Author Archives: Andy

(it’s like painting by numbers, but less intelligent): If an Islamic group commits a terrorist attack, run a story about how the particular ethnic group is ‘oppressed’.

BBC Radio 4’s Today programme (20th March) carried a story from their Spanish ‘correspondent’ about the plight of the Moroccan community in Spain.

Let’s start with a Moroccan restaurateur. We are informed about a feeling of suspicion, and

business after the Madrid bombings was down on the Sunday, with fewer customers than usual.

The implication was that the Spanish are boycotting the restaurant out of pique, or are afraid to go anywhere near a Moroccan. We are not reminded that the Sunday in question was election day in Spain, and was three days after the Madrid bombings. These things may have had some affect on restaurant business generally.

So much for the Spanish people, time for the police, who are

inspecting the papers of immigrants in the main square

The police aren’t rounding people up and locking them in cells, just inspecting papers. If felt listening to this that I was meant to see this as oppressive, or sinister, or both. I just saw it as sensible – 200+ people dead, I expect Spain to be in a state of heightened security.

Tonight’s hourly Radio 4 news summaries are carrying a story from Iran about how a few hundred political candidates have been stopped from electoral participation by Iran’s Guardian Council. This Guardian Council is a part of the theocratic political system in Iran.

Fair enough. Except that the newsreader adds

“…the Guardian Council is dominated by right-wingers”.

So the Guardian Council believe in individual liberty and responsibility, free markets, and a smaller state? Somehow I don’t think so. I would advise the BBC that applying the terms left-wing and right-wing to the complex political system in Iran is misleading.

While I’m on this subject, BBC2 has recently run a tedious series starring arch-lefty Stephen Fry called ‘Absolute Power’. One of the episodes featured another bunch of ‘right-wingers’ – a group of Countryside Alliance types who wanted to start their own political party.

Within two seconds of them appearing on screen, I turned to my wife & said ‘they’ll either be Nazis or repressed homosexuals – or both’. Sure enough, it transpires they really are Nazis, complete with swastikas.

Thanks BBC as always for your sensitive portrayal of non-left views.

is BBC Radio Scotland’s flagship morning news programme.

During the 11th November edition from 6:00am onwards, BBC Radio Scotland ran the following in their half-hourly news summary very prominently

“Over 2 million people in Britain are malnourished. The elderly, poor, socially isolated and chronically sick are particularly vulnerable”

Sounds like a case for higher welfare payments and ‘social inclusion’ – right? Presenter Maihri Stuart interviewed one of the authors of the report that prompted this headline at around 7:50am, clearly of the opinion that this was a poverty issue, and possibly connected with Scotland’s notoriously poor diet.

Oops! As the author of the report pointed out “I should say we are really talking here about the very sick – for those in hospital and in poor health one of the first things that can suffer is a person’s appetite”. The report is a warning to healthcare professionals to watch the diet of their patients, and to watch for sudden weight loss.

Not surprisingly, by the 8:30am news summary the item had disappeared without trace. However, anyone listening between 6:00am and 8:00am will have been misinformed.

For me this was an interesting item because I’ve often suspected BBC journalists take press releases from the fax machine, and never read beyond the first paragraph. Is it bias? Only in as much as shows the instinctive, almost knee jerk reaction to any story, and the angle they use to present it.

. It can be expressed in the approach and assumptions made about a subject. It can also be much more subtle, such as in the choice of subjects it gives airtime to, or those that receive no airtime at all. One of the more subtle forms of bias is the ‘wrongly imprisoned’ articles which crop up frequently on BBC radio networks. The ‘wrongly imprisoned’ are always concerning subjects close to the BBC’s heart, and are usually treated with undue respect.

So it was on Radio 4’s Today programme on 6th November. Ed Stourton introduced an item about an ‘anti-capitalist protestor’ arrested in Greece called Simon Chapman. I do not know (and neither does Stourton) if he was going to commit or committed acts of violence – what I do know is that this man travelled to protest at Thessaloniki where the usual groups of violent hooligans were congregating to destroy other peoples property and fight running battles with the police. Chapman has been on hunger strike for four weeks.

The Greeks allege he was arrested with a bag containing molotov cocktails, an axe and a hammer, and is now charged with ‘rebellion’ and G.B.H. Liberal MEP Sarah Ludford has taken up Chapman’s case.

Stourtons first question was real hardball – ‘So you think these charges are dodgy then?’

Ludford is then allowed to complain that Chapman has not been given bail, and that ‘it does seem that he has been fitted up’. Stourton does not interject anything here, or point out that anyone likely to abscond bail like a foreign national (especially on such serious charges) has a poor likelihood of bail. The assertion of ‘fitting up’ is not challenged either. I’d rather like to see the evidence for this myself.

The Greek justice system is then trashed by Ludford, and the Greek police accused of ‘beatings’. The item then ends abruptly.

It’s hard to imagine a more one sided account, and I am at a loss to see why this was included at all on a news programme, but I would contrast this with how a far-right thug in the same situation would be treated by the BBC. I’d have like to known for instance if Chapman travelled alone, or as part of a group. Has he any previous convictions for violent protest? I don’t know – I simply was not informed. It was really a soapbox piece presented as news, with one leftie (Stourton) chatting to another (Ludford).

is Radio Scotland’s flagship morning news programme.

Yesterday, the US Government passed a USD87 billion programme for operations in Iraq – of which is USD18.6 billion is for genuine civil and economic reconstruction. This money is paid as grants (not loans), so does not need to be repaid.

To discuss this significant event with the BBC’s Derek Bateman, the BBC wheeled out Martin Lewis, announced as a ‘US-based political commentator’. They could have announced him as ‘arch self publicist and Beatles historian.’ Read more here .

A few things stood out from the bizarre discourse that followed. Firstly, the tone is always to attack the US government for everything, as Bateman says

“The [US] government is spending more on Iraqi healthcare than American healthcare”

This may be true, but an alternative way of looking at this is it shows the commitment of the US to the country it now occupies.

Lewis chips in with

“the package was passed by voice acclamation, without a proper, formal vote…”

which went unchallenged by the BBC’s Bateman. For me, this was a nice little smear, implying a stitch-up in the Sentate to its Scottish listeners. American readers of this blog will be able to explain better than I that there is nothing sinister about this procedure.

And then comes the following from Lewis, again unchallenged

“During the election in 2000, George Bush said he didn’t believe in nation building abroad…yet here he is investing a huge amount at a very time when the American economy is fragile”

I seem to recall four hijacked airliners, around 3,000 dead people, and the most grievous attack on American civilians in living memory. Maybe, just maybe, this caused a total rethink of American diplomatic and defence policy. Also, although the US is building a very large budget deficit, the US economy is reporting very strong rises in GDP and confidence at the moment.

The question is this : is this bias? Possibly, in that the correct angle to approach any story is that US policy is wrong or corrupt (if you work for the BBC). It is certainly lazy journalism, and does not inform or serve it’s listeners well.

The BBC have a ‘Comedy’ slot on a Friday. I would contend it is for left-wing metropolitan ‘comics’ only.

The October 24th edition of ‘The Now Show’ contained its usual blend of both hard and soft left polemics. The show started with a soapbox style rant about the police from armchair SWP member Mitch Benn. This was so unfunny that the audience (composed of BBC staffers and like-minded people) simply did not laugh – this is not surprising though, the script was not meant to be funny, just political.

Could you imagine a speaker from the right of politics being given so much air time on the BBC – I for one cannot.

Mitch Benn then gives way to Punt and Dennis – a pair of what I can only describe as the smuggest Cambridge Lefties you will ever come across outside a sixth-form debating chamber. Week by week, they prod Blair from the left because the government is not left-wing enough for them. Yesterday, they had a long and tedious item about the conservatives.

Fair comment you might say, except that it got me thinking about other shows on this slot.

‘The Now Show’ alternates with ‘The News Quiz’. Two of the regulars on this show are also armchair SWP members – Jeremy Hardy and Linda Smith. Even I admit Linda Smith can be very funny when she leaves politics alone, but the same cannot be said of Jeremy Hardy. Like Mitch Benn, he uses the show to launch furious left-wing rants which strangely never seem to be edited out. No speaker from the right would be allowed as much latitude as Hardy, who is like a bore at an office party who has trapped you between the water cooler and a filing cabinet. A facade of ‘balance’ is achieved by the presence of the Francis Wheen, who I would call an ‘apologetic Tory’.

‘The News Quiz’ also sometimes alternates with ‘The Mark Steel Lecture’, which is a soapbox programme for…an overtly left wing comic. Mark Steel is a darling of the BBC producers, so expect to see him back soon. During one of his last lectures (about a year after the attack on the WTC and Pentagon) he likened Osama Bin Laden to Hanibal, the great Carthaginian general and scourge of Rome, wishing that the Americans could be as respectful to Osama as Rome was to Hanibal. Except, of course, that Hanibal challenged Rome openly on the field of battle, not as a terrorist, in a time when military power was regarded differently. Like all BBC types, Steel parades his contempt of America openly and with pride.

The only exception in the Friday 18:30 left-wing slot is the marvellous Deadringers, which has short and all too infrequent runs.

The BBC response to criticism like this is ‘well, do you want right-wing comics?’ – but I think this misses the point totally. The 18:30 left-wing slot shows how BBC bias operates – giving airtime to views with which it has some sympathy over and over again. An answer would be to be careful not to choose such smug, overtly political performers and to find other voices.

is BBC Radio Scotland’s flagship morning news programme.

The Friday 24th October edition carried an article about how Network Rail is to assume control of routine maintenance contracts from private contractors. During the article, which was a conversation between the news ‘anchor’ Alex Bell and the BBC Transport Correspondent Tom Simons, the BBC got a chance to show it’s economic illiteracy.

BELL: “I suppose that costs will be reduced because they [Network Rail] will no longer have to pay the profit margin?”

SIMONS: “Yes, but the savings from that may not be that great…the contracts were being negotiated down anyway”

I enjoyed this exchange because it shows the marvellous ignorance from commerce which is key to success as a BBC journalist. That a private company might be capable of operating more efficiently, or with some degree of innovation even in an area like rail maintenance, simply does not come into it. On this basis you have a good argument for the nationalisation of the whole economy, so that you would not need to pay the ‘profit margin’ to companies like Easyjet, Tesco, BP and so on.

Equally strange to me was the fact that any sane person could use the terms ‘cost reductions’ and ‘Network Rail’ in the same sentence not as an obvious oxymoron. Network Rail has overseen truly breathtaking rises in costs (costs guaranteed by the taxpayer), and only a few days ago was censured by the regulator Tom Winsor for it’s wasteful performance – but that’s OK this time as we won’t be paying a profit margin. As you would expect, this point was not made during the article.

The Saturday 11th October edition of ‘Talking Politics’ (Radio 4), hosted by Sheena McDonald, was a model of BBC P.C. bias.

Let me say at the start that I have nothing against opinion programmes, so long as there is diversity in the kind of opinions offered, and opinion pieces are clearly sign posted as such. Talking Politics is not sign posted as an op-ed piece.

The programme was on the subject of women in politics (Westminster politics). A group of like-minded labour politicians and left-wing writers gathered together to discuss what is wrong with politics. Naturally, it is awful, and it’s those pesky men.

If I tell you that one of the contributors has written a book called ‘Why do women vote Conservative?’ you’ll understand the thrust of the programme. The assertions that ‘Affirmative Action’ was a good thing was hardly challenged – in fact we need more of it. That ‘Affirmative Action’ could also be called ‘State-Sponsored Discrimination’ was not discussed, nor was the irony that such policies fell foul of anti-discrimination law discussed either.

For me, the most remarkable thing about this programme (aside from the presenter’s lack of professionalism) was the fact that the ‘T’ word (Thatcher) was not mentioned. Love her or hate her, I believe she ranks with Clem Atlee as the most successful post-war PM, at least in terms of changing society. She is a woman (and a mother) but of course would have no truck with a bunch of lefties like these, and so is not worthy of mention.

As a final word on this poor programme, getting a group of like minded individuals together to discuss a political topic makes for poor radio.

The Saturday 11th October edition of Today carried an article about the California election.

Margaret Doyle introduced an American author called Jonathan Franzen. Franzen was introduced as a ‘liberal’, which a spot of googling certainly confirms to be the case (though the BBC shows progress here in introducing the standpoint of a speaker who would be unknown to most listeners).

Franzen’s interview was really a monologue. Naturally, the result of the California election was down to the stupidity of the electors. According to Franzen, there are a lot of angry people in America who have no right to be angry. The electorate couldn’t understand the issues etc etc. The failures of previous Governor Mr Davies were not mentioned.

All of Franzen’s comments were accepted without comment by a fawning Doyle. The real question was why this article was included at all. Franzen certainly was not a witty speaker (rather dull actually), and he had nothing fresh to say on the subject. Was it because has was, from a BBC point of view, ‘on message’?