Brexit and Apocalypse in the same BBC sentence…who’d have thought….balance and impartiality…who’d have thought?
Hotels, restaurants and tourism may face staff shortages
The hospitality sector raises fears of potential economic damage if EU immigration is heavily restricted.
Dover delays: Could they become the norm?
Port of Dover boss warns backlog of HGVs could become normal in the absence of free movement of goods.
It seems some people think the BBC is above scrutiny and accountability…enough is enough we hear….leave the BBC alone!
Nick Robinson: the referendum is over – now the BBC must fight a new Brexit bias
“Many people with strong views find it hard to accept that on the BBC they will often hear people they disagree with saying things they don’t like”
Welcome to another week of moaning about the BBC. “Stop being so pessimistic. Stop talking the country down. Stop ignoring the will of the people.”
A week in which the stopwatches and calculators are out, as first one side, then the other, time our interviews and add up the number of Remainers and Leavers and so-called optimists and pessimists we invite on air.
Robinson must be responding, been sent out to respond, to News Watch’s detailed take-down of the BBC’s Brexit coverage in which it was found to favour the Remain camp to a remarkable extent….BBC Business News coverage of Brexit ‘continues Project Fear’
A report by News-watch into the BBC’s coverage on Brexit covering the six month period after the referendum vote has found overwhelmingly negativity about Britain leaving the EU – breaching the Corporations rules on impartiality.
The report into the BBC flagship Today programme on Radio 4 found that of the 366 guest speakers who appeared in the Business News segment, 192 of them (52.5%) were negative about the impact of the vote and only 60 (16.3%) expressed opinions which were pro-Brexit or saw the post-referendum economic outlook as positive. There were 114 (31%) neutral contributions.
That there were three times more anti-Brexit speakers than pro-Brexit ones invited by the BBC to participate in the prestigious slot breaks its charter requirements to be impartial.
Robinson continues…
The referendum is over. The duty we broadcasters had to “broadly balance” the views of the two sides is at an end. Why? Because there are no longer two sides, two campaigns, two rival sets of spokespeople reading out those focus-grouped slogans.
The BBC’s job is not to look over its shoulder wondering whether a report, interview or discussion will provoke letters of complaint or a tide of tweets from Remainers or Leavers – who, like fighters who emerge after months of hiding in a bush, seem not to accept that the war is over.
That may come as a surprise to many who have taken a close look at the BBC’s referendum coverage….by no means was it balanced or impartial…it was profoundly pro-Remain, attacking the Leave statements with relentless vigour and forensic scrutiny whilst being very reluctant to challenge the highly alarmist and exaggerated claims made by the Remain camp as part of their Project Fear conducting only the most casual of ‘Reality Checks’ that were more fantasyland than reality.
What does Robinson mean by ‘balanced’? He doesn’t define it. All everyone expects is that each side gets a fair chance to state their case…maybe they did and maybe they didn’t on the BBC, but certainly when it came to the analysis it was guns out for the Leave campaign.
The BBC now does still have a continual duty to be balanced, meaning impartial, accurate and honest, but once again that is not the case. What we are served up with is a relentless diet of doom and gloom about Brexit, everything is a problem and things are only going to get worse. Jon Pienaar regailed us with his fake news about the ‘extravagant promises’ made by the Leave campaign [and er what were they?…They don’t exist]. Even this morning Mishal Husain casually suggested that Lloyds was practically packing its bags and setting off for the Continent despite the fact that Lloyds has stated unequivocably that London will remain its main financial centre…..“London will remain the major financial centre for Europe. It’s certainly going to remain the major financial centre for Lloyd’s.”….‘Lloyd’s will always be centred in London and that is not about to change.’…’The decision to leave the EU has no impact on Lloyd’s financial strength, which remains incredibly strong, with Fitch and A.M. Best ratings of AA- and A. S&P also affirmed Lloyd’s A+ rating on the same week as the referendum vote.’ Goldman Sachs may move several hundred jobs to the EU but it has 6000 here in the UK and similarly insists London remains central to its plans….“Whatever the outcome [of the Brexit talks], London will remain for us a very significant regional hub and a significant global hub. London will remain a very significant important centre.”
Oh and JP Morgan?…‘The head of JP Morgan has admitted he will not move many jobs out of Britain in the next two years as a result of Brexit, in a U-turn on his pre-referendum warning that a vote to leave the European Union could mean as many as 4,000 jobs moving across the Channel. Jamie Dimon, chairman and chief executive of the Wall Street giant, said that the bank will need to obtain licences and permissions to operate across the EU, but that it can still service European clients from the UK. “This does not entail moving many people in the next two years,” he said in a letter to the US investment bank’s shareholders. Rather than seeing Britain as a basket case for leaving the EU, Mr Dimon now fears that if the EU fails to address its own problems then the union could break up, with much more serious economic consequences.’
Robinson has a nerve to say this…‘like fighters who emerge after months of hiding in a bush, seem not to accept that the war is over.’…when the BBC itself is promoting the idea that the referendum is not in fact over and instead of working to unite Britain and encourage a can-do attitude it collaborates with the Remain campaign to undermine Brexit…which can only in the end be the worst of all possible worlds as even if we were to return to the EU fold it would be on hugely disdvantageous terms….and it peddles the EU narrative on everything…such as Gibraltar.
The war continues and the BBC aids and abets giving plenty of airtime to the Remainers to make their own films attacking Brexit as if there was still a choice and Brexit can be reversed…
Robinson ends with an arrogant jibe…as usual it’s the other peoples’ problem…they just don’t undertstand…
We must, of course, ensure that we display no bias. The bias I worry about most is the bias against understanding.
We understand all too well…you are biased and you don’t want to answer for that bias preferring instead to act the victim and demand no one dare challenge you…sounds a familiar tactic beloved of the Muslim community….let’s hope you aren’t radicalised and start force feeding everyone the Guardian…oh, too late.
Bourgeois, bohemian, metro, trendy, sandal-wearing, Guardian-reading, Champagne Socialist bed-wetters get upset because real audiences don’t react to their mocking of Leave voters in the same way that BBC studio audiences do –
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/04/comedians-tell-anti-brexit-jokes-damaging-careersas-audiences/?WT.mc_id=tmg_share_tw
Mice,
Robinson has obviously caught naughtie disease (apols for spelling) – self glorifying and self regarding . The remainder bias in the BBC journo and their editors shines through every day on the Today programme . It’s a laugh out loud job for me now predicting how the beeb distorts journalism to further its view e.g. Interview Hilary benn this morning without an alt view – failing to challenge and nodding along.
The BBC can’t get that there can be little plan for brexit apart from a hard one . Nor does the beeb understand that Trump is different to career politicians . Americans voted for change and the BBC cannot understand that as it’s so far outsize their smug taxpaid comfort zone
I agree entirely. How could these people even begin to empathise with the blue collar worker.
To them, something that Trump said in private, fifteen years ago, is far more important than whether some piece of white trash from the Rust Belt can afford to feed his wife and kids.
I feel that the standing of the BBC with the public must be at an all time low . everyone can see that their reporting of Brexit is so biased in Favour of Remainers as to be laughable. It doesn’t bother the BBC that over half of those who voted wanted to Leave the EU. The Globalists at the corporation want to Remain and they are determined to do whatever it takes to reverse the democratic outcome of the referendum. That they are allowed to be so flagrant in their bias makes me think that the government shares their view, even if the people don’t. But the time is coming for an organised protest against the BBC. We people who have to pay a poll tax to fund this pro EU outfit should refuse and mount a massive License Fee strike. But it needs organisation on a nation wide basis to work. A few brave souls ignoring their reminders isn’t enough . To be effective it needs hundreds of thousands if not a million or two. We need a newspaper or political party to help .
I stopped paying my TV tax many years ago, and have encouraged scores of other people to do so since.
I must dig out the source, but read last week that the average age of the BBC viewer is now 62.
The idea of being forced to pay for content is an alien concept for today’s young people. It is this that will bring about the end of the BBC. In the meantime, simply keep bringing up their shortcomings when in likeminded company, and encourage them to stop funding this Leftist nonsense.
Doublethinker,
I think a strike is well overdue & would love to get on with it. As you suggest though it needs some organisation & a lot of support. One of the problems being that unless you pay monthly, we all pay our licences at different times of year. I pay mine in one go annually & I assume many people do this. Because of that we would need to play a long game & have huge commitment from a massive portion of the population. I just paid the Marxist indoctrination tax in November so in order to withhold payment I would have to wait until next November. Hardly effective unless hundreds of thousands of households participate.
The problem is if there is a ‘mass movement’ of licence-payer refuseniks, the Government will come to the BBC’s rescue and just add the fee to general taxation instead. Thus ensuring the multiculti leftist propaganda juggernaut continues..
On the subject of stopping your individual payments – I haven’t paid mine for about 3 years now, but do they still refund people who have already paid a lump sum but have no further need for the service (eg you have gone abroad)?
I may,
It is possible that this conservative government may decide to fund the BBC directly from general taxation. However, if there was a mass License Fee payers strike , perhaps 500 thousand strong, there may be sufficient opposition from within the Tory party to resist this and instead support a subscription service. We know that least 70 MPs have protested about BBC bias , there may well be others who, once they see there is a large section of the public who are prepared to take direct action , can be encouraged to join their colleagues. Of course Labour /Lib Dems would never agree to anything detrimental to the BBC as it gives them so much support. But once the BBC was funded by subscription it would be difficult to reverse the method of funding.
Lucy,
Thinking about your time and type of payment points.
One factor would be how long it took the BBC to react to an individual not paying. Those brave enough to have already cancelled their payment will know this time scale. But if the number of refuseniks substantially increased it may take the hated corporation longer to respond. I expect that the BBC would try to expedite taking some test cases to court . The organisers of the strike would have to be able to fund a legal defence of these individuals in order to make the court cases long and drawn out recruitment advertsfor the strike. To pay for the legal costs there would need to be funding. I think that this would have to be provided by the strike organisers holding at least some of the unpaid LF money in a central fighting fund.
So the organisation of the strike is complicated and has legal aspects . But if the public does not show its disapproval of the BBC , the corporation will get even more brazen in its liberal left Globalist bias.
Robinson knows the score. So it is just special pleading for a bunch of secondraters who have been found out. Yes I too think the May lot have the BBC’s back in this so no change there. May will do anything legal to keep us in. The BBC is her willing helper.
Watch the print media that seems to be on our side fall into line eventually. One way or another . The progressives have had a shock but are not done with yet. It is impossible to exaggerate the contempt they have for the plebs. They are not like the old socialists of the early 20th century . They really feel entitled to the nice things of this world and will fight to keep them. A real stinking ancien regime.
A long time ago I learned that the real stumbling block to the EU and it’s dreams are the bloody minded stubborn English and throughout Europe they knew this and everything has been done to shut us up for good. So our vote was a shock and now it is the only thing that matters. To bring us to heel like good little dogs.
President Trump got this and his support in the US is the same sort of people as us. No wonder the elite hates him and us.
“. If the referendum result goes wrong ……”
Remember Robinson saying that ? That’s all the proof we need .
Rod Liddle has a good column in today’s Speccie. Not full throttle but quietly effective in sticking one to Al Beeb. He even gets in a paragraph about CH4 News and the arrogant, up-themselves, far-Leftoid pair of Snow and Teacher Murphy.
“Channel 4’s remit was to present an alternative agenda to that set by the BBC, but for its execs this means moving it half an inch to the left of the Beeb. It is not an alternative at all, and never has been. If it moves it will more likely than not take its own smug little bubble with it and nothing will change. You could sack the lot of them and start again in Newcastle or Middlesbrough or Leeds and then maybe the channel might betray a different perspective. But that won’t happen, either, sadly. Probably the best-case scenario is simply to close it down or privatise it. Given the profusion of channels, do we need it any more?”
Nick Robinson shows his False-Narrative building skills in that Radio Times piece
– Firstly the context as you say is a rebutall to the NewsWatch analysis and 70 MP complaint yet he doesn’t mention them.
NewsWatch comes out with a proper mathematical analysis of BBC’s constant anti-Brexit bias, which is backed up with the views I hear on the street and Robinson responds by calling the PAYING CUSTOMERS concerns
“moaning about the BBC”
… “moaning” ..You can tell his salary doesn’t depend on tips
Analysis is dismissed as “stopwatches and calculators are out”
Then like a beeboid he starts to build the false narrative
‘Complaints about BBC bias come equally from both sides (so we got it about right)’
Tosh, take a look online and spot that 8/10 tweets complain of Anti-Brexit bias and the 2/10 going the other way often seem to trace back to PR offices.
And then he builds other false-narratives
– ‘that during the campaign the BBC gave equal airtime’
The maths doesn’t show that it shows Remain voices score much higher
– And ‘that periods before votes are special and come under special rules’
(I don’t see that in the rulebook of Charter obligations and Editorial Guidelines which do state it must be impartial, strive for balance and represent the full public)
Surely as many peoples concerns as possible should be addressed at all times ?
But all the time on air we see the same faces of your Liberal Elite mates to push their anti-Brexiteering, with an occasional Brexiteer invited on just to make the bias seem no too obvious; “I’ll have to cut you off there)
‘Let’s give Nick Clegg a free kick by sending him to ask Why did Ebbw Vale in Wales vote Brexit? ‘
‘Let’s send Neil Coyle to the Brindisa Spanish food shop’
And then to add to his false-narrative that the complaints are equally from both sides he cherry picks the one day their were more complaints from remainers the recent seemingly ‘orchestrated’ march complaints .
364 days/year Brexit complaints dominate
Then he picks the one day where still more Brexiteers complain but Remainiacs were orchestrating complaints about their demo (even before it began)
I continued checking Robinson’s text
”\The referendum is over. The duty we broadcasters had to “broadly balance” the views of the two sides is at an end. Why? Because there are no longer two sides, two campaigns, two rival sets of spokespeople reading out those focus-grouped slogans.//
* Certainly wasn’t 50/50 during the campaign ..seemed like the BBC was part of Remain campaign and Project Fear, but gave token appearances to Brexiteers in the most reluctant way to cover themselves * Is it right that before and after a referendum are different scenarios ?
..shouldn’t the BBC be fair and challenge everyone all the time ?
\\The BBC’s job is not to look over its shoulder wondering whether a report, interview or discussion will provoke letters of complaint or a tide of tweets from Remainers or Leavers – who, like fighters who emerge after months of hiding in a bush, seem not to accept that the war is over.//
* You look over your shoulder
to make sure you’ve ticked PC boxes
– BBC job is to look to the truth so should be treating both sides fairly
Remain given privilige
Brexiteers given contempt
\\If company A announces that it will invest more in the UK and create more jobs, it’s not our duty to search for a company that says it will invest less, just to balance the news. //
* It’s your job not to just take stories that come in off PR agencies and end up with just negatives, but to also challenge narratives that are presented. You should not be just reporting each press release but storing them and then doing own research to report a rounded picture.
\\And vice versa. We shouldn’t turn every news story into an excuse to ask, “Who was right about whether we should remain or leave?” //
* No of course not that would be adding spin *
\\In the week that Article 50 was triggered, ardent Leavers complained that too many Remainers were being heard on the BBC.
What they failed to acknowledge is that many of their most prominent leaders – Messrs Johnson, Fox and Gove – seem remarkably reluctant to accept invitations to be interviewed.
In the nine months since the referendum, not one of them has agreed to appear on Radio 4’s Today programme. //
* Fair point you shouldn’t be awarding airtime purely on who will turn up
So make it clear when people decline to appear and make an effort to balance panels by bringing on voices from non-politicians. *
\\Meantime, ardent Remainers bombarded the BBC with complaints that their pro-EU march hadn’t had the coverage it deserved, ignoring the fact that it was covered by all BBC news outlets.
Sure, it wasn’t given the prominence the marchers wanted, but that’s true of almost every march that fills the streets of London. Many people with strong views find it hard to accept that on the BBC they will often hear people they disagree with saying things they don’t like.
Their choice of newspaper, friends (real as well as on Facebook and Twitter) and protests reflect views they agree with. They find it hard to believe that “everyone” doesn’t think as they do – except for those whose views they despise who have somehow wooed or bullied the BBC into giving them disproportionate coverage.//
* Worth quoting ..he realises that shouting “ban people” is wrong.
(but he’s still doing a trick by picking the one big Remainer complaint)
\\We must, of course, ensure that we display no bias. The bias I worry about most is the bias against understanding. //
** Well, most people on the street think that the BBC is very biased from a Liberal Elite Metrobubbleword
and that’s the strange thing the BBC used to be ahead of the curve on critical thinking
Yet today it’s the BBC who are like the fresh graduate in your office who think they know everything
..Whilst its now the man on the street that has the job knowledge and says things like
“ah what about the sample size ?”
..” ah in mining there’s a difference material left in a mine, proven reserves and the amount that could be mined eventually”