Kipling talked of the “the truthful well-weighed answer that tells the blacker lie”.
The BBC are the masters of deploying the truth to hide the truth.
Whenever the BBC reports something verbatim without further explanation or background colour and context you know they are trying to sweep something nasty under the carpet.
Labour’s little spot of trouble with their Union sponsors, Unite, hasn’t really kept any BBC journo awake at night thinking how he can tie all these loose but fascinating ends together.
The BBC has stuck strictly to a limited set of facts without indulging in the usual speculation, analysis or voices off that reveal far more than we get from the main players.
They have also been extraordinarily slow in picking this story up….’slow’? Again do I mean ‘wilfully blind’?
It has been a major, major talking point on the Left’s own political blogs….all condemning Unite…and yet the BBC ignored it for a long time…..or ignored the significance of the story.
As CCE in the comments says:
Where is the massive BBC ‘political analysis’ machine – that costs 3.5bn PA to maintain when we need it?
This is a HUGE and damaging story about the unscrupulous nature of the Labour Party internal politics and will consequently get no “analysis” and fall off the BBC news agenda in 3 1/2 hours (max)
Here the BBC reports the resignation of Labour’s Tom Watson:
Tom Watson quits as Labour election campaign chief
But the BBC fails to mention two very relevant points which the Scotsman (H/T CCE) brings to light:
Labour sources claimed that Mr Watson was told to resign by Mr Miliband who is under pressure to exert his authority on the party after it emerged that the Unite union is targeting 41 safe seats including the Falkirk selection.
You will be hard pushed to find mention of those other seats that Labour has taken control of which Unite has been targeting…and no mention of Miliband actually sacking Watson because of Unite’s actions and his association with that…….a significant move by Miliband if true…..his relationship with Unite being all important as his major backer as leader of the Labour Party.
The BBC seem to be downplaying this at the moment when the reality is that it is a story of great importance with a whole series of possibly devastating consequences for Labour…apart from damage to their reputation.
There looks like being a massive fall out with Unite, and maybe other Unions, and they of course bankroll Labour…..yet more encouragement to reform and curb Party funding by big donors….though that seems to be on the back burner for now.…and Watson was a Brownite so probably intellectually and politically aligned with Miliband’s own Old Labour politics….as Nick Robinson said:
Ed Miliband knew what he was getting when he hired him as Labour’s election coordinator. The Labour leader wanted Watson’s ruthlessness, organisational skill and campaigning zeal to help him reach Number 10.
So a loss of an important ally for Miliband.
Robinson finished that piece with this:
At the Downing Street barbeque tonight Tory MPs will be congratulating David Cameron for making the issue of Watson, Unite and Miliband’s leadership one which the public will now hear about.
Note that …‘the public will now hear about.’
Question might be why haven’t the ‘Public’ heard about this days ago, from the BBC, when it was already big news on the internet long before PMQs?
And of course beyond the little spot of trouble with the selection hijacking there is also the question of Unite’s control of the violent protest group Unite Against Fascism…chaired by Unite officer Steve Hart who has close ties to Miliband….not forgetting that one UAF officer is Labour MP Peter Hain….all connected to extremist Islamists via the UAF.
Something else for the future for BBC reporters to get their teeth into…once they’ve woken up.
Don’t hold your breath about the BBC reporters waking up! This will be all hands to the pump for damage limitation. The BBC will probably be very quiet indeed on this one, after all, you never bite the hand that feeds you, do you?
Sky news this evening made it clear that the story was a disaster for Milliband snd that labour was in meltdown. With anticipation of more analasys, I tuned to R4 and The World Tonight . The program launched with an overlong half hour of pre-recorded coverage of Egypt, after this there was just a two minute segment on Tom Watson’s resignation. Had this been an embarrasing story featuring the conservatives , the program would have been very different !
Copied from the open thread because I like my jokes…
In a change of schedule due to the phasing of the moon in the holy month of Ramadan, in place of tonight’s episode of Mark Steeles “Vote Labour now because Thatcher was an evil bitch”: Sir David Attenborough travels in one squadron of BBC helicopters to the barren tundra town of Falkirk deep in the arctic wastes north of Islington to explore the remarkable phenomena of Scottish tumbleweed.
The programme fills the prime viewing slot between “Marcus Brigstock spouts liquid shit – again” and the “For fuc* sake turn it off, it’s Jeremy Hardy” show.
Thrill to the HD, second by second, coverage of a few tumbleweed bushes spotted in Scotland. Sir David Attenborough narrates masterfully as he explains that the ‘greatest scientific minds of this or any other generation’ (TM Greenpeace) believe that these scraggy bits of weed blowing about in the freezing damp Caledonian wastes are a precursor to more tumbleweed on our screens as the unique circumstances found in Falkirk are explored more fully by the elite BBC team of 297 experienced weed specialists fresh from extensive weed research at ‘Glasto’. They will cover the predicted 97 C increase in temperature over the next two weeks and the consequent rising of sea levels which will wash more a tumbleweed bushes from Arizona (or somewhere) to the central belt of Scotland.
In this first episode, Sir David reads a script prepared by a committee of pressure groups concluding that this horror is caused by capitalism, greed and above all by selfish climate criminals who insist on wasting electricity, some having up to 3 cups of tea per week, or bathing more than is permitted for the non accredited population (a).
“This is the first of many cutting edge new documentaries; we can expect pretty much continuous coverage of bushes or even bits of paper blowing up and down past the queues for food banks on bitterly depressed ‘triple dip’ streets to the sound of distant plaintive bagpipes up until the 2015 general election” said an un-named BBC spokes person. The spokes person concluded: “just in case you thought that we would explain why Tom Watson has ‘resigned’, think again fascist/racist/climate criminal, we don’ t we have no intention telling the aboriginal proles of Britain about any orchestrated campaign of left wing entryism and gerrymandering by unions: be realistic, that isn’t ever going to be on the narrative arc is it now is it?”
(a) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23175220
Great Kipling quote and so very apt.
these unite uniion and labour lot are the same crowd who encourage these uaf moronic knucklec draggers to attack edl supporters whenever they have a peacefull demo.
And perhaps even more worrying are encouraging them to attack UKIP meetings
Any chance Panorama will be doing an undercover expose on that?
you know out of a sense of balance
Yes, as referred to in this 60-page report:
‘Siding with the Oppressor: The Pro-Islamist Left’
Click to access SidingWithOpressor_Web.pdf
Thanks for the link – this report looks fascinating. Downloaded!
Indeed sir!
Listen to Naughtie slavering over comments made by some Cairo poppet about her love for the Muslim Brotherhood( the Sisterhood wing as yet unformed) this morning.
Oh Jim so worries-no constitution, so unlike the rainbow that South Africa turned out to be…for heavens sake, can`t you Egyptians just cool it?
The Opposition spokesman blasts him politely into orbit-much as a similar bloke did to Humphrys yesterday( the Egyptians seem to be educated…oh dear, that`ll be the World Service cuts then!).
The MB gal accuses the 8 million crowd, and the Army of being anti-Muslim…er, they`re all Muslim love…but not the Al Queda types that you think should be ensuring Sharia for the rest of the country-but Jim will note this anti-Islam prejudice in Cairo, before donning the pith helmet and doing the sand dance so he`ll be back for the start of the Proms.
Humphrys will doubtless get his bite at the olive on a freebie with a day trip to Cyprus amid a few weeks at his Greek villa…oh those poor Muslims…maybe Egypt needs to join the EU eh?
God they`re dumb…all this democratic shortfall crap when we all know what Islam thinks of “constitutions” “rule of law” and “voting intentions”…all f***in haram…but it`ll not stop the Beeb from bleating about it all, as Morsis goons laugh along at the white fools on public expense accounts wringing their hankies over their hookahs…spineless bastards all, as Morrissey once sang!