Laughed a lot when Victoria Derbyshire tore a strip off the Police for running an internal review of their own behaviour because as we know the BBC is well versed in the ins and outs of that old trick itself.
Always worth a reminder of all those reviews by the BBC into its own impartiality…what could go wrong?
Impartiality
Ensuring the impartiality of the BBC is a key priority for the Trust; it is essential to its independence that the BBC retains the public’s trust as an impartial purveyor of news and programming.
The BBC is required to deliver duly impartial news by the Royal Charter and Agreement and to treat controversial subjects with due impartiality. The Trust is committed to making sure that the BBC fulfils this obligation. One of the ways the Trust does so, is by commissioning reviews of specific subject areas.
Here is the Trust’s Work Plan.…. The main purpose of the work plan is to provide an overview of our work in the coming year for licence fee payers and the wider media industry. It also identifies the views of our Audience Councils.
This summer the BBC Trust will publish its latest review into BBC impartiality, concentrating especially on immigration, religion and Europe:
Trust sets out planned approach for review of BBC’s “breadth of opinion”
The Trust has today published the terms of reference and planned approach for its impartiality review of the BBC’s breadth of opinion.
Breadth of opinion means reflecting a range of voices and viewpoints in BBC output and the BBC has a unique commitment to it included in its Editorial Guidelines.
The review, which will be led by former broadcasting executive Stuart Prebble, will focus on the BBC’s news, current affairs and factual output.
The content analysis will include an analysis of the BBC’s coverage of immigration, religion and the EU, by comparing some coverage from 2007 with coverage from 2012/13.
Nothing about Israel? Oh yes they did that in the Balen Report already….what ever happened to that?
Shouldn’t hold out too much hope of anything groundbreaking…this is the Guardian’s take on the BBC:
On Europe, for instance, the BBC has been found to be more negative and critical of the EU than the German media. On the European constitution, this finding held, even when reporters were relatively more Europhile. A study of BBC online coverage of immigration found that it “invites a reading that might, most positively, be described as unease” in relation to immigration.
There seems to be some suggestion that the review of the BBC may also examine religion in general, and Islamophobia in particular. No shortage of material there. A variety of academic studies has examined how the BBC and other media have covered Islam, especially since September 2001. One found that “the framing of Islam as a security threat can be inferred from the very large numbers of news items in which Muslim political and military or paramilitary actors have been shown in postures of hostility towards aspects of [western] societies”.
Not a lot of support in these studies for the contention in a Daily Mail leader column last week that the BBC “consistently attacks Christianity (though never Islam)”.
Of course that came from an academic…David Miller is professor of sociology at the University of Bath and a director of Spinwatch
An academic, a professor of sociology, a director of Spinwatch…..impartial? …Left wing, anti-Iraq War, pro extremist Islam…very popular on Muslim media outlets, received research grants from the EU.
Something to watch out for anyway.
found to be more critical than the German media is utterly, completely, irrelevant. That’s comment not reporting. Since when has the benchmark for standards on the BBC been the reporting style and stance of media in the new Reich?
And at their most positive (implied criticism there?) they are reflecting unease about immigration. What? Their being criticised for, for once, reflecting at least some of the concerns that exist amongst the indigenous licence-fee paying residents of Britain?
And the framing of islam as a security threat can be inferred from the very large number of news items….shown in postures of hostility…
No it can’t. It’s got nothing to do with the way such people are portrayed, and everything to do with the fact that they want to blow us up.
Its the Trusts’ role to act on behalf of licence fee payers, hence the regular reviews. The Audience Councils are for members of the public and open to anyone.
You know whay Balen hasn’t been publsihed, but there have been Trust reviews of the BBC’s coverage of the Middle East since…..although you have no faith in those, except for Balen….which was an internal review.
If by Trust you mean the BBC Trust, then I’m afraid there is little to trust about the BBC Trust. So, as VD criticises the Police for running an internal view, these internal BBC Trust findings are just as dodgy.
The Balen Report was run in-house, agreed, but there must have been some uncomfortable findings for the BBC for it to spend so much of our money to keep its results hidden from the people who paid for it (us). One can only assume that it was, for once, run honestly and came up with the obvious findings that the BBC is “Institutionally anti-Israel”. Incontravertible proof of which can be found all over the Biased BBC blog.
“internal view” should be “internal review”.
Ahhhhh!
‘One can only assume that it was, for once, run honestly and came up with the obvious findings that the BBC is “Institutionally anti-Israel”.’
You could make exactly the same argument and replace “Institutionally anti-Israel” with ‘
“Institutionally anti-Palestinian’.
You don’t know what was in it, so you can only speculate. Any way, its a tired old argument, you will believe whatever you wish, regardless of all the evidence. Incontravertible proof of which can be found all over the Biased BBC blog.
I remember back in 2005 when the BBC held another ‘impartiality review’ on its Israel/Palestine coverage, supposedly INDEPENDENT. This was try and make the public believe that the Balen report showed how balanced they were, and their reasons for withholding it was really for journalistic purposes.
Here’s what I noted at the time about who they selected for the panel.
BBC Appoints ‘Independent’ panel to judge own bias
Details of a review into the BBC’s coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have been published by the broadcaster’s board of governors.
The review, announced in May, will look at BBC impartiality “with particular regard to accuracy, fairness, context, balance and bias, actual or perceived”.
Great, so after thousands of complaints about BBC bias over the Israel/Palestine conflict, mostly in favour of the Palestinian view, they have finally decided to elect their own panel to judge their impartiality. Seems already fishy that they should pick the people who are going to judge them if whatever outcome is going to be seen to be a fair appraisal. But okay, perhaps they will pick people who have a genuine objectivity and some expertise in the issues involved to make that appraisal.
So who do they pick?
Sir Quentin Thomas (chair) President of the British Board of Film Classification
Lord Eames Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland
Stewart Purvis Former editor-in-chief and chief executive of ITN; professor of television journalism, City University
Philip Stephens Associate editor and columnist, Financial Times
Elizabeth Vallance Former head Department of Politics, Queen Mary College, University of London; member of the Committee on Standards in Public Life; author; magistrate
Not being familiar with any of these names previously I decided to research, something about them that would show why the BBC had chosen them. Seeing what links they might have had previously to Middle Eastern affairs or the BBC.
First Quentin Thomas, and I find this:
Consider the huge success of the licence fee-funded BBC
in which he has this to say about the BBC
“….Online which extends the value licence fee payers derive from BBC programmes and services. During the past year, usage grew at double the rate of the UK market as a whole and, by the end of 1999, more than a quarter of UK Internet users were visiting BBC Online every month.
The Eclipse site in July drew over 3 million page impressions in 48 hours. And page impressions of BBC News Online increased from 50 million in April 99 to 77 million in March of this year.
Public service Internet sites are increasingly becoming the way people obtain their core information.
Online technology also presents the opportunity to turn all of us into questionin interactive participants in the news process. Non linear broadcasting will also certainly become a reality – where we can all be editors, digging ‘vertically’ through news stories to find the research and analysis we need, rather than simply consuming news and current affairs as ‘horizontal’ narratives. Imagine a nation full of Jeremy Paxmans! But think of how important the public service role models will be to ensure we are equipped to ask the right questions. Increasingly we are coming to realise that in the digital on-line world it is not so much the provision of information that matters, but the interpretation that is provided alongside it.
Naturally he see nothing wrong with the BBC providing that ‘interpretation’. He’d probably like them to interpret for me why they have selected him for this panel instead of the impression I already have.
Lord Eames is one of the heads of the Anglican Church, the same organisation that has been busy recently implementing sanctions against Israel, one can guess where his sympathies lie.
Stewart Purvis actually started working for the BBC before ITN, and following the Hutton report and the departure of Greg Dyke, left no doubt how he felt BBC coverage had been maligned in this article:
Moist-eyed appreciation of Greg
To know Philip Stephens’ views on Israel one has only to see this article by him which was posted on an Islamic website.
Sharon and Arafat are locked in a lethal embrace
Regarding Dr. Elizabeth Vallance, other than being married to a Lib Dem peer, which may be significant, I can find little to show why she was picked. It might be that she is the most ‘independant’ of the others, but being outnumbered 4 to 1, it won’t make a lot of difference to the outcome.
And it didn’t – the findings were everything we could predict they would be.
Propaganda is what the BBC do and we see every trick they employ.
The Trust… Inquiries.. All of questionable value when the BBC looking in the mirror and liking what it sees.
One of the Trust’s supposed roles is ensuring money is spent wisely. Hard to see most investments made on licence fee payers’ behalves as delivering on that.
Especially as the avowed stated commitment by the guy at the top is to warn anyone off even thinking of holding the BBC to account as they demand and presume to do of others.
I recall a Newsnight where an aggressive Paxman tore a hapless PR (ironically) from the institution of PR apart for the conflict of interest of an internal inquiry they held finding a member got it about right. Irony not a strong suit with BBC staff either.
The Trust is just the rotten head of a crumbling edifice.
On matters of accountability to those compelled to fund it, it is beyond satire, depending on semantics and Beware of the Leopard delusion that would make Douglas Adams gasp.
http://bbcwatch.org/2013/05/13/more-revealing-bbc-replies-to-audience-complaints/
It’s the only game in town, and they know it, which is why they feel invulnerable in rigging it so blatantly.
That more and more know they are, yet are still taunting and flaunting the unique farce that is their claim of transparency, will be their downfall one day.
Irony not a strong suit with BBC staff either – demostrating you don’t understand the word Irony.
But the Chairs of the regional Audience Councils report to Audience Council England and the Chair of Audience Council England reports to the Trust – so the Trustees will never get to hear what the Trustees do not want to hear.
‘the Trustees will never get to hear what the Trustees do not want to hear.’
Of course, as everything is held in secret, in camera, anyone outside the bunker will have no clue what happens within, including what the Trust members get to hear whether by choice or simply being kept out of the loop by those filtering what they get to arbitrate upon.
As Pollard revealed, the Trust… the sole highest oversight that there is on BBC conduct… often had no clue what was going on even when a barge load of manure was heading for a windmill. The result?:
‘161. …left defending something that wasn’t true’.’
Inept? Venal? Just dumb?
Who can really say.
But what is possible to guarantee is that anyone outside the BBC will be told in no uncertain terms that what happens within the BBC is no one’s business but the BBC’s. Even when the matter is very much in the public interest and/or funded by the public. Yet files can get closed on no more than the BBC having a sneaky peek and getting comfy in the belief that the files are best shut.
Which given their claims on coherence, and trust, and transparency is hard to rationalise.
No… make that… utterly delusional BS.
Celery, let’s say we accept that the BBC shouldn’t have to publish the Balen report as it was an internal review. So let’s forget about the debate over publishing it and move on to the next step following any review. You say that we (assuming your “you” was meant “collectively) have faith in it, so can you point to any result from that review? After all, if some or all of the conclusions were valid, surely the BBC must have learned lessons and put new standards and practices into place, etc.
Now that the principle behind not releasing it has been establised in court, I’m of the view that it should be published.
My view herE is not about the BBC or its coverage of the ME. I simply have a problem with those who asks stupid questions like ‘Balen Report ….what ever happened to that?’ or ‘why hasn’t the Balen Report been published?’
There’s an answer to that. If you disagree, fine. Let’s hear why, but stop asking the same stupid question.
Secondly, I’m annoyed by the kind of thinking that because the report is ‘secret’ some people necessarily speculate on its contents. Their speculation usually fits their own agenda. They don’t know what’s in it, therefore it must’ve found that ‘the BBC kills Jews’.
The rest I’ve answered before and can’t be arsed doing so again.
Vegetable Boy, you haven’t answered my question anywhere before.
Maybe that’s the kind of thinking that annoys him too?
If ever one wondered what the equivalent of a vegetable stamping its roots is, this would seem close.
“Its the Trusts’ role to act on behalf of licence fee payers” [sic]
When are they going to start?
i think V Drearybyshire is losing the plot, after that fiasco, championing the pandering to gitmo, THIS VERY MORNING shes “gonna get daan wiv de kids” on her show – her choice is … wait for it …
“ALL THOSE” young muslims “CHOOSING” sham marriages” … her tone … wow such a hip idea,
radical 😀 eh Dreary!
I believe they publish a report about complaintgs its considered monthly or quarterly. Check its website.
Where’s Mr. Buster when clearly he is still needed?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22403731?ocid=socialflow_facebook_bbcnews
It’s in the news, so what could have prompted it?
Yes, an effect without a cause, apparently.
I think the new curriculum left out the most important apostrophe problem going now, though: the increasingly common use of an apostrophe to denote a plural. The piece mentions somebody complaining about Waterstone’s losing the possessive and appearing plural, but not about the other way around.
No reason.
“Why is the Left so blind to the link between today’s sex scandals and the cult of permissiveness?”
By MELANIE PHILLIPS
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2323554/Why-Left-blind-link-todays-sex-scandals-cult-permissiveness.html#ixzz2TAkAQ729
Many comments from the Lefty Internet Army making the point that most of the new accused have admitted support for the Conservative Party.
Either it’s just co-incidence that so many hold right-of-centre views, or maybe this campaign of vilification is a deliberate plot to smear Conservatives. It could be a bit of both, but it is surprising that few are admitted Labour supporters. We all will have different views as to which it is, Dezi for instance will clearly say it’s not a political smear campaign, but we all remember Lord McAlpine!
Well Hall [the naughty one] is a full labour party guy has this been mentioned ?
“…An academic, a professor of sociology, a director of Spinwatch…..impartial? …Left wing, anti-Iraq War, pro extremist Islam…very popular on Muslim media outlets, received research grants from the EU…”
Yep, this is very much how common purpose trolls operate; the paper being referred to is an almost textbook-example of how they write for each other exactly what they need (and want) to read. It’s also a perfect example of how the real world – you know, the one that actually exists beyond their cosy socialist bubble of sneering self congratulation – is never, ever allowed to impinge on their process. This is a political process, after all, and nothing so trivial as reality must be permitted to cloud the outcome.
Staggering, that the BBC is somehow allowed to carry on in this way; it couldn’t advertise its sheer contempt for the license payer any more blatantly than it does in the commissioning and publication of these self-serving, meaningless ‘reports’ about itself to itself.
Things would be better if the BBC were, in a “look how clever I am” kind of way, simply contrarian. In that case it would be, by default, anti-government, attacking Labour from the Right (or even Left) and the Tories from Left (or even Right!) This attitude might be tiresome but it would, at least, constitute balance of a sort, and be better than Soviet-style, slavish, uncritical pro-government support.
What strikes me is the generally incurious attitude and narrative of BBC reporting. Suppose I were an up-and-coming historian re-examining WWI; for reasons of career self-interest and self-publicism if nothing more, I might try to challenge the established ‘lions led by donkeys’ narrative regarding British military tactics and casualties. Michael Portillo actually did this once on a Radio 4 prog’.
So I ask: ubi sunt ? That is, where are the ambitious journalists who, even if only to play devil’s advocate, challenge established BBC thinking, e.g. on climate change, EU integration, the NHS and immigration? The BBC has done work of this sort: for example a Radio 4 prog’ around the time of the 40th anniversary of Enoch Powell’s Birmingham speech on immigration (20/04/1968) which I considered – incredibly for the BBC – to be actually biased in Powell’s favour, when I had been expecting a hatchet job on him.
I think Michael Buerk, to his ever-lasting credit, dared to question the dominant narrative on so-called ‘man-made climate change’. I don’t think he was so much exiled from the inner sanctum of the Politburo at Broadcasting House as he was ‘sidelined’ for expressing such traitorous views. You can still find his musings here:
http://www.thefifthcolumn.co.uk/the-agitator/michael-buerk-on-the-climate-summit/
I have no doubt there are other potential dissidents currently working for The Corporation who have traded their conscience (and their journalistic principles) in return for ‘taking the shilling’ from the BBC’s Ministry of Climate Truth for the sake of their careers.
Heresies, after all, tend to work a bit like that; they frighten otherwise good people into silence whilst a mockery of intellectual and scientific honesty.
Ms DERBYSHIRE seems to turn 5 Live into a two hour ‘Woman’s Hour’, as this Tuesday morning; complete with her gratuitous, anti-male comment at around 11 am.