, even if you’re a religious bigot:
It means Germans are still under pressure from their past and Jews receive special treatment because of that.
Tauseef Zahid, London
This fails the ‘Switch Around Sniff Test’ – switch around the groups named and see how it smells, though perhaps the BBC is right to show that there are people with views like Tauseef Zahid in London.
Thank you to Biased BBC reader Elbow for the link.
draws our attention to BBC accused of insulting war hero in The Times. The BBC’s own Radio Times has this to say:
It purports to be a serious look at British war films, yet only British Film Forever would come up with the following throwaway remark about Reach for the Sky, the biopic of legless Second World War hero Douglas Bader: “Viewers of this film might’ve thought they were having their legs pulled.” I wonder exactly who this witless commentary is aimed at? But as always with this series, best ignore such drivel…
We’ve been here twice already with this series (here and here) – didn’t anyone at the BBC read the tosh turned in by the writer (Matthew Sweet, apparently) before it was recorded and broadcast? Has the writer been reprimanded or spoken to? Or is the only lesson learnt, by the writer, that he can get paid handsomely by unwilling tellytaxpayers to stick in his own politicised sneers as much as he can get away with?
, so the second most important Entertainment story, in their view, is the stunning revelation that Theron ‘wants US soldiers home’ – a masterpiece of investigative reporting. Quite coincidentally, she’s also plugging her latest film that just happens to be about an American soldier who goes missing after serving in Iraq.
Meanwhile, just for balance, we have this tacked on to the end of the same article:
Meanwhile, director Ken Loach also premiered his new film, It’s A Free World at the festival.
The movie takes a look at the exploitation of migrant workers in the UK.
Loach said he hoped it would generate attention on the plight of immigrants – legal or otherwise – who have flocked to the country from eastern Europe in recent years.
“On the one hand people say the economy couldn’t survive without the immigrant workforce. On the other, the right wing is saying, ‘Get these people out of our country’. It’s hypocrisy,” he said.
A free advert for the leftie film-maker’s latest tosh, and a platform to express his bigotry about his political opponents. Funnily enough Ken, the people who say that we need immigrants for the sake of our economy are not the same as those who wish to get rid of immigrants. I know that’s a complicated idea Ken, but it’s not hypocrisy when two different groups express different views, is it? Though of course what you’re ignoring completely is that most people just want, and would be happy with, some form of reasonable control over immigration to the UK – something that our Labour luvvie government has failed to manage.
P.S. The most important Entertainment story, at least according to the BBC, is BBC’s DJ held ‘over order breach’, which isn’t a story I want to comment upon beyond the dodgy headline. Surely it should just be BBC DJ – they do have more than one DJ on the tellytax-teat don’t they?
Thank you to David for the Theron link.
Update: Ms. Theron’s comments are now more important than the BBC DJ in jail story, at least according to Views Online.
, BBC Views Online bring us news that TV’s McGovern calls BBC ‘racist’:
Asked by Mayo whether the country was less racist than it once was, McGovern said: “I have got to say this, you will not like this. But I’ve worked a lot in the BBC, you know.
“I love the BBC as an institution and as an organisation and you do see lots of black faces in the BBC. But you see them in the canteen. You do not see them in positions of power.
“It would appear to me that one of the most racist institutions in England is in fact the BBC.”
You could’ve fooled me, but there’s no shortage of “black faces” all over the BBC’s output. Perhaps an over-representation in strict numerical terms even. To present for BBC London it seems that being a good-looking Asian female is a big advantage, and nobody can say that the Black and Asian community of Mull isn’t more than amply represented in Balamory for instance.
Fortunately, the BBC does defend itself against this nonsense:
Mayo reacted by saying it was “a very serious allegation to be making”, adding that the BBC would be responding.
He later read out a statement from the BBC. It said: “What really matters is that we reflect our audiences through our programmes.
“The BBC’s ambition is to reflect the ethnic and social mix of people around the country. We’re actively seeking and nurturing ethnic talents both on and off the air.
“This has been coming through in our output with a range of presenters and reporters across our peak-time programmes for example Freema Agyeman in Doctor Who, the forthcoming Omid Djalili show, Dance X, and dramas such as Waterloo Road.
The BBC can certainly be accused of having too narrow a cross-section of people running the BBC – but it’s not so much that there are too few “black faces” (to use McGovern’s loaded term) – it’s that there are far too many lefty-liberal arts types who’ve never had proper real world jobs and who’ve never had to worry about where their next wedge of tellytax salary and pension were coming from.
Someone at BBC Views Online does have a sense of humour though:
In March, Jonathan Ross said during his live Radio 2 show that too many black people at the BBC were in low-paid jobs.
To which one can only respond that there are too many Jonathan Ross’s at the BBC in extremely highly paid jobs (£18m over three years). No one’s forcing you to take that much Jonathan. If you want to share it with the BBC’s poorer employees, black or white, there’s nothing stopping you.
Thank you to j0nz for the link.
laying in to Stephanie Flanders over that Cameron interview on Newsnight (see Biased BBC yesterday and the day before) didn’t get a mention in the regular BBC In The News section of the BBC Editors Blog on Friday, at least not until after 5.44pm, when one Elliot Spencer commented (see no. 2):
I see Littlejohn’s piece in the Mail didn’t make your list, I wonder why?
…complete with a link to the article. The Littlejohn article was then dutifully added, with a note linking to Mr. Spencer’s comment. Must just have been an oversight. Oh the fun of blogging!
Update: And now an apology comment has been added too, though considerably later than the time on the comment’s timestamp.
, I watched the first of this week’s Panorama programmes, the one about Weekend Nazis, and was thoroughly unimpressed. It was a weak and ineffectual edition that achieved little beyond undermining the reputations of Panorama and John Foghorn Sweeney for genuine investigative reporting.
In short, a small number of people get a kick out of dressing up like Nazis and play-acting second world war battles at a show in Kent attended by 100,000 people. David Irving was there quietly flogging some of his books. Some people were selling various bits and pieces of allegedly genuine WW2 memorabilia.
The worst that Foghorn exposed was, shock horror, that one of the weekend Nazis is a police officer and that a couple of others (one of whom was a Dutchman not even from the group Foghorn was investigating), late at night and after much drinking, privately expressed some unpleasant opinions on the subjects of race and immigration, though probably no worse than you’d find in any pub in the land near closing time about any racial group not of the speaker’s own (whether they be Black, White, English, Scottish, whatever).
And that was about the sum of it. The two comments broadcast were recorded on a hidden BBC camera – though of course we were shown none of the preceding context of the conversations or any encouragement that the undercover Beeboid might have given to the speakers. And of course we all know how honest reporters and editors are when it comes to getting the story!
Whoever tipped off Panorama about this enormous threat to society should be crossed off their list of contacts immediately. It might have made for an amusing ten minutes on one of Louis Theroux’s weird weekends, but it certainly wasn’t the ‘telling of stories that powerful people don’t want told’ that Sweeney specialises in.
Here’s a tip for John: Keep sticking it to the real SS threats in Britain:
Thank you.
Strangely, the Weekend Nazis edition of Panorama hasn’t been included in Panorama’s online archive (though a later programme has been). Can any of our resident Beeboids tell us why please?
You can, however, read John Sweeney’s own Times article about the programme, and also The Times’ own, equally unimpressed, review of it.
has had a much needed one–two (two links) at Abd al-Bari Atwan, Editor in Chief (no less!) of Al Quds Al-Arabi (it’s all Greek to me, but it means ‘Arab Jerusalem’, nice and subtle) – “Barry” Atwan to his friends at BBC News (and Sky News too).
It seems those dastardly truth telling jews at Memri have had the cheek to translate some of “Barry’s” Arabic pronouncements into English – pronouncements just a tad different from the emollient and moderate “Barry” that the BBC so oft shows us:
“If Iranian missiles hit Israel, I will dance in Trafalgar Square”,
Abd al-Bari Atwan, ANB TV, June 27th, 2007.
Presumably our “Bazza” hasn’t considered the possibility of Maddog Ahmonajihad spoiling his little jig with a missile strike on Trafalgar Square.
– covering Malaysia’s 50th anniversary BBC Views Online style. Good old News Sniffer!
Updates: There are now four versions – see the list on the left at News Sniffer.
Martin comments that it’s worth reading the related Have Your Say thread, sorted by reader recommendations, to get a real (rather than a Beeboid) insight into the reality of life in Malaysia.
Laban has written about this at greater length on his blog.
Thank you to Mike_s for the tip.
, following his recent outspokenness against the BBC’s work on a planned day of Planet Relief propagandagrammes (see below), writes on the BBC Editors Blog that the BBC has No line on climate change:
BBC News certainly does not have a line on climate change, however the weight of our coverage reflects the fact that there is an increasingly strong (although not overwhelming) weight of scientific opinion in favour of the proposition that climate change is happening and is being largely caused by man.
Well Peter, that’s a big ‘and’ that you’ve slipped in at the end there, and is, I’d venture, one of the central points of contention in the climate change debate – i.e. the extent to which climate change is caused by man vs. other influences on the earth’s atmosphere – an area that, so far, the BBC doesn’t seem terribly keen to explore thoroughly.
Further to this, supposing that we accept that climate change is largely caused by human activity, the other significant area of debate that the BBC as a whole doesn’t explore adequately is the question of what to do about it.
The BBC ‘line’, if you’ll indulge me with such a notion, seems to be all about reducing carbon output (unilaterally) in the UK and the developed world, primarily through curtailing flying and private car use, whilst ignoring what’s happening elsewhere on the planet (for example, the 500 new fossil fuel power stations planned and under construction in China).
Moreover, the BBC ‘line’ seems, at best, to ignore reliable carbon-free nuclear power generation (though expensive, unsightly, unreliable windmills and suchlike get a big BBC thumbs up) and other technological solutions, such as hydrogen powered vehicles and carbon-sequestration techniques.
BBC news programmes and our website of course reflect alternative views but we do not balance these views mathematically as that is not our judgement about where the argument has now reached.
It is highly debatable just how well BBC news programmes and BBC Views Online do reflect alternative views. Alternative views, to use your term, get the occasional passing reference on minority interest programmes such as Newsnight or a brief mention on News 24 from occasional guests such as Nigel Calder, but in the main, these views might as well not exist at the BBC for the minimal airtime they receive.
BBC Views Online in particular rushes to report man-made climate change news prominently, whilst slowly, ever so minimally, if at all, reporting news to the contrary, hence we have people such as Dr. David Whitehouse, a former BBC science correspondent (and believer in man-made climate change), warning: “look on the BBC and Al Gore with scepticism. A scientist’s first allegiance should not be to computer models or political spin but to the data: that shows the science is not settled”.
For many years the BBC has treated EU-sceptics (euro-sceptics as you term them) as if they were deranged flat-earthers braying at the moon (rather than a large portion of the UK population). Those with alternative views on the twin issues of 1) the causes of climate change; and 2) what to do about climate change, seem to be even less well regarded at the BBC.
That is definitely not the same as us propagating a view ourselves about climate change.
Uh-huh. I think we could argue about that too.
It’s not our job to do that.
Indeed. And that’s why this site is here, free-of-charge, unlike the BBC.
In the Edinburgh session the possibility of the BBC doing a “consciousness-raising” event about the subject, possibly called Planet Relief, was raised.
There has been no decision yet about whether there might be such an event, nor what its editorial purpose might be. However it is clear that all BBC programming about climate change – whether about the science itself or the potential policy response by governments – needs to meet the BBC’s standards of impartiality.
Sounds like a spot of back-pedalling Peter. According to The Grauniad there’s been eighteen months worth of development work already. Have they got you on the rack now that they’ve you back from the freedom of Edinburgh?
I was pleased that you and Peter Barron both spoke out against this latest nonsense that the BBC has been quietly planning to inflict on our unwitting nation, but I cannot help but feel that your concern has more to do with protecting the BBC from itself than from genuinely seeking to return the BBC to a state of impartiality on the causes of climate change and the steps we should take in response.
In closing, let’s have the last word on the BBC ‘line’ on man-made climate change straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak:
“People who know a lot more than I do may be right when they claim that [global warming] is the consequence of our own behaviour. I assume that this is why the BBC’s coverage of the issue abandoned the pretence of impartiality long ago”,
Jeremy Paxman, Media Guardian, Jan 31st, 2007.
Update, 6pm: Come on Peter, I submitted my own very reasonable comment on your BBC blog post around 12.15pm (you know, the one with the Paxman quote and a link back to the discussion here), and yet it seems to have been skipped over for some reason in favour of apparently later comments. What gives? Have I caused offense? Please feel free to comment here on my blog post if you prefer. Thank you.
Update, midnight: I’ve just checked again and, as if by magic, my comment has appeared in the right place, bumping the previous no. 57 up to no. 58. Thank you Peter. Much obliged.
the widespread criticism of Wednesday’s Snooznight Special interview of David Cameron (see posts below), asserting that If BBC reporter Stephanie Flanders speaks for Britain, I’m a gnu – flaying Stephanie Flanders for her patronising response to the idea of a marriage tax-break. Here are a couple of excerpts:
“Have you ever met anybody who gets married for £20 a week?” she sneered. “If I decided to go home and get married, you’d give me £20 a week just for getting married.
“I’m not sure I’d need it. Why is that a good use of scarce public resources?”
(Have you noticed how “public resources” are always “scarce” on the BBC?)
Her petulant outburst tells you an awful lot about the “liberal” mindset.
It’s not about you, pet. I don’t suppose she does need an extra £20 a week (though her cleaning lady probably wouldn’t turn her nose up at it). Not on a six-figure salary from the BBC and a partner who presumably pulls in a few bob, too. But she chose deliberately to miss the point.
And, for good measure:
I can only assume that while she was studying at Harvard, she didn’t stumble across the work of the eminent economist Arthur Laffer, who asserts that people will always be poor if you pay them to be poor.
Miss Flanders is symptomatic of the whole BBC/Guardianista/New Labour mindset – patronising, statist, nanny knows best.
She exemplifies the way the self-appointed “liberal” elite have imposed their own values and prejudices on society – and to hell with the consequences.
And still they don’t get it. What’s good for Stephanie Flanders is not necessarily good for Vicky Pollard or for society as a whole.
Do read the rest!
