Author Archives: DB

Impartiality Gene?

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BBC editors were clearly concerned that their coverage of Christine O’Donnell’s youthful activities wasn’t getting the traffic they hoped, and so for much of yesterday and this morning this was the main news story on the BBC.co.uk front page (h/t Cassandra):


The carefully chosen “cackling” photo is a nice touch, isn’t it?

Meanwhile, yesterday evening this story appeared on the BBC’s website:

Eight people, including the mayor and ex-city manager, have been arrested after a probe into excessive local government pay in Bell, California.

There was outrage earlier this summer after it was revealed that the city manager was being paid almost $800,000 (£500,000).

The others arrested were former and current council members.

The investigation has looked into allegations of voter fraud, corruption, and misuse of public funds.

Nowhere in the article does it mention any party affiliation of the elected officials involved. No prizes for guessing why. (Read More…)

In July the Orange County Register apologised to its readers when it too had failed to identify the party ties of those in the scandal:

In the wake of the Bell salary scandal, our readers noticed one part of the story has been left out by virtually all media sources, including our related editorials and columns: the political party affiliations of the five city council members who not only failed to protect city coffers, but participated in what amounts to shameless, if apparently legal, self-dealing.

All five council members are members of the Democratic Party.

In its defence the Register claimed that Bell voters are represented only by Democrats “in every level of government” but conceded that wasn’t a good enough excuse for ignoring the fact. A local paper thinks it’s wrong not to mention that these were Democrats, but for some reason the BBC – with its worldwide audience unaware of the local political scene – thinks differently.

Would the Beeb have neglected to point out Republican Party membership in similar circumstances? Of course not – it would have been the main thrust of the story. But with Democrats involved we have to adopt Pravda-reading strategies to figure out the full picture.

And I haven’t seen anything about this on the BBC yet either:

Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. directed a major political fund-raiser to offer former Gov. Rod Blagojevich millions of dollars in campaign cash in return for an appointment to the U.S. Senate, sources said the fund-raiser has told federal authorities.

Nothing to see here, move along, might deal with it after the midterms.

I think the BBC needs a bigger gene pool. Better yet, a disinfectant.

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Intolerance

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Back in May the BBC reported the following:

A cartoonist whose work inspired an internet campaign inviting people to draw images of the Prophet Muhammad has apologised for her role in the row.

Writing on her blog, Molly Norris said her satirical cartoon was “hijacked” and that the campaign was “offensive to Muslims”…

Molly Norris drew a cartoon in April to protest against the decision by a US television channel to cancel an episode of the popular show South Park because of a contentious depiction of the Prophet Muhammad.

Sadly, apologising doesn’t appear to have done her much good.

(“Read More…”)

The Seattle Weekly reports:

You may have noticed that Molly Norris’ comic is not in the paper this week. That’s because there is no more Molly.

The gifted artist is alive and well, thankfully. But on the insistence of top security specialists at the FBI, she is, as they put it, “going ghost”: moving, changing her name, and essentially wiping away her identity. She will no longer be publishing cartoons in our paper or in City Arts magazine, where she has been a regular contributor. She is, in effect, being put into a witness-protection program—except, as she notes, without the government picking up the tab. It’s all because of the appalling fatwa issued against her this summer, following her infamous “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” cartoon.

It will be interesting to see if the BBC follows up its earlier story and, if it does so, how it will frame this latest horrible news in the context of “increasing Islamophobia”.

(And will the luvvies write a letter of protest about it to The Guardian, or will they be as silent as they were when South Park was censored? James Lileks has some thoughts on how the “smart set” will probably react.)

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MORE CASH

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On his blog, Cash Peters is taking a stand against “the nutjobs and loons”.

He has responded to my post about him yesterday by comparing it to “Opposition arsonists who spread fear, irrational and baseless rumors, and a raft of lies about Obama in the hope of destabilizing his power to govern and discredit him and his administration.” Gosh! And armed only with his trusty raw vegetable and a healing crystal, Cash is mad as hell and he’s not going to take it any more.

“Read More…”

Of course, he refutes the claim that he is in any way biased:

For a start, I can’t remember when I have ever spat venom on the BBC… Second of all, I genuinely don’t have any political axe to grind in my slot… And lastly, I honestly don’t remember – and trust me, my memory extends back years – the last time the host and I discussed politics in relation to TV at all.

I’m not a regular listener but I’ve caught the Cash Peters segment enough times over the years to know this is rubbish. Sarah Palin in particular has been a target for his abuse, and he’s never slow to air his hatred of Fox News. There isn’t an Up All Night archive to which I can refer, but I do have a transcript of Peters talking to regular Up All Night host Rhod Sharp the week after Obama’s election victory:

CP: It was absolutely huge, and I know it was worldwide huge, but when you live in America and basically everybody’s waiting for a certain nincompoop to get out the office and they’re just praying, everybody’s on bended knee waiting for this idiot to get out the office and suddenly he is and he’s gone, he’s gonna be gone, it’s just the best. In fact you know Oprah was terribly partisan in all this..
RS: Almost as partisan as you, in fact…

So even the host has noticed.

And a bit later:

CP: [Still talking about Oprah] And now she’s said to Sarah – she banned Sarah Palin from her show because she was not going to be political (unheard word) – and now she’s said to Sarah Palin ‘You’re welcome to come on’. But who wants to give that woman any more publicity than she’s already had? That would be crazy talk.
RS: I think quite a lot of people do.
CP: Well she was on the Today Show this morning again. Matt Lauer went up to her home in Wasilla in Alaska in her home eating food and it’s like STOP IT! If you give her any… if you feed this monster, if you give her any more er, oxygen, she’s gonna be in, like, the Senate before you know it. It’s ludicrous.
RS: There you go being impartial again.
CP: No, I love all human life but she’s A MONSTER!

No political axe to grind? No venom? I beg to differ.

In his blog response Peters doesn’t really help his case by describing Christine O’Donell as “Tea Party neo-loon”.

He goes on to say:

“People are tired of fighting. Tired of untruths. Tired of the crazies getting air-time. And downright annoyed that the media affords them even a grain of credibility by discussing their nonsense views.”

And there we get to the heart of the matter. The media should be there to represent only those views acceptable to the likes of Cash Peters. Fortunately for him, Radio Five Live seems to share his opinion of what is and isn’t acceptable.

One more thing – given some of the New Age wacko nonsense he’s into, Peters should perhaps think twice before throwing around words like “nutjob” and “loon”. Some might say that he himself is one of the “crazies getting air-time”.

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LEFTNETWORK

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Daily Politics reporter Giles Dilnot is the stand-in presenter on Radio Five Live’s Up All Night this week. On this morning’s show he and the show’s regular conservative-hating US TV reviewer (and New Age goofball) Cash Peters discussed the new right-leaning TV network backed by Kelsey Grammer. Here’s the sneering, mocking exchange in full:

Listen!

Sweet irony – Cash Peters deriding a broadcaster for being one-sided when the BBC has provided him with a platform to spew his venom about conservative America for over ten years. A BBC correspondent who was as openly antagonistic to the American liberal left would have been dropped after one week. (Incidentally, are there any regular TV or film reviewers on R5L who aren’t lefties?)

Earlier in the show Dilnot asked USA Today’s Bill Nicholson about the success of Tea Party candidates in the latest round of primaries . “We should remain polite,” said the presenter, knowingly, before immediately pointing out that some see the movement as “down right fruit loop!” Clearly Dilnot has been watching the BBC’s coverage.

At least RIGHTNETWORK is open and honest about what it is.

UPDATE 21.15. Heh:

UPDATE 21.30. Don’t worry Cash, your star can only rise in the BBC firmament after this.

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Exit Stage Leftie

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I’m sure you’ll all be sorry to hear that our old friend Scott Matthewman of luvvie paper The Stage has just about had enough of us:


Well Scott, nutty as it can sometimes get here, at least we don’t look at Islamofascist terrorists and think, “Hmm, fancy a bit of that!”

“Do me like I’m hundreds of innocent New York civilians, Faisal. And then cut my throat like the bitch I am.”

Shame they arrested him eh Scott? Still, there’s always Greg Gutfeld’s bar to look forward to.

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Introducing Generic BBC America Correspondent…

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(This one is work safe)

Talking of which, here are the opening and closing words to James Naughtie’s report for the Today programme on Tuesday:

Naughtie: New York, Ground Zero around the corner. I’m standing on the site of a planned Islamic centre with a mosque, a proposal that’s turned into an angry national debate here and acted as a proxy for the wider culture war between President Obama and liberal opinion on the one hand, arguing that America stands for religious freedom, and the conservative Right on the other, saying that a mosque would be provocative, offensive and wrong.

[…]

Naughtie: Which leaves the writer Sam Lipsyte looking out to America from New York, wondering what on earth he can do, and dreaming.

Lipsyte: Sure, is there [sic] a lot of tittering and grousing and sort of blanket dismissal that there could be anything but hate in the Tea Party, and I gotta say that what, y’know, their presentation lends itself to that conclusion. And at my most despairing moments I too have that sense of why can’t New York just be its own country.

Judging by the latest poll for the New York Times, Lipsyte’s dream utopia could only be realised if they deported more than half the people (via Newsbusters):

Two-thirds of New York City residents want a planned Muslim community center and mosque to be relocated to a less controversial site farther away from ground zero in Lower Manhattan, including many who describe themselves as supporters of the project, according to a New York Times poll…

Over all, 50 percent of those surveyed oppose building the project two blocks north of the World Trade Center site, even though a majority believe that the developers have the right to do so. Thirty-five percent favor it.

Opposition is more intense in the boroughs outside Manhattan — for example, 54 percent in the Bronx — but it is even strong in Manhattan, considered a bastion of religious tolerance, where 41 percent are against it.

And yet BBC correspondents such as Naughtie, and Hilary Andersson, prefer to give the impression that such opposition is the sole preserve of a scary, reactionary right-wing Tea Party movement.

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"A BIT OF THE OTHER"

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From a discussion about crime, punishment and rehabilitation on Kate Silverton’s Radio Five Live show this morning:

Laurence Lee (solicitor for Jon Venables): It goes back in my opinion to maybe the sixties, lack of parental discipline. I don’t want to sound too right-wing here…

Silverton: No, carry on because we all get accused of being too left-wing here so we like a bit of the other.

Yeah, a “bit” being the operative word. Apart from Lee, who felt the need to apologise for sounding right-wing, Silverton’s other guests were The Guardian’s chief political correspondent Nick Watt, leftie blogger Sunny Hundal and, for the second week running, leftie lawyer Philippe Sands. And people have the nerve to talk about left-wing bias. As Beeboidal says in the comments: “Kate take a look at your programme today and tell me if the accusers might just have a point.”

Silverton’s programme was followed by the first in a new series of 7 Day Sunday which, for once, did try “a bit of the other” by including in its guest line-up Toby Young of the Telegraph and Spectator. I only caught some of it but what I did hear was a definite improvement on the last time I listened.

Perhaps I should do one of these about a production meeting for Kate Silverton’s show.

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