Author Archives: Andrew

, I couldn’t help but notice how this BBC Views Online story, Three dead in Israel suicide bomb, about the tragic murder yesterday of three people in Eilat, had this paragraph tagged on to the end of it:

The last suicide attack was at a Tel Aviv restaurant, killing 10 people. Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in that time, mainly in the Gaza Strip.

The first of these sentences is of course wrong. They mean the last suicide attack in Israel.

The second sentence is just plain irrelevant to the story, although the cub journos responsible for this addition will doubtless claim that it adds ‘essential context’. Hogwash. Unless every story of ongoing Middle East violence is to be accompanied by a potted history of recent Middle Eastern events (which this one sentence just isn’t) or a scoreboard of deaths going back till who knows when, then that line just shouldn’t be tagged on to the end of this story apropos of nothing else in particular.

The second sentence doesn’t even read sensibly. When they say “Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in that time”, what time do they mean? Do they mean ‘since then’, since the last suicide terror murders? If so, wouldn’t it make sense to say that clearly? (They do mention April 2006 waaaay up at the top of the piece, but the two don’t seem to be otherwise related). Bleedin’ amateurs – can’t even propagandise clearly!

For anyone interested in following the development of this tawdry BBC Views Online attempt at news reporting, the wonderful News Sniffer Revisionista is the place to go (for some strange reason the BBC refuse to provide their telly-taxpaying customers with this information themselves).

The successive versions revealed by News Sniffer are quite illuminating, particularly the differences between versions 11 & 12 (see the News Sniffer page linked above). Notice how the story is massaged and a couple of chunks are excised, as if to downplay the horror of this incident – for instance, this line:

The force of the explosion left body parts scattered around the bakery, while outside trays of bread lay on the blood-stained pavement.

magically disappears, as does this sentiment from the UN’s Middle East envoy:

I feel deeply for those killed and I share the pain of their families. I send them my deepest condolences.

I wonder why these chunks were cut out. Reasons of space perhaps? No more room on the BBC’s servers?

While we’re on the subject of the Eilat murders, earlier, on BBC News Twenty-Bore, the BBC’s reporter on the spot (‘Going live!’) was making much of this being the first suicide terror attack in months (although he didn’t use the word ‘terror’, natch) and that things had been relatively quiet until today.

Hogwash, again. This is the first successful suicide terror attack in months. According to the former Labour MP, Lorna Fitzsimons, interviewed in Eilat by Sky News, there have been 62 foiled attacks over the last nine months. Whatever the exact figure, there have been many, many attempted attacks, with only Israel’s high state of security and the vigilance of Israeli citizens and security services preventing the indiscriminate murder of many more civilians – not that these failed attacks were mentioned on either BBC Views Online or on BBC News Twenty-Bore. Strange that, since the Beeboids are so keen on adding ‘essential context’.

from Saturday’s Daily Mail:

The BBC faced more claims of New Labour bias Friday night after giving prominence to Downing Street’s instant denial over the latest twist in the cash-for-honours scandal.

Rival ITV News led its 6.30pm bulletin on Thursday with allegations that police had found deleted e-mails on a second computer system linked to the probe.

The Mail was also working on making the story its front-page splash Friday.

But the BBC’s Ten O’Clock News spent less than 20 seconds on the story Thursday evening. When it did get round to the story at 10.20pm, the broadcaster decided to focus on the Government’s instant rebuttal.

On Thursday night’s programme, Dermot Murnaghan told viewers: “Downing Street has denied new claims about the cash-forhonours inquiry.

“ITV News and the Daily Mail claim that the police had uncovered a second computer system within Number 10 in which e-mails appeared to have been deleted.

“This evening Downing Street denied the existence of the system and said the story was untrue.”

A BBC spokesman said: “The story was reported extensively and the coverage was balanced and impartial.”

The criticism comes a week after Newsnight faced accusations of bias over its treatment of the story. The show led on an embarrassing e-mail between two Conservative Party members rather than the news that Ruth Turner had been arrested in the cash-for-peerages case.

Hat tip to commenter Alan-a-gale.

Please use this thread for off-topic, but preferably BBC related, comments. Please keep comments on other threads to the topic at hand. N.B. this is not an invitation for general off-topic comments – our aim is to maintain order and clarity on the topic-specific threads. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog. Please scroll down to find new topic-specific posts.

latest report from the USA, also featured in other BBC bulletins and repeatedly on BBC News Twenty-Bore.

The report was on a new US Army device – a Humvee mounted heat ray system to disperse hostile crowds or enemies in a non-lethal manner. An interesting topic, but oh so nauseatingly covered by Frei, his smug voice dripping sarcastic disdain throughout his ultra-sceptical report.

Here’s a transcript in case you can’t watch the Youtube clip above, complete with some added commentary in red italics:

Dermot Murnighan: The US military has given the first public display of what it says is a revolutionary heat ray weapon for use against hostile crowds or stopping battlefield enemies in their tracks, but it’s only in the prototype stage, as Matt Frei reports.

Cut to pictures of soldiers playing the part of a hostile crowd…

Matt Frei: No, it’s not a rebellion from American troops refusing to serve in Iraq (Oh very witty Matt – sarcasm and Iraq in one go!), it’s a bit of Pentagon role playing (yes indeed, it’s all a game to these yahoos). These soldiers are pretending to be rioters and these are not shooting back because this machine will do it for them.

Cut to pictures of Humvee mounted system…

Meet the latest addition to the Pentagon’s list of weapons and euphemisms (Great suggestive use of ‘euphemisms’ there Matt), the Active Denial System. It looks like a satellite dish, it works like a microwave oven, and what it actively denies you is the desire to stay in front of it. Watch them…

Cut to two soldiers reacting to the machine’s heat ray, followed by an old sci-fi still (really old) spinning annoyingly (very annoyingly) on to screen, complete with a silly sound effect (very silly).

It feels like a blast from an oven, it sounds like a blast from the past (kerching, never spotted that follow up coming!). Not science fiction (even though I’m trying to suggest otherwise), but science fact according to the military (does that sound sceptical enough about the military?). And this is how it works…

Cut to animated graphic titled ‘Feeling the heat’…

A beam of microwaves fired from a Humvee is aimed at a human (a human, a HUMAN, you got that? Not a tree, a f***ing human!). The rays gently heat the water under your skin to about 54 degrees and then supposedly, you run for it (I’m b*****ed if I’m going to try it out so that I can tell you what it actually feels like!). It’s called the ‘goodbye effect’.

John Pike, Globalsecurity.org: (Gee, this guy has a real hick-style drawl, just the job!) The ‘goodbye effect’ is that when people feel their skin burning they’re gonna run away, they’re going to stop in their tracks and run away, uh, the military basically wants that to be able to stop people at checkpoints or to disperse crowds. The theory is that when they feel their skin burning they’re going to say ‘goodbye’ and get out of there. (Great editing, make him repeat what Matt’s just said…)

Cut back to soldiers and Humvee…

Matt Frei: But what happens if you don’t feel like saying ‘goodbye’? (I don’t know Matt. Aren’t you going to tell us? You are a reporter aren’t you, and I’m sure they’d give you an opinion), and could it work in places where would be suicide bombers are already used to the desert heat (Well could it Matt? Did you ask them? or are you just spreading doubt as you go?), like Iraq for instance (Yeah, let’s get Iiiiraq in there one more time baby!)?

The Active Denial System, non-lethal (I don’t think so, am I sounding sceptical enough)?, or just non-starter (These Yankee-doodle cowboys and their fancy machines!)?

Matt Frei, BBC News, Washington.

Next up, a new Active Denial P45* System, for getting rid of nauseating, hackneyed, sinecured reporters. It’s called the ‘f*** off’ effect…

* A P45 is a UK government form issued when employment ceases.

, courtesy of Peter Mullen, Rector of St Michael’s, Cornhill, in the City of London, as published in the esteemed Northern Echo last year:

Aunties’s bias is showing

I sometimes worry for the sanity of the BBC. Let me say at the start, I’m a totally unreformed addict of Radio Four and I come over all sulky when we go abroad and I have to make do with satellite TV in the hotel bedroom.

The beauty is that you can have the radio with you wherever you go and you don’t have to stop everything you’re doing and gawp at it. There’s a regular ritual in our household. Sometime around seven o’clock, I get up and make the tea and carry a cup up to my wife. She has The Today Programme on while she’s dressing, and I listen to the one downstairs in the kitchen. We are both very much provoked into answering the programme back – not always in the most delicate phraseology. In fact, I would go so far as to say that many a morning it’s a toss up which one of us threatens to chuck the wireless into the street first.

It’s the inbuilt outlandish bias that gets through to us. I say “inbuilt” because I’m convinced they don’t know they’re doing it. The BBC bias is something learned by journalists as soon as they start to work for the Corporation. They are nice sincere, honest people and I believe they really do think they are merely presenting us with the balanced and objective truth. But this is not so. There is a BBC agenda which has a view on every aspect of public life and art, domestic and foreign affairs.
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Everything is divided neatly into good and bad, light and dark. Here is a sample of the good and approved things: the United Nations, the EU, socialism, the establishment view on global warming, foreign aid, ethnic minorities and non-Christian religions.

And here are some of the dark, bad things always disapproved: America, private education, elitism (that is the notion that we can actually distinguish between quality and rubbish), big business, foxhunting, smoking, Tories, the army, the police, stiff prison sentences, traditional Christianity.

There is one particular aspect of BBC bias which puzzles me – because I think it involves a contradiction and a confusion of thought. This is the anti-Americanism rife all over the network. For this bias is selective. The BBC hates what it always describes as “American imperialism” and indeed all American military operations. You wonder where these BBC producers and presenters learnt their history. Twice in the last century, in the First and Second World Wars, the timely military interventions of the US armed forces saved Europe from tyranny. America then fought to defeat the evil totalitarian expansionism of the Soviets. It was American military might which saved us from becoming part of the gulag. You would think the BBC types would be grateful. Far from it.

But here’s the anomaly: while despising America for all the good she has done, they worship her for the trash she creates. Those same BBC news and documentary departments that loathe wholesome American power, grovel before the worst and most trivial aspects of American culture. They send countless staff on freebies to the Oscars. They import trashy American sitcoms and even trashier children’s television shows. They even adopt the language and syntax of America – “kinda”; “math”; “elevator”; “sidewalk” and the barbarous “miss out on”.

It’s all very puzzling. I don’t mind bias. I’m biased myself about many things – but at least I know I am. With the BBC, there is only a blissful ignorance.

The Beeboids insist that the BBC is impartial and unbiased. Can all of the BBC’s many critics really be wrong?

, posts this update:

January 24th, 2007:

Hi All,

Spring time has hit Baghdad and the weather is fine.

Shit day yesterday: A girl I knew pretty well from the company we work for here was assasinated. She was Shia and lived with her mother in a real shitty Sunni area. The world is a sadder place without her. You can bet she was raped, pretty girl, and we heard that the militia were not even letting people get down that street to pick up the bodies. Scumbags were probably boobie trapping the bodies. (Sorry to be so morbid, but I did promise to tell it how it is).

Today was an angry day in town – predictably – Mr Bush gave his speech and the insurgency gave their answer – I heard a very good quote the other day – 90% of al-Qaeda’s war is fought in the media (and the BBC duly oblige!).

I come in off the streets and watch the crap being spewed about this place by BBC propagandistas and their panel of “experts” in amazement.

Thanks Tim. Keep us posted. (Click here for other updates from Tim).

I haven’t seen or heard any reply from Peter Barron, editor of Newsnight, to the questions I asked him the other day, even though many others have posed similar questions on his blog.

I’ve just posted a reminder for Peter on his blog:

Hello again Peter, I know you’re a busy chap, but from the questions and comments here it is plain that a lot of people are interested in answers to the questions that I posed above. They’re perfectly reasonable and straightforward questions – can you spare me, the ~1,600 daily readers of Biased BBC and the rest of the tellytaxpaying public a minute to give us some replies please? Thank you, Andrew (Biased BBC).

To save scrolling down, here’s my original comment:

Hello Peter. You say: “I don’t rule out the possibility that it was simply a misjudgement”, which rather implies that it wasn’t you who made that judgement. Was someone else editing Newsnight on Friday? If we accept that the running order was ‘simply a misjudgement’, it still doesn’t explain why Michael Crick et al made so much out of the ‘cripple’ email non-story (a story based on a private email sent four months ago from a private individual (not even a councillor) referring to someone else as a cripple – a non-story even without the Ruth Turner headlines). Also, can you explain how this email came to be leaked? It was a private email between two people, so unless either of them leaked it themselves (unlikely), how did it come to be leaked to the BBC? Left-wing council employees perhaps? If it was leaked in this way, do you really think that ‘public interest’ would justify such criminality? Looking forward to hearing from you further, Andrew (Biased BBC).

Perhaps one or other of the Beeboids that follow Biased BBC will be kind enough to give Peter a nudge for us. Thank you!

, according to Media Guardian’s Leigh Holmwood. Not surprisingly, just like this chap (Ned that is, not Justin), the Newsnight turkeys aren’t keen on the approach of Christmas:

All of the flagship BBC2 programme’s 15 correspondents, including political editor Martha Kearney and veteran journalist Michael Crick, wrote to Mr Barron last week as part of the campaign against the compulsory cuts.

The journalists, who are all faced with selection for compulsory redundancy, told Mr Barron they would not fill in draft CVs or meet with him as part of the process.

“We are writing to express our deep concern about your decision to press ahead with the compulsory redundancy process on Newsnight,” the letter said.

“We will not cooperate with it. We will not be filling out the draft CVs. Nor will any correspondent be meeting you or your team individually as part of the selection process.

Poor Mr. Barron. Perhaps a good place to start would be with whoever swallowed (or went along with) the NuLab spinners and their exclusive (oh yes!) ‘cripple’ email non-story. The Newsnight staffers whinge:

“We note that some £546,000 in bonuses was paid to senior management this year. In the context of this, losing two high-profile reporters to save a much smaller sum, with all the resultant stress, bad publicity and loss of goodwill seems to reflect perverse priorities within the BBC.

I have some sympathy with that argument, but a much better target for huge cost savings at the BBC is the £18m being paid to the tiresome Jonathan Woss over the next three years. It’s an obscene amount of money, especially for someone who does nothing that special. The BBC argue that Woss is at the ‘top of his game’ (presumably that game is exploiting the poor bloody tellytaxpayers) and that they need to be competitive (there’s a novel concept for the BBC).

Here’s a suggestion, pay Woss £1m per year – it’s still money that most people wouldn’t even dream of earning, and a lot more than he’s worth, and it’d save the BBC £15m over the next three years. Marvellous, and I won’t even charge you a consultancy fee for my advice.

“Ah, but” you say! Well, if Jonathan doesn’t think a million a year is worth it for all of his services to the BBC, simply start a new Saturday night reality show, here’s a name to conjure with, “How do you solve a pwoblem like Mawia?” – I’m sure that out of a population of 60 million people we’d be able to find plenty of new and talented people who’d be thrilled to work for a million a year. Another free idea, and a new Saturday night programme into the bargain!

After that you can do similar programmes to find and nurture new British talent in place of all the hugely expensive moronic has-beens that seem to populate the BBC just now. Even Gordon Brown might smile at the creation of new jobs and the uncovering of new talent.

I’ll concede though that we do need to retain the services of Terry Wogan for the purposes of the Eurovision song contest – a genuine national institution, gently exposing and mocking the dishonesty of sundry Johnny-foreigners as they incestuously vote for one another year after year irrespective of the music. Well worth it!

Turning back to Newsnight:

Presenters such as Jeremy Paxman and Kirsty Wark are not affected.

That’s a pity – Kirsty Nark should have been dispensed with long ago – the business with Jack McConnell was so blatant and embarrassing that I’m surprised even she has the brass neck to maintain her pretense of impartiality at Newsnight. She and her husband have done quite well filling their boots at tellytaxpayers expense, so she’d be quite comfortably off even without the Newsnight gig.

Mercifully for you Beeboids:

BBC News had proposed cutting 108 posts. However, the number of compulsory redundancies has been brought down to about 10.

So life’s not as tough at the BBC trough as it might have been, more’s the pity, for those of us keen to see more exposure to reality at BBC News.

, has sent us several updates recently:

January 9th, 2007:

Have been busy since the end of Eid, so little time for blogging.

I will get a decent post in later, so you can all hear the true perspective of what’s happening here in Baghdad. Not just the Beeb’s left wing propaganda.

Oh by the way, there may be a few new bloggers from here soon, as I’ve told all the expats here about this blogsite – BBC 24 is only really put on in this villa so we can all have a really good shout at the TV.

January 17th, 2007:

Very bloody day yesterday, dozens killed at Baghdad University by murdering Al-Qaeda bastards.

There is a girls school close to us here, and daily, well dressed, smiling and giggling school girls with loose headscarfs, smart uniforms and trendy footwear head there clutching their books, chatting like teenage girls anywhere in the world.

We stay well clear of the school area itself, as the same scumbags are targeting this place and sadly it’s only a matter of time before we might be clearing their body parts off our vehicles one morning.

Second point: A mortar round landed in close vicinity to our villas yesterday (not necessarily targetted at us). My friend an ex Brit SF mate, picked up a piece of the shrapnel – the mortar shrapnel was Iranian and still had (new) green paint on it.

Unlike other parts of the world where the BBC is quick to show locals holding what they say are US missile parts in front of the usual wedding that is being held in the local baby milk factory, the Beeb are not rushing to point out that a lot of the ordnance and technology doing all the killing over here is Iranian.

The BBC showing you only what we want to, it’s what we do…

January 19th, 2007:

I’ve been seeing some [cobblers] on the BBC, about how the US military are not arming the Iraqis to fight the insurgency.

Well, I can’t currently speak for other areas of Iraq, but I do drive around Baghdad (covertly) on a daily basis and the Iraqi Police and Army have all AKs and PKMs or Dushkas and are well armoured, Baghdad being where the worst insurgancy activity is taking place.

Also, schrapnel from the mortar that landed near to our villa the other day was Iranian and new (Still had it’s green paint on it – had not been weathered, or old war stock, very new).

Sorry not been on for a while, more soon from your myth busting reporter in Mesopatamia.

Thank you for your updates Tim – interesting and welcome as ever – and more relevant to the real world than the BBC’s reports, stuck in the Green Zone as they usually are.

The idea of you rufty-tufty types shouting at al-Beeb on your telly is most amusing – just like what goes on in my house, but without the guns. Probably just as well, otherwise my telly would have been blasted to kingdom come a long time ago!

Stay safe all of you who are out there, including the Beeboids.

Please use this thread for off-topic, but preferably BBC related, comments. Please keep comments on other threads to the topic at hand. N.B. this is not an invitation for general off-topic comments – our aim is to maintain order and clarity on the topic-specific threads. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog. Please scroll down to find new topic-specific posts.