I see Entwistle has been all over the BBC this morning as Newsnight incompetence becomes the story yet again!
A BBC Newsnight report in which an abuse victim accused a former Tory politician of sex abuse should “never” have been broadcast, BBC director general George Entwistle says. He gave an unreserved apology to Lord McAlpine after it wrongly implicated him in abuse at care homes in Wales.
Yeah, and of course, there is the proverbial ongoing detailed investigation as to what went wrong at Newsnight. I can save them a lot of time and money. It is the innate BBC bias and hatred of ANYTHING or ANYONE related to the Thatcher years that clouded their judgement over the “Senior Conservative figure in Thatcher Government” story they pushed out with apparent relish. Now the consequences loom and their is silence from the comrades at Newsnight. I watched it last night and it was a horror show, did you see it?
The underlying problem for the BBC is that it continues to believe it has “the trust” of the British people whilst in fact all it ever does is systematically betray that trust. The BBC is institutionally BIASED and this manifests itself in all sorts of ways. Rather than pretend it is unbiased, it should embrace the left wing bias that pervades it. However at the same time, it should uncouple itself from enforcing us to fund this bias and make its own way in the world under its own financial resources. Let those who want leftist news pay for it.
I’ll bet entwhistle is cursing mark Thompson up and down for handing him a poisoned chalice
I also bet that entwhistle was sure he was walking into a cozy little number with no hassles,fully subsidised by the tv tax
the qualification bar must have been set pretty low,as his performance on the media today swerved between utterly abysmal and downright disgraceful,trying once again to deflect the blame onto the victim
time to go boys,time to go
and not a tear will be shed in these parts
Of course if Entwhistle goes it will be proof that lowering pay meant they only had a poorer choice of candidates and will be all the Governors need as an excuse to push up the DG’s pay again.
lefties are top guns when it comes to spin and twisting,aren’t they?
Seeing evidence of bias and pointing it out is valid. But presupposing what will happen on the basis of your prejudice isn’t.
it’s not difficult to foretell the kind of thing that might happen when it comes to people such as these
“Seeing evidence of bias and pointing it out is valid.”
Thanks. Any more gems?
If it looks like a duck and it swims like a duck then it;s a safe to presuppose it will quack like a duck especially when it has been quacking for as long as you can remember, and I can remember before there was a BBC 2 or a Radio 4 and even as far back as when all alternative outlets were banned by law, the loss of which the BBC resents to this day and will do anything they can to have it reinstated.
well thank the Lord they already found Macdoom a sincure elsewhere.
sinecure! damn!
This is an issue not of bias but simple incompetence. They will have been desperate not to sit on another allegation of sexual abuse and risk somebody else breaking the story. In deciding to broadcast they made numerous catastrophic and basic errors. But I don’t believe for a moment that the political affiliation of the person concerned had anything to do with it.
you seriously don’t?
fatcher era tory
fatcher era tory
fatcher era tory
etc etc etc ad infinitum
it’s as clear as the nose on your face it was politically motivated
Well, the simple fact is that he WAS a Thatcher era Tory. How else would he be described?
a conservative politician from the 1970’s perhaps?-Thatcher HAS to be dragged in at every opportunity
it’s like every report on Israel has to end with “these settlements are illegal under international law”
tediously biased and predictable
No, it was NOT a Thatcher era Tory at all. It was someone completely different and if they have done even the basic journalistic checks they would have found that out. That is the simple fact. Though apparently not simple enough for countless BBC loafers on six figure publicly funded salaries.
As I said in an earlier thread, this is the biggest cock-up in modern journalism, inexcusably so. I’m not defending the allegation, merely how they described the person concerned.
Understand. But I watched the 6 o’clock news most carefully last night and even after Meesham has apologised and the story is obviously false they were still talking about “Thatcher era Tory” showing images of the Bryn Estyn home with images of Margaret Thatcher and Lord McAlpine superimposed. It is subliminal and totally unacceptable. I have not looked at the new today but it will be interesting to see if they still use that imagery every time they raise the story of the “Thatcher era Tory” even though the story is now totally discredited.
If they just wanted to run a sexual abuse story they could have chosen one of the Scottish ones – but that would have mean pointing the finger at politicians who weren’t Tory.
I wish I shared your view but it is my sense that the chance of Newsnight “redemption” at the expense of a “senior Conservative figure from the Thatcher era” was just too much to resist.
There is no evidence for such an assertion – Not even the Conservatives have suggested it. Those with a determination to see bias will have a field day, but I’d rather be rigorous about such things.
some conservatives obviously need to waken up from walking comas
Revenge is a dish best eaten cold.
Indeed. I may have mentioned this before (although I haven’t commented for a long time) but my father tells the story of a visit by a senior office-holder to his local Conservative Association fifty years ago at which the question of BBC bias was raised from the floor. The reply came that the party was aware of it, but felt that it would be best to wait and see if it wasn’t simply anti-government bias against an administration that had, after all, been in power for over a decade. You have to wonder how long they decided to wait.
And to critics of this site, who cite balancing stories in the Corporation’s defence, or see many of David and Co.’s complaints as trivial, the issue is bias, not outright partisanship: the claim to a hypothecated tax is founded on absolute impartiality and objectivity, which is impossible. There’s a reason British newspapers make no pretence towards it, and that the parallel argument in the United States includes their newspapers, which do: you can’t report controversial political issues impartially. Even if your words are carefully chosen, the relative prominence you give to them over other stories is a judgement of value. The question therefore is in what direction the inevitable bias of coverage and tone lies. The BBC has certainly attacked Labour governments, and presented conservative and classical liberal viewpoints. But it does seem inordinately keen on playing down stories that discredit the centralizing, statist, and Leftist agendas, while giving prominence to those which do the opposite.
So I strongly suspect that David’s right. One thing about the BBC – for which it’s often criticized, in fact – is that it’s usually extremely cautious about reporting stories that “everybody knows about” (and rightly so; I’ve always felt that BBC employees, with a few exceptions, do try to be impartial, but, as I say, they’re attempting the impossible). So why the recklessness here?
The BBC truly had a very flimsily case (unlike the original ‘dropped’ story which was corroborated) and aggressively pursued it across all their outlets.
It was done with obvious glee as was the response by Labour and like minded jounalists.
Not true. The most enthusiastic pursuers of the story were the Daily Mail’s journalists. The biggest sceptics were at the Guardian. Who rightly did their best to disprove the story.
you mean the non-publically funded Daily mail and Guardian?
The Grauniad has learned its lesson after lying to close down the News of the World.
Have they ever apologised for wrongly saying that the News International hacks deleted Milly Dowler’s messages?
No, but nor did they ever apologise for completely fabricating the Cash For Questions scandal. The Guardian is as venal and dishonest as any Murdoch-owned gutter rag.
John Redwood has.
Gosh, look at all those extremely tiny minority opinions about BBC Left-wing bias which are not at all representative of anyone else outside this echo chamber which nobody reads except a few who come to laugh.
If the, now “non” story would have read “A senior Liebour politician from the Blair era”, and was reported ENDLESSLY on Fox, and all it’s affiliates…would you consider it to be anti Labour bias?
Case closed.
How do you think the Beeb would headline that story?
Here, I’ll show you:
“Politician from the 90’s accused of involvement in child abuse ring”
NO association with Labour.
NO association with Blair
Case closed twice.
Unlike the BBC, Fox News does not boast at every opportunity that it is unbiassed, they, unlike the BBC, make no secret of there political slant and certainly don’t go so far as to tell complete lies about being “completely impartial”.
” There is no evidence”
Now I know you will correct me if I am wrong here RWB, but isn’t that what Enwhistles first reaction was when the saVILE crap hit the fan?
A lot of folk use that phrase without adding, ” but hey I haven’t looked anywhere yet!”
I can’t work out if you are being sarcastic or not.
The BBC is institutionally biased against the 1980s Conservatives and this blinded them to the possibility that this story wasn’t true.
What goes around comes around. Suck it up beeb.
“Suck it up beeb”
I see what you did there 😉
“I don’t believe for a moment that the political affiliation of the person concerned had anything to do with it.”
If you don’t believe “for a moment” that political affiliation might have anything to do with this anti-Tory smear, this tells us more about you than it tells us about the journalists at BBC Newsnight.
My memory may be playing tricks with me, maybe someone can help, but wasn’t Newsnight’s predecessor taken off air because it set up an IRA ambush so it could film it ?
I don’t know about that,but from the early 70’s on,it was being mooted here that bbc reporters were “encouraging” rioters to stone the army and police just to get some good camera shots
A la pallyvision ?
The interview with Entwhistle was indeed notable for not the tiniest hint of a suggestion of anti-Conservative bias in running the Newsnight programme. It was assisted by the Tory MP Whittingdale of the Media Select committee not mentioning such a key aspect either.
That dog has yet to bark, if the BBC could even conceptualise the charge, which they can’t.
Anyway the MP Rob Wilson is kept well off the Today programme as he has spotted it is the motor for the decision to run the Messham accusations and for a thousand other ‘robust’ anti-Tory interviews.
James Naughtie was complaining throughout about the lack of cheerful news! He for one can’t take it much longer.
All this while General Entwhistle, the editor in chief who dares not edit (before the event) awaits news of further enquiries reporting to him. He never thinks of ringing up a staff officer at the front.
Let’s hope Lord McAlpine sues not only the BBC but takes every possible penny from the well-lined pockets of Sally Bercow and George Monbiot who so gleefully passed his name round Twitter.
not that I have any love for John bercow,but he must be ready for the hills being tied to that stupid bint of a wife
Will ‘Newsnight’s Father of the NUJ Chapel there, Comrade Paul MASON, call a strike at the BBC?
Will he call on his chums of ‘Occupy’ to occupy BBC?
Where is Tom Watson in all of this? Remember it was he who raised the slur initially in the House of Commons presumably under parliamentary privilege.
Tom Watson asked a question in the House of Commons five days after his PMQs question:
‘Hansard 29 October: ‘Mr Watson: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many files relating to the premiership of Sir Edward Heath (a) are retained by Government Departments and (b) have been transferred to the National Archives but have not yet been released under the 30 Year Rule. [124917]’
Anything you’d like to add Mr Watson?
‘Guardian’-
“Newsnight – review:
Eddie Mair takes self-flagellation to new heights with masterclass in humility.”
[Excerpt]-
“Yet even by past standards, stand-in presenter Eddie Mair raised that self-flagellation to new heights as he stewarded the current affairs show through one of its most uncomfortable episodes ever – asking at one stage: ‘Is Newsnight toast?'”
By Ben Quinn.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/nov/10/newsnight-review
Thank you for this. I notice that the article is not open for comments.
Having been caught with their trousers down over Savile (sorry..) and facing criticism from Tory MP’s they have decided that attack is the best form of defence.
This is larded by their anti-Tory bias.
This is proof that the BBC should be disbanded. Let the lefties purchase the assets at market value as well as the intellectual rights. Refund the money to licence fee payers and see how they survive when people just stop watching the Bolshevik Broadcasting Corp.
I realise when you have different posters and with something as important as the BBC’s dreadful behaviour towards Lord MacAlpine that there were going to be at least two posts about the same issue – so I am afraid I raising the same issue on two different posts.
The Today programme today chose Sian Kevill, an ex Newnight producer to talk about Newsnight and MacAlpine. She worked for the programme in 2002 when a programme was broadcast about Mandelson resgining because of his links to the Hinduja brothers. Only Labour politicians were on Newsnight that night and even the BBC Governors at the time had to admit it was a biased (pro-Labour) programme. Was Sian Kevill therefore the best person to have on Today this morning?
What became very obvious in Humphrey’s interview with Entwhistle was how much the Corporation depend on Twitter, and how even Humphrey sees it as a major source of news gathering and news distribution. Perhaps as part of any review the BBC, whilst navel gazing, should consider how or if they want to use Twitter.
They are re-considering it as we speak.
Think before you tweet
Interesting comment in that Ariel article
Chris Hamilton, social media editor at BBC News, says …
“But you have to remember that what you tweet personally connects you to the BBC whatever department you’re in – and whether you like it or not.”
Has anyone retweeted that comment to Katty Kay and the numerous other biased-BBC drones who spout leftie propaganda in their ‘personal’ tweets?
Katty Kay’s account is officially sanctioned, not personal. She has no excuse. She’ll get away with it time and time again, though, unless she crosses the Jude Machin Line and somebody reports it.
I wonder how [ahem] hard they are considering, all things considered…
‘If there were such a thing as a collective noun for erroneous tweets – a fluff..
The current situation for the BBC is quickly turning into quicksand for the BBC. The more you thrash about the quicker your end comes.
News on Sky is Entwhistle knew nothing until he read the papers. Upper management now hunkered down and refusing to make any further comments on the situation.
Unfortunately for them this is quickly getting out of control and if Patten does not react quickly this weekend then I think we will see Parliament act next week.
It is now totally apparent that the BBC is a monolith that is out of control. The management is unable to manage and the troops do what they like. The biggest media outlet in the UK that is publicly funded cannot be run like this.
“The management is unable to manage and the troops do what they like.”
That seems far too kind.
Working for the same ideology, management decide the policy we should obey, troops relentlessly push that policy onto us.
The troops would be restrained [or fired] if they went against policy or ideology.
If we go against their policies we are smeared by the BBC as racists, deniers, political extremists, tax-cheating criminals. This is a typical tactic of the Left – to accuse/smear opponents (or victims) as being guilty of the bad things the Left are actually doing.
“The BBC and journalism”
By JOHN REDWOOD.
http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2012/11/10/the-bbc-and-journalism/
The BBC appears to now be noted for ‘putting a gloss on crime’, and even then stuffing up.
Polishing a Topical Unmentioned Report Defensively sounds the go.
In the spirit if the moment, and the BBC’s ‘accuracy won’t fit, ho-hum’ ediotorial policies, I have subbed David’s post for BBC twitter and mobile:
I see Entwistle has been all over
Talking of trust … can the BBC Trust Trustees be trusted to investigate how the BBC, its management and structures led to one of the country’s worst cases of institutional paedophilia within the BBC. Oh, and who are the Trustees exactly? What does each one earn? What are their conflicts of interest?
Read on … 😉
Oh dear. This wasn’t supposed to happen was? Paedophilia is the charge of choice that the BBC uses to attack conservative institutions such as the Catholic Church,; it isn’t supposed to be applied to the BBC.
Yet even in its ‘self flagellation’ on Newsnight, it attempts to control the narrative. Up pop Ester Rantzen and Steve Hewlett, both BBC employees, to engage in some in-house debate. Esther in particular is keen to remind us how great the BBC really is.
BBC and Guardian man Hewlett is obviously the BBC’s idea of an impartial commentator since he’s been doing the rounds. On Propganda24 and 11 this morning we had the peculiar sight of the presenter Maxine showing a clip of Entwhistle been interrogated by BBC breakfast then turning to Hewlett for comment. So we had one BBC employee watching two BBC employees interrogate another BBC employee about the actions of other BBC employees, then getting ‘impartial analysis’ from another BBC employee.
Business as usual I’m afraid. Just like BBC newsreader interviews Nick Robinson who goes on to give us his “opinion” as opposed to the facts. He has even taken to throwing in the occasional “Labour would say this or that” as he obviously speaks for them.
It’s only a couple of days since toenails was bragging on This Morning ( pushing his book of course) that he KNOWS the identity of that senior tory. Where is his bragging now?
Don’t worry. Just like before, he’ll come out after it’s all over and do one of his “I can now reveal” apologies.
“So we had one BBC employee watching two BBC employees interrogate another BBC employee about the actions of other BBC employees, then getting ‘impartial analysis’ from another BBC employee.”
Well done.
I think you’ve written the definitive summary of how historians will view the BBC internal inquiries.
Of course we’ll have to wait a hundred or so years for that as this will all be protected from FoI, thanks to very expensive lawyers paid for out of our pockets. Still I’m sure the excessively paid BBC executives consider that good value for money, seeing as it stops the public holding them to account.
” The end of newsnight.. The beginning of the end for the BBC ?
From your mouth to Gods ears.
As a sign of their true remorse the BBC should invite independent accountants in to calculate the total amount of National Insurance avoided by paying their ‘stars’ through service companies. The final amount should be returned to Licence Fee Payers or HMRC.
As always, the BBC were trying to deflect and project the heat onto others… and the others just happened to be Tory. Pathetic!
And all this because the BBC wanted to pull the legs off the CPS spider, and that fuzzy legal nonsense that the coppers are s`posed to do.
When their Jimmy fixed them…well that would have been because he met Thatch at Chequers for Christmas….where presumably Savile got his Toryboy pals to set up next years kiddie home visits.
Oh dear-looks like the BBC.Monbiot, Bercow etc have traduced a wealthy Peer of the Realm in a way so bad that no bloke would deny him every penny possible by way of compo.
Be a pity to bulldoze Monbiots wind turbine by Stowe School where he learned to be an elitist humbugging hypocrite wouldn`t it?
Oh this is comedy gold…but as yet, not a joke about any of this on the BBC….bloody Tories censoring the left, no doubt!
Funny!
It was all jokes about the humiliated Romney, Republicans and Fox News on Friday’s Now Show. They may have got around to satirising the Beebs’s troubles, later, but I’d switched over before then.
The BBC and Newsnight’s over the top enthusiasm for perusing the “Thatcher Era MP” was a desperate attempt to turn the child abuse spotlight away from the BBC. Their judgement was further blurred by their hatred of all things conservative.
If the story surrounded labour MPs then there would have been no story as far as the BBC was concerned.
If this is not the start of a TV license revolt then nothing will be.
It turns out that Steven Messham, Newsnight’s star “Tory Paedophile” accuser, was reported by the Beeb as being charged with fraud and theft from his abuse victims’ charity in 2002.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/1915901.stm
Funny they never mentioned that on Newsnight.
I predict:
– There will be a couple of resignations
– Newsnight will be binned
The BBC will have been seen to take actions comparable to Murdoch’s.
But nothing fundamental will change.
Yes you are right, nothing at the BBC will change .But there will be a change outside the BBC. The public will now be wondering what they are supporting with their license fee, auntie has turned in to a monster.
I watched the news this morning on Breakfast and they were still trying to justify running the story because the BBC had been criticised (shock horror) for not running the Sa”vile” story. This hardly justifies running an unverified story. They are like petulant children.
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