Remember the delight of the BBC when research used by some to support austerity policies was found to have an error in its calculations…the BBC filled the airwaves with the news and gave us extensive briefings on the subject eulogising the clever lad who caught the profs out:
Reinhart, Rogoff… and Herndon: The student who caught out the profs
And
Reinhart and Rogoff correct austerity research error
Curiously when the new hero of the left, Thomas Piketty, gets it similarly wrong there is hardly a word…just this quick 50 seconds on newsnight (30 mins)
There appears to be nothing on the website and I haven’t heard anything on the radio unlike for Herndon who was given pride of place on several shows.
All very curious as this is a story in just about every newspaper and current affairs publication….except the BBC….Newsnight excepted.
The BBC goes very noisy when it thinks there is something that undermines austerity but keeps quiet when something undermines the left’s new narrative…one that is the central theme of Labour’s election manifesto.
The Spectator has a look at the FT’s claims:
Why didn’t Piketty’s Harvard publisher spot the errors which the FT has exposed?
Hi there, its pleasant piece of writing concerning media print, we all be aware of media is a enormous source of facts.
The left (which means the media) love Picketty because he is in favour of more tax and more state controls. He is telling them what they want to hear, so they love him for it. Whether what he is saying is bullshit or not, is really not the issue for them.
The only recent mention of Piketty, found by a search of the bBBC website, gives the game away. A pointless article about paying money to black people (because their great-great-great-great-great-grandparents might have been slaves) includes the comment:
So is all this reparations talk just that? A pleasant diversion for the chattering class that has tired of the Jill Abramson story [loony feminists] and moved on from Thomas Piketty’s wealth treatise?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-echochambers-27549568
It’s just a game for the socialists who have nothing better to do than cycle round their obsessions – racism, feminism, capitalism – and invent stories about each of them in turn. But it wouldn’t do for the bBBC to mention that Piketty has invented his figures.
Well done Alan for highlighting this one. I was just about to post after spotting this on Samizdata
http://www.samizdata.net/2014/05/pikettys-data-krugmans-shame/
‘There were hints of data problems even before my own earlier blog post on this matter. I will continue to assert that even were the data correct, it would make no real difference, as Piketty’s conclusions are absurd.’
Of course, the BBC will happily gobble up every leftist nose-picking going.
‘One wonders why Professor Piketty chose to first publish his ideas in a popular account rather than in academic journals, where peer review might have caught these problems earlier.’
Ah but the job is done : BBC/Leftist noise feedback circle toss in action.
Leftist slogan ammunition pile delivered free of charge to all.
You’ve herad of food banks – witness slogan wanks
Far be it from the billion £ journo-rich Charter Trustee thingy BBC to do any fact checking. Not when it comes to a ‘scientific’ backing for anything whatever that supports the left-liberal view of the world.
But just as with discredited warmist climate models that have been proven wrong by real world evidence, it will not stop the BBC, the Guardian et al promoting Picketty as the economics guru who can deliver us from evil capitalism into the promised land of ‘social justice’ (though they might choose do it through one of their favourite leftist gobshites such as Owen Jones or Jonathan Portes).
If it was the slightest bit interested in our democratic system (and democracy in general) Newsnight would also run a critical report about the Electoral Commission, which under its watch has seen a spectacular increase in postal vote corruption, and (whatever your political views) has demonstrated a manifest bias against UK Independence Party by allowing Parties with very similar names on the ballot paper, and taking that Party to the very brink of bankruptcy with its court actions against it.
For that matter Newsnight should also be reporting the refusal of the Liberal Democrats and The Labour Party to bring Parliamentary Constituencies in line with population changes as a scandal and offence against our democratic system.
Newsnight is just a Labour Party spin operation with zero credibility as a Current Affairs programme. It evidently sees itself as a magazine programme for middle class public sector workers such as themselves.
On Newsnight you can say anything you like just so long as it accords with whatever orthodoxy is currently being pushed by middle class Leftist totalitarians such as themselves. The whole concept of BBC journalists telling us what to think was bound to end in Leftists using television as a propaganda platform.
Newsnight is about a reliable guide to political events as a “free” council newspaper.
Every debate about the Labour Party is framed as a debate about how can we do better. Every debate about the Conservative Party assumes a hostile attitude – not that you would learn anything about what the Right stands for if you watched the BBC.
For example they push the notion that the National Front is right wing, which they must know is a lie. The National Front is nationalistic socialism and has nothing to do with conservatism or promoting a free society. The difference between the National Front and the Communist Party is no greater than the difference between the Judean People’s Front and the People’s Front of Judea.
The BBC is to democracy what Stalin was to free speech. At least we were not forced to pay for Stalin. The BBC is an anti-democratic cancer of pro-Labour Party parasites and propagandists. They have zero interest ion our democratic system, and have even less interest in representing the views of those who vote.
The BBC – what is its point? Unless you are a middle class Labour voter what is the point of the BBC? Any classical liberal who supports it must be mad. It is the thought police incarnate.
I think the appointment of Ian Katz from the Guardian to be editor of Newsnight is the last nail in the coffin with regard to the credibility of the BBC’s sinking news flagship. The Guardian/BBC axis is a left wing echo chamber.
Picketty may just be a wife beater or serial abuser of women-but like Dominique Strauss Kahn or Bill Clinton, he`s the kind of abusive alpha male that Womans Hour won`t bother themselves about.
For the Cause is sacred, and allows for “indiscretions”…unlike, say Jim Davidson or Freddie Starr.
Good Analysis last night by an economist who is 180 degrees against Piketty…but the “woman” has had a sex change so sounded like Stephen Hawking on low batteries.
Trust the BBC to set “her cause” up to fail-they could at least have offered helium for the voice to be even sillier!
Sad really-for the arguments deserved better.
Oh Lord…is there a Transphobia hotline I can refer myself to?
The logical fallicy of the appeal to authority, which the BBC will only use if that authority happens to approve of the same agenda as the BBC.