Author Archives: DB

BBC Editor Removes Anti-Palin Tweet

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BBC News editor Rachel Kennedy has removed the tweet, highlighted here, in which she expressed hope that recent events would “do for” Sarah Palin (h/t John Horne Tooke). In case you missed it here’s the screengrab:


Kennedy will now be attending a “masterclass” by BBC Twitter tutor Sue Llewellyn (who was herself quite keen to associate Palin with the Tuscon shootings):


No doubt the licence payer will be picking up the tab.

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BLAME PALIN

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The Telegraph’s Toby Harnden has a good blogpost about the “unseemly rush to blame Sarah Palin, the Tea Party and Republicans for murder in Arizona”.

I noticed this eagerness to blame the Right, and Palin in particular, when reading some BBC twitterers last night.

BBC News strand editor Rachel Kennedy, whose opinionated tweets (highlighted here on Biased BBC) led Director of News Helen Boaden to issue a warning email to all BBC staff, continues to be unconcerned about impartiality. In Kennedy’s view the cross-hair imagery in a map of pro-Obamacare Democrats produced by Sarah Palin was of such significance to yesterday’s shootings that she hoped it would bring about Palin’s downfall:


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As Toby Harnden points out “martial imagery is standard political fare” and has been used by the Democrats when targeting Republicans. Such details are of no concern to a Palin-hating BBC news editor, though. Is it any wonder that BBC news output is so aggressively negative towards Palin when its editors openly express a desire to see her done for? It would be nice to think that such views would “do for” Rachel Kennedy, but as she works at the BBC she will no doubt be lauded instead.

The cross-hair map attracted BBC reporter Nicola Pearson’s attention too. She was concerned that it wasn’t receiving enough attention, and evidently was also impressed with the thoughtful balanced opinions of Kevin Maguire:


BBC US correspondent Katie Connolly was another who was keen to get in a mention of the Tea Party:


For BBC Radio Shropshire’s painfully right-on Jim Hawkins the map was the thing, as it was for BBC Twitter instructor Sue Llewellyn:


(Incidentally, “fieldproducer” is Sky News’ Neal Mann who last week was warning other journalists not to jump to conclusions about the arrest of the landlord in the Joanna Yeates murder case. No such worries about wild speculation for British broadcast journalists when there’s Palin-bashin’ to be done.)

Fiona Graham, a BBC “technology of business reporter” was very taken with the views of acute Palin Derangement Syndrome sufferer Roger Ebert:


Unfortunately for all the BBC employees desperate to pin the blame on Palin and the evil American Right, Caitie Parker, a former school friend of the shooter, had been offering some insight into his past politics and strange beliefs:


Doesn’t sound like he’d be a natural Palin-loving Tea Party supporter, does it?

It’s also worth noting that none of the BBC twitterers quoted above chose to mention that Giffords had enemies on the left, as this now-deleted blogpost at leftie website Daily Kos shows [click to enlarge]:

UPDATE 13.20. Gavin Esler has blessed us with his tuppence-worth this morning:


The BBC College of Journalism’s Marc Settle (h/t John Horne Tooke):


UPDATE 13.50. Remember how the BBC’s America editor rushed to inform us, incorrectly, that the Fort Hood shooter wasn’t motivated by religion? How very different from the BBC stampede to link yesterday’s sad events to Sarah Palin and the Tea Party.

UPDATE 14.20. Which US politician said the following in 2008? “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun”. See here.

UPDATE 14.45. A further thought. What does Rachel Kennedy’s Sarah Palin tweet say about Helen Boaden’s authority? The BBC’s Director of News pontificates about impartiality but her underlings continue to ignore her.

UPDATE 16.00. Another tweet from last night, this one from senior BBC journalist Toby Brown:


I think it’s safe to say that BBC hatred of Sarah Palin runs wide and deep. Murderous dictators in Africa don’t elicit this type of reaction. Truly weird.

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"The winters of our youth are unlikely to return"

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It was amusing to see that the most viewed item on the Independent’s website yesterday was the article “Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past” from 2000.

Similar claims have been made by the BBC, of course. In February 2007 the BBC World Service’s One Planet devoted an episode to warmer winters. Here’s the presenter, BBC science correspondent Richard Hollingham, giving us his conclusion :

Listen!

Richard Hollingham: Those of us who grew up with very cold winters, who tell our children that winter’s not what it used to be, we’re right aren’t we?

Brenda Ekwurzel (Climate Scientist, Union of Concerned Scientists): Yes. Absolutely. It has changed.

Hollingham: Sitting here at the BBC, leafing through my old photos, I can’t help feeling nostalgic for proper winters. This year we had just one day of snow in southern Britain. Mind you it still brought the roads, railways and airports to a standstill and shut the schools, but as most people in London, Moscow, Washington, Beijing or Oslo will testify, a cold crisp winter’s day with snow on the ground is infinitely preferable to the mild damp miserable winters many of us are having to get used to. It seems the winters of our youth are unlikely to return.

And here’s the BBC’s ‘Ethical Man’ Justin Rowlatt writing on the Newsnight blog in January 2007:

Do you remember snow? It’s that cold wet stuff you used to trudge through in the olden days.
I was reminded of the stuff – not by the weather of course – but as I looked through some super-8 footage of my family that my dad shot. It’s been collecting dust at my parent’s house for years. I dug it out because we were looking for images to use in the Ethical Man series.
I built the snowman with my sisters in January 1968. The shots of us sledging are from January 1971. It is beginning to look like my kids will be lucky to ever build a snowman in our garden.

Or how about this on the BBC Weather website from 2004:

There haven’t been to [sic] many cold winters recently in the UK and the number of days with snow cover are becoming fewer too. It’s getting harder and harder to make a snowman in Southern England! Many young children living here are still waiting to see their first white Christmas. If global warming predictions from the Met Office’s Hadley Centre are correct they may never live to see it.

Oh, won’t somebody please think of the children?

Snow – a thing of the past. Just imagine, if the powers that be had believed all this there might be chaos right now.

[Previously – BBC reports the demise of the ski industry.]

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A TWEET FROM THE ECHO CHAMBER…

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Left-wing website Think Progress has a very upbeat happy-clappy take on the outcome of the Cancun climate conference. I am aware of this because BBC LA correspondent Peter Bowes recommended the article after he’d seen it tagged by one of the leading climate analysts of our generation:


How much is all this going to cost UK citizens? What could we spend the money on instead? What will it mean for our taxes, and for the price of energy and goods? How many old people will die because they can’t afford the increased fuel bills? None of those questions worry BBC journalists. No, what matters is that Leonardo DiCaprio says it’s great news.

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AMERICANA GUEST HOST – RICHARD WOLFFE

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This week’s edition of Americana on Radio 4 will be presented by regular MSNBC political analyst Richard Wolffe. His political leanings are so obvious that earlier this week Craig Ferguson mocked him on his talk show (via Newsbusters) :

CRAIG FERGUSON: You’re a Democrat, aren’t you?

RICHARD WOLFFE: I am a journalist.

FERGUSON: A journalist? Much the same thing, isn’t it?

A Democratic Party supporter and a journalist – well, they’re certainly one and the same thing at BBC America.

Just yesterday Wolffe was on MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews attacking Sarah Palin. He even once had a spell as leftie nutjob Keith Olbermann’s stand-in (until conflict of interest issues arose). And now he’s a guest host for the BBC. An effortless transition from one left-leaning news organisation to another. (You can be damn sure nobody at the Beeb ever considered asking a right-wing contributor from Fox News to present Americana.)

As if the choice of Wolffe isn’t bad enough, his main interviewee is foil-hatted fruitcake Gore Vidal. Ooh, I wonder if he’ll say something outrageous and controversial. Yawn.

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INSTILLING A SENSE OF PRIDE

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David Vance has blogged before about the BBC’s Horrible History of the British Empire, but after seeing in the comments that it was repeated today (hat tip Peter Parker) I located the Queen Victoria song on the programme’s YouTube account.

Open your mouths, children, while we ram big spoonfuls of guilt down your throats because your country is evil and its achievements non-existent. (*)

(*) Does not apply to children of recent immigrants. See relevant handout for details.

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IMPARCIALIDADE (pt3)

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BBC Brazil’s Lucas Mendes has had another go at the Republican Party in his latest column, this time over attempts to strip National Public Radio of public funding.

Here’s how Google translates his description of NPR:

“produced by and starring a brilliant liberal majority, a voice a little left of center and a program that reminds of the BBC.”

A left of centre broadcaster dominated by liberal lefties convinced of their own brilliance. Why yes, that “reminds of the BBC” very much. The sense of entitlement to public funds “reminds of the BBC” too.

Evidently Mendes has forgotten that the BBC doesn’t like its employees telling the truth about where it sits politically, but when you’ve been churning out left of centre commentary for the Corporation for as long as he has you probably don’t see the need to hide the obvious.

[Previous blogposts on Mendes]

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Palin/Obama Double Standards

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When Obama made his gaffe about visiting 57 states, his slip of the tongue about “my Muslim faith“, and displayed his ignorance about the military when mispronouncing “corpsman” (particularly embarrassing for the Commander in Chief), none of the incidents was reported by the BBC. When he appeared on Jay Leno’s show in March 2009, Obama’s description of his own bowling skills as “like Special Olympics” created many headlines and much comment around the world, and yet it wasn’t even mentioned in Rajini Vaidyanathan’s gushing account of the evening. (There was an online report later, but only after Obama had apologised.)

But when Sarah Palin misspeaks the BBC decides it’s news. (World Service journo Robyn Bresnahan couldn’t resist declaring her shock on Twitter and, inevitably, Richard Bacon was banging on about it on his show today.)

Perhaps someone from the BBC – or one of its drive-by supporters – could explain this double standard.

(Hat-tips all round)

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