Yes, we all know that Lib Dems do seem to have a problem with Israel and in that regard today’s saga with David Ward MP is not that surprising. Just to remind you…
Lib Dem MP David Ward has had the party whip withdrawn over comments he made about Israel. He posted a tweet at the weekend calling the country an “apartheid state” and saying that “Zionists” were “losing the battle”. It comes after a long-running dispute with the party’s leadership over his use of language and comments he made about “the Jews”. Mr Ward said he would not apologise for his tweet.
I agree, he should let hims reprehensible anti-Semitism stand. If he feels sad he could always phone Jenny Tonge. But, what has this to do with the BBC? Well, I would have THOUGHT that this story merited an inclusion on the main BBC UK news portal but it is nowhere to be seen. Yes, I know it leads the politics page but many readers do not go there. On the main UK news page, the BBC finds room to tell us about Thatcher’s support for Jimmy Savile, about Budget cuts are “damaging neighbourhood policing” but nary a word about this vile Lib Dem Jew hater. Funny old world.
UPDATE; 30 minutes after me posting this, link appeared on main news portal!!
Has causal anti-Semitism passed the “dinner table test” yet? The BBC won’t be interested, as the sentiments expressed by Ward will most likely be seen by most BBC journalists as simple fact and not anti-Jewish sentiment. If Katty Kay can speak of the overriding power and wealth of the Jewish Lobby and get away with it, why would the BBC worry about this?
Maybe the protestations of casual anti-Semitism might carry more weight if this site was not awash with casual anti-Islamic statements. The post on Mishal Husein is particularly egregious, and contains a pretty clear libel.
Keep avoiding the issue of that interview and continue with the tu quoque stuff. Good boy.
You don’t think that if you want to try to occupy the moral high ground that it isn’t a bad idea not to have your feet in the same dirty swamp, old boy?
The story leads the politics page. It is a story about a member of a political party (and a pretty unpopular one at that) being rightly disciplined, by the equally unpopular leader of that political party. It is an inside Westminster story. It belongs, rightly, on the politics page.
To claim that making it the lead political story is somehow evidence of anti-Semitism by the BBC strains credulity. It is clearly evidence of anti-Semitism by Ward.
Are you happy with the anti-Islamic posts in that Mishal Husein thread?
Just as long as you don’t have to address the issue of that video.
A whip from the Coalition Government making anti-Jewish remarks isn’t worthy of the main UK page? I assume you’re awaiting a full BBC investigation into the anti-Semitism amongst one part of the Coalition Government as we are.
James, you are missing a few points:
1. This site is about BBC Bias so don’t expect every criticism to be ‘balanced’ by a compliment. Unlike the BBC it isn’t part of its charter.
2. The posters on this site aren’t recruited from the same newspaper, didn’t go to school/university with the Labour cabinet and don’t drink in the same wine bars and don’t need to toe the same editorial line to keep their jobs. It is inevitable that some may express more extreme views than others.
3. You don’t understand bias. The card sharp might convince successive punters that he does a fair shuffle. The bartender might notice that the ace of spades is always drawn. That is extreme bias. A thousand ‘fair-minded’ reviewers might review a thousand different BBC stories and conclude that : a) most of the facts were there and; b) they ‘might’ have been stated in a different order. A single ‘fair-minded’ reviewer might notice a pattern, that is called bias.
4. Ian Duncan Smith said recently that the BBC does ‘small’ and ignores ‘big’. A simple example: Marcus Brigstock has a joke item about branding cod fish as unpopular. How about ‘ukipper’? The ‘fair-minded’ casual listener might say “classic comedy, play on words, kipper, UKIP, ukipper. Not the greatest joke but OK”. The frequent ‘fair-minded’ listener hears “unpopular” and “UKIP”. Hardly cutting edge satire or fair comment, especially when we get the same ‘drip-drip’ EVERY week. And the same story goes right across the BBC output, the single, integrated ‘good’ muslim; the single, deserving, abused asylum seeker; the single, hard-done by benefit claimant; the ‘small’ set against the ‘big’ atrocities of Islam and the ‘big’ requirement of government to balance the books. That’s bias, that’s the BBC.
Thank you for an excellent response.
Rather than “Fisk” your reply let me make a few points.
This site, it seems to me, is a prime example of confirmation bias. There is hypothesis that the BBC is biased and this site’s members go out and find the evidence that suits the hypothesis.
That doesn’t test the hypothesis, it merely confirms the preconception.
If I hypothesize that every time I flip a coin it will land on heads and ignore all of the evidence when it lands on tails then I prove my hypothesis.
The same is true on this site. If you don’t include the counter evidence and only collect evidence that fits your “BBC is biased” hypothesis, then not surprisingly you confirm it.
(lest I be accused of not replying let me v briefly answer points 1-4)
1. True, but if you are seeking the moral highground make sure you can occupy it.
2. Diversity is important to prevent a group-think. But isn’t that what that post was about? The BBC introducing someone who is not white, male and over 40?
3. I think I do (see above).
4. Good journalism is about real people. I forget who it was who said “tell the story of the soldier, not the battle”. It was Stalin who said one death is a tragedy, a million a statistic. Journalism should be about bringing things down to the individual level not up at the statistical level.
Do you realise how ineffably boring you are ?
If successive leaders of the BBC, and successive senior people employed for many years at the Corporation say there is deep bias – we are inclined to believe them. Certainly they know a thousand times more about it than you do.
Yet every so often someone like you claims the BBC is not biased. All we dwell on here are the many conti nuing examples of bias. And frankly, as you bring so little to the party – why should anyone take the slightest bit of notice of your pernickety comments ? You refuse to see the big picture, the overwhelming evidence of engrained bias at the BBC. So your nitpicking is boring as well as shallow.
Oh – and good history encompasses both the battle and the soldier. But in your smartass manner you push whichever side opposes people here. Yes, individual stories about welfare may be inter3sting – but so is the context of the welfare cuts, the fact they are needed because of the fiscal crisis – and the fact that the cuts have heavy support in the public view. That is what the BBC omits. That is the “balance” it fails to deliver. And the imbalance always cuts one way – the Guardian way.
Do you realise how ineffably boring you are ?
Possibly, but I am a rank amateur compared to a Zen master like you.
As for the rest I don’t think you understood it.
I will make it simpler for you with words of one or two syllables.
“You see only what you want to see and your minds are closed to all else.”
pernickety comments
You mean like evidence when posts are wrong. Why let facts get in the way of rampant speculation?
No – you post when YOU think things are wrong, you don’t post to discuss instances of clear bias by the BBC, you don’t post if you are shown to be wrong.
And please spare us your paranoid whinging about being barred or having your stuff amended. If you want that sort of treatment – go to the BBC or CiF at the Guardian
Because it isn’t clear bias that’s why. When you can show me something that is irrefutably biased then fine, let’s talk about it. Let’s take this complaint, that somehow the BBC is anti-Semetic because it lead its politics page with a story about an MP having the whip withdrawn. Where is the bias? In what way was the BBC an outlier?
I went through the print editions of the Daily Mail and The Times. Neither even carried the story. Now don’t come back with the tired “we don’t have to pay for …” I am establishing norms not methods of payment.
What you mean by bias on this site is “not the same views I have”. Not subscribing to the same views as you does not make the BBC biased. Given the robust views of this site from one side of the political spectrum it isn’t the BBC that is biased, it is you.
As for Chop – if John Anderson is going to launch his comment with insults then he deserves to be met back with them. As do you. But it is Friday, the sun is shining, we are 93/6 against the Australians so instead I shall wish you a very good weekend.
(although wanker is two syllables)
“I will make it simpler for you with words of one or two syllables.”
What a sanctimonious prick you are.
Typical Liberal tosspot, the old “I’m better than you, I look down on you and your beliefs…Only I’m right…You are wrong…”
A typical, pro BBC’er if ever there were one.
What a wanker…
To any of the open minded posters who may have taken offense at my single syllable response to brother Stables, may I extend my apologies.
Only to you…not to him, I stand by what I say about him.
What a wonderful ad hom. No counter-argument?
Typical Liberal tosspot, the old “I’m better than you, I look down on you and your beliefs…Only I’m right…You are wrong…”
So when John Anderson is sniffily dismissive towards Chris, is he being a Liberal tosspot, too?
Or are right-wing people who agree with the bias of this site allowed to be patronising in ways that they’d complain about if the same attitude were used towards them?
The Lib Dems do have a bit of a Nazi problem, what with Jenny Tonge, Bob Russell and David Ward.
Thank goodness Clegg had the guts to kick Ward’s backside. I hope he kicks the little shit right out of British politics.
Nick Clegg is very much at home with the likes of Lib Dem MP David Ward and Jenny Tonge.. I suggest that you note the following piece by Nile Gardiner in the Telegraph
http://tinyurl.com/yygptda
Looking forward to publication of Balen Report 🙁
If any politician had criticized Muslims or ethnic minorities in this foul way the BBC would be driving vans with megaphones through every street in Britain.
DV, the news of lowest crime stats for 32 years made top spot on BBC portal for maybe one hour before a spoiler item about cuts leapfrogged it. The BBC cannot BEAR good news from the Coalition without trying to neutralise it.
Murdoch now has top billing again! The BBC yellow streak is widening. Its days are numbered.
Off topic, and not particularly relevant to the BBC, but I see that the actual withdrawal of the whip only lasts for a period similar to the length of the recess. So no voting or attendance impact at all then.
I have to say, what an excellent post by JimS.
David Ward = Female sex organ
They are usefull, Ward is just pandering to his overwhelming Muslim voters.
anti semetic hypocrites of the left always get caught out in the end,and what makes it worst is they always pretend they are not racist and anti semetic and come out with there twisted excuses that what they said was taken out of context.
Mr Vance didn’t ever manage to get elected on his platform, but I wonder if he would’ve had the whip withdrawn for his Twitter comments:
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/politics/tuv-mans-gaza-boat-comments-spark-outrage-28539639.html
Doubt it – being denounced by Sinn Fein Lite (the SDLP) is only a tragedy to terrorist-lovers like you.