Although, to be fair, he does make comments about people here, such as sneerily blanket-dismissing *everybody’s* contributions, except those of two named individuals, one of whom happened to be you. Ahem…
That’s pretty insulting and I don’t think it was a fair reflection on all of the airily dismissed content. An element of ad homming mixed in with personal prejudice against particular viewpoints, possibly?
Oops…above comment of mine addressed to David P.
I didn’t see that, but I absolutely agree with your point about unfairly dismissing the entire blog.
Yes, JD didn’t make a good start here, but he does seem to have heeded some of the reasonable criticisms made of him since.
Believed they have been lefty for some years.
Having just watched the news, they surpassed their bias where MP’s taxes are being opened up The clip they showed started with his holiness, Ken Livingstone, challenging Boris Johnson to prove his tax dealings! Everyone knows that is red Ken who’s been creaming the system, but the blasted beeb just twist the story to suit their agenda,
Utter disgrace, and they need a damn good sort out.
I totally agree, but why don’t these tory arseholes get a backbone and do something about it?…..sleepwalking to oblivion. Oh no….before oblivion the wankers want turkey in the EU. Oh FFS get real will you Cameron?
Point about Jim Dandy is that he has no real points.
He cherry picks and makes spurious comments that make little sense however many times you want to read them…attempting to point score without addressing the argument in any coherent manner.
Look at his comment on claims that the BBC are showing bias towards sellers of fish as opposed to those who sell pomegranates…..
‘Obadiah, his servants. There shall, in that time, be rumours of things going astray, erm, and there shall be a great confusion as to where things really are, and nobody will really know where lieth those little things with the sort of raffia work base that has an attachment. At this time, a friend shall lose his friend’s hammer and the young shall not know where lieth the things possessed by their fathers that their fathers put there only just the night before, about eight o’clock. Yea, it is written in the book of Cyril that, in that time, shall the third one… ‘
In my book that just sitting on the fence.
I’m not going to nibble.
F**k
Congratulations Jim, you’ve got you’re own pet troll on this site!!
I hold no candle for the British police in the 21st Century, least of all the Met.
But considering that they (the rank-and-file at least) spent their working day, literally, on the fault lines of multicultural Britain, I think that even these latest ‘revelations’ show remarkable restraint!
…which just makes the faux outrage and witch-hunt all the more unbearable.
I was amused to see the earlier reference to what I might call Mark Thompson’s 30 year rule. ie. he can admit bias so long as it was a long time ago. During this same three decades every other British institution, the police, judiciary, civil service, Church of England – goodness me even the army – have marched ever leftward and now find themselves packed with Blairite placemen. Meanwhile the Beeb, he would have us believe, has rebalanced itself to the centre? Pull the other one!
Spot on!
Ever wondered why the the Marxist nutters you would see during the 80s hawking Socialist Worker every Saturday in a shopping centre near you, or out ‘demonstrating’ (aka rioting) for every righteous cause from anti-fascism to ditching the ‘poll tax’, suddenly disappeared? My theory is they decided to take a different tack and infiltrate every influential public/semi-public body in the country. And damned successful they’ve been too.
It’s going to be pretty hard to defend the BBC as ‘unbiased’ in the light of its refusal to cover the Livingstone tax affair in any detail – though I don’t doubt some will try.
The lengths to which the presenter of PM this evening was going to avoid allowing a Tory MP to even mention the issue were remarkable.
If pressed, I suspect her editor would claim pre-election coverage is a vexed issue and they were erring on the side of caution.
There are those of us, however, who will never forget the amount of entirely gratuitous BBC airtime Livingstone has received since he was last booted out of office. And we won’t believe a word of it.
It’s also impossible to defend the BBC’s censoring of both Livingstone’s “Beacon of Islam” statement and his anti-Jewish missive.
seeing as the BBC has loads of gay guys in it, like Hollywood, it’s not surprising that it’s institutionally leftist
The phrase ‘institutional racism’ is utter twaddle and so is Maclooney’s definition of it.
What it is saying is the Police must adapt to immigrant communities ways and anyone who doesn’t think so is racist.
MacLooney got goosed by the Guardian and Brixton possee to come out with such subversive claptrap. If we ever get a democratic party that says we should dump the MacPherson Report as the insane nonsense it is I’d join it like a shot.
BBC bias exists because left wing subversives have infiltrated it. They are so pervasive that the BBC could fairly be called insitutionally biased.
With regards to Alan’s suggestion of complaining to the Equality and Human Rights Commission about the BBC’s anti-Jewish racism, he has far more confidence in this body than I do.
Someone subscribing to an infiltration conspiracy theory (oops, that’s me) would say it has been done so successfully the Left now have their people in so many influential positions, and will strive to ensure it remains so, their position is becoming unassailable. The ‘institutional racism’ tactic is just part of their wider strategy to put poor old Whitey at the bottom of the heap of our multicultural paradise. As an example, look no further than Trevor Phillips’ constant bleating over the years about how wrong and racist it was for black children and certain groups from the Indian sub-continent to be at the bottom of the educational attainment tables. Now the bottom place is occupied by poor, white ‘working class’ kids we don’t hear a squeak from him.
Erm, Johnnythefish, I had an inkling you might be off the mark about Trevor Phillips, and lo and behold, the omniscient Google has proved that inkling correct:-
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1343231/Working-class-white-boys-learning-table-despite-millions-spent-Labour.html
I obviously missed this (though I’m not a Mail reader), so many thanks for pointing it out.
It does raise the question, though, who does TP believe should be bottom of the table – white middle class males? I would guess he wouldn’t make such a fuss if that were so – after all, it would then be the parents’ fault and not that of the government or ‘society’, I would guess (ref ‘little Buddha’ remarks from teachers’ leader earlier this week).
As an aside, I’m always amazed that our (largely) socialist teaching profession isn’t doing it’s utmost to reverse the educational under-achievement of kids from ‘deprived’ backgrounds – after all, it’s their responsibility (leaving behavioural issues aside, of course).
Yes, it’s true that Phillips has acknowledged the statistical data re the position of the boys now at the bottom of the table but as far as I am aware, that is only recent on his part. For years before that, he and his industry advocated relentlessly on behalf of blacks and the message pushed constantly was that blacks were being disadvantaged in the education system by things such as unconscious or conscious racism by white teachers and by the lack of black teachers and role models. So I see him as having done a bit of a volte face latterly and not just on this schools problem but also on the general direction of the race relations machine and its position on the multicult doctrine.
He didn’t do himself any favours on that one. Suggesting racism amongst a (largely) socialist teaching profession is a bit of an oxymoron, surely.
The dumber they are the more likely they’ll be easily fooled by people like themselves to vote Labour. All the need to learning is men having sex with men is normal and multi-culturalism is great. The 3 Rs? Don’t be such a fascist.
“Left Bent” really sums it up, I think. Don’t know why, but as others have pointed out there seems to be an extraordinary link between homosexuality and leftieness. I’m not casting aspersions on gays, just making an observation.
I don’t know: I came across an article recently in which Simon Heffer was suggesting why there are so many homosexuals in politics. According to him an awful lot of them are in the Conservative Party, working at Central Office and the like, not necessarily MPs. I get the impression of quite a few MPs in the LibDems.
Have enjoyed this morning’s blog immensely thanks very much everyone.
Should have been sorting out the garage this morning but thought I’d have a quick look on here first. Big mistake!
This blog and its ‘Likes’ underlines wonderfully how democracy works, one man one vote and I love it, (yes I know there are ways of fiddling but I am not a Labour postal voter from Bradford). Anyway, guess who lost his deposit today? Mind you on here as in any democracy thank goodness you can vote for yourself eh Jim?
Ps. can we have a nationwide vote on paying the TV tax now?
As my favourite thinker GW Bush said: ‘One of my proudest moments is I didn’t sell my soul for the sake of popularity. ‘
How’s giving it away working out?
I often ‘like’ JD’s posts. If anyone has any concrete proof that he ‘likes’ his own posts let’s hear it, otherwise stop discrediting this site with your smears.
Hippiepooter, much as I respect the value of many of your posts, at risk of gasting your flabber again, unless you own this site, I’d suggest making demands of folk how to behave because you don’t happen to like it, might be deemed less than creditable in its own right. Also, try and cut and paste the bit you are knee jerking at to save confusion. And throwing ‘right wing’ in willy-nilly serves poorly too.
If people are free to post what they like on this site, I suppose it is fair enough that other people can also post what they think of what others have posted. In any case, they have certainly done so from time to time. I have seen various objections of this sort.
Only last week, I think it was, there was a series of comments telling hippieposter he shouldn’t be posting something or other and that it wasn’t necessary / good for the blog etc sort of thing.
Nobody, as I recall, told those posters they shouldn’t be upbraiding hippie or saying what was good or bad for the blog.
I would say it’s a case of sauce for the goose and the gander, so hippie can say as much as others do – albeit on a different subject – without censure for doing so, unless we are into the business of selective disapproval / censorship according to person or topic or stance. Admittedly, it won’t be popular and hippie won’t be…
Yes Millie, points more or less circulating in my own head. I would further add that instead of resorting to the peurile and specious ‘you’re not the owner of this site so keep quiet’, I addressed argument with argument.
The tragedy of this site for me, as evidenced by the numerous likes for various trollish comments directed at JD lately from habituees of this site, is that the boorish right is grossly overrepresented here.
One reason why a really welcome a reasonable interlocutor here with a different view to my own like JD, is a lot of people here are more ‘anti-BBC’ than anti-BBC bias, and the likes of JD can often help sift the wheat from the chaff over what is claimed to be bias here.
Oh, sticking your neck out again, hippie. You are incorrigible! There has always been an element of the boorish, as you call them, on this site. I think of them as the headbangers. But then, they may think the same of me – or you!
I suppose it is inevitable though, if a public institution is leftwing, the people objecting to its bias are more likely to be rightwing and their general views and opinions will be part of the package. It’s hard to separate them out. On here, you will tend to get a different set of biases from those on the left. No blog is free from bias of one kind or another.
I am not that keen on many of Dandy’s comments, either, to be honest. I agree to a large extent with alan’s complaint that they make no sense and don’t form a coherent argument. Often I find myself wondering what is the context or meaning of some comment that he has posted. They can seem snide, glib, dismissive, superior and point-scoring rather than persuasive argument and sometimes he does not bother to answer or address points put to him. I get the feeling of a veneer and sometimes a false note, with some kind of underlying or hidden true purpose. So it is not always the fact of an argument that gets up people’s noses but maybe the way that it is done or failed to be done.
Bravo
A constructive way of reviewing JD’s presence here, although I broadly disagree. There again, maybe we’re reading different posts in different threads? We can’t read them all, after all!
Superbly put. I personally wouldn’t want this site to become a refuge for right-wing views, but Jim does need to engage properly with the arguments on here if he is to gain any respect, not to mention avoid some of the mildly vitriolic stuff which has been aimed his way. Open debate, after all, is what many of us (I feel) have been deprived of since the straitjackets of political correctness were issued as compulsory apparel around – oh, I’m only guessing – 1997.
‘instead of resorting to the peurile and specious ‘you’re not the owner of this site so keep quiet’’
If referring to anything recent in this regard, please show where that is stated, preferably without resorting to the kind of language you appear to decry in others. If directed at me, I certainly suggested you were operating multiples of standards and hence wondered who put you in charge; I didn’t at any stage say keep quiet, instead suggesting keeping counsel may serve to keep the focus where it should be.
Especially with presumptions of isms, ings, ists or zis you cannot know about. Which boorish right posters are you referring to? Seems to me you’re every bit as guilty of trying to set up a tribal political divide with language like that, despite claiming to be the bearer of apolitical BBC bias purity and civil discourse. If a post offends have at the poster on specifics, but the generic ‘you lot’ harks back to a less welcome period.
Otherwise the analogies with what the BBC gets up to setting up conflict are hard to ignore.
JD can surely say what he likes, when he likes, as can anyone else in his support or in counter?
What is rather quaint is the presumption that some can say it more than others, and by being a little bit more civil than the usual brigade of cherry vultures, any cherry vulture swoop must somehow be treated with reverence.
Where on earth this ‘enemy of my enemy’ tribal empathy lark comes from who knows, but the tag team can be effective, and JD must be more than happy with the discord sown… so bravo.
What you welcome is your affair, and good luck. And when JD posts a factual correction or a reasoned comment I find that can indeed ensure accuracy and the flow of discourse. But getting on a high horse forgetting the ad homs, site owner slights and ‘argument’ that is no more than a ‘wot I think’ dressed up as a bold statement… not so much. One man’s reasonable interlocutor can still be another’s inaccurate, apologist contrarian. In the past you have thought Mr. Campbell is great; others don’t… the way of the world. They tear his behaviour a new one for not being up to professional, impartial snuff, and if they exist you counter with persuasive facts.. that is effective debate. It has worked quite well… until recently.
If folk ‘like’ a comment that is for them to do, and if you find that a tragedy when you don’t think their likes are warranted then fine… but seems pretty boorish to me to start leaping in telling folk they are wrong in what they like.
I hope I am not telling you how to think by saying so, but I do worry that if folk who comment on site are bullied by the louder voices, especially those pulling personal pejoratives out of the hat to do so, a perverse sort of dominance is exerted. Yes, Mr. Dandy cops just that too, but the site title rather shows the line being taken, and if he weighs in (often first), he knows what he is doing and why. He’s also a big boy and can give as good as he gets (try dealing with a CiF crowd). When right… kudos. When wrong, a mea culpa can win grudging respect. However, bunker retreats or failing to answer counter-questions… harder to feel is playing the game fairly.
So if I think JD, or anyone, is not meeting argument with argument, until banned here too, I might well chirp up. The alternative being what… some are expected to keep quiet more than others? Very Orwellian.
‘Nobody, as I recall, told those posters they shouldn’t be upbraiding… or saying what was good or bad for the blog.’
OT, but with the greatest respect, if allowed, proving negatives is always hard. And on a site of individuals, the move to a generic entity being held to account seems less than fair.
I am tempted to set the hounds of archive on a fun chase seeking where I have not leapt in to critique where I should by saying I have chipped in with a ‘regular’ when I feel a line has be exceeded, but frankly this has not happened too often, mainly because I have not felt it has.
And setting up one poster not being held to account (especially on something not specified) to equate to another being so held seems tenuous, especially when the latter does rather seem to exist here to create heat over light… and is succeeding admirably at it too.
My focus is BBC competence, impartiality and coherence. The site owners set up instances where they feel these have been compromised. If the first post in is (often) little more than ‘the BBC have got it about right’ based on no more than a personal view, then even if politely articulated it seems of questionable value. And there may be merit in saying so, as opposed to creating an aura of slack cut because of an obsession with ‘balance’. They can stand, or fall on their merits like any other comment.
As to internal courtesies, if there isn’t anything nice to say about style, it usually feels better left not saying. Often the lack of a ‘like’ can be the most potent postscript of all.
I get discomfited by the odd phobia stridently bolted onto a BBC critique that serves to distract, but usually ignore it. If that is what is being alluded to here… ain’t going to change.
As a great man once said, [subject] didn’t make a good start here, but [subject] does seem to have heeded some of the reasonable criticisms made of [subject] since.
Maybe ‘we’ (to use the BBC royal) all might reflect on these words?
Being fair is the point I was making, or attempting to make – level playing field and all that. And I was referring to individuals, not a general entity, which so often visitors to this site do, mistakenly, I feel. Not clear why you think otherwise.
Matters of interpretation, differences of perception and points of view, I suppose. I often see things differently from hippie, say, or other people on here and mostly I don’t say anything or make a point of trying to argue them out of something. And when it comes down to it, it’s not my blog, either! Nor anyone’s, except DV.
So, hey ho, I will leave it there and retire to the garage, as someone else mentioned earlier, to sort out some stuff which should have been done earlier.
It seems you’re running out friends fast around here; not surprising considering the patronizing and sanctimonious tone of your postings. The majority of people on here have had it up to our necks with Marxism, political correctness and paying for the BBC so stop trying to be Mr Moral Adjudicator and stop f**king moaning because it’s getting boring. You don’t like the post, you don’t read. Simples.
I should add @hippiepooter
Merlin, I dont come here to make friends. You really do have a temper problem, dont you?
Not at all lol, I’m actually quite a chilled out guy hippiepooter apart from the fact that lefty PC do – gooders are destroying my country.
Off topic. When does Trenton Oldfield get his article published in the guardian and then given air time by the BBC.
The custard pie idiot was in the Guardian (BBC in print) a day after his Murdoch stunt.
Quoting G Dubya!
QED
The BBC and fellow grievance farmers need to square the contradictory notions that “we are all equal under the law” and “well, we have to take affirmative and compensatory action to favour victims of their racist oppression-imaginary or not”.
We whites get similarly incompetent and mouthy police,capable of being nasty when under pressure….but it`s not racist-just like the death of Baby P was not seen to be a white kid wilfully left to die by black or Muslim social workers…just malice, ignorance, PC gestures and incompetence…indefensible but not evidence that black or Mediterranean workers in Haringey are “institutionally racist”.
If then we`re all better off being “equal under the law”-then an awful lot of media types and their grievance farming charity law firms etc would be dumped…and that would never do would it?
Second point…is gayness linked to leftism?…well, I reckon that these memes are “linked”…and will use my license fee to fund my own research into it…and then not publish my results, but know that the BBC will take it all on trust…I get it pretty much right…and both Crow and Qatada would think me a tosspot!…so no problem re my impartiality!
‘The darkness enshrouding God and obscuring values is the real threat to our existence and to the world in general.’
The Pope
Sitting on the fence, never judging, never coming to a conclusion, never therefore able to act, typifies the very BBC attitude that this blog is published to fight against…..the BBC’s attempt to carpet the world, to stop all risk and to prevent debate on any difficult, ‘dangerous’ subjects, to prevent all talk of immigration or Europe or Islam….is the attitude that ironically develops into the bias and extremism they seek to do away with…..it becomes an ever smaller intellectual world that refuses to engage with reality and indeed starts to fight against it….and where free speech becomes a crime.
The BBC believe ignorance is bliss, don’t talk about it and it will go away, agree to disagree and therefore agree to do nothing. All cultures, religions, ideologies are relative and of equal value. Who can say whether one is better? So don’t do anything to rock the boat even if someone is hacking the bottom out of it.
What will happen to the world under such , what you might call a tyranny, of non ideas….look to Islam, look to the so called Golden Age of Islamic empire…where is it now? Buried in the sands of time…why? because the religion wrapped those cultures in its smothering deadly embrace and refused to acknowledge or take in different or new ideas….Nations that succumbed to the Islamic embrace were strangled for centuries….culture, science, learning, philosophy and intellectual pursuit didn’t just stand still they died…..a thousand years of Islamic ‘Dark Ages’ because of the attitudes that the BBC now pursue and embody.
As the Pope says we are heading for a new Dark Age….and it is brought to us by the magic lantern people. The light in the corner of the room, the enlightened speech out of your wireless, is like the light at the end of the tunnel you see when you die…..it’s not a new beginning, it’s the End.
Fine, fine post Alan.
Do you think that the BBC would ever tell us how it is that Islam has a claim on Jerusalem?…or how Islam seems awful similar to misheard snippets of Judaism and Christian practice at the time, with nothing revelatory as far as I can tell?
Yet we`re supposed to respect it….I do hope that gay wedding parties and themed stag nights are being lined up for Cairo and Jeddah…I know that I would pay to watch the outcomes…so how about it Beeb?
Islam has a claim on Jerusalem in the same way that the Mormon Church has a claim on Jesus appearing to the Native Americans. Yet one is openly denigrated by the BBC, while the other is treated with the utmost respect.
Unwitting bias, or institutional? Defenders of the indefensible are welcome to explain it to us.
A keen regard for their own personal safety and/or a natural totalitarian leftist affinity with Islam I would say are the deciding factors here.
It’s an intellectual failure.
Another reason why INBBC doesn’t like ‘The Sun’ :-
“I wed aged FIVE… in the UK .
Shocking story from a British town ”
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4244979/I-married-at-the-age-of-FIVE-in-the-UK.html
1468 known cases, plus another suspected 6500 unreported? If this were a disease or a “hate crime”, the BBC would be screaming bloody murder about an epidemic and the failure of whatever institution or group of people they could hold responsible.
So true David P.
Funny too that the BBC would regard the Popes warnings as Alan gives them as just the ramblings of an old Panzer paedophile…but these appalling facts about under-age marriages, of plying girls in care with drugs and kebabs as they pass them around for rape…none of this bothers the BBC one bit…they`d have been asking for it eh?
No wonder we`re getting angry about the medias double standards and selective stories…it will not end well at this rate, sad to say.
Yes.
Of course BBC-NUJ is institutionally lefitst, and in so many wonderous ways, which it refuses to acknowledge.
For example, for BBC-NUJ, ‘racism’ can only be something done by ‘whites’ against ‘blacks and non-whites’. For BBC-NUJ, ‘ racism’ is not something which can be explicitly reported as being perpetrated by ‘blacks and non-whites’ against ‘whites’.
So today, for example, BBC-NUJ only presents cases such as the following:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-17651621
A Rod Liddle comment (2010):
“Stop the BBC’s racism.”
http://www.spectator.co.uk/rodliddle/5802008/stop-the-bbcs-racism.thtml
Is BBC-NUJ aware of this?:-
“Caucasophobia — the Accepted Racism” (2006).
http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.co.uk/2006/10/caucasophobia-accepted-racism.html
“Is the BBC institutionally leftist?”
WHAT?!! ..lol!.. Do bears shit in the woods?
Yes, absolutely, from top to bloody bottom the anything BUT impartial BBC is institutionally leftist….and it should be either commercialised and free (like ITV) or made a subscription broadcaster, NOW! Being legally forced to have to fund anything leftist absolutely makes my feckin blood boil!
Left-wing bias? It’s written through the BBC’s very DNA, says former top BBC news and current affairs man Peter Sissons:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1349506/Left-wing-bias-Its-written-BBCs-DNA-says-Peter-Sissons.html
Brilliant report! Top man!!