Author Archives: Andrew

Yesterday’s edition of The Times reports that London bomb victim lied about rape history.

Garri Holness, who lost part of a leg in the July 7th Islamist terror attacks in London, formerly known as Gary Linton, is revealed as a convicted rapist, guilty, along with six others, of a brutally violent gang sex attack on two sixteen year old schoolgirls in 1985.

Recalling the prominence afforded to Holness recently by a number of BBC programmes, I looked for their coverage of this story. After searching for it, I found Rape past of London bomb victim.

Not surprisingly (to readers of Biased BBC at least), the story had long since been removed from BBC Views Online’s index pages. When it was featured though, it didn’t make News Online’s front page (home to plenty of trivia at the best of times), and was, instead, hidden in the England section, itself below the UK section. Another case of blink and you’ll miss it, but you can’t (quite) say that they haven’t covered it.

Also not surprisingly, The Times report of the story, though not that much longer than the BBC’s, is sharper and more detailed than the BBC’s passive effort, including such facts as:

• Holness’ gang history as ‘Star’ of the ‘Young Raiders’;

   

• The £50,000 that Holness deems inadequate compensation for his injury, in contrast to the £13,500 compensation for victims of rape (elsewhere, News Online quotes Holness saying “I am going to need financial security for the rest of my life” – losing a leg is bad, but Holness, a musician, apparently reckons it’s a meal ticket for life);

   

• Holness lied to the Daily Mail, claiming that he had been cleared on appeal;

And last, but not least:

• Holness was paid £700 by the BBC to appear in six programmes charting his recovery.

None of which, it seems, the BBC deems worthy of bringing to telly-taxpayers attention, and certainly not for any length of time.

P.S. See also today’s update to my post from Monday, below.

, BBC News Online reports that:

Former Humberside Police Authority chairman Colin Inglis has been charged with 14 counts of indecent assault in relation to allegations of child abuse.

News Online goes on to say:

Following the launch of the North Yorkshire Police investigation last September Mr Inglis was suspended from the police authority and the Labour Party.

He was replaced as leader of Hull City Council in May this year.

This story was also reported on the BBC’s Six O’Clock News this evening, though Inglis’ party affilition and former tenure as Hull City Council leader weren’t mentioned, which is odd, since “Tories” (as the BBC unfailingly calls Conservatives) subject to legal proceedings are almost always linked to their party.

Update, 19NOV05:

Catching up with the news after a hectic few days, by way of contrast, The Times’ coverage of this story last Tuesday, Police chairman charged with 14 counts of child sex abuse, begins:

A LABOUR politician who supervised Britain’s worst-performing police force was charged yesterday with 14 counts of child abuse.

No doubt about Inglis’ political affiliation there then! The Times also reports:

The politician, who is openly gay, has consistently denied any wrongdoing, blaming the allegation on a homophobic conspiracy. He cited “dark forces” as the reason for his fall from political power.

– yet more facts that the BBC completely omitted from their coverage of this story. Would any of our BBC readers care to offer their adoring telly-taxpayers an explanation for keeping the public in the dark?

Wednesday, 14:25BST:

The Guardian (or is it ‘theguardian’ these days?):

Tories offer qualified terror bill support

BBC Views Online:

Tories delaying terror laws fight

The Views Online article did at least start by explaining:

The Tories say they will back proposed new anti-terrorism laws as MPs debate them for the first time, but will oppose some aspects at later stages.

The party is particularly against plans to allow terrorism suspects to be held for up to 90 days without charge.

The Liberal Democrats are expected to formally vote against the Terrorism Bill at Wednesday’s second reading.

The bill would outlaw “glorifying” terrorism and make it an offence to commit acts “preparatory to terrorism”.

The Conservatives’ decision to back the government at this stage of the bill’s progress through Parliament signals an end to the previously united approach on the issue by both opposition parties.

The increase in the time police can hold terrorism suspects, from two weeks to 90 days.

But oh, that awful headline – so misleading – especially for people who didn’t read the story itself. While we’re at it, can anyone tell me what that last paragraph is meant to say? Does anyone at the BBC (including sub-editors) ever read through what they’ve written before clicking ‘Publish’? We are forced to pay for this stuff you know!

The headline was subsequently changed – it now reads: Terror Bill clears first hurdle – but only as part of BBC Views Online’s questionable practice of completely re-writing existing stories rather than either adding an update or starting a new story. Just one more way of re-writing history as we go along!

Last November, “The Tories” (as the BBC almost always calls Conservatives – one ‘T’ word that’s not a problem for the Beeboids) complained officially, along with many viewers, about a particularly dodgy item on Newsnight. Peter Barron, Editor of Newsnight, wrote a rebuttal article on NewsWatch, headlined:

Howard special ‘not staged’

Moving forward to August 2005, having investigated itself (no conflict of interest there then), the BBC decided that it was mostly blameless on the main points of the complaint, and, to celebrate, published two articles, one in their main Politics section:

BBC dismisses Howard complaints

…complete with a specially selected photo of Michael Howard (again!) and a typically smug Paxman, and another in NewsWatch, with the spectacularly objective headline:

Tory Newsnight gripe rejected

Although there’s plenty of scope for giving the above articles a thorough fisking in their own right, let us press on with comparing and contrasting the BBC’s scrupulously impartial coverage of itself.

Last week, having investigated itself again following a complaint from a listener, the BBC’s Editorial Complaints Unit upheld the complaint about coverage of the Conservatives, finding that “the significance of the survey had been exaggerated in the bulletin”.

Newswatch reported this decision last Friday, though, strangely enough, with much less gusto than they covered the earlier Newsnight complaint:

Complaints upheld

How bland and unimaginative! It gets worse though, not only did they tack on another upheld complaint (about coverage of landless Brazilians) to the same story, they immediately pushed the Complaints upheld story down the running order by filling the top position with a rather spurious article, A question of sports, about the BBC’s coverage of sport in news bulletins, which could have been published at any other time, and is hardly a lead story anyway.

Finally, just to make sure the upholding of a complaint about coverage of the Conservatives was properly buried, they illustrated the story headline on the NewsWatch page with a picture of a toothless Brazilian (either that or it was another BBC photoshop special of Howard!). The same stunt was pulled in the even more off-the-beaten-track Notes section of NewsWatch – with a picture of more Brazilians, though the spurious A question of sports story was placed second at least.

A new BBC game: spot the upheld Conservative complaint…

It’s reassuring to know that the BBC is as impartial in covering itself as it is when covering everything else!

how about a spot of BBC ignorance, of the ‘why are we forced to pay for this tosh?‘ variety?

In Genette police file for charges our sharp-minded, ever astute BBC journos report:

Prosecutors are to consider whether to charge a man with the abduction and murder of a Devon schoolgirl in 1978.

Genette Tate, 13, vanished while cycling on her newspaper round in Aylesbeare, where she lived.

Devon and Cornwall Police, who have reinvestigated the case, will send a file to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) early next year.

It will ask the CPS to consider whether charges can be brought against Robert Black, 57, for the murder of Genette.

Britain’s longest missing person inquiry began in August 1978 when Genette’s bicycle and papers were discovered lying in Within Lane at Aylesbeare.

No trace of Genette has ever been found, but detectives discovered that Mr Black was in the area at the time she went missing.

All well and good, and then they conclude with:

Police have held three lengthy interviews with Mr Black in Yorkshire where he lives.

It’s certainly true to say that Robert Black lives in Yorkshire, but stopping the story there make one wonder if having an interest in current affairs, reading newspapers and even just watching the news is still required for BBC journalists and sub-editors these days, for you see, with a little more effort, as little even as typing “Robert Black” into Google and clicking ‘I’m Feeling Lucky!’, even the most otherwise ignorant of BBC journalists should have been able to track down Black’s current address (and hence the rest of the story):

5 Love Lane

Wakefield

West Yorkshire

WF2 9AG

…to be precise, where he has been resident, courtesy of Her Majesty, since his conviction in 1994 for the murders of three other young girls, Susan Maxwell, 11, Sarah Harper, 10 and Caroline Hogg, 5.

Next they’ll be trying to tell us that Gibraltar is an island!

N.B.: The BBC’s story is timestamped 18:04BST yesterday, and was featured on the front page of News Online until 02:05BST this morning, before being relegated to the West/South West corner of the England page, whilst drivel like Women ‘can’t cook to save their lives’, says celebrity chef, which has been front page ‘news’ since 10.35BST yesterday, remains.

Update: Just in case anyone thinks that publishing the above address is encouraging mob-rule, please do click on the Her Majesty link before complaining! Black is in more danger from his nearest and dearest, with whom he lives, than he is from anyone else. Nor is the matter sub-judice. Even if it were, it is inconceivable that Black’s existing record would go unmentioned in court if there is a trial. His 1994 murder trial depended on the admission of his 1990 abduction conviction as ‘similar fact evidence’.

Update 2 (3pm): The Beeboids have now sneaked back while no one was looking and stealth edited the final paragraph to read:

Police have held three lengthy interviews in Yorkshire with Mr Black.

Nice to know you’re out there paying attention, but would it have been too much to do the decent thing and mention the murder of the young girls for whom Black is currently incarcerated, as you’ve done before?

, according to TotallyJewish.com:

An internal corporation email sent on Monday revealed that the 39-year-old, who has come under considerable fire for a perceived anti-Israel bias in her coverage, will leave Jerusalem in December to start a new posting in Johannesburg.

While Israel government press office director Danny Seaman said the corporation, rather than any one person of having been guilty of “shoddy” journalism with regards to Israel, he told TJ: “Unfortunately, despite personally liking her, she didn’t always uphold the standards of balanced and unbiased journalism one would expect.”

The announcement of former Bafta-nominated Guerin’s leaving comes weeks after the departure of another controversial correspondent Barbara Plett, who last year said she cried as a dying Yasser Arafat was airlifted from his compound.

The article concludes:

Looking to the future, Seaman said: “We hope that BBC will send an individual of professional standards worthy of journalism if not the BBC.”

I hope that the BBC will also send “an individual of professional standards worthy of journalism if not the BBC” to Johannesburg too!

There are no signs of the departures of Barbara “I cried for Arafat“ Plett or the charming Ms. Goering being reported on the BBC’s Newswatch site or announced by the BBC Press Office yet.

Thanks due to Ritter for the TJ link from a comment thread below.

Surely where a fifteen year-old has died and people are convicted for manslaughter the headline should be Two-year term for Aimee killers – pathetically lenient sentences or not.

, the ever miserable Caroline Haw-Hawley managed to get out of the BBC’s private enclave in central Baghdad to report from Halabja, largely bemoaning:

“but it’s not for this that Saddam’s going on trial, at least not yet, relatives of the five thousand Kurds massacred in Halabja in March 1988 will have to wait for their day in court, the first legal proceedings against Saddam are for separate killings in the town of Dujail, hundreds of miles from here”

Unfortunately Caroline didn’t have the time to tell us that “court officials say the case was chosen because it was the easiest and quickest case to compile“, which sounds quite reasonable under the circumstances, but she did manage to wrap up her piece with:

“each headstone here represents a family wiped out with weapons that Saddam Hussein bought from the West”

Just in case Caroline’s definition of “The West” unintentionally misleads anyone, here, courtesy of Scott Burgess, are figures he derived from those of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (an independent foundation established in 1966 under the auspices of the Swedish parliament), showing “actual deliveries of major conventional weapons” to Iraq between 1980 and 2002, expressed in millions of dollars, in relative terms, at 1990 prices:

Referring to the original source, we can see that the UK’s total for this period, according to SIPRI, was $79 million dollars. We can also see that there are no figures recorded for the period from 1991-2002 – the period when UN sanctions were officially in force, which is confusing, because I distinctly recall watching, ‘Live on Sky’, as US forces found recently manufactured Russian and French arms at Baghdad airport after they liberated it from Saddam’s forces in 2003. Almost as confusing even as Caroline’s apparent understanding of “The West”, given that, according to SIPRI, over 80% of the arms sales to Iraq were from the Soviets, French and Chinese, which isn’t “The West” as I understand it, then or now.

Just to be clear though, SIPRI’s figures are based on ‘major conventional weapons’ sales rather than chemical weapons, but they give a good indication of who really armed Saddam. Moreover, chemical weapons themselves are relatively cheap and easy to make, the hardest part being the delivery systems for those weapons, which is where all those arms sales would have been useful for Saddam.

To see the report for yourself take your pick of Windows Media Hi/Lo or Realplayer Hi/Lo, starting about 20’39” from the beginning.

, the presenters announced “and we’ve got a new phone number, 020 8535 1000…” – what they didn’t mention was that their old phone number was one of the many 0870 disguised premium rate rip-off numbers (where the caller pays the recipient at high rates, often paying to be held in a queue!) that have proliferated across the BBC, government departments and second-rate call centre operations across rip-off Britain over the last few years, as previously highlighted here at Biased BBC.

Hopefully after a decently short interval the BBC’s fearless Watchdog will recover from its longstanding hypocrisy and get on with what it should have been doing all along, namely exposing and challenging this BT inspired scam that has ripped off consumers for years in the finest traditions of the former state telecoms monopoly that should have been broken up properly long ago.

While we’re on the subject of Watchdog, keep an eye out for their occasional inclusion of enviro-propaganda masquerading as consumer affairs – for instance, an anti-car piece broadcast a few months ago publicised enviro-loonies as they went around harassing law abiding drivers, and an apparent throwaway comment in last night’s edition “Now, global warming may be about to turn Britain into a group of islands linked by underwater motorways…”.

, Alan Connor of News Online (a sometime follower of Biased BBC), has written an interesting article about the relevance or otherwise of David Cameron’s privileged education and the ever-shifting public perceptions of class, private education and Old Etonians.

The following comment from the (Don’t) Have Your Say selection below Alan’s article caught my eye:

Old Etonians ruin the fabric of society. Oxford is infested with them like an old apple with maggots.

Gayrav, Oxford

Can you imagine such a thoughtless bigoted comment being selected for (Don’t) Have Your Say if ‘Old Etonians’ were replaced with some other social group (take your pick from the BBC’s usual roll-call of favoured minorities) and ‘Oxford’ with a correspondingly stereotypical place?