Apparently Trump has trounced Clinton in the public polls but you’d be hard pushed to find that out from the BBC..here they ask Who won the first debate? and yet you don’t get the answer in a very long piece, or only the BBC answer…which, they tell us, is that Clinton won.
Apparently the media have to stop being nasty to Corbyn. Can’t say I’ve noticed the BBC being nasty, being very restrained and grovelling yes, nasty? no.
Is the BBC biased? draws our attention to an article by Newsnight’s James O’Brien, the man whose stock in trade is a hefty dose of deep unpleasantness combined with lies, outraged moral anger and smug self-righteousness but who thinks poor old Corbyn is having a hard time….the media must be nice to him and his wonderful policies…
James O’Brien said today that it was time for the media to change the way it talks about Corbyn.
He said: “The media, myself included, now have to stop talking about Jeremy Corbyn like he is some sort of pimple on the backside of British politics and start talking about him as the only alternative Prime Minister to Theresa May.
“That is what he is.
“I’m not going to lie to you. I’ve made a conscious personal and professional decision to leave the scepticism at the door and will now treat this party and this man as I treat all politicians – with a degree of cynicism but not as some sort of aberration.
And questioning the negative media reception to Corbyn’s polciies, he said: “Try this on for size. We spend far too much money on war and weapons and we should be spending that money on the poor.
“What’s not to like about that?
“Why is that even controversial?”
He added: “I used to call it undergraduate, quasi-Marxist. Parking all that language, it’s over, it’s finished, it’s meaningless.
“You begin to look for finer detail in the policy. You struggle at the moment to see it, but who comes up with a fully-fledged manifesto within a few weeks of being leader, or a year? He’s not got an election to fight.”
Praising Corbyn’s qualities, he said: “You see a strength in the man, a lot of other people would have buckeld under the sheer weight of abuse he has recieved from his own party let along the media and establishment.
“You’ve got a leader who really does appear to represent a profound alternative to the notion of business as usual.
“Why has that been treated so negatively?”
Possibly because he’s a dyed in the wool Marxist with policies that would destroy the economy, our defences and our society…never mind presiding over a steep rise in anti-Semitism and violent abusive behaviour in his party and rather than do anything about it actually ignored the anti-semitism before greeting one attacker with praise and a slap on the back, and of course he is the man who gave a peerage to someone who was supposed to be holding an inquiry into that anti-Semitism…perhaps that explains why the inquiry was such a white-wash.
Speaking of which…good old Andrew Neil interviews a very Shifty Shami:
Raises a few questions about Corbyn as well doesn’t it? Not allowed to ask them apparently.
Still, Corbyn is an honourable man…no?
O’Brien should never have been given a job on Newsnight to start with, he got it solely on the basis of his hatchet job attack on Farage so bigging up Corbyn won’t be seen as an obstacle in his new career.
I wonder what the BBC Trust would make of it…presumably they’d say, ala Packham, that he wasn’t a regular BBC employee…however he is of course involved in news and public policy related output…..surely he is breaking editorial guidelines on impartiality…speaking of which….
The new editor of a BBC wildlife magazine has said despite the BBC Trust ruling on Packham she would not have allowed him to use the language he did.
New editor of the magazine Sheena Harvey told the BBC Trust: “Coming to this magazine as the new editor and with a fresh eye, I will say
that I feel some of the language used by Chris Packham in that column was somewhat flippant and the use of a phrase such as ‘nasty brigade’ would not have been let through had I been overseeing the content.
The BBC’s response?
The BBC Trust complaints committee said: “The committee considered that the fact that BBC Wildlife Magazine’s new editor would not have allowed the term ‘nasty brigade’ to have been published, together with the fact that both complainants had been given a right to reply to it, meant that the issue had been resolved and no further action needed to be taken.”
Hmmmm….so even though it looks like Packham was wrong to use the language he did and should have been brought up by the Trust for saying it the Trust has decided there is nothing to see here because in future he wouldn’t be allowed to use that language.
How can a complaint be dismissed because someone agrees something is wrong but says in future it won’t be allowed? That just opens up all sorts of possibilities and a world where no complaint is successful….unless you put one in now for future programmes in the expectation someone says something that is controversial and they do.
Bet the Nazis wished they’d thought of that defence at Nuremberg….sorry, won’t let it happen again.
The BBC coverage of last evening’s first US presidential debate was as pro-Clinton as I expected. It reminds me so much of the run up to the EU referendum, the BBC is smugly confident that their side will win. I will delight when Trump prevails and they are forced to go into another bout if sustained denial. Your thoughts?
Why is it that when Jon Pienaar admits that ‘a tough line on migration – the single greatest influence underlying the vote to leave the EU ‘ the BBC ran the Remain camp’s narrative throughout the referendum campaign that it was all about the economy…and even now their Director of News insists the economy was the main issue?….
‘Inasmuch as the EU referendum was about the economy…’
The Remain losers are out in force though you might never know there was an orchestrated campaign to undermine Brexit if you relied solely on the BBC’s ‘analysis’.
Osborne came out declaring he was the voice of the liberal mainstream….that ‘mainstream’ that was so mainstream it couldn’t get a majority, he’s now claiming that there is no mandate for a ‘Hard Brexit’…but of course there is…the vote was precisely about that…stopping immigration and wresting political control from Brussels. Osborne conjures up strawmen as he suggests Hard Brexit means cutting all ties and cooperation with the EU, or ‘Europe’ as he calls it….naturally that is complete alarmist nonsense…lies. And oh yes…the results of many of Osborne’s own policies, such as the living wage and stamp duty changes?…pretty disastrous in the effects they have in business and the housing market and tax receipts.
Clegg told us that he couldn’t leave politics to the extremes, left or right. He then told us that politics was broken and that what he saw drove him to become a radical who wanted wholesale change of the political system. Radical then but not ‘extreme’.
His replacement, Timothy Farron, is equally deluded as he claims Brexit was a ‘howl of anger‘ from the electorate about the state of the political system, the answer they sought being a LibDem government. Really? Four million UKIP voters, 11 million Tory voters and 9 million Labour. What did the LibDems get? Two million. Clearly the voters have no idea what’s good for them.
Indeed LibDem Norman Lamb told us on the Today programme (08:34) that we have no idea what the voters wanted when they voted for Brexit, we know what staying in the EU meant [sweets and happy days all round] but the voters had no idea what leaving the EU meant, therefore May has no mandate to negotiate, therefore we need a second vote to clear this up…and if May’s deal is not accepted then no more votes, we stay in the EU….er wouldn’t the vote be about the content of the deal not the principle of Brexit, leaving the EU? So another deal and another vote until we get one acceptable to the Leave camp.
Justin Webb didn’t challenge that claim that voting to leave was a vote for the unknown. That’s nonsense, and a continued Remain narrative, that Leave voters are basically emotive, stupid anarchists [not just racist]…Leave voters knew precisely what they were voting for, less immigration, no political control by an unelected, arrogant elite in Brussels and the end to EU courts interfering in British sovereign law. As for knowing what staying in the EU meant….Lamb thinks it is the land of milk and honey, the BBC refused to explore this important issue…because the real truth is that the EU is heading for ever closer integration, the only way it can survive, along with an EU army…and you only have to look at Deutsche Bank right now to understand the problems of the EU economy as it crashes and will possibly sink the Euro. Which may be no bad thing...The euro has destroyed the EU and led directly to Brexit
The BBC itself often pushes that same narrative from Lamb…that the vote was merely a vote against something rather than for something. Which is tosh. For less immigration, for an independent Britain, for control of our own laws and borders.
Now we have the pro-EU Sunday Times and Remainer and BBC plant [you have to think] Craig Oliver [in the pro-EU Sunday Mail] both churning out anti-Leave books. Oliver was so upset at the result of the referendum he was sick…he thought holding the referendum was madness. Can’t think what possessed Cameron to employ him. Oliver claims May was an enemy agent for the Leave camp, good chance Oliver was an enemy agent for the BBC, gone from their employ but still onboard and reporting back from the heart of the Tory government…taking copious notes and then rapidly turning that into a reveal-all book.
Dominic Lawson in the Mail examines the latest Remain propaganda in a way that the BBC fails to do...No 10 spin doctor who scribbled notes for his memoirs in meetings and a cry of rage from Brexit losers.
Fraser Nelson in the Spectator also suggests there is mischief afoot….David Cameron can’t blame Theresa May for his awful “deal” with the EU
The BBC sees nothing underhand in these attacks on May and Boris and gives them full, uncritical credence.
The Sunday Times claims that May was soft on immigration controls and that her stance stopped Cameron from getting a better deal with the EU [in his utterly failed negotiations that the BBC reported as a success]…however it admits that May wrote twice to Cameron in the period on question demanding tougher immigration controls….but you know what? Cameron didn’t feel he had her support for a tough line. Poor lad. Just who was it really that didn’t want tough immigration controls? Cameron.
Oliver tells us that his book is a sincere, eyewitness account of what actually happened…however the crucial messages that he claims were sent by Boris that Oliver says indicated he actually wanted to vote to Remain are missing….
Sir Craig also claims Mr Johnson, now foreign secretary, was “genuinely in turmoil” about supporting the Leave campaign and had been “flip-flopping within a matter of hours” of declaring his intention.
Sir Craig writes that, the day before throwing his weight behind the Leave campaign, Mr Johnson sent a text to Mr Cameron warning him that he would be campaigning for Brexit.
However, he says Mr Johnson later sent a second message suggesting he could back Remain. [So where is it?]
“I ask DC what makes him so sure Boris is wobbling. He reads out some parts of the text including the phrase ‘depression is setting in’, followed by a clear sense that he’s reconsidering.
“Neither of us is left in any doubt,” he added.
Well I have a few doubts. So Boris was down in the dumps….but where is the message that he was thinking of voting Remain? ‘A clear sense that he’s reconsidering’ is just meaningless twaddle, pure invention, where’s the proof?
Still the BBC accept it as proof, so good enough eh?
But rest assured, the BBC is absolutely impartial and a vital balance in the nation’s political debates…so says James Harding, BBC Director of News…
A truly balanced view from the BBC: don’t blame us for Brexit
LOL. Harding is either a fool or a fraud. My take is that he is completely and wilfully dishonest. Just read his piece and laugh aloud at the brazen lies and delusions that pour off the page. The title is a good place to start. But there’s more, lots more…
There have been two strands of criticism of our coverage. On the one hand, some Leavers have said the BBC reported impartially and accurately through the course of the campaign, but, since the vote of 23 June, we have returned to what they say are our true EU-luvvie colours and our reporting of the prospects for Brexit Britain has been gloomy or hysterical.
On the other, some Remainers have complained that we have been too impartial – that our unthinking insistence on balance meant we treated Remain and Leave arguments with equivalence, giving the same treatment to respected experts as to know-nothings and lightweights. Worse, the criticism has gone, we abandoned our duty to inform the public: the Leavers’ exaggerations, distortions and downright lies, they say, were given the same airtime as the Remainers’ evidence-based judgments. Impartial reporting, this argument goes, is contributing to the problem of post-truth politics.
Note how Harding words that as if the Remain camp’s claims about Leavers’ exaggerations, distortions and downright lies are true whilst Remain had ‘evidence base judgements’. Well post-referendum the facts seem to indicate that the Remain camp’s ‘experts’ were vastly wrong…the ONS, the Treasury, the OECD and many other organisations now backtrack and tell us that all is calm, Brexit has not resulted in a meltdown…the main problem is the world economy and the EU’s economy not the UK’s.
He tells us that ‘In the months ahead, our job is to understand what Brexit actually means – without relish or alarm.’ Well not so far….the apocalyptic and alarmist tone that the BBC adopted pre-referendum has continued as it cherry-picks every negative story that it thinks it can connect to Brexit in some shape or form.
Laughably he says…‘Unsurprisingly, the BBC did not carry water for the government: our job is to challenge politicians, not to serve as a rebuttal unit or advocate the alternative argument.’
The BBC spent all its time rebutting the Leave camp’s claims but spent little effort in challenging the government’s…nor the fact that Cameron had hijacked the ‘Government’ for his campaign.
Harding even admits the BBC favoured the Remain camp…‘Inasmuch as the EU referendum was about the economy, it was about forecasts more than facts. It was not a contest of hard truths but an argument over whose predictions of the future you preferred. The BBC was abundantly clear that the overwhelming weight of expert economic opinion advised people to vote Remain.’
Trouble is those ‘experts’ were sp often in hock to the government…Carney and Lagarde owing their jobs to Osborne. And as for the referendum being about the economy…no it was not. The BBC decided it was going to concentrate on the economy as did the Remain camp…but the referendum was about immigration and sovereignty, political control. The economy was a secondary issue. The BBC pushed the Remain camp’s message.
Yes indeed…the BBC’s non-alarmist reporting…
EU referendum: Brexit ‘would spark year-long recession’ – Treasury
Harding goes on…
If you go back, you will see that the squeakier claims made by politicians were challenged again and again by our presenters and correspondents. Go back and look at Evan Davis take on Douglas Carswell over the claim that voting Leave would bring £350m a week back into UK coffers; watch David Dimbleby take on Michael Gove’s dismissal of the IFS; read what Reality Check said about George Osborne’s forecast that voting Leave would cost each home £4,300; watch Andrew Neil pick apart Nigel Farage’s numbers on immigration. Or Kamal Ahmed on the 6pm and 10pm bulletins saying: “The economic consensus is on one side of this debate.” I could go on and on.
So the examples he gives are nearly all ones where the BBC challenges the Leave camp…and the one he gives for the Remain camp? Well we’ve looked at the BBC’s Reality Check and found it somewhat unchallenging when it comes to Remain claims. Kamal Ahmed was decidedy pro-Remain and uncritical of their economic claims.
Funny old thing…it looks like the BBC’s Kamal Ahmed is a one man hit squad for the Remain camp out to neutralise any Leave campaign ‘good news’.
We’ve already noted his immediate rebuttal to Steve Hilton’s claim that all economic forecasts about Brexit are so much bunk and now as James Dyson tells us that it is ‘cobblers’ that the EU won’t trade with us Kamal again slips in a spoiler. Just a week or so ago he was painting a gloomy picture of the economy on Brexit…
Have no fear though, the Remain camp didn’t suffer from BBC bias…
No one who watched the BBC during the campaign could have been left in any doubt that President Obama, the governor of the Bank of England, the IMF, OECD, IFS, CBI, prime minister, chancellor and, yes, both David Beckham and Jeremy Clarkson believed Britain should remain in the EU.
But did the BBC ever challenge any of their claims and their credibilty? No.
Here’s the BBC ‘fact-checking’ claims about the NHS...Facts, Facts, And BBC Facts.
Is the BBC biased? also has doubts about the BBC’s Reality Check:
George Osborne’s bogus ‘families will be £4,300 poorer if we leave the EU’ claim a couple of days ago wasn’t debunked during the BBC One News at Six, despite being cited five times during the course of the bulletin. In fact, it wasn’t even questioned (not even by the BBC’s economics editor Kamal Ahmed).As for Reality Check, the nearest we got to that was:
And the BBC’s Reality Check team has been going through the claims and today’s document in more detail on our Reality Check pages. That’s at bbc.co.uk/realitycheck.
I have to say I that’s pretty inexcusable.
The BBC’s job is not to preside over the democratic process – it is to report, to host the argument and to interrogate the participants. We aim to inform our audiences, not seek the approval of politicians or pundits. That is what we sought to do in this difficult and contentious contests. And it is what we continue to do.
The BBC of course sees its job as precisely that, over-seeing the democratic process, guiding the voters to the ‘right’ conclusions…even if that means shutting out the ‘unacceptable voices’ from the debate, hiding the facts and promoting only the narrative, views and ideas that the BBC approves of.
Rarely does a day go by without the BBC running one if its strange freak family stories. Take this one currently in the limelight.
The transgender family where the father gave birth. (He didn’t – “he” is a she despite the BBC running with the nonsense. DV)
Meet one of South America’s most high-profile transgender families. “We don’t have a name yet – or rather we do – we are just waiting to announce it,” Diane tells me, not looking up from tapping at her mobile phone with her perfectly manicured false nails. The choice will be controversial and she and her partner want to wait until everything has calmed down.
It’s Pride Week in Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest city. I’m driving Diane Rodriguez, her partner Fernando and their six-week-old baby – known affectionately for now only as Caraote – which means “the snail”. Tomorrow is the big march and they are whizzing around town finalising paperwork for their float. Diane and Fernando are South America’s most high-profile transgender couple. For many, they are a symbol of growing tolerance in the region.”
Why does the BBC obsess over these poor mentally disturbed people? Why are they on mission to laud every form of family unit but one man and one woman? Why do they approve of a family when it is not a heterosexual one? I believe the BBC is marinated in anti nuclear-family rhetoric and so it embraces these “gender fluid” and Trans free shows.
You have to laugh at the shining bias of the BBC’s Norman Lamb. He was on the Today programme this morning to tell us all about that divided and strife torn political party. Labour? Oh no – the Conservatives! He was doing his level best to big up the allegations in the book by Tim Shipman that Theresa May she was “lily livered” over immigration. Meanwhile the all too obvious rancour and despair at the Labour party conference was casually swept under the carpet as all “unite” under the dear leader Comrade Corbyn. Lamb stuck the boot into May and her Party at every opportunity. One assumes that THIS poll must drive Lamb and his associates to despair! The BBC seethe against May and are rallying under Corbyn’s Red Flag.
ICM NATIONAL POLL. CON 41% LAB 26% UKIP 14% LDEM 8% GRNS 4%
Here you go, a new Open Thread to commence the fresh week of BBC bias.
The BBC famously preferred this picture on their newsroom wall….
“I mean in our office there’s a picture of Bush as Hitler. I don’t know where they got it, but yes, Bush as Hitler. It’s quite a serious thing comparing Bush to Hitler! So did anyone in the newsroom in question object? No. Nobody did.”
In the last post I noted the BBC’s failure to fully represent the true demographic make-up of the UK by not having a good many Fascist’s in the ranks of its presenters. What you cry…what about Gemma Arterton who channelled Hitler in a 5 Live interview as she compared refugees to Zombies and told us that her life philosophy was that of the survival of the fittest…She suggests that if migrants [sorry… Zombies] outnumber you you must surrender your country to them….it’s only fair….if the new ‘normal’ is Zombies then the previously normal people have no right to stop the Zombies…she takes her recent film role and tells us that it is very redolent of today as the massed armies of refugees are at the gates…raising questions about who has the right to live where and other very relevant issues for today. Naturally the BBC’s Simon Mayo far from disagreeing went with her and agreed.
The story tells us that as long as there are uninfected humans and Zombies there will be war therefore the uninfected humans must be infected or die. Very redolent of course of the Left’s ideas on race and immigration and indeed the EU…the celebrators of diversity ironically working to stamp out national and cultural differences in the name of ‘peace’…as the Arabs say…they make a desert and call it peace…..and it sounds like the story is channelling Labour’s immigration policy…attempting to wipe out the Whites by ‘browning’ Britain.
The Zombie girl in the film starts off as sweet and timid and by the end……hmmm…sounds familiar. Not sure how Arterton then thinks such a scenario demonstrates that the vicious and deadly ‘Zombies’ should be allowed to take over just because there are more of them.
Lord Ashcroft