I am sure many of you will have seen BBC coverage of the riots in Belfast in recent nights. However is it possible that the BBC played a role in CREATING the riots through their very selective coverage? A Biased BBC reader writes;
” The BBC NI website was instrumental in making the band at St Patrick’s Chapel the biggest news issue around the 12th July. It was their main headline for about ten days As a consequence, it became the defining issue of the summer – not the Ardoyne riots.
They used Sinn Fein-supplied video footage (just about acknowledged) of the circling band and did not put up any explanation or counter-view for days and then mostly on radio.
Ormeau Avenue staff were presumably in Donegal en masse and some junior was running the website. Normal news and views programmes were also off air. (The website is and has been much more biased/unbalanced than BBC NI broadcast news over recent months in choice of stories, emphasis and headlines.)
BBC NI has a record of not sending journalists out to cover events at weekends, at night or during holidays presumably because of the ‘cuts’, we will be told, which, by the way, are not ‘cuts’ but consequent on the diversion of £1 billion of licence fee money from programming and news to the BBC Pension Scheme. The result is their website goes without updates for hours or days. Sinn Fein spotted that gap and supplied dream footage of the band.
The impression, uncorrected, was given that the band were playing at the church by choice and circling as an extra sectarian point. Both untrue. Circling happens when the parade stops for a time or rests, as happened in Donegall Street that day. There was one dubious tune played and a bit of shouting at the Sinn Fein camera team – duly recorded and displayed.
The result is that the focus of Belfast parading disputes has moved from the Ardoyne roundabout to that at Carlisle Circus, largely as a loyalist paramilitary response to the Sinn Fein challenge, so enhanced by the BBC spotlight. And we have serious rioting not dissimilar to that in East Belfast a couple of years ago.
The Parades Commission has not helped with its Alliance Party chairman coming on the radio in July making assertions in advance of receiving his team’s reports while developing new Commission policy as he went along.
There needs to be an independent (Leveson-style) enquiry into how the issue was handled by BBC NI and a policy enunciated on when and how they use film footage supplied by non-BBC sources, in particular by political parties.
Obviously the real issue is territory but the BBC prefers to concentrate on sectarianism which is usually seen as a Protestant preserve. Republican misbehaviour like the mistaken attack on a car belonging to nuns living in a Protestant area in West Belfast is addressed briefly, if at all.
Would that the BBC broadcast a livecam of life for Protestants in the Fountain area of Londonderry which has to be protected by two massively high steel fences? The police now longer count sectarian incidents there as it would distort their crime figures so massively.”
So instead of complaining about the BBC not reporting something, now your complaining that it did report something! Of course because it doesn’t reflect your own bias then they must be at fault. Take the mote from your own eye perhaps?
Had you actually read David’s piece you might have considered your comment more carefully and not just jumped in with a smart and rude reply. If your view is that the BBC is never wrong then with the utmost respect it is not a mote of grain that is covering your eyes but a large sticky pudding. However if you prefer a proverb: ‘there is none so blind as those that cannot see’.
Ever asked yourself why the traditional loyalist parade routes are under threat – and not just from the appeasement-minded Parades Commission?
The real terrorists are those who weep to Auntie about how hard done by they are – like McGuinness and his friends in republican and islamist groups.
The decent loyalists and other Brits who really ARE hard done by don’t get such sympathetic coverage.
The key here is that certain elements within NI society want to keep the mayhem going.
It appears that most responsible people want to move on with their lives and build an integrated peaceful NI. There appears to be sincere attempts to tone down events, like marches, to reduce tensions. The BBC should be supporting community efforts to short circuit inflammatory situations by NOT giving undue coverage to something like this that may not paint a true picture of what is actually happening.
This is the kind of thing that most of us are harping on about all the time about the B-BBC. They seem to specialise is giving us a selected view of things (usually leftoid) to cause problems where none existed before.
Again balance, always missing. How long must we be forced to continue to finance this vile organisation and their leftoid journalists who parade their fake “concern” for ordinary people in the hope of making more “news” for them to cover.
This is simply David Vance’s own partisanship. We no which side he’s on.
Of course, I’m sure he would’ve preferred that footage hadn’t been shown. Doesn’t show his side in too good a light after all.
Bigotry is alive and well in Northern Ireland. David Vance and his dinosaur friends are the epitome of that.
What’s ‘partisan’ about reporting actual facts? It’s a fact that the BBC aired inflammatory footage supplied by a -genuine – extremist group with a record of murderous violence and did so without an ounce of ‘context’, ‘balance’ or any of the normal BBC buzz words.
Meanwhile, over in England-Land, things are a little different. The BBC had to be dragged kicking and screaming to report on systemic gang rape by Islamist fanatics, and only did so while constantly whining about mythical Islamophobic backlashes and the ‘vast majority of non-rapey Muslims’.
Do you mean that only protestants are bigoted? If so, how bigoted.
There needs to be an independent (Leveson-style) enquiry
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God no. The Bliar government tested the ‘independent enquiry’ route to destruction and the current shower are now conducting their own tests cf leveson and heathrow third runway.
If you want to govern then govern, get on with it, and shut up. If not, hold lots of enquiries, listen to pressure groups, cave in to whoever shrieks the loudest, and (deservedly) lose the next election.
Nothing at all to do with the BBC, just a general rant. But I agree with the thread – for sure the droids like nothing better than a bit of revolution (just nowhere near where they live or work, or where their kids go to school.)
What’s ‘partisan’ about reporting actual facts?
What more of a fact can you get than the actual video footage? If it was inflammatory, that was because of the actions of those filmed, not that it was a reported. That’s the job of a news broadcaster.
“What more of a fact can you get than the actual video footage?”
Blimey! Is anyone actually that naive?
Except the whole thing is that the inflammatory footage wasn’t actually inflammatory once it was presented in context, which is the kind of thing real reporters actually do, instead of just airing virtual advertorials for unhinged hate groups.
Meanwhile the BBC still operates a virtual news blackout on the anti-Jihad movement, and certainly won’t be airing anything supplied by the EDL any time soon.
The camera never lies, does it? Take an event and only film parts of it and what do you think the end result will be? it will be whatever slant the camera person puts on it. Naive to say the least!
The BBC says:-
We at the Salford Palace of Truth do not report about stone throwers unless they are WASPs (White Anglo Saxon Protestants). In this way we keep ‘The Balance about Right’.
Should you have any complaints we will investigate them and then hide them away at your expense.
We also thank you for your continued support and for paying your licence tax upon demand. If you feel this is in any way unfair we will ensure you are sent to a comfortable place of residence at Her Majesty’s expense for a period of not less than one month.
Have a nice day.
Well at least,the BBC are inadvertedly showing us all their bumboils!
As the Toady show runs itself into the sand on the hour, we get a quick five minute gobfest featuring Humf or Monty.
Yesterday leading up to the close, it was immigration-with Sir Andrew Green telling us all that his appearance had been bumped to the tail end of the programme for “more important things”…he had a liberal opponent from a uni to contend with, as well as Humf sucking his dentures throughout. And only a few minutes to say anything too.
Today, it`s Northern Ireland replacing immigration numbers as the “also rans”…up to the 8am news, we just got Monty musing that the UVF are to blame for it -some independent bloke that they invited on, got cut off completely and had to talk over Monty and her pop tarts…
And why the rush?-well, the weather of course..to warn us of the Obamaluv to follow..to cogitate over NuLabors “predistribution” word…and-but of course -to tell us that we can all LOL with Sandi and the lefties tonight at 6.30.
As for a few terrorists , asylum frauds and the unravelling of Blairs love-in with Gerry , Martin etc…well it is mere pollyfilla before the real priorities of Beebland get their due prominence.
And-one more thing as I`m here-as boulevardier Naughtie had invited in Classic FM to wish them happy birthday today(20 years broadcasting)…you might have thought that this would be a fair piece., and welcome their presence…birthdays and all that!
But this is the BBC-and so Radio 3 gets its shafts in, and Classics “dumbed down populist” approach gets a panning-and Jim says nothing.
Brave-independent -fearless-sniffs at elitism(unless its Radio3 vs ClassicFM)-that`s our Jim!
Hope the Sky/Classic lots realise that the BBC wants any opposing provision strangled at birth-so why the hell don`t they say so whenever they`re so attacked or mocked?
I hate the BBC…really do!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-18858728
Is this footage manipulated? What’s the mssing context then?
Hardly an advert for a hate group.
Silly stuff.
Have you noticed how the BBC is promoting strikes before they ever happen, whipping up the flames of discontent every hour, on the hour. There was a good couple of minutes on the late news last night, covering about 4-5 speakers, each with a carefully selected soundbite.
Compare that to an international meeting of heads of state, for example, where news coverage will show them greeting, shaking hands and then a few seconds of one speech at the most….