Boston bombing update

(Updates added below)

Here’s how BBC Radio Five Live’s 1pm news bulletin dealt with the Boston bombing on Tuesday 16 April:

Jonathan Marcus: “The United States has a very large and well-developed group of radical extremists of their own. People I suppose you would categorise as being on the far-right, people who are opposed to federal authority, particularly enraged by things like gun control and immigration and so on.”

Suspect number 1 is now dead, and number 2 – still on the run at the time of writing – has been widely identified on social media as Sunil Tripathi, a Brown University student who has been missing for some weeks. Here’s Sunil:

sunil_boston

I’ve a got a sneaking feeling that speculation about the political motivation for the bombings might play a lesser role on the BBC from now on.

Also this from NBC:

Law enforcement sources said the suspects have international links and have been in the country legally for about a year.

UPDATE. Looks like I could have fallen into the speculation trap:

UPDATE 2. NBC reports:

Both of the suspects are brothers of Chechen origin and have been in the U.S. at least a year as legal permanent residents, authorities tell NBC News. The suspect on the run is believed to be Dzhokar Tsarnaev, 19, NBC News’ sources say.

POLLARD TRANSCRIPTS

The BBC has released transcripts of the Pollard inquiry on Savile, but hasn’t made it easy for those trying to find out the details.


(above image via Lucy Manning)

The Telegraph and Guardian are liveblogging the release of the transcripts. Add your thoughts here.

HUGH SYKES: EUROSCEPTICS = RATS

Commenting on the proposed EU referendum, senior BBC foreign correspondent Hugh Sykes makes known his views of the better-off-out brigade. A taste of things to come from the BBC?

Update. Twitter has just changed the way tweets can be embedded meaning that things don’t work as before. Therefore here’s a good old-fashioned screengrab for the full exchange between Sykes and me.

Update 2. “scrupulously objective” :

BBC : £5,000 for Tranny Comedy

So Fawlty Towers gets censored but the BBC puts up £5,000 to promote transgender comedy (ht DJ):

The Trans Comedy Award opens up an opportunity for the transgender community and members of the general public to portray transgender characters and the transgender experience in an affirming manner.

We are looking for original comedy sitcoms, comedy dramas or sketch shows featuring transgender characters and/or themes and written for television. An award of up to a maximum of £5000 will be shared between the selected writer(s) in order that they may develop a pilot or taster.

Hey, let’s do the show right here!

FX Doorbell

Pizza Guy: Hello, did someone order a pizza?

Tranny Suzanne: Yes that’s for me and my friend Tranny Julie. But we wanted extra sausage.

Pizza Guy: Looks like you two have enough sausage already!

Tranny Julie: Ooh, cheeky! Get your gob round this while I knock off an Observer column.

Pizza Guy: So you were both trannies all along?

Tranny Suzanne: Yes. And now we have our own shit BBC sitcom, a bit like Miranda only somewhat more shemale.

(I do apologise – unexpectedly found a bottle of Glenmorangie in my cellar this evening and I’m bit off my head)

BBC BUSINESS JOURNO AGREES COVERAGE OF OBAMA “NOT JOURNALISM”

FT journalist Janan Ganesh is not impressed with the fawning media coverage of Obama. The BBC’s Dominic Laurie agrees and concedes that the BBC does not escape blame.

Ministry of Truth: Benghazi was a “huge issue” in US election after all.

On this morning’s Today programme BBC Washington correspondent Paul Adams admitted that Benghazi was a “huge issue” in the US election. Funny that, because at the time the BBC clearly thought it was a non-story, best ignored. During the final weeks of the election campaign, as more and more evidence emerged showing contradictions in official claims over what really happened and Republican politicians demanded to know the truth, the staff at the BBC’s Washington bureau decided to bury the story and reported none of the new developments.

But today Adams told us that Benghazi had after all been a big deal during the campaign, explaining that the Republicans hoped “it would undermine Barack Obama”. And there’s the reason the BBC’s pro-Obama editors and journalists ignored the story during those final weeks of the campaign – they had no desire to give any publicity to something that could help the GOP against their guy.

Today programme 16/11/2012 (approx 44.30 in)

Sarah Montague: Now David Petraeus is up before Congress today on another matter isn’t he?

Paul Adams: He certainly is and this is of rather more concern, actually, to most politicians here in Washington and that is what exactly he knew about the attack on the US consulate building and CIA annex in the Libyan city of Benghazi which resulted in the death of the American ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. Now this was a huge issue that the Republicans were running with before the election in the hope that it would undermine Barack Obama. They are still pursuing it. There is a lot of anger about what the Republicans regard as essentially a cover up, an attempt by the administration – various bits of the administration – to portray this as simply a mob attack in the wake of publication of that notorious internet video about Mohammed rather than call it what it was which was an organised terrorist attack by groups allied to al-Qaeda. And they also want to know exactly what the CIA was doing there in Benghazi at that annex and what steps were taken to try and relieve the situation once that attack began.

Of course Petraeus is big news now, and the BBC can no longer pretend there’s nothing to report. Hence the whiplash-inducing reassessment of recent history.

A few days before the election I asked BBC foreign correspondent Hugh Sykes (who wasn’t covering the US elections) why the BBC had been ignoring the latest Benghazi developments. He said it was “odd” if the BBC was indeed not reporting it:

By the time of our exchange the BBC had pretty much given up reporting the story. “Odd” indeed.

And while I’m on a Twitter splurge, BBC newsreader Alice Arnold was on holiday in America with her partner Clare Balding when the election was on. She played golf with a Texan guy – good company, apart from his politics:

Phrases you won’t find BBC journalists tweeting: “He was a Democrat but apart from that…” “He was an Obama supporter but apart from that…”

And here’s BBC news producer Richard Bowen (ex-Washington, now London) exchanging a little joke with a friend on the day after the election:

The ultimate horror – a Republican voter! Still, could be worse – the kid might grow up to be a BBC journalist.

Spinning the US jobless figures

When the US jobless figures came out last month showing a drop in unemployment, this was the BBC’s headline:

Today’s figures show the unemployment rate has gone back up to 7.9%, so this time the BBC headline concentrates on jobs created instead:

Note the phrase I’ve highlighted above. A few minutes after taking that screengrab I noticed the page had been updated (although the timestamp remained the same):

Someone had decided that even mentioning the rise in the jobless rate on the main page was too negative. To discover that the unemployment rate has gone up one now has to click through to the story. The BBC will do anything it can to make things seem better for Obama.

UPDATE. The Commentator spotted the spin too.

UPDATE 2. I’ve noticed another change. The original opening line for the article was as follows:

The US economy added 171,000 new jobs in October, which was more than had been expected.

By the second draft a word had been added:

The US economy added 171,000 new jobs in October, which was much more than had been expected.

(Via Newssniffer)

Not very subtle. By election day there’s every chance the BBC will be spinning this as the most awesome set of job figures in, like, ever.

British-funded Super PAC produces campaign ad for Obama

A recent Washington Post poll found that nearly 3/4 of Americans support voter ID laws. The old, the poor and non-whites all back the measures:

Moreover, big majorities of those whom critics see as bearing the brunt of the laws are supportive of them, including about three-quarters of seniors and those with household incomes under $50,000 and two-thirds of non-whites.

In the Democrat state of Illinois even the president was required to produce a photo ID before he could vote this month. You won’t learn about any of this from watching the BBC’s take on the issue. Produced by Franz Strasser, this 2 minute film is a piece of blatant partisan propaganda. With the election less than a week away, we appear to be at the stage where the BBC is now acting as a Democrat Super PAC producing campaign ads for Obama, all funded by the British licence payer.