Author Archives: DB

IMPARCIALIDADE

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Lucas Mendes is a New York based Brazilian journalist who writes a weekly column about US current events for a Brazilian audience. His articles often attack the American Right, and in particular the Tea Party movement (which he really hates). He works for the BBC.

Here are the Google translations, Portuguese to English, of some of his recent columns for BBC Brazil. The translations aren’t perfect, of course, but they’re good enough to give a pretty full flavour of his views, all courtesy of Britain’s “impartial” national broadcaster.

October 28, 2010
October 7, 2010
September 23, 2010

The BBC’s English-speaking US correspondents must be envious of Mendes – BBC Brazil doesn’t bother with even the slightest pretence at balance.

(I don’t quite understand why the BRITISH Broadcasting Corporation is employing a Brazilian journalist to provide opinion pieces about America for Brazilian consumption.)

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RALLY FOR SANITY (pt 2)

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[Apologies for a second blogpost on this subject but I was working on it when David Vance posted his one. Hope he and others don’t mind if I put it up anyway.]

[UPDATE. I mistakenly thought Finlo Rohrer was a female journalist (I used to know a girl called Finlo) but apparently that’s not the case. Have updated the blog accordingly.]

When BBC correspondent Finlo Rohrer reported on the Glenn Beck rally he made a point of mentioning the racial make-up of the crowd:

The audience at the rally was predominantly white, but there was the occasional African-American in the crowd, some Tea Party-aligned, others without symbols of affiliation.

Yesterday’s Rally To Restore Sanity was at least as white (if not more so) but Rohrer’s account of that event fails to say so. Here are some images of the crowd from the Stewart/Colbert smugfest. If you look carefully you can just about make out a couple of non-white faces in the centre of the top-right image: [Read More…]


(Click to enlarge. Pics from American Elephants and Small Dead Animals)

It serves no purpose for the BBC to highlight the overwhelmingly white nature of yesterday’s rally so the fact is simply ignored, airbrushed from the bigger picture. The only white narrative the BBC is interested in is the angry white conservative one. A rally of young white hipster liberals is just a rally. Agenda-driven bias from the BBC, pure and simple.

Rohrer’s account of the Glenn Beck event included this:

Activist Jeremy Batterson, manning a stall festooned with posters of President Obama sporting a Hitler-style toothbrush moustache, explained why he was so steadfastly against the nation’s leader.

His report on yesterday’s event mentions only funny slogans and placards. Here’s another side to the rally – isn’t it amazing that BBC journalists never see stuff like this at leftie events?


(Click to enlarge. Pics from Falling Panda and Don Surber)

One of those Hitler moustaches is on a Jewish congressman, btw. Once again it doesn’t fit the BBC narrative, therefore it is ignored.

From Rohrer’s account of the Stewart/Colbert rally:

What was going on was effectively a mixture of a stand-up comedy gig and a one-day rock festival featuring Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Bennett, Sheryl Crow and others.

Ah yes – “and others”. Rohrer sidesteps the controversy over the appearance at the event of Yusuf Islam, a man who wants Salman Rushdie dead just because he wrote a book. Quite an odd choice of guest when one claims to be “promoting sanity” as Jon Stewart is, but once again it’s not deemed worthy of mention by the BBC. Airbrushed and ignored.

Rohrer’s Glenn Beck article includes the following sidebar column:


Readers of Biased BBC won’t be surprised to learn that there is no equivalent criticism accompanying yesterday’s article (there is a link to a Mardell blogpost about an “all-white” Tea Party gathering, but no same-page critic.) The idea that there could be negative opinion of Saint Jon’s event probably didn’t even occur to him.

Update 3pm. The BBC online team is trying to drive as much traffic as possible to Rohrer’s article by making it the top item on the BBC home page:

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Partiality Genes?

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It must be true because scientists say so:

People with left wing views may have their political opinions controlled by a “liberal gene”

BBC US correspondent Katie Connolly is concerned:

Don’t worry Katie, we don’t need genetic tests to get to the essence of liberal bias at the BBC – we have Twitter.

In other news, the mythical BBC “impartiality gene” still eludes discovery.

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OBAMESSIAH MEETS SAINT JON

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Online reports so far from the BBC:

Obama tells Daily Show more time needed for reforms
Obama appeals to voters on satirical TV show The Daily Show
Obama’s mid-term election pitch on US television network
Cagey Barack Obama spars with Daily Show’s Jon Stewart
‘Yes we can… but’ says Obama

(If you spot any more add them in the comments)

UPDATE 5pm. If you were thinking that what the BBC’s midterm election coverage really needs is Billy Bragg taking cheap shots at Christine O’Donnell then worry no longer – BBC World News America has made it happen. No agenda though. Impartiality is in their genes.

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SPENDING REVIEW

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If you’re getting your information about the US midterms only from the BBC you are no doubt aware that Republicans are outspending the Democrats by millions of dollars. Yesterday’s report by Katty Kay on campaign funding focused almost entirely on Republican spending (there’s a very brief mention about union support for Democrats, but the thrust of the piece is clear – Republicans and their supporters are trying to buy the election. See short version here, longer version here). When Matt Frei blogged about the subject he name-checked only Republican candidates.

Hang on though, what’s this? Politico, 26 October:

To hear top Democrats tell it, the party is being wildly outgunned this year in the fight for campaign cash as Republicans rely on outside groups to funnel money to GOP contenders.

But the numbers tell a different story.

It’s true that conservative third-party groups are outspending their Democratic rivals. But the Democrats still have a sizable cash advantage in their party committees – making this year’s elections a lot more of a fair fight than Vice President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi let on.

And this? New York Times, 26 October:

Lost in all of the attention paid to the heavy spending by Republican-oriented independent groups in this year’s midterm elections is that Democratic candidates have generally wielded a significant head-to-head financial advantage over their Republican opponents in individual competitive races.

The Times article also points out that Democrat-supporting third party groups have now begun splashing the cash around big-time:

Last week, for example, [America’s Families First Action Fund] spent $362,000 on a television ad attacking Steve Southerland, the Republican challenger to Representative Allen Boyd, Democrat of Florida.

None of this fits the BBC’s narrative, therefore it is ignored. They’re not going to let the facts get in the way of their relentless anti-Republican propaganda.

Update. Check out Matt Frei’s chat with Jimmy Carter. Not a single assertion by Carter is challenged. It’s like one of those obsequious 1950s political interviews (“Is there anything you’d like to say to the British people, Minister?”). Pathetic.

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Unintentionally Ironic Statement Of The Year?

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“Instead of balanced coverage you’ve got somebody, a commentator, finding a way to reaffirm the beliefs of their viewers.”

That’s Foster Kamer of the Village Voice in his dire paint-by-numbers attack on Fox News and the American Right for the BBC’s Culture Show (h/t Oliver via David Preiser).

Kamer’s item is so clichéd, so typical of lazy left-wing conventional wisdom that I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that the BBC College of Journalism is already using it as an example of best practice.

It wouldn’t have occurred to the editor of the Culture Show to commission a conservative commentator (Klavan, Breitbart, Gutfeld?) to give a different perspective on the US media for once. No, that would risk alienating the target audience – pretentious Guardian-reading dickwads. Far better to play it safe and get a reliably on-message left-wing hack to serve up the usual BBC smug prejudiced toss about the US.

How do you suppose Kamer responded to NPR’s sacking of Juan Williams? By championing open debate and free speech? No, like this:

A nasty little left-wing bigot. Not unlike the Culture Show supremo Janet Lee, in fact, as the editor of GQ Dylan Jones can testify:

Last summer, even I was subjected to a volley of abuse from a BBC executive. Janet Lee, the editor of the BBC’s flagship arts programme, The Culture Show (and who I have known for over 25 years), came up to me at a party on the Thames and, after calling me a ‘Tory ****’ proceeded to disparage the Tory leader, using ‘Etonian’ as though it were the very worst word in her lexicon of obscenities. You could tell she couldn’t work out what was worse: becoming a Tory, or admitting it.

Impartiality is in their genes.

Update Oct 25. Janet Lee’s predecessor as Culture Show editor was Eddie Morgan:

After a spell working in strategy for Granada Media, Eddie joined the BBC to work as an output editor on Newsnight.

In 2002 he took time out from TV to work as Assistant General Secretary of the Labour Party and then went to the communications firm Brunswick before returning to the BBC to help set up The Culture Show in 2004.

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MORE BBC TWEETS

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Do you think George Osborne is trying to “knacker the economy” and “ruin lives”? Do you love Green Party leader Caroline Lucas (despite her weird eyebrows)? Is leftie human rights lawyer and Labour peer Baroness Kennedy a hero of yours? Do you believe that the BBC Trust was wrong to criticise an inaccurate report by Jeremy Bowen? Do you think the rescue of the Chilean miners offered a good excuse to make a snarky comment about Margaret Thatcher, and the hunt for crazed murderer Raoul Moat was just the time to make a sick joke about Sky News presenter Kay Burley? If the answer to all those questions is yes, and you expressed it all on Twitter, then there’s a good chance you could be BBC TV news editor Rachel Kennedy (click image to enlarge):


Impartiality is in her genes, you know?

(They really do have a thing for Caroline Lucas, don’t they?)

Incidentally, if you want to be one of the cool kids on Twitter, having a little pop at Thatcher and/or Burley appears to be a fairly popular way of proving your right-on cred to other users. Even BBC political correspondent Chris Mason was at it last week:

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YET ANOTHER BBC CHE SLURPFEST

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Last week the BBC World Service commemorated the highly significant 43rd anniversary of Che Guevara’s death by asking former KGB-funded commie-sympathising Guardian journalist Richard Gott to offer his adoring version of the “Christ-like” psychopathic thug. Be warned, you may need a bucket for this one. (Thanks to Marky for the clip; further hat-tips to Abandon Ship, Rueful Red and John Horne Tooke).

Over on Townhall.com Humberto Fontova also marked the anniversary, but his version of Guevara’s story is somewhat different to the one the BBC serves up year after year.

(Marky provides some more related links in the blurb for the above You Tube clip)

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PETER ALLEN: TEA PARTIES "BIT STRONG FOR OUR TASTES"

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The BBC’s Kevin Connolly has been doing a series of reports from Missouri this week for Radio Five Live Drive. Yesterday he spoke to Reed Chambers, a Tea Party activist in the city of Independence. In response to a series of quick-fire questions Chambers said that he wanted lower taxes, federal government to keep out of healthcare, less gun control, that he backed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (adding “any war should be prosecuted to the fullest effect of our military until the opponent is crushed”), and was personally against abortion. He said Obama was a horrific president (which Connolly misheard as “terrific”, much to his own amusement) with a leftist agenda. Peter Allen in London couldn’t believe what he was hearing, so alien to his mindset were these opinions: [Read More…]

“Listen Kevin, are you searching around the country and finding these people or just… are they…(laughing)… are you quite legitimately just bumping into them? (More laughter).”

When Connolly said that the views weren’t out of the ordinary, Allen responded:

“The Tea Party. I dunno – they’re a bit strong for our tastes.”

“our tastes”. The conventional wisdom of the BBC echo-chamber.

From the BBC’s new editorial guidelines, section 4 – Impartiality (News, Current Affairs and Factual Output):

4.4.12 News in whatever form must be treated with due impartiality, giving due weight to events, opinion and main strands of argument.  The approach and tone of news stories must always reflect our editorial values, including our commitment to impartiality.
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4.4.19 We must challenge our own assumptions and experiences and also those which may be commonly held by parts of our audience.  BBC output should avoid reinforcing generalisations which lack relevant evidence, especially when applying them to specific circumstances.

The BBC is delivering 16,500 copies of its new guidelines to staff and freelancers. I can only assume that they’re printed on toilet paper, the easier for journalists like Peter Allen to wipe their backsides with them.

(Listen Again available for one week. Skip to approx 2 hr 27. H/t Martin & mphousehold in the comments.)

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OBAMA IN OVER HIS HEAD

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The latest article by Time magazine political analyst Mark Halperin (hardly a frothing right-winger) is quite a doozy (via Hot Air):

With the exception of core Obama Administration loyalists, most politically engaged elites have reached the same conclusions: the White House is in over its head, isolated, insular, arrogant and clueless about how to get along with or persuade members of Congress, the media, the business community or working-class voters. This view is held by Fox News pundits, executives and anchors at the major old-media outlets, reporters who cover the White House, Democratic and Republican congressional leaders and governors, many Democratic business people and lawyers who raised big money for Obama in 2008, and even some members of the Administration just beyond the inner circle.

Not the impression we get from the BBC.

Matt Frei described the book Game Change, which Halperin co-authored, as “the definitive account of the 2008 election campaign” (Americana, BBC R4, 26 Sept 2010). It’ll be interesting to see if any BBC correspondents acknowledge these latest revelations about insider attitudes towards Obama’s failing administration.

(Frei will have to catch up on the article later – he’s joined the ever-growing army of BBC hacks in Chile. Another “I was there” moment he simply had to have for his memoirs.)

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