https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7uuoDpwygo
A sample of the BBC’s latest dignified, thoughtful and impartial examination of Brexit [H/T Craig at Is the BBC biased?]…
Since the Brexit vote, Europeans suspect endearing eccentricity has morphed into unpredictable irrationality. The UK has become the tipsy, tweedy uncle, who after too much Christmas sherry has tipped over into drunkenly abusive bore.
BBC Newswatch…The BBC holding itself to account…or not….of course.
The above video is of Katy Searl, editor of BBC Political News, defending the BBC’s coverage of Brexit as she is keenly and rigorously challenged by Samira Ahmed…or not. Sure Ahmed asks some basic questions but then allows Searl to bat them away with trite answers that go unexamined and unchallenged…where is Andrew Neil when you need him?
Searl tells us it is the BBC’s job to ask questions and in particular, it seems, they have decided that May is not giving enough detail on Brexit and thus it is the BBC’s job to keep demanding she give more and more of that detail about what the negotiations will look like and the way the government will be negotiating….Searl pompously tells us that it is the BBC’s job to give clarity where there is none from government…never mind that there is perfect clarity on what Brexit means, no freedom of movement, no Single Market, and that it is impossible to define how any negotiation will turn out in every detail. But the BBC is insisting in asking for that detail.
That of course is the Remainders’ narrative and one designed to block Brexit with endless questions and challenges to every one of those details as they arise…in the ‘name of democracy…’ when in fact it is the very opposite of that, shaped to stymie democracy and the result of the referendum….it is in fact the BBC and the Remainders continuing to fight the referendum and refusing to accept the result. You have to ask why the BBC coninues to promote scenarios that paint Brexit as an economic armageddon…the only reason can be that they hope a continued barrage of manufactured bad news will scare the voters into demanding a second referendum….perhaps the BBC and the Remainders should take the BBC’s own advice…
Many Germans now want to just work out a solution that does the least amount of harm to the European economy. Hence the irritation in Germany when British politicians keep rehashing the pre-referendum debate.
“It was frustrating to hear the same old arguments from the referendum campaign,” one business leader told me when I asked him what he had thought about Saturday’s discussion.
Germany has moved on, he said. Maybe Britain should too.
It is astonishing, a BBC journalist’s complete lack of self-awareness of what his own news organisation is doing…continually re-running the referendum trotting out the same old arguments again and again and again…maybe the BBC and the Remainders should move on and work towards making Brexit a success instead of trying to sabotage it.
There seems to be no recognition from the BBC that there can be no detail, no minute by minute running commentary from the government on the negotiations and what the exact outcome they are looking for is. May gave the broad outline of what Brexit will look like, outside the Single Market, outside the Custom’s Union as is, no more freedom of movement….what the final outcome will be is subject to the negotiations and clearly that is impossible to define….and yet the BBC keeps demanding to know as it continues to press the Remainders’ line about the ‘detail’ without questioning if that is something that it should be asking the government to reveal.
When asked if the BBC should have a more balanced representation of voices rather than the usual weasel voices of Farron, Clegg, Sturgeon or Soubry for instance, all ardently pro-EU and anti-the referendum result, Searl again asserted that it was the BBC’s job to ask questions….the same questions put by those Remainders.
Indeed it is…however it is also the BBC’s job not just to question what the government is doing but also to challenge the Remainders’ narrative especially when they talk of a ‘soft Brexit’ as such a thing does not exist and is purely a rhetorical device manufactured to fool the public into thinking it is still some sort of Brexit when it is in fact just a continuation of what we have now…ie remaining in the EU. The BBC never questions the Remainders’ narrative on that. Nor do they challenge the sheer effrontery of the undemocratic bluster from Sturgeon as she tries to bluff her way to independence with a flurry of outraged indignation and warped logic as she tells us Scotland voted to remain in the EU and therefore if the government is to take us out Scotland must have independence.
You may have thought the BBC would point out the blatantly obvious fact that the referendum was a ‘British’ referendum and not national nor indeed regional and therefore it is irrelevant what the predominant vote was in individual areas of the UK….and as Scotland voted previously convincingly to remain within ‘Britain’ the Brexit referendum has to be framed within that context….’Scotland’ did not vote to remain in the EU as it was individual Britons voting and not ‘Scots’. It would be an absurdity to grant Sturgeon any credibilty on this…such a policy would mean any town or city that ‘voted to remain’ could then cede from Britain and remain in Europe…clearly unworkable and ridiculous…you’d think. But the BBC allows Sturgeon to peddle such tosh unchallenged and when she talks of ‘democracy’ why not ask her why she is undemocratically attempting a coup d’etat by effectively ignoring and overturning the independence vote? Dictator Idi Amin lives on…last King of Scotland?
The truly disturbing thing about 2016 is not the rage of the masses against the establishment, but the rage of the elites against democracy.
The BBC of course has not noticed the dangerous and enraged anti-democracy tone of the likes of Farron, Soubry and Sturgeon preferring instead to present their arguments as reasoned and credible rather than a ‘return to the 1930’s’ that the BBC does like to say about Brexit itself.
Remarkably when asked if the BBC was getting the tone right Searl told us that this was a vital part of any broadcast and that they think very carefully about this, constantly checking their scripts and ensuring they don’t reflect just the views of one side or the other. The BBC continues to be committed to impartiality. LOL.
Searl thought that the BBC’s Reality Check was an excellent tool that answered those unanswered questions….hmmm…anyone who read the Reality Check during the referendum would know that it was more a tool of the Remain camp just as it it peddled pro-immigration stats its economic coverage was just as one-sided…forensically exposing what they thought were Leave failures whilst glossing over Remain’s blatant exaggerations and misinformation.
Happily Searl left us with the thought that the BBC will be trying to find some good news out of the Brexit disaster and will examine every event to determine if it is good news or bad. I look forward to that from a BBC that instead of choosing to report that year on year retail sales for December had increased by 4.3% chose to report a 1.9% fall from November 2016 to December 2016 and to conclude that this was down to Brexit rather than to high sales in November because of Black Friday.
Last time I looked, CECUTT’s home page reckoned the topic most exercising the public was someone leaving the Xmas Turkey in the oven too long on Eastenders, so it is possible the BBC do not take self criticism too seriously.
Because,… They don’t have any reason to.
Traitors all.
They know we know but now have no option other than to double-down. How could they justify their historical actions at this point?
They might as well fight I guess. They fully realise there is a very deep reservoir of white-hot fury afoot.
So be it.
Why do they bother? Just the usual spin from the BBC apparatchniks. Still won’t get them an interview with President Trump.
“Why do they bother”?
I suspect a lot of it is simply a case of “conditioned reflex”.
Sturgeon is a national treasure. She spouts utterly unalloyed twaddle. You could re-fashion the Honours of Scotland from her words (direct speech only, obviously).
Here’s another beauty, BBC comparing Trump with Hitler.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-38708485
But they aren’t really you see cos they’re only reporting what the Pope said like “The Pope condemned the use of walls and barbed-wire to keep foreigners out.”
The Vatican has a rather fine wall itself I seem to recall. Along with the latest surveillance tech.
http://www.nowtheendbegins.com/massive-vatican-anti-immigration-wall-shows-hypocrisy-of-pope-francis/
http://nteb-mudflowermedia.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/will-pope-francis-take-down-the-vatican-wall-catholic-church-whore-babylon-revelation-17-antichrist-false-prophet-nteb.jpg
The Catholic Church has short memories. Hardy covered itself in glory in the 1930s and 40s. Here in the north of Europe we have an inbuilt wariness of Popes and their pontificating as I suspect they do in the USA.
“Pope Francis Warns Against Judging Trump Too Hastily”
bet the BBC didnt leap to report that.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/01/22/pope-francis-warns-judging-trump-hastily/
“The BBC is committed to impartiality…” Blah, blah. Strange that there are so many contributions to this site, then. Hundreds of thousands of insightful comments that reveal all the BBC’s tricks of the trade, but this blinkered BBC-bot wouldn’t read them because they must all be mistaken. Like so many of the top comments on BBC HYS that surely should tell them something.
I am actually so tired of all this self-serving rubbish they spout I can’t make all the arguments this time. The BBC has succeeded; I am beaten down and can no longer think for myself. My brain is squealing “Does not compute!” in a world that has spun 180 degrees on its axis.
Truth is “false”.
Those who speak the truth will be shouted down and ridiculed.
Hate-filled bawlers are celebrated because they chant “Love not Hate”, with no questions asked which might reveal the logical precariousness of their stance.
Democracy results in riots for mental enslavement in a free country.
The new democratically-elected POTUS is sneeringly derided.
The politicians who lie the most outrageously (Nick “No EU army” Clegg) are treated like favoured children.
The man who wants to return sovereign power to our country back is monstered by the BBC.
Brexit voters are continually branded as Nazis – subtly and not so subtly – by nitwits who have no understanding of history, and no perception that the bureaucratic totalitarian superstate was Hitler’s dream for Europe.
The outrageous insults and truculence of the EU’s finest is ignored when simple logic – and human nature – would lead unbiased journalists at least to ask why we would want to stay in a club that clearly only wants us for our money and remaining firepower.
And this useful idiot still thinks the BBC is “getting it about right”. Bloody insulting. Arghhh!
Trump does throw away statement mentioning Nazis and suddenly he’s misrepresented
eg many MSM headlines ran
“Donald Trump likens intelligence agency actions to Nazi Germany”
But he didn’t exactly say the “Everyday the intelligence agencies behave like Nazi Germany”
If you have been news events or seen video ..you’ll notice that MSM SPIN and build narrative you always have to go back to the transcript
First he tweeted with a question mark
Then in the transcript of the Press Conference
*He does not say the intelligence agencies leaked cos of course it could have been either Himself or Obama who leaked the topic of the meeting.
#NotTheLiberalsPresident
On LBC this morning they were talking about Trump having a go at the media because of their continued bias against him,LBC asked ‘is it the President’s job to have a go at the media’, one good reply was along these lines, ‘Trump is not a politician, he is an ordinary businessman,and it is his normal reaction to defend himself against aggression, maybe that is good, maybe that is what a President should be doing?’
Doh, re ‘It’s not the presidents job to have a go at the media’
..It’s anyones job to complain at the media if they peddle a false narrative about you.
By the way Alan,I am not sure if it is politically correct to use the words ‘Stonewall’ and ‘Ass’ in the same sentence.
Searl pompously tells us that it is the BBC’s job to give clarity where there is none from government…
Except where ‘clarity’ doesn’t fit the BBC agenda.
So if you depended solely on the BBC for your information the following ‘clarity’ would be noticeably absent:
– An almost complete lack of democracy in the EU – a massive issue which on its own could fill several programmes (but only if properly debated)
– The various quotes from Juncker and others showing their utter contempt for democracy
– The number of referendum results that have been ignored because they went the wrong way
– The combined economies of the current 28 members declined from 36% of world GDP in 1973 to 17% in 2015
– The EU is the world’s slowest growing economic bloc
– The share of our exports to the EU has shrunk from 61% in 1999 to 44% (and could be <40% when goods moving through Rotterdam and on to other parts of the world are considered
– The Customs Union imposes import tariffs which could be adding as much as 15% to our food bills
– The countries with which the EU has free trade deals only account for 10% of the world's economy
– If we stayed in the single market we would remain subject to all the EU rules that Leave voters rejected
– Thus 'Soft' Brexit would leave us subject to those same rules
– ‘Hard’ Brexit is not an option but is effectively what the majority voted for, but hey – don’t let the truth get in the way of a good mantra
– Benefits immediately available to EU economic migrants such as housing benefit and tax credits which are denied our own people when they lose their job
etc.
Here is the proposed Frankfurt Treaty designed for EU members, scheduled for 2025.
Doesn`t get mentioned much-maybe the BBC could tell us why this exciting Euro Project isn`t well known?
http://www.euractiv.com/section/global-europe/opinion/the-frankfurt-protocol-calling-for-a-new-treaty-for-the-eurozone/
I wonder if the treaty will take the form of an eleven point plan, in homage to a similar sounding plan from a school of thought from that very same city?