The BBC’s highest-profile talent in the US, Katty Kay, held an audience Q&A session on Twitter this morning. Once the BBC publishes the transcript on their website, I’ll update this post with a link. She didn’t say anything that would get her in trouble like last time, but she did answer at least one question with pure, unadulterated, partisan bias:
From an FB user: How exactly does #Obama intend to bridge rich/poor gap in USA? #SOTU #AskBBCKatty
— Katty Kay (@KattyKayBBC) January 29, 2014
This is one of Katty’s pet issues. She’s on record already advocating for it. Her reply:
He really can’t do much as Republicans won’t agree to legislation on taxes and spending. He can do a bit on minimum wage. #askkattybbc — Katty Kay (@KattyKayBBC) January 29, 2014
And there you have it. The President’s policies are correct, and the only thing preventing Him from saving us is Republican intransigence. Notice also Katty’s belief that taxes and government spending will be at least part of the solution. This is pure Left-wing ideology, and the anchor of a BBC News broadcast produced in the US and aimed directly at the US audience is espousing it without reservation or qualification. Whether or not you or I agree with her politics is irrelevant. The fact is that she is biased and displays it here. Here’s another one on essentially the same issue:
From @gidget_smart: Do people (including #Obama) not realize raising min wage will only cause cost of living increase? #askbbckatty
— Katty Kay (@KattyKayBBC) January 29, 2014
Katty’s reply:
Historically, increases in minimum wage haven’t caused increases in either cost of living or unemployment. #askkattybbc
— Katty Kay (@KattyKayBBC) January 29, 2014
Is she correct? The Wall Street Journal said no in 2009.
Yesterday’s September labor market report was lousy by any measure, with 263,000 lost jobs and the jobless rate climbing to 9.8%. But for one group of Americans it was especially awful: the least skilled, especially young workers. Washington will deny the reality, and the media won’t make the connection, but one reason for these job losses is the rising minimum wage.
Earlier this year, economist David Neumark of the University of California, Irvine, wrote on these pages that the 70-cent-an-hour increase in the minimum wage would cost some 300,000 jobs. Sure enough, the mandated increase to $7.25 took effect in July, and right on cue the August and September jobless numbers confirm the rapid disappearance of jobs for teenagers.
But wait, there’s more:
As the minimum wage has risen, the gap between the overall unemployment rate and the teen rate has widened, as it did again last month. (See nearby chart.) The current Congress has spent billions of dollars—including $1.5 billion in the stimulus bill—on summer youth employment programs and job training. Yet the jobless numbers suggest that the minimum wage destroyed far more jobs than the government programs helped to create.
Congress and the Obama Administration simply ignore the economic consensus that has long linked higher minimum wages with higher unemployment.
Katty Kay is an opponent of the consensus.
We can debate this issue of the effects of minimum wage laws until the cows come home, but the point here is that she stated this uncategorically as fact. The WSJ, on the other hand has a different opinion. If the WSJ is nominally right of center, then the opposite position must be on the Left. Katty Kay’s ideology is Left-wing. Her tweets (see her listing on the “In Their Own Tweets” page) and pundit appearances on MSNBC reveal her personal Left-wing ideology, and the same bias in on display when she acts in her official capacity as a BBC journalist. There is no question here about personal ideology directly affecting and being evident in her BBC journalism. This is just the latest example. Many more can be seen here, here, here, here, here, and here. And that just for starters.
Fixing the management structure and adding layers of accountability on internal spending will not fix this problem.
She’s just using more up to date research than you?
http://www.businessinsider.com/minimum-wage-increase-job-loss-unemployment-workers-2013-2
As for this part of your post “And there you have it. The President’s policies are correct, and the only thing preventing Him from saving us is Republican intransigence.” I think it’s a bit of a stretch to read it like that. She was asked what the President can do and she’s just saying Obama can’t do much of anything. She’s not making any comment at all on who’s right or wrong.
I know you hate the woman, David but all these straw persons do your cause little good.
(CTGWR)
Perhaps, you’ve also misrepresented what Katty said, haven’t you? She was asked what He can do, and she replied that He couldn’t do much because the Republicans wouldn’t go along with specific ideas. This indicates that those ideas would work, but Republicans won’t allow it. It’s not a stretch at all. If she didn’t believe that His plans for taxing and spending wouldn’t work for sure, she would have added a qualifier of some kind. Yes, Twitter is limited to 140 characters, but this was a freely-structured thing and she could either have spread her answer out over two tweets, as many do, or added a more concise qualifier, like, say, “perhaps”.
When somebody asks what the President can to do fix something, and she offers an answer, you simply cannot claim she isn’t implying that that answer will work. She’s not saying, that His executive order might help, is she?
As for that “up to date research”, you’re presuming to know on what Katty is basing her opinion. In any case, that Business Insider piece you’ve linked to is citing a 2011 study. Hardly more up to date than the WSJ, and certainly not enough to disprove it. It’s also a Left-leaning magazine, which only supports my point about how partisan these positions can be.
Here’s something else from 2011 which, while saying that raising the minimum wage doesn’t really raise unemployment, “few modern-day economists argue that an increase in the minimum wage will actually create jobs in America, and such policies failed dismally during the Great Depression.” Of course, some people keep saying this President is a modern-day FDR…..
Here’s something from earlier this month, which cites a Right-leaning think tank’s statement that minimum wage is a “price control”, and doesn’t work. Up to date enough for you? And again, if Katty is espousing – and she is – a position that’s on the opposite side of the Right, it must be of the Left. It’s not merely different: it’s opposite.
I think you also need to reconsider your definition of straw men. I’ve quoted her words exactly, not restating what I think is an opponent’s position just so I can knock it down. You claim her words can be interpreted differently (and had to elide it in order to do it) which isn’t the same thing.
And if you intend to undermine my position by pointing to what you perceive as my personal animosity against an individual, then I you ought to be equally ready to dismiss all complaints from defenders of the indefensible on the same grounds.
“I know you hate the woman, David …”
Do you? How do you know?
You are complete tosspot, Perhaps… who comes to this site in a paper tiger keyboard war. Why do you idiot trolls come here? To make yourselves feel like you are doing something?
Tosspot.
No one here takes the blindest bit of notice of you – except to make it more clear who the enemy is – you.
I think the word “intransigence” in the tweet is loaded. I read it as the Republicans blocking Obamalamadingdong with no good reason, but political point scoring. That might or might not be right, but it is a poor choice of wording if you want to be impartial.
I used the word “intransigence”, not Katty. That was my way of characterizing what she said. I was only using the term in the way the BBC has used it in the past.
Whoops. My bad. It’s been a long day. 🙂
The day a BBC employee correspondent posts a right-wing tweet I expect this website will be inundated with trollist self-righteousness, proving to us once and for all that the BBC is as impartial as its mandarins always claim.
Until then, we’ll just have to imagine what BBC impartiality might look and sound like.
Andrew Neil! Andrew Neil! Andrew Neil!
David, would you ever give a bbc journalist an interview? I certainly can’t envisage a situation where I would and maybe that’s a policy that,if widely adopted, could clarify some minds in the hive.
Do you mean me interviewing one of them, or one of them interviewing me? Neither one could ever happen even if I was interested.
I meant you being interviewed by a bbc journalist. But thinking about it, interviewing a bbc journalist could be good fun if conducted by someone more capable than me who also possesses a visceral dislike of them and their employer.
Why would any of them ever talk to me? Unless I happen to be in the right place at the wrong time when one of them is looking for some vox pops, there’s no reason for them to talk to me. Nor would any of them ever agree to be interviewed. Unless it’s for some soft profile piece, an interview would force them to be accountable for their journalism, which can never happen, ever. I don’t think any journalist would do such a thing, really. In any case, it would probably be more of an interrogation than interview, and I’d probably come across as an Evan Davis-like @$$hole shouting over them, mischaracterizing their answers, and seeming to put words in their mouth.
Having said that, I certainly wouldn’t mind interviewing a journalist outside the BBC about their opinion about BBC bias, like Delingpole or West or Thompson or Liddle. I’d definitely learn something from all of them.
A genuine question here – is it really the case that BBC recruitment ads appear in the Guardian but not the Telegraph or the Times? If so, how can that possibly be justified? Maybe it is an urban myth – anybody confirm either way?
Of course it’s true. The BBC cannot conceive of having employees who might not read the Guardian. I suppose a few might read the Independent every now and then.
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Introducing #EmptySuit. This new video from AAN puts a different twist on what the State of the Union address means for many Americans.
Year after year, President Obama has used this annual address to deliver lofty rhetoric but hollow promises to the American people. Yes, we’ve heard it all before, and seen the empty results.
http://americanactionnetwork.org/topic/emptysuit
This time, though, while the promises were certainly less lofty, they were also less than empty. The President is now going to expand executive authority and use the ultimate power of the Federal Government to force His will on us. Congress can’t do a thing about that, and it will take quite some time before any challenge can make its way through the Judicial branch, at which point the damage will already have been done. He may not be able to affect much of the change that Katty Kay and the Progressives desperately want, but He can surely punish and destroy.
The media, Hollywood, Goldman Sachs, Google, and the mayors of the most prominent major cities in the country will support and protect Him and work hard to elect a successor who will continue in His footsteps. Any power He grabs now will be handed over to and expanded by President Hillary.
His SOTU speech was not filled with empty promises: it was an STFU speech filled with threats.
That’s the Chicago Way.
“Katty Kay is an opponent of the consensus.”
Say it ain’t so!