Monthly Archives: February 2017

 

‘What’s the role of traditional journalism in a world where crying “fake news” has become a potent political tool and trust in the mainstream media has collapsed? Former editor of The Sunday Times Sir Harry Evans is in London for a discussion tonight organised by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism on how reporters can make a difference in a “post truth” world.’

Yet more abysmal ‘journalism’ from Nick Robinson [08:20]…perhaps he should consider his position…the longer he stays at the BBC the more useless and biased his reports become.

Trump has refused to bow down to the self-selected Media priesthood with their enormous sense of entitlement and belief that they not only hold government to account but are in fact the real government themselves deciding which policies are acceptable and which not.

The BBC just can’t get over Trump’s cheek and lack of respect for their genius…doesn’t he know they have many degrees in English between them and that their dads held high office within its sainted ranks…as do their brothers and sisters…the BBC is Media Royalty after all.   Surely they deserve some respect for their heritage?  No?

Robinson started off as he meant to go on and did so with no sense of self-awareness as he casually claimed Trump was bullying the Media…this from a man employed by the BBC which has spent the last two years shouting abuse at Trump and doing everything it could to stop him being elected.  Robinson also name checks the ‘post-truth era’ as if it were a real thing and not just a very convenient invention of the left-wing media intended to discredit Trump’s election and Brexit.   Note also the BBC’s sudden u-turn on fake news….from using the term itself as a political weapon against Trump they now denounce Trump for using it against them…. ‘crying “fake news” has become a potent political tool.’  LOL…quelle horreur.

Robinson wheeled in Sir Harry Evans to vent his spleen and he did so in full-on bilious mode.

Trump was a liar, a liar, a liar, a madman, a compulsive liar, a man with a personality defect…and he was a liar.

Who was it said this..was it Lord Hall? …Spot on though and describes exactly what the power of the BBC is to distort what people say and misrepresent them and their intentions….

‘What is important is not what the creator of an idea of genius may mean, but what this idea becomes in the mouth of whomever transmits it.’

Where does the BBC keep digging these people up?  Having said that it doesn’t really need to go out of house as its own journalists are quite ready to demonise Trump calling  him crazy, power mad, a dictator, not forgetting of course the endless times they call him a Fascist, racist, sexist, Islamophobe and link him deliberately to Hitler, Stalin and Mao….

Mr Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy have led to comparisons, from some quarters, with the rise of the Nazi party in Germany.

Later changed to the apparently more acceptable...

The US president’s use of “enemies of the people” raises unavoidable echoes of some of history’s most murderous dictators.

Naturally Robinson doesn’t give any weight to the consideration that Trump may actually be right and that the Media is a bunch of lying charlattans who do more to damage democracy than any others bar the politicans themselves [ref.  Nichola Sturgeon].

Undoubtedly Trump will come to some accomodation eventually with the Press which would be a shame…and a shame that more politicians and people under the Media spotlight don’t fight back and hold the Media to account…just about the only thing I can applaud George Galloway for doing.

The BBC really is pushing the boat out for immigration today…which is remarkable as the BBC is renowned for not wanting to talk about immigration, for wanting to suppress debate, so much so that they habitually resort to the very sinister and Stalinist tactic of show-trialling anyone who dares to challenge the orthodoxy that immigration is good and that Islam represents no threat to Western civilisation, denouncing such heretics as the Far-Right, Fascists, Nazis and racists….so much for free, fair and impartial debate.

Of course when the BBC does talk about immigration the discussion is rigorously policed and controlled, held within well defined limits of acceptable ideas….step outside the BBC’s approved comfort zone and you’re toast and of course they control any interviews by selecting the interviewee, choosing one who they know will voice the acceptable ideas with an agreeable tone….such as in this interview on the Today show about Swedish immigration, the BBC trying to undermine Trump’s reference to its downsides.  A very short interview clearly only intended to rapidly rebut the concerns about what is happening in Sweden….we hear that yes there is immigrant crime but it is caused by the socio-economic conditions of immigrant families and it is completely untrue that police officers cannot record the ethnicity of criminals….strange then that police officers say they cannot or that it is frowned upon and discouraged by politicians who seek to hide the truth such as the real problem immigration poses…

This month, a seasoned investigator with the police department in Orebro, Peter Springare, caused a stir with a Facebook posting in which he discussed the case files on his desk.

“What I’ve been handling Monday-Friday this week: Rape, rape, serious rape, assault rape, black mail, black mail, assault in court, threats, attack against police, threats against police, drugs, serious drugs, attempted murder, rape again, black mail again and abuse,” Mr. Springare said. He went on to list the first names of the people he said were suspects, all but one of which were traditionally Middle Eastern.

Why such a short interview with someone who was obviously picked to toe the line?  Why no police officers or others who are concerned?  A very one-sided ‘debate’ from the BBC about a problem that is well known and of ever increasing concern.

Following Today we had ‘Start the Week’, subject: ‘Build That Wall’: Barriers and Crossings.  No guesses which were the main walls of contention…Trump and Israel.  Nothing good comes of them we learn.  They did go to Ireland to check out a ‘barrier’ there…the border with NI….not oddly enough the ‘Peace Walls’ which you’d think would be the first port of call and an obvious subject.

Then we had ‘Book of the Week’:  Border – Tales from the Edge of Europe.  Another dose of ‘aren’t borders bad and murderous’.

Then we had ‘Neither Here Nor There’….with a daily dose of unreality as a black immigrant gives us a very select view of immigration…the first programme…How the Israelis are so-badly treating Ethiopian refugees….’Ethiopian Jews remain the most disadvantaged group within the Jewish population. Many have been victims of racism and tensions have boiled over, resulting in clashes in with the police. ‘

The next episode is about the Guyanese immigrant community in the US…the author of these tracts is Guyanese himself….considering the vast diversity of immigrants to the US you might have thought he could choose a more representative group…Hispanics or Cubans…but no, he chooses his own group.

Next he heads off to Sweden to look at Bosnian Muslims…why them?  Probably because they are more European than the rest of the Muslim immigrants and therefore he hopes to persuade us that Sweden is not ‘under attack’.

Then off to Germany to discover just how essential all those Turkish guest workers were to the German economy….just the usual BBC narrative…which neglects all the downsides…such as Turkey views them as a Turkish enclave, a Trojan Horse within Germany and actively told Turks not to assimilate.

Finally it’s Britain’s turn and we get the blame for not integrating the Asians…and of course the compulsory mention of Brexit and the inevitable false association with ‘hate crimes’…

What measures did the British government take to promote integration? What compromises and sacrifices were Asian women themselves prepared to make? And what more could have been done on both sides to ease the multicultural tensions that have surfaced once again in Brexit-era Britain?

So five very targeted programmes all either of interest only to the author or peddling the usual BBC narratives on Israel, Brexit, the wonders of economic migrants and of course crushing the criticism of Sweden’s immigration policy.

Then we have The Underground Railroad…‘the new novel by Colson Whitehead, abridged for radio across 10 episodes. This brilliant and at times brutal novel about the history of slavery and racism in America won the US National Book Award for Fiction in 2016.’

Not a bad days work for the BBC eh?  I have no doubt that the other scheduled programmes on Radio 4, and throughout the BBC, also slipped in pro-immigration, anti-Trump, anti-Brexit, messages…but the dedicated programmes on immigration/race are a remarkable haul for just one day on just one station…is that what we pay the licence fee for, to be bombarded with propaganda that peddles a very, very one-sided view of immigration and is designed to counter what the BBC sees as the ignorant and prejudiced views of most of the population?

Heard some of Sunday yesterday just as Roy Hatterseley was brought in to plug his book about the persecution of Catholics in Britain…apparently Catholics survived by sticking rigorously to their faith.  In the usual BBC way this was undoubtedly meant to be a ‘lesson from history’ that parallels Muslim experience of ‘suffering’ in Britain today…good that the BBC should be advising them to be even more fundamentalist.  Amused that even here the BBC slotted in a comment about Brexit…Henry VIII’s Reformation was yet another historical parallel apparently…which you may take as good news…Britain soaring to ever greater heights as the Popish shackles were thrown off.

Then we moved onto the ‘securitisation of Islam’ in America….people only look at Muslims through the prism of security…go figure.  Apparently Trump has appointed people who have what were fringe ideas about Islam…such as it is incompatible with the West.  Hmmm…fringe or mainstream, the BBC and Obama aside?  We were told that Muslims feel under siege, both in the US and here in the UK, and that this has united them in a common cause.  Hmmm…no, what unites them is Islam and 9/11….which was Osama Bin Laden’s call to arms to Muslims across the world…as Lawrence of Arabia might have noted…

Such people demanded a war-cry and banner from outside to combine them, and a stranger to lead them, one whose supremacy should be based on an idea: illogical, undeniable, discriminant: which instinct might accept and reason find no rational basis to reject or approve.  This was the binding assumption of the Arab movement; it was this which gave it an effective, if imbecile unanimity.

Ed Stourton managed to bring Brexit into this….naturally Muslims were suffering even more now after the referendum vote just as Muslims are in the Trump era…aren’t they?

An extremely one-sided narrative about Muslims from someone, Dr Peter Mandaville, who is clearly not a fan of the truth.  So why does the BBC, so concerned about facts, truth and accuracy as it is now, give him a platform to peddle his schmutter totally unchallenged by Stourton?

Had the joy of watching some of the BBC’s ‘Doctors’ soap…even here the propaganda runs deep as a quote from the Bible was turned into an opportunity to promote the Koran as well….a character stating ‘I read the Bible, and the Koran, it makes me a better person’…or some such waffle along those lines.  I’m sure a working class likely lad would be reading both the Bible and the Koran…but only in the mind of a BBC scriptwriter.

All posts on this open thread must now include copious praise for the Prophet’s blueprint for conquest and colonisation in the interest of celebrating diversity…the open thread is all yours…..

Gerald Kaufman has died and the BBC used it as a chance to have a go at Mrs Thatcher.  Kaufman was 86 years old and must have said some nice things in his time but the BBC chose a somewhat unpleasant attack on Thatcher as something to remember him by…Nick Robinson certainly seemed to approve.

The BBC, statesman-like, responsible, fair, accurate and truthful, or the same type of scumbag, gutter tabloid journo’s they so often deride whilst hiding behind the respect and trust earned by previous generations of BBC journalists who were honest and decent?

The BBC has been pumping out reports insinuating that Syrian filmmaker Khaled Khatib was stopped from going to the US by some devious Trump trick despite having been issued a visa by the US…the BBC is still reporting today that this is so...[A report from 13:00 today]

However, White Helmets’ cinematographer Khaled Khateeb was unable to attend the Oscars ceremony after being barred from boarding a flight from Turkey, after US officials reported finding “derogatory information” about him.

The Daily Mail however reports that Khatib’s passport was cancelled by the Syrian government as said in a statement by the White Helmets themselves [see above image]….

In a statement early on Sunday, the White Helmets, also known as the Syrian Civil Defence, said that Saleh would not be able to leave his work because of the high intensity of air strikes while Khatib could not attend because Syria’s government had cancelled his passport.

BBC fake news?  I think I’ll go with the Mail on this one….seems likely the Syrian government would not like such a person to be freely roaming around making anti-Assad noises.

Oh even the Guardian is on the ball [Sunday]…

White Helmet to miss Oscars because Syria cancelled passport

So America does not ‘deny entry’ to Khatib, he doesn’t have a passport.  Guess the BBC is either desperate to keep blaming Trump in some shape or form or they are incompetent.

The BBC relentlessly hunted down Bradley Wiggins and all but called him a drug cheat despite there being no evidence of that whilst in contrast they gave Mo Farrah the all clear despite him missing two drug checks and his coach being investigated for alleged drugs infringements.  Mo is black, an immigrant and Muslim, Wiggins is a successful white, working class British male….any reason the BBC chose to announce one as completely innocent of any wrong-doing whilst conducting a witch-hunt against the other?  And of course Wiggins worked for Murdoch’s Sky team….no love lost there I expect….just as the BBC targets the Premier League’s funding for criticism…Sky again.

To be fair, Mark Daly, who investigated Salazar for Panorama, ended the programme with a warning that Farrah  has been coached to world success by a man who has used banned methods, though there is no suggestion that Farrah is implicated…but…we were told…any athlete involved with Salazar should be seeking the assurances that they are not being put at risk in any way….so a suggestion that if they are taking drugs it might be without their knowledge, at least as to the legality of them….so a bit of a whitewashy, sitting on the fence comment.  As usual though any such ‘controversial’ [in BBC terms] findings such as on specialist programmes such as Panorama don’t filter through to the troops on the ground at the BBC, the presenters and journalists on the everyday programmes who continue to push certain naratives regardless of facts often dug up by their own teams….we were repeatedly and loudly told Farrah was not implicated in the investigation when clearly he should have been part of it….how could he not be investigated, when as Daly said, he was coached by someone to ‘world success’ who used banned methods…is it likely just to be for a select few athletes on the same team?

But has the BBC now been forced to change tack?  Is Mo being thrown to the wolves after more revelations in the Sunday Times? This line from the BBC might indicate change is in the wind….

The revelations will pile more pressure on Britain’s greatest ever endurance runner, who has steadfastly refused to end his association with Salazar.

It raises questions too for UKA, which gave the Briton the all-clear to continue working with Salazar after an inquiry was launched following the BBC Panorama programme.

Note how the BBC is now setting the UKA up for the fall…the BBC itself dodging any suggestion that it too whitewashed any thoughts that Mo might not be entirely clean….and the BBC is claiming the credit….and I’m guessing claiming a journalistic scoop trumps celebrating diversity…

Alberto Salazar has been under investigation since a BBC Panorama programme made allegations about drugs use at his US training base.

The BBC reports…

According to the Sunday Times, the leaked report claims that Salazar:

• used a banned method of infusing a legal supplement called L-carnitine;

• risked the health of his athletes, including Farah, by issuing potentially harmful prescription medicines to improve testosterone levels and boost recovery, despite no obvious medical need.
• The Sunday Times claims the Usada report also reveals:
  • investigators have been impeded because Salazar and several athletes have “largely refused to permit Usada to review their medical records”;
  • Farah received an infusion of the legal supplement L-carnitine in 2014, which Usada is continuing to investigate in case the method of infusion broke doping rules by going over the legal limit of 50ml.

It’s an interesting slant though…the coach ‘risked the health of his athletes’….as if the athletes were victims, possibly unaware of what was going on….isn’t it the athletes responsibility to know what they are taking?

And Farrah took prescription drugs, with no obvious medical need, to boost performance.  When Wiggins legally took a drug for his asthma using the agreed procedures under the regulations this was denounced as ‘cheating’….even though he had a medical need for the drug….will there be so much ‘outrage’ over Farrah?

No drug which gives, as Salazar claimed, ‘incredible’ performance boosting effects can morally justifiable….might as well put the athlete on a motorbike…it’s not his own innate ability that would win the race….Wiggin’s asthma drug merely brought him back up to his normal level of performance as if he didn’t have asthma and so is not performance enhancing…as long as you actually have asthma.

I await the BBC’s developing reaction with interest.  If he has taken drugs illegally will he be a victim, a fool or a cynical cheat?  Will the BBC hunt him down as they hunted down Wiggins?

Mo had better watch out…nothing like a fallen hero, an icon of multiculturalism, to upset the BBC, its love and trust betrayed…..I’m guessing we won’t be hearing so much about Mo’s Muslim identity now if things turn out for the worse here.

Seen this?

Great news!

Media groups have reacted angrily after several, including the BBC, were barred from an informal briefing with White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer.

It’s time Fake News anti-Trump merchants such as the BBC were shown the door by the White House. Well done Sean Spicer. Just wait for the extra venom to flow ….

Here you go, a new Open Thread to see us all off into the weekend! Detail their daily stream of bias here…