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  1. George R says:
    April 25, 2012 at 6:46 pm

    BBC-NUJ’s political amnesia: Labour and the Murdochs –

    “Phone hacking: pressure on Gordon Brown over Rupert Murdoch meetings.”

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/phone-hacking/8654643/Phone-hacking-pressure-on-Gordon-Brown-over-Rupert-Murdoch-meetings.html

       14 likes

  2. jim smiles says:
    April 25, 2012 at 6:59 pm

    As the bbc and most of the other UK media outlets only ever seen to give a “east coast liberal perspective” on American news. I’ve had to look else where for a more balanced middle America one.

    I found theblaze.com, uncommon knowledge’s youtube channel is worth a look as well as c-span. But if anyone else knows of other sites please let me know.

       7 likes

  3. Jeff Waters says:
    April 25, 2012 at 7:04 pm

    Double-dip recession: There’s always fantasy island – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17842001

    Paul Mason tells us why austerity is a bad policy…

    Jeff

       6 likes

    • George R says:
      April 26, 2012 at 12:21 am

      BBC’s NUJ Father of the Chapel at ‘Newsnight’, Mr MASON, the novelist and musician, has an idiosyncratic ‘Marxist’ solution to UK’s economic problems:
      ‘Tories should cut taxes’, and ‘Lib Dems Cable is right’.

         3 likes

    • johnnythefish says:
      April 26, 2012 at 4:00 pm

      I love that: ‘Even more austerity’. Yet we’ve hardly started addressing the deficit. You’d think from Mason’s statement that we didn’t have enough money to mend the potholes in our roads (we do, but it’s being spent on more worthwhile causes, like council ‘community’ newspapers, telling us what a heroic job they’re doing keeping the show on the road – carefully avoiding the potholes, of course – in the face of ‘austerity’ cuts). I know which fantasy island I’m living on, and it ain’t Mason’s.

         2 likes

  4. matthew says:
    April 25, 2012 at 7:13 pm

    nice bit of subtle bias here:

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17826515

    “Could teenagers be stopped from looking at porn?”
    Teenagers?
    I think the world they have chosen not to use is “children”.

    The campaigners are trying to stop CHILDREN from seeing porn, by means of a filter controllable by their parents or guardians.

    They are not trying to stop 19 year olds say (who are teenagers), living in their own household, it is specifically targeted at CHILDREN, of any age, who will not be able to access the material unless their parents enable it. Nothing to do with children, it’s about ADULTS being able opt in, and CHILDREN not.

       13 likes

    • Span Ows says:
      April 25, 2012 at 10:00 pm

      Funny how when they’re Palestinians they are always “children” even if they’re patently armed terrorists.

         20 likes

      • uncle bup says:
        April 26, 2012 at 1:16 pm

        and a fifteen year old six foot two gangsta with a shank’ is always ‘a child’.

        Just so long as its someone else’s gizzard his ‘shank’ is sticking out of.

           7 likes

    • johnnythefish says:
      April 26, 2012 at 2:31 pm

      The one that made me shake my head in disbelief was to hear (on the BBC, where else) some months ago a woman advocating free and confidential (i.e. without parents’ consent) contraception for girls as young as 12 so they could go round bonking to their hearts content. I’m pretty certain she worked for a pressure group – sorry, ‘charity’. Unbelievably, she didn’t call them children but ‘young women’. Funny how that quickly changes back to ‘vulnerable children’ when they start bonking someone over the age of consent.

         8 likes

  5. Reed says:
    April 25, 2012 at 7:31 pm

    A very interesting (and credible) article here…

    http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/05/who_wrote_dreams_and_why_it_ma_1.html

    http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/04/google_books_lists_bill_ayers_as_author_of_dreams_from_my_father.html

    Turns out the ‘nuance of his finely tuned brain’ might just be Obama channeling Mr. Ayres.

    Former Marxist terrorists, Communists and racist pastors…this President has some deeply worrying cohorts.

       8 likes

    • David Preiser (USA) says:
      April 25, 2012 at 7:40 pm

      Especially interesting given the sweeping under the rug by the MSM of His connection to Bill Ayers, and most recently the dog-eating meme going around. It was included – true or not – as part of the portrayal of The Obamessiah as being better connected to the world than ordinary, parochial, ignorant United Statesians.

         8 likes

    • Millie Tant says:
      April 25, 2012 at 7:42 pm

      That was posted on the previous open thread by Cassis.

         3 likes

  6. John Anderson says:
    April 25, 2012 at 7:57 pm

    These days for my antidote to BBC propaganda I visit powerlineblog.com, realclearpolitics.com and realclearpolitics.com/videos, hotair.com. dailycaller.com and breitbart.com

    and Iowahawk, brilliant satire !

       4 likes

  7. Jeff Waters says:
    April 25, 2012 at 8:07 pm

    “Mr Trump’s increasingly inflammatory attacks on wind power have been met with Mr Salmond’s more measured response on the importance of green energy to Scotland’s economic future.”
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-17826561

    No bias at all in that wording..

    Jeff

       26 likes

    • Cassandra King says:
      April 25, 2012 at 8:29 pm

      “The Scottish government said offshore wind was worth £30bn of investment to Scotland, and could create up to 28,000 Scottish jobs.”

      Who makes up these figures? More importantly why does the BBC take claims like this at face value? Nearly 30.000 jobs? How many of these jobs has actually been created so far though? And its nowhere near 30.000 nor ever will be and the few created will cost two job or more in the real economy and each job will rely on permanent subsidies which cannot be sustained.

      In fact the McToad of McToad hall is relying on England to buy Scotlands wildly erratic expensive and unreliable windmill electricity at inflated subsidised prices while Scotland imports cheap fossil fuel generated electricity from England. In essence its a giant fraud and a big risk and it relies on England footing the bill. Mr McToad can beat the nationalist drum and play braveheart while taking English money.

         25 likes

      • Buggy says:
        April 25, 2012 at 9:06 pm

        Justifying things that are unwanted or unpopular by pulling out the “jobs creation” card is an old trick that I’d be thrilled to see going the way of the dodo. Motorways, airport extensions, the bloody rat hole to France and its accompanying 10 minute saving railway (in our case), every last one of them is going to create lots of luvverly jobs if only the permission (pleeze pleeze pleeze) to go ahead is given. As with so many unlovely modern habits, it’s an attempt to close down any sort of argument by damning the opposition: in this case, by implying that naysayers are heartless bastards who don’t want those 28, 000 jobs to be created.

        (Funny how the putative jobs are always “local” jobs, as if you can legally ringfence posts against anybody applying from outwith the area).

        On another topic: Sitting in the Doctor’s waiting room at 5 o’clock this pre-vening, the finance female on Simon Mayo’s show announced that we were in a double-dip recession for the first time since the seventies. She was surprisingly upbeat about this rather grim news, so much so that even Mayo was moved to observe why she sounded pleased.

        Frankly, her denial wasn’t exactly convincing. Quelle surprise.

           24 likes

      • Dave s says:
        April 25, 2012 at 10:25 pm

        Like everything else to do with Scottish independence it is fantasyland. But the BBC laps it up – Independent Scotland the nearest thing to the statist paradise of their deranged dreams.

           15 likes

      • uncle bup says:
        April 26, 2012 at 9:11 am

        Ah yes the old job creation card.

        If you spent £30 billion going round the country smashing windows and then repairing them you could create 28,000 jobs.

        Or if you spent £30 billion going round the countryside erecting vast statues to the folly of our ‘ruling’ classes you could create 28,000 jobs. (Oops they’re already doing that).

        But if you want to spend £30 billion to create 28,000 jobs then how about spending the £30 billion on something useful like, I dunno, transport links.

        Or, and I know this is a real stretch, giving the £30 billion back to the people and see how many jobs get created that way.

           11 likes

      • johnnythefish says:
        April 26, 2012 at 2:36 pm

        Incidentally, guess how Germany is replacing its nuclear-sourced energy
        http://thegwpf.org/international-news/5536-germany-building-17-new-coal-29-new-gas-fired-power-stations.html

           5 likes

  8. Louis Robinson says:
    April 25, 2012 at 8:48 pm

    Sorry, folks, I don’t understand. I just don’t understand.
    For months now I have been posting information about the “fast and furious” scandal.

    At first it was the tale of a clandestine ‘unofficial’ FBI sting that went wrong. The story was this: heavy duty weapons (with GPS tracking devices hidden in them) were smuggled by the FBI to Mexican narco-terrorists, the plan being to track the bad guys down. Newly released emails and briefing papers suggest that a similar operation was pursued by the Bush Administration, but in that case bad guys were actually brought to justice. The Obama plan failed, it was suggested, because the tracking devices didn’t work. When one of the weapons ended up being used by a Mexican drug smuggler to murder Brian Terry, a US border patrol agent, questions began to be asked.
    The line put out in the media was that it was a botched FBI operation – too clever by half to succeed. If only…!

    I have just read “Fast and Furious: Barack Obama’s Bloodiest Scandal and the Shameless Cover-Up” by Katie Pavlich. Pavich has been talking to many very unhappy people in law enforcement who hate what they were instructed to do on behalf of Obama and his trusty sidekick Eric Holder the US attorney general. After investigation, this is what she is saying:-
    During the 2008 election campaign Barack Obama, eager for evidence to support the Left’s (and his) ideological goal of gun control, claimed that violence on the Mexican border was being carried out by weapons imported from the USA. However, after the election they found that most of the weapons were not from the USA after all, but from other South American countries. This inconvenient fact did not forward their agenda so evidence of US involvement was cynically manufactured and used: –
    The Administration gave the green light to a scheme which allowed 2500 guns (some of them AK-47s) to be given to Mexican drugs lords, not to locate these scumbags, but to be later used as evidence to support Obama’s election statement. No-one seemed to mind that hundreds of innocent Mexican citizens were killed with these guns, but when Brian Terry was shot, investigators have been uncovering the truth. The Attorney General, Eric Holder, covering his arse, has not explained what was really happened, but as Pavlich points out, there are many deeply unhappy people within law enforcement and the FBI who are blowing the whistle.

    It’s obscene: the Obama administration was willing to accept the slaughter of people in Mexico and endanger their own US population on the border in the interests of their political aim – gun control. This has already begun:

    “In an effort to stem the illicit flow of weapons into Mexico, the Justice Department announced Monday that all gun shops in four Southwest border states will be required to alert the federal government to frequent buyers of high-powered rifles”. AP reported on Fox news July 11th 2011. The “effort”, by the way, was a Presidential Executive Order. And all the while He must have known that many of these were “sting” weapons.
    Katie Pavlich says, it’s “a stunning indictment of a radical administration willing to trample the Constitution and risk lives to achieve its ideological goals” – the equivalent of Knacker of the Yard planting bricks in a suspect’s back yard, then “finding” them. But these were not bricks, but dangerous weapons, put in the hands of people who think nothing of killing a small town mayor, removing his face and stitching it on a football.

    In case you are wondering, I am not a gun owner. Being a Brit I’m still uncomfortable seeing cops on US streets with pistols in their holsters. But I would never put people’s lives at risk in order to achieve my political ends by manufacturing evidence.

    But why bring this up here on Biased-BBC? Because the BBC needs to attach more importance to this story. Even if Pavlich’s allegations prove to be false, the BBC has a duty to report on the matter. Could it be that this is an issue that could sink Obama re-election hopes? Is the media so corrupt that they will hide a story simply because it is inconvenient for their cause? My own bet: though Ms Pavlich works for the Republican leaning “TownHall.com”, the book is being enthusiastically promoted by the National Rifle Association – and the NRA is public enemy #1 to the BBC. However it should be the facts should stand or fall as they are.

    For BBC listeners and viewers: a blow by blow account of fast and Furious is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATF_gunwalking_scandal
    The new allegation that the motive for the plan was to manufacture the evidence the Administration needed to forward their gun control agenda is expressed by Ms Lavlich on the “Morning In America” radio show. The site is: http://www.billbennett.com/ The interview is the second hour of the show but I think an excerpt will be posted on the site shortly.

       12 likes

    • Span Ows says:
      April 26, 2012 at 1:45 pm

      Wow…this is thriller movie territory; also a hidden scandal about to erupt (hopefully) if this is true.

         1 likes

    • David Preiser (USA) says:
      April 26, 2012 at 3:10 pm

      Good point, Louis. We’ve mentioned it a few times here, but we know the BBC has mostly censored the story, and certainly hasn’t provided any real depth. I haven’t read Pavlich’s book yet, but am aware of it, and seen some of her making the non-Left media rounds.

         2 likes

  9. John Anderson says:
    April 25, 2012 at 9:24 pm

    Obama’s dog-days ?

    http://predicthistunpredictpast.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/pictures-of-day-other-white-meat.html

    This story will simply not lie down and roll over. Even if the BBC tries to ignore it.

    Woof !

       4 likes

  10. Neil Turner says:
    April 25, 2012 at 9:41 pm

    The BBC are to have 765 staff at the Olympics

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/news/9226599/London-2012-Olympics-BBC-to-have-765-staff-working-at-Games-a-55-per-cent-increase-on-Beijing.html

    I paid for the Olympics once through my taxes. I’m paying for it again through my licence fee.

    I am a youth cricket coach so am committed to grass roots sport, but feel that over £20BN for two weeks running and jumping is expensive

    With the BBC at the helm it will turn into a festival of diversity, where most Brits either can’t gain access, or will have their lives / businesses disrupted

    Grumpy ? Definitely.

       23 likes

    • Jeff Waters says:
      April 25, 2012 at 9:54 pm

      Let’s say that the BBC didn’t offer Olympics coverage. ITV and Channel 4 would happily step into the void, providing the public with wall to wall sporting coverage on a free of charge, non subscription basis. So why does the license fee payer need to pay for something they would get for free anyway?

         16 likes

      • Span Ows says:
        April 25, 2012 at 10:07 pm

        Therein lies the dilemma: the time for a state public broadcaster is well and truly over in the multi multi MULTI radio and TV channel era.

           15 likes

  11. Merlin says:
    April 25, 2012 at 9:52 pm

    It’s bad enough that we are back into a recession without the BBC, Liebour and the Guardian willing it to be so. Distorting statistics through the prism of complex social factors which are not amenable to quick and glossy current affairs coverage and bartering in the currency of political point scoring is disgusting behaviour from what is meant to be an impartial pubic service provider – I would urge the BBC, who we are all coerced into subsidising under the threat of fine or criminal prosecution, to think long and hard about their scruples because I can anticipate a time when the public neither has the money or the patience to underwrite their tendentiousness any longer. It’s been a bad day and I’ve had it up to my neck with the BBC’s little middle class political bubble. Enough is enough!

       29 likes

    • Dave s says:
      April 25, 2012 at 10:34 pm

      Yes today they just went too far. Is there just one of these useless parasites who understands basic economics? Just one.
      Answer that with a big fat zero.

         11 likes

  12. Harry says:
    April 25, 2012 at 10:40 pm

    Ex Guardian Political Correspondent, Allegra Stratton (Now BBC Political Editor for Newsnight), is on Newsnight talking about how the governments austerity plan is not working. No real discussion of the fact that there has been no real cut in spending yet.

       16 likes

  13. Jeff Waters says:
    April 25, 2012 at 10:45 pm

    Tweet from the BBC’s Tim Weber:

    Amusing line by Rupert Murdoch: “All govts hate the BBC, and then give it everything it wants.” Hmm, our 20% budget cut must be voluntary.

    Since when were the BBC cuts anything like 20%?!?

    Jeff

       16 likes

    • uncle bup says:
      April 26, 2012 at 9:13 am

      or since when were the BBC cuts anything at all?

      Can’t say I’ve noticed any reduction in the license fee.

         8 likes

    • David Preiser (USA) says:
      April 26, 2012 at 1:51 pm

      Just like the housing benefits, there are no cuts at the BBC, but rather a freeze in the license fee. The only action that could be considered to have a diminishing effect on the amount of cash the BBC has to spend on its departments is the Government deciding not to fund the World Service (so much) anymore, forcing the BBC to absorb the cost. Never mind that the profit from Worldwide would more than cover it, it’s not even £100 million pa.

      So this 20% cuts is a load of crap, of course, as that’s barely 2% (if I have the numbers right) of the BBC’s budget. Any department seeing 20% cuts is due to political decisions internally, just like what Labour councils do, and for which they blame Tory cuts. What a shock.

         7 likes

  14. lojolondon says:
    April 25, 2012 at 11:01 pm

    Clearly at this stage the weakest link in the coalition is Jeremy Hunt – so the BBC has several articles on him – eg. ‘Ten questions Jeremy Hunt faces’, lots of Liebour quotes saying he was responsible for his team’s messages, and Labour people saying he threw his ‘assistant to the wolves’.

    I can’t even count how many times under Brown and Blair, the big man promised that investigations would be made, and they always found a scapegoat. BUT the Beeb ALWAYS accepted the resignation and NEVER chased the top guy.

    Most classic line was from Brown when he fired Damian McBride “I take full responsibility for what happens. That’s why the person who was responsible went immediately.”

       15 likes

    • David Preiser (USA) says:
      April 26, 2012 at 2:05 pm

      Listen to Sarah Monatgue on Today introduce her segment with the guy who used to be with the Fair Trading office. There’s no mistaking her sarcastic over-emphasis of “strictly followed due process”, and Hunt’s claim that Sky had “no back channel of influence”. She sounds so certain that Hunt is guilty when she greets the ex- Fair Trading guy and over-stresses those words again in her opening question to him, “Do you think that he strictly”, etc.

      Answer, “Well I don’t think we know yet….” Even though the rest of his answer, in classic Sir Humphrey style, shows that he’s pretty skeptical about Hunt’s aide’s behavior at least.

      But there’s a problem with one part of his answer where he suggests the job of deciding these deals should be passed to another group and taken away from politicians. He uses the US example of having the Dept. of Justice having more responsibility, but anyone except BBC audiences will know that the DoJ is just as political as anything. So that’s a fail, but you wouldn’t know it if you had to rely only on the BBC for your information.

      Next up Peston spitting out a few words summing up yesterday’s Murdoch appearance, but basically he just didn’t believe Murdoch’s testimony. What a shock. Peston was in just as tight with them as anyone, yet he’s still allowed to play unbiased expert analyst. I guess he’s turned on them just like he turns on anyone who gives him the gossip on which he’s made his reputation. If I worked in The City or in the press, I wouldn’t give Peston the time of day. How stupid are people who talk to him about anything?

         6 likes

      • Span Ows says:
        April 26, 2012 at 2:12 pm

        well I wouldn’t mind betting mad Brown is on Peston’s speed dial. He wrote the book on Brown FFS how can the BBC even pretend he’s impartial.

           7 likes

      • Andy S. says:
        April 26, 2012 at 7:52 pm

        Peston shouldn’t be pontificating on Murdoch for the Beeb as he’s a member of the “Hacked Off” campaign. Surely he cannot claim to be unbiased?

           3 likes

  15. jonuk says:
    April 25, 2012 at 11:05 pm

    http://www.gaysauna.co.uk/ …….the BBC social club

       3 likes

  16. Te Huhu says:
    April 25, 2012 at 11:34 pm

    Brown has implicitly accused Murdoch of lying under oath. ThIs may up the stakes…

       13 likes

    • Guest Who says:
      April 26, 2012 at 11:41 am

      ‘Brown has implicitly accused Murdoch of lying under oath. ‘
      Interesting this. I see it as huge. Yet the MSM so far has barely mentioned it with more than a giggle.
      The UK PM puts in a call to the boss of a huge media enterprise and there is no record of it to support the rather clearly disparate recollections from any in the staff chain that would have facilitated the exchange?
      Uh-huh.

         7 likes

      • Dysgwr_Cymraeg says:
        April 26, 2012 at 7:02 pm

        If only Murdoch had a tape of the conversation, a la “that bigoted woman”……….perhaps he has, who knows, wouldn’t that be nice.

           1 likes

  17. Framer says:
    April 26, 2012 at 12:14 am

    Ben Bradshaw MP, a former BBC employee, complains on the BBC TV News that James Murdoch wanted to end the BBC licence fee, with much angry body strutting.
    BBC interviewer could not possibly ask if he was biased by self interest.

       18 likes

  18. The Technical Team says:
    April 26, 2012 at 8:03 am

    Did the Beeb reporter in last nights early evening news really have to stand in front of the handfull of placard waving “Murdoch Mafia” demonstrators outside the court. Couldn’t a more impartial backdrop have been used, a wall for instance.

       15 likes

    • Roland Deschain says:
      April 26, 2012 at 9:01 am

      I think I counted three, if it’s the same report seen on the news at 10:00. Does that even qualify as a handful?

      Contrasted with the visit of “The Donald” to the Scottish Parliament where both pro and anti wind farm protesters were shown. You wouldn’t have guessed from the pictures that the pro lobbyists were heavily outnumbered.

         5 likes

    • #88 says:
      April 26, 2012 at 11:34 am

      Perhaps someone needs to position themselves behind a live OB with a placard along the lines of ‘End BBC Bias’ or something similar

         9 likes

    • johnnythefish says:
      April 26, 2012 at 5:33 pm

      They couldn’t possibly have been BBC employees, could they?

         2 likes

  19. lojolondon says:
    April 26, 2012 at 8:07 am

    Watch the news on BBC1 today – they are talking about ‘great public concern re closeness of Murdoch to politics’. Says who?? NO mention of closeness of Liebour to BBC and Guardian.
    Also, a classic airbrushing – montage of Rupert through the ages against pictures of Thatcher, Major, Blair, and Cameron as the years tick by.
    Crash Gordon completely airbrushed out of that one!

       19 likes

  20. Nick says:
    April 26, 2012 at 8:58 am

    28,000 new jobs in Scotland from ‘wind power’? Don’t make me laugh. Even if it was true, do you think the Scots would be clamouring over each other for them? Of course not. There’s no way they’d leave their widescreen tvs and bottles of Buckie. Better to sit on your arse and let England pay for your miserable existence.

       6 likes

  21. uncle bup says:
    April 26, 2012 at 9:02 am

    And this week on The Film Programme with Claudia Itsaboutmememe…

    Defence Lawyer: Mr. Cogburn, did you find a bottle with a hundred and twenty-five dollars in it?

    Prosecution Lawyer: Objection your Honor, Leading

    Judge Parker: Sustained. Rephrase the question.

    Defence Lawyer: What happened then?

    Rooster Cogburn: I found a bottle with a hundred and twenty-five dollars in it.

    …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

    Now compare and contrast.

    BBC Droid: Are they still in your opinion two posh boys who don’t know the price of milk?

    Nadine Dorries: Yes

       3 likes

    • uncle bup says:
      April 26, 2012 at 9:19 am

      Sorry, did I say ‘Now compare and contrast’?.

      I meant of course ‘Now compare’.

      My bad 🙁

         1 likes

  22. uncle bup says:
    April 26, 2012 at 9:05 am

    …and while I’m on the halfwit’s halfwit, Gameshow Nikk moved into pole position for the Sony Dolly Dimple Question of the Year Award with

    ‘Ed Miliband did you attend those (Murdoch) parties with a heavy heart?’

       9 likes

  23. As I See It says:
    April 26, 2012 at 9:20 am

    BBC 5 Live appears to have an unspoken remit to vigorously mix sport and left-wing comment. The result: a sickening lefty stew.
    Radio Salford has been at the hub of liberal pant-wetting over horse deaths at the Grand National. No problem with people deaths at the London Marathon? – Won’t go there, will you Beeboids?
    Mad-For-It Wireless carried plenty of criticism of the Bahrain GP. (Thank you for focusing on the supposed evils of the Bahrain regime, say the Governments of Iran and China).
    Bastard-Son-of-Morrissey Broadcasting is aching to find a gay footballer. Hopefully in a team managed by a black coach.
    There is the remit.
    This morning we have a campaigner presented with a platform to suggest that soccer matches are called off by referees if and when there is racist chanting. None of us like racism but this guy’s reasoning was choice: it is a matter of heath and safety it seems! No one should be required to work in a racist workplace. To think Martin Luther King never thought of that argument.
    Now I’m almost relieved when Dame Nicky comes on to attack the coalition.

       8 likes

    • Pah says:
      April 27, 2012 at 2:00 pm

      So next time my team is losing I start chanting “You black bastard!” ad nauseum and I get the match called off and my team does not lose 3 points.

      That’ll work.

      Some people are just twats aren’t they?

         1 likes

  24. Umbongo says:
    April 26, 2012 at 9:20 am

    I love the idea of “news” at the BBC. Evan Davis gave Ed Miliband a less than searching interview on Today at around 8:15 (compare and contrast Humphrys’ sustained attack on Cameron during his “interview” with Cameron). Then on the 8:30 “news” we were told that Ed Miliband has (verbally) attacked Cameron. Later – on the 9:00 news – a full minute (of, what 2 1/2) was given to Ed’s attack on Cameron complete with a sound-bite from Ed.
    This is not news in any sense that I understand it: it’s blatant propagandising on behalf of Labour.

       18 likes

    • Fred Bloggs says:
      April 26, 2012 at 10:39 am

      Balanced reporting; and that was nothing like balanced reporting.

         5 likes

    • GotItAboutRight says:
      April 26, 2012 at 11:47 am

      I didn’t hear the Cameron interview to compare it to, but I’ll hazard a guess that Humphrys didn’t begin a question to the PM with the words “We all know you want to help hard-working families, but…”

         6 likes

      • will says:
        April 26, 2012 at 12:28 pm

        I did not hear the whole Millband interview, but he said near enough nothing of substance in the 4/5 minutes I did hear. Is that why (unlike with Cameron) it was not necessary to wheel on Toenails immediately after him to give us the BBC spin?

           2 likes

      • John Anderson says:
        April 26, 2012 at 12:32 pm

        I don’t think Cameron was able to finish a single sentence before Humphrys cut across him It was an appallingly rude interview. Anyone else subjected to that treatment would have been tempted to walk out – or slap Humphrys’ arrogant mouth shut.

           5 likes

      • johnnythefish says:
        April 26, 2012 at 5:47 pm

        And the tiny bit I heard before the red mist descended and another ‘off’ button got seriously twatted was Millibean inferring that only those who are not on the top rate of tax are ‘hard working’. This went completely unchallenged by the swooning Davies, of course. It’s at times like this the BBC show their core bias, as there was no challenge from a right-wing perspective e.g. ‘The top 1% of earners pay nearly 30% of the tax. Don’t you think that’s enough?’

           4 likes

    • Millie Tant says:
      April 26, 2012 at 12:47 pm

      That’s standard practice on Beeboid Radio 4 news: make the “news” item the Labour attack, rather than the relevant government action or policy, which should be the leading news, with Labour’s reaction secondary.

         4 likes

  25. Rueful Red says:
    April 26, 2012 at 9:50 am

    Re Olympics, here’s an entertaining piece about how being uniquely funded means you can be utter rubbish.

    http://www.heraldscotland.com/sport/opinion/michael-vaughan-and-the-masters-no-auntie-its-just-not-cricket.17409117

       2 likes

  26. Framer says:
    April 26, 2012 at 10:39 am

    James Naughtie on ‘Today’ did a tour down memory lane this morning of his old newspaper haunts – they are all closing. Apparently it is the web that is to blame. Nary a mention that it is the BBC’s massively subsidised [by us] news websites that are killing them off.
    There won’t be more than a few newspapers left in a decade and with Murdoch seen off, the BBC will be the sole purveyor of news and employer of journalists.

       13 likes

  27. Phil Ford says:
    April 26, 2012 at 10:56 am

    I’m looking out of my window here in Bedfordshire today. It’s raining cats and dogs. Again. Apparently, this month the UK has seen ‘record’ rainfall (whatever that means) and yet, as the BBC dutifully reminded East Anglian viewers on last night’s BBC local news ‘the region is in the grip of a drought’.

    It’s a funny thing this ‘drought’. As our ‘on-message’ BBC reporter films himself (in the driving rain) beside a ‘three quarters full’ reservoir (‘way below normal level for this time of the year!’), I wonder why he couldn’t have gone just down the road to Northampton where reservoirs are doing well and are at perfectly healthy levels for the time of year. I suppose if you have a particular message to make, you find a way to make the picture fit.

    The BBC: proving time and again that 2+2 does actually =5.

       14 likes

  28. George R says:
    April 26, 2012 at 11:07 am

    -Not a ‘Binyam Mohamed’ type case, so INBBC will NOT campaign for this BRITISH soldier:

    “Betrayal of a war hero: Why did the Army pursue Para through the courts for two years at a cost of £300,000… just for stopping a Taliban suspect fleeing?”

    By Ian Drury.

    Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2135275/Betrayal-war-hero-Why-did-Army-pursue-Para-courts-years-cost-300-000–just-stopping-Taliban-suspect-fleeing.html#ixzz1t8i3g2Bm

       9 likes

  29. George R says:
    April 26, 2012 at 11:44 am

    Just as BBC-NUJ is politically committed to forcing the British people to be taxed to pay for the broadcaster’s propaganda output, so too the BBC-NUJ is committed to campaigning for the British people to be taxed to pay for the Islamic Republic of PAKISTAN’s weaponry, under the guise of ‘AID’.

    ‘Cranmer’:-
    “Pakistan spends UK’s £650million aid on nuclear missiles.”
    http://archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/pakistan-spends-uks-650million-aid-on.html

       8 likes

  30. George R says:
    April 26, 2012 at 11:47 am

    Comrade MASON, NUJ Father of the Chapel at ‘Newsnight’ wants tax cuts. Of course he doesn’t advocate ending the tax on the British people, which is the licence fee. Why not?

       8 likes

  31. George R says:
    April 26, 2012 at 12:13 pm

    TURKEY.

    Even before the EU political elite (which includes Labour, Lib Dems. Tories, and BBC-EU) gets 80 million Turks into the EU, the following is happening, which continually adds to Islamic immigration into EU and into the UK:-

    “More Turkish Colonists on the Way”

    http://stopturkey.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/more-turkish-colonists-on-way.html

       8 likes

    • Dysgwr_Cymraeg says:
      April 26, 2012 at 7:20 pm

      You just have to admit the whole issue is far too complex and important to allow us mere plebs a vote on it. . Treacherous scum they are.

         3 likes

  32. Lunchtime Loather says:
    April 26, 2012 at 12:34 pm

    Anybody else having problems posting comments here? I wanted to add an update to the TAXI! thread but it has just vanished, and now tells me that “You have already said that” when I try and resubmit.

       0 likes

    • Millie Tant says:
      April 26, 2012 at 12:54 pm

      I haven’t had any problem posting here today, at least on the Open Thread. Haven’t tried any other threads.

         0 likes

  33. Colonel Blimp says:
    April 26, 2012 at 12:59 pm

    I appreciate that it’s a busy day for the Beeboids, what with gloating over Cameron and Murdoch and a recession to big up – they’re swamped. But I can’t help feeling that this would have achieved some coverage if a Tory MP had tweeted about foreign workers:

    http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/uk/labour-mp-barry-sheermans-bacon-sandwich-jibe-leaves-bad-taste-7681698.html

       5 likes

    • David Preiser (USA) says:
      April 26, 2012 at 3:00 pm

      For sure. An “English rant on St. George’s Day”! LOL. Where’s Mark Easton to make him look like a racist? Can we get a comment from Mrs. Duffy?

         2 likes

    • Demon says:
      April 27, 2012 at 11:48 am

      It would have definitely been squeezed in with all the other anti-Conservative attack pieces that the BBC is majoring on at the moment. They wouldn’t let it go until he made a fulsome apology, and we would have been subjected to all sorts of “Nasty Party” and “racist” accusations on the conservatives. A Labour MP, soon forgotten, even ignored.

         0 likes

  34. George R says:
    April 26, 2012 at 1:00 pm

    More BBC-greenie campaigning for ‘green revolution,’ in contrast to BBC-greenie opposition to shale-gas development, and to nuclear power.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17851599

       3 likes

    • Phil Ford says:
      April 26, 2012 at 1:27 pm

      Amazing, isn’t it, how useful idiots like Shukman can always be depended on to big-up wretched ‘renewables’ whilst managing almost always to either ignore or trash-talk reliable, cheap, secure energy such as shale gas. It really will not do – the BBC is required to provide balanced and informed coverage for all but, when it comes to issues of climate and energy, I see no sign at all that the BBC is interested in any such quaint notions of ‘impartiality’.

      This story, btw, is just another in what will be a long litany of dogmatic ‘primers’ on the BBC for what promises to be the mother-of-all Climate Jamborees – Rio+20, fast-approaching in June of this year. Strengthen your resolve, people: this is going to be an insufferable, sanctimonious, hectoring charade. Expect to see ‘smiling’ George Alagiah on the Six gleefully reporting the end of world on a nightly basis.

      I can hardly wait.

         7 likes

      • Roland Deschain says:
        April 26, 2012 at 3:27 pm

        And, right on cue:

        World’s glaciers ‘out of balance’

        “Earth’s glaciers are seriously out of balance with the global climate and are already committed to losing almost 40% of their volume.

        However, if temperatures continue to rise as models predict, the wastage will be even higher…”

           3 likes

        • johnnythefish says:
          April 26, 2012 at 5:55 pm

          And temperatures HAVE failed to rise as the climate models predicted, for the past 15 years. Now THAT would make a good news story, or full-length investigative feature. Hows about it BBC? No? Thought not.

             7 likes

  35. Dazed & Confused says:
    April 26, 2012 at 1:11 pm

    Shock horror….Hold the front page…….No wonder the BBC wont say a wrong word about him, he’s one of their sainted peoples….

    http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/politics/2012/04/george-galloway-conversion-islam-muslim

       3 likes

    • David Preiser (USA) says:
      April 26, 2012 at 2:57 pm

      They still won’t point out that he took a secular oath when taking his seat in Parliament. Not very godly there. Yeah, they showed the video, but without comment.

         1 likes

      • Reed says:
        April 26, 2012 at 5:27 pm

        I don’t believe a word of it. If he’d really converted as much as TEN years ago, a naked opportunist like Galloway would have made it known long ago and exploited it to the full, Lauren Booth style.

        From the comments on the NS article, someone links to an interview in 2010 where he clearly states that he is a Roman Catholic. This is in an interview with Sinn Fein’s Gerry Kelly. This is the modus operandi with Galloway : saying different things to please each different audience, and hoping that nobody will rumble him. The man is clearly a dinosaur, imagining he still lives in a pre-internet age, when it was much easier to appear in multiple forums around the world, make contradictory speeches, and expect that it would all stay self-contained within each audience. It’s the only explanation I can come up with for such blatant lies, and his repeated fury when someone surprises him and joins the dots to show him up in public.

           2 likes

        • Reed says:
          April 26, 2012 at 5:29 pm

          2 minutes 10 seonds in…the time setting feature doesn’t seem to take.

             0 likes

          • Dazed & Confused says:
            April 26, 2012 at 5:55 pm

            I’m guessing that he changed his name in the usual Islamic tradition to Sadam bin laden or something similar, hence he can’t come out and say, which is why he needs all of the cloak and dagger…..

            I mean……..Since when did a Stalinist believe in Catholicism?

               3 likes

            • David Preiser (USA) says:
              April 26, 2012 at 7:06 pm

              How can Galloway be a Stalinist when he was disparaging David Aaronovitch for being one on last week’s Question Time??
              /rhetorical

                 1 likes

    • Millie Tant says:
      April 26, 2012 at 6:11 pm

      Heh. Being cynical, it would facilitate his womanising. I expect that’s why he’d do it. To “marry” those Muslim women he would have to anyway.

         2 likes

    • Demon says:
      April 27, 2012 at 12:23 pm

      I knew it was only a matter of time before Galloway announced his conversion, I’m just surprised that it happened 10 years ago.

      I believe that Muslims have a word to describe the favoured fooling of infidels (taqqiya???) which is of course what he did to his electorate.

      A further thought; as the race-relations mafia keep telling us that any attack on Islam, however mild or honest, is racist – does that means he has also changed his race? Clever trick if he has.

         0 likes

  36. matthew says:
    April 26, 2012 at 1:36 pm

    Usual BBC colour blindness here:

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-17850995

    “Woman jailed for Victoria station killing of Sofyen Belamouadden”
    “Victoria Osoteku, 20, of Deptford, south London, was found guilty of manslaughter at the Old Bailey.”
    “The A-level student sent messages by phone and on Facebook arranging the clash between pupils from the rival schools.”

    Rival schools? Shome mishtake, shurely.

    The foreign press gives us a better perspective, as usual:
    http://www.nigerianeye.com/2012/03/nigerian-teenager-victoria-osoteku.html

    “Nigerian Teenager, Victoria Osoteku, found guilty of murder in UK”
    “Adonis Akra, 18, Samuel Roberts, 19, and Femi Oderinwale, 18, were found guilty of manslaughter during earlier hearings. (More Nigerian teenagers)”

    The deceased is of Moroccan origin.

       12 likes

  37. will says:
    April 26, 2012 at 1:53 pm

    For some reason this interview between a terminally dim Sarah Montague & Nigel Farage doesn’t feature in the Today programme’s full running order. She just can’t understand how a nation could ever restrict the flow of immigration (Not sure whether she considers it to be too beastly or that is it technically impossible?)
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9716000/9716488.stm

       13 likes

    • TigerOC says:
      April 26, 2012 at 2:05 pm

      She is either incredibly stupid, in which case she shouldn’t be doing this job, or she has “bias in her jeans” and believes that Britain can no longer function without the constant supply of foreign labour.

         9 likes

      • Millie Tant says:
        April 26, 2012 at 6:37 pm

        It’s just the Beeboid agenda at work. That is that you can’t stop people coming here because it would be raaaacist to do so. Attempting to lay elephant traps and establish that the UKIP party is raaaacist would be the likely Beeboid reason for pursuing that line of questioning.

           7 likes

  38. TigerOC says:
    April 26, 2012 at 1:56 pm

    The true BBC agenda;

    Jeremy Vine today on Radio 2;
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01gcdg6

    says; “Rupert Murdoch said that Gordon Brown declared war on his company when The Sun declared war on the Labour government. Whatever was said or wasn’t said, does part of you think – good on Brown for taking on the power of Murdoch.

    Apart from a BBC agenda that sees it correct to use public funds to drive a narrow political narrative.

    The Prime Minister has no mandate or authority to pursue a Party Political vendetta against any commercial organisation because they differ in political outlook.

       13 likes

    • Hugh says:
      April 26, 2012 at 2:15 pm

      The BBC is having a field day on Leveson. If Cameron doesn’t go for the jugular, he’s finished.

         7 likes

      • Dysgwr_Cymraeg says:
        April 26, 2012 at 7:28 pm

        He won’t ! simple as.
        Too dumb, no guts. He’ll wonder what went wrong at the next GE, but still wont figure it out.

           7 likes

    • uncle bup says:
      April 26, 2012 at 2:55 pm

      Would have thought that,

      ‘Should a British Prime Minister be declaring war on a public company?’

      was the question that should have been asked.

      Jeremy, you’re an utter arse.

         8 likes

  39. Louis Robinson says:
    April 26, 2012 at 3:10 pm

    THE M WORD
    From time to time we’ve joked here on Biased-BBC about the absence of the word “Muslim” when describing news events. We’ve also said “Muslim” is usually used with the associated idea of victimhood. Is this an accident? No. We have long believed that the language is being parsed in order to avoid inflaming anti-Muslim sentiment.
    However, while watching the second part of Frank Gaffney’s excellent video course on the Muslim Brotherhood and its infiltration of the US establishment on YOUTUBE, the following segment caught my eye. It’s about the use of words, the banning of certain words and why it is done.
    Fast forward to 7’00” and watch from there.

       6 likes

    • Span Ows says:
      April 26, 2012 at 4:16 pm

      Stunning. And how clear that the BBC is signed up to the submission and are in an immensely powerful position to attain information domination. Thank God for the internet.

         9 likes

    • johnyork says:
      April 27, 2012 at 6:45 am

      Very interesting Louis, all 36 minutes of it.

      Now if only we could persuade the Muslim Brotherhood working at the BBC to film a television spectacular on Shariah Law for our enlightenment.

      Take Chicago and Liverpool for example, impose SL sit back and enjoy the footage.
      No sports, no booze, no X-factor and no laughing !
      My guess would be that on DAY TWO the balloon would go up and it would all “kick-off”.

      Then, and only then, will the infidels notice what a threat Islam is to them.

         5 likes

  40. Louis Robinson says:
    April 26, 2012 at 3:19 pm

    UPDATE:
    “The war on terror” is now over – official

       1 likes

  41. David Preiser (USA) says:
    April 26, 2012 at 3:46 pm

    Compare & Contrast or BBC Censorship (take your pick):

    The BBC reports (currently the top item on the US & ZZzzz page) that “Catholic leaders” have criticized Republican Rep. Paul Ryan (he of the coherent budget plan to counter the joke budget offerings from the President):

    Catholic leaders skewer Paul Ryan budget plan

    Rising Republican star Paul Ryan has been condemned by Catholic leaders for saying his controversial budget plan was inspired by church teaching.

    Turns out it’s really just faculty and priests from Catholic-run Georgetown University. So the headline is practically a lie, as is the teaser.

    At the very bottom, after a line about how the Catholic Church is supposedly trying to distance itself from the Republican Party, is this bit:

    Catholic leaders recently criticised the Obama administration’s recent decision to require employers to offer contraceptive services to their employees through their health coverage.

    Oh, really, BBC? Contrast with this from The Hill:

    Protest by Catholic activists may hamper Obama reelection bid

    President Obama has seen his standing among Catholic voters, a crucial segment of the electorate, slip in recent weeks, and a looming confrontation with Catholic activists could make it worse.

    Key bit:

    Earlier this month, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops called for two weeks of public protest in June and July against what it sees as growing government encroachment on religious freedom.

    So that’s actual “Catholic leaders” from across the country, and not just faculty and staff from a single school. And it’s a call for civil disobedience against the government, the kind of thing the Beeboids usually love to report.

    When a key Republican opponent of the President on the issue about which He’s most vulnerable is criticized by a group from a single private institution, that’s worth a story with a big misleading headline, but when actual Catholic leaders from around the country call for protest against the President, it’s censored. Instead, they barely acknowledge a previous criticism of Him at the end of a news brief about the lesser story.

    Come see the bias inherent in the system, and don’t trust the BBC on US issues, especially when it comes to threats to their beloved Obamessiah.

       5 likes

  42. George R says:
    April 26, 2012 at 4:00 pm

    Postal vote fraud.

    In close, low turn-out local elections (inc London Mayoral Election next in May), postal vote fraud could be decisive.

    BBC-NUJ had an item on this on ‘World at One’ today, which made reference to the practice in Tower Hamlets and in Birmingham.

    Ex-Beeboid, and now ‘Telegraph’ reporter, Andrew GILLIGAN, drew attention to such problems years ago and was more specific than the BBC-NUJ:

    “By permitting fraud we betray democracy.
    The increase in postal-vote fraud is an urgent and dangerous issue, argues Andrew Gilligan. ”

    [Excerpt]:-

    “I have no evidence that the IFE [Islamic Forum of Europe] is behind the fraud in Tower Hamlets. But its favoured candidates have done remarkably well lately. At the last London mayoral election, Ken Livingstone, for whom leading members of the IFE vigorously campaigned, saw his share of the vote in one ward rise from 29.6 per cent to a rather improbable 68.1 per cent. ”

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/election-2010/7687416/By-permitting-fraud-we-betray-democracy.html

    Paul WESTON:

    [Excerpt from recent speech]-

    “The last election, Cameron’s main sort of claim [for defence] on this is that he can’t do what he wants to do because his hands are tied by the Liberal Democrats. But the only reason he does not have a majority rule in this country now is because there was fraudulent Muslim voting in the last election. Baroness Warsi came out and said the only reason the Conservatives lost the last election was basically from three seats and those three seats were Muslim seats. They had a huge amount of election – postal, electoral – vote fraud going on, so Cameron’s government only exists today in its weakened state because of Muslim voting fraud in this country.”

    http://britishfreedom.org/full-transcript-of-paul-westons-london-speech/

       7 likes

  43. George R says:
    April 26, 2012 at 4:30 pm

    Melanie Phillips:

    “”Medieval Christianity — like contemporary Islamism — stamped out dissent by killing or conversion; Western liberals do it by social and professional ostracism and legal discrimination. It is a kind of secular Inquisition. And the grand inquisitors are to be found within the intelligentsia — the universities, the media, the law and the political and professional classes — who not only have systematically undermined the foundations of Western society but are heavily engaged in attempting to suppress any challenge or protest.

    “It is hard to overstate the influence of these left-wing doctrines on our culture. They form the unchallengeable orthodoxy within academia, from which base-camp they have set forth on their “long march through the institutions” which they have colonised with stunning success. They have managed, furthermore, to shift the centre of political gravity so that anyone who does not share these values is defined as extreme. ”

    -from essay, ‘The New Intolertance”

    http://www.melaniephillips.com/the-new-intolerance

       10 likes

  44. George R says:
    April 26, 2012 at 5:24 pm

    British people to pay more for further global expansion of BBC-NUJ.

    Britsh taxpayer/licencepayers, unconsulted , will have to pay more for the ever-expanding BBC-NUJ global broadcasting EMPIRE, this time in South East Asia:

    “BBC’s world to expand in Asia Pacific”

    http://www.theage.com.au/business/bbcs-world-to-expand-in-asia-pacific-20120426-1xnxm.html

       2 likes

  45. Sarah Simmons says:
    April 26, 2012 at 5:36 pm

    Pictures of the Day: If Barack Obama & George Zimmerman’s Maternal Great-Grandfathers Had Sons….

    http://predicthistunpredictpast.blogspot.com/2012/04/pictures-of-day-if-barack-obama-george.html

       4 likes

  47. Jeff Waters says:
    April 26, 2012 at 6:18 pm

    Barack Obama gaffe caught on microphone – http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/barackobama/9167428/Barack-Obama-gaffe-caught-on-microphone.html

    Funnily enough, I couldn’t find a story about this on the BBC news website. From the way they’ve covered gaffes by Republicans, I’d have thought this would have been right up their street…

    Jeff

       5 likes

  48. Biodegradable says:
    April 26, 2012 at 7:17 pm

    Al Beeb still perpetuating the myth that Israel “captured” Jerusalem from Jordan:
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-17854819

    The Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state. It was captured by Israel from Jordan in 1967. Israel subsequently annexed the land and declared all of the city its undivided capital. The move is not recognised by the international community.

    No mention of the undisputed fact that the Jordanian occupation of Jerusalem was itself illegal and was only recognised by the UK and Pakistan at the time and since.

    No mention either that during the Jordanian occupation neither Jews or Christians were allowed to visit holy sites, or that synagogues were desecrated and Jewish cemeteries were vandalised and tombstones taken and used as paving stones (so that Muslim feet would trample them) and also used to build latrines.

    BBC: bias by omission!

       7 likes

  49. Lunchtime Loather says:
    April 26, 2012 at 7:23 pm

    I received an interesting follow-up email from BBC Audio & Music today in response to my query concerning Jeremy Vine’s use of Twitter sent a couple of weeks ago. This is what it said (my emphasis):

    Sorry for my slow response, I wanted to check a few things with the JV programme.
    Like a number of freelance presenters and journalists, Jeremy Vine does run a personal, non BBC, twitter account. People do tweet directly back to him, text the studio, phone the studio, email the studio and tweet to BBC owned accounts.
    The comments you hear on air are selected by a producer and passed to Jeremy, based on their content. It’s not true that the responses back to Jeremy’s account play a major part in the show…by far the biggest response is by email and text.
    Sometimes the producer (not JV) will judge a comment via twitter is useful in the debate and pass it through to the studio.
    Jeremy is aware of our guidance on personal use of social media, and his comments on twitter are within that guidance, and I, and others, will advise him from time to time about twitter.
    Twitter is a new phenomenon, and adapting guidelines etc. does take time and often leaves a few grey areas. You’ll have noticed BBC news people like Robert Peston have tweet accounts too…and many of those are ‘BBC’ owned. But, the way the accounts are labelled and who owns them does, I admit, vary across the corporation. We are tidying this up bit by bit, but it is taking a little time.
    I hope this explains the situation.

    The writer has obviously gone to some trouble to get his facts straight, but I feel that he has been given misinformation by the JV program staff. Old habits die hard!
    I am pleased to have it confirmed that Vine is freelance and not a BBC employee. I always suspected that this was the case, but had no proof.
    This was my response to the email:

    Very many thanks for your reply, and for taking the time and trouble to investigate further – it is very much appreciated. Unfortunately, it does not explain the situation!

    The only Twitter account that I know Jeremy Vine has is @theJeremyVine. I can only assume that the BBC-owned Twitter account that you refer to is @BBCRadio2, which I have never heard mentioned in connection with Mr Vine’s programme.

    Mr Vine uses his “personal” account to tweet about his favourite football team, cycling in London and a whole host of non-BBC related topics, but this is also the same Twitter account that he promotes heavily in connection with his Radio 2 programme. For example, this is what he said yesterday (25th April):

    – During his daily promotion on the Ken Bruce show at 11:30 : “Phone number 0500 288291, you can email vine@bbc.co.uk, we’re both on Twitter @R2KenBruce and @theJeremyVine”
    – At the start of his programme at 11:59 : “The phone number is 0500 288291, you can also email vine@bbc.co.uk and if you have an account on Twitter I’m there as @theJeremyVine”

    You will note that in both of these promotions there was no mention of texting, and based on previous experience I have absolutely no doubt that other similar promotions of @theJeremyVine were made during the programme. You will also note his promotion of Ken Bruce’s Twitter account, which has as its description: The official twitter account of the real Ken Bruce. You’ll find my words here typed by my own fingers . On air weekdays 0930-1200 BBC Radio 2. Despite his claims to the contrary, am I to take it that Mr Bruce’s account is “personal” too?

    You kindly wrote: Sometimes the producer (not JV) will judge a comment via twitter is useful in the debate and pass it through to the studio.

    So, just to be clear, Mr Vine’s “personal” account is monitored by a BBC producer and cherry-picked for good comments – is that correct? If that is the case, perhaps you would be good enough to explain the BBC’s definition of the word “personal”, as I am now completely baffled..

    Mr Vine reads and attributes comments from Twitter on air, and a quick check of tweets to his account (by searching for @theJeremyVine in Twitter) reveals Twitter to indeed be the source, almost word for word.

    As you have mentioned, I could choose to communicate with his programme by email or text, but both of these mediums are relatively cumbersome and lack the immediacy and convenience that Twitter provides to me.

    I have no issue, or interest, with the comments that Mr Vine makes on Twitter. We live in a land of free speech and he is entitled to his opinions. However, that same free speech is denied to me simply because he has chosen to block me from being able to respond to his invitations to contact his programme (not Mr Vine himself). This amounts to nothing less than censorship on Mr Vine’s part.

    All I want is to be able to communicate with a BBC radio programme that I fund by buying a TV Licence every year.

    Again, I thank you sincerely for your email, but I cannot help thinking that whoever you spoke to at the JV programme has not been entirely accurate with their responses.

    As well as defining “personal”, would you care to comment further?

       6 likes

    • Guest Who says:
      April 27, 2012 at 8:12 am

      As hole diggers I think the BBC’s market rates could have had the Chunnel done in a month.
      ‘The comments you hear on air are selected by a producer and passed to Jeremy, based on their content’
      One is sure they are, no doubt.
      Of course, certain comments are not selected, are they, meaning Mr. Vine and many at the BBC have a rather unique control over what is, and is not broadcast to suit their views.
      That is propaganda via censorship.
      On my current fun & games over Mr. Esler’s Dateline London Falklands panel, I have just been offered a DVD of the show if ‘I provide my home address’. Guessing they feel rather confident that their last few months accessing a restricted archive trumps my memory at the time.
      But I may just review ‘Rising Sun’ again first..

      ‘When something looks to go to be true…it’s not’
      Often uniquely.

         0 likes

  50. Jeff Waters says:
    April 26, 2012 at 7:46 pm

    Leveson Inquiry: Murdoch rounds on BBC News website – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/17857574

       1 likes

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