Author Archives: Ed Thomas

General BBC-related comment thread!

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Please use this thread for comments about the BBC’s current programming and activities. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog – scroll down for new topic-specific posts. N.B. This is not an invitation for general off-topic comments, rants or chit-chat. Thoughtful comments are encouraged. Comments may also be moderated. Any suggestions for stories that you might like covered would be appreciated! It’s your space, use it wisely.

I know you will love this

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HERE! – Mandelson (Mandy) in cosy sofa chat on BBC news programme declares support for BBC contestant on BBC show (Come Dancing redux); confesses (shock!) to envy at Sergeant’s success. Now that really is a major story worthy of frontpage note and not at all an indication of an inbred backscratching culture and the unfair hybridisation of commercial with state interests.

Quote of the Day:

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“Look, we know we keep going on about the pants lefty tax-funded BBC, but we’ve just had enough. On a personal level we are seriously thinking about joing the telly tax rebels who refuse to pay (especially now we know the BBC has backed away from prosecuting). And on a national political level, there have to be consequences for the way they systematically undermine our future well-being by supporting Big Government Labour and bashing any Tory who even hints at believing in smaller government.”

Tyler from Burning our Money takes on the BBC’s coverage of George Osborne. Brilliantly. Hope you enjoy by reading on here.

Get Osborne! (save Brown)

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Looking at the many valuable comments in the latest open thread, it’s amazing how many ways the BBC have found to get at George Osborne in recent days. Speaking from what I have seen, it was noticeable how Marr stacked his progamme this morning with better-then-average lefties like Doug Alexander and Dr John Reid (plus Jarvis Cocker for leftist chic), to foreground a lengthy interview with Osborne which began with the line from Marr: “Do you think your job is on the line this weekend?”

Sums it all up really- not the reality, that is, but the BBC’s preferred narrative. Alexander- the Secretary of State for International Development- was there to demonstrate how (in accordance with the Brown narrative) the crisis is global, first, and we are the victims, second, while John Reid was there to show how he was burying the hatchet and uniting behind Brown and to blame Osborne for not doing the same.

In fact Osborne performed superbly on the Marr programme, so despite Marr’s repeated attempts to bring up the world crisis in defending Brown, Osborne swept past him. Yet is he actually winning this argument? Difficult to say, because the BBC has so relentlessly depicted him as on the defensive, the “George Osborne under attack” meme. This has been partly justified by bringing up a so-called convention regarding commenting on Sterling which, as the commenters at B-BBC have noted, is bogus. Meanwhile David in the comments points to this article as a related note, where Brown “regrets” Osborne’s comments highlighting the risk to the pound. Surely in fact Brown regrets that his economic incompetence is being exposed? It is no good his shaking his head over that unpublic-spirited Osborne- it is Brown who has been frantically trying to look competent in situations he has been instrumental in creating. So far he has done only the most obvious things, like bail out faltering banks, huddle with world leaders and pronounce “routemaps” as he poses for photos.

Earlier I saw an BBC online article where Gordon was shown in a decidedly odd picture (actually used above) at the G20 meeting towering over the Russian President, the Russian’s eyes upraised to meet Gordon’s (ie. where on earth was Gordon standing in relation to Medvedev? [Update: apparently Medvedev is unusually small. This does not explain the particular photo with Gordon facing the camera and Medvedev looking up to his eyes, or indeed the very choice of this photo- why these two men and only them? Generally I think the BBC’s photo-story-telling is abysmal]). In a more sensible world Brown wouldn’t even have been able to take the reins of the Government a year and a half ago because his incompetence over boom and bust would have already been made apparent by a sentient fourth estate (Labour’s favourite bank Northern Rock was melting away as they feted Gordon). Instead, those who have the temerity to question the inevitably compromised economic wisdom of Gordon Brown are put in the media dock by the BBC-led media.

Meanwhile, Guido points to yet another angleof BBC bias in favour of Brown.

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BBC’s currency fading

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An interesting couple of links for you: Iain Dale doesn’t mention the BBC but says
“The value of the Pound is about to become the big story in town. And if not, why not?”


John Redwood meanwhile, names and shames the BBC as the culprit behind the non-story. He says the BBC are misrepresenting the credit-crunch to present the situation in Britain as having nothing to do with domestic factors (aka the lengthy incumbency in Downing Street of one Gordon Brown).

It’s the double standards that get you.

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Obama’s set-piece press conference debut contained three nice little nuggets- Obama referred to former First Lady Nancy Reagan as being into a “seances thing”. He referred to himself as a “mulatto” “mutt”, and he said that people were more interested in his new dog than in his policies. All this was there, accompanied by the anxious looks from the assembled Obama team members, yet the BBC headlined their story “impressive debut” and excerpted for video the deliberate joke that Obama planted about the “serious news” of the family’s planned dog. Have you noticed how quite a few of Obama’s joke moments don’t seem intentional? Just saying. If George Bush had said that his dogs were more interesting than his policies…

But actually the double standards I had in mind wasn’t a comparison with the coverage that has been habitually afforded to GWB’s “gaffes”. It was with the treatment of Sarah Palin whose brisk on the fly conference with the press in Alaska was reduced by the Beeb to comments about the “jerks” who were criticising her. You can get much more video here than the BBC offers. In fact the comments were contextualised in a fairly substantial response to a precise question about anonymous allegations against her. These were not criticsms but allegations which she refuted. The Beeb’s treatment made her look intemperate and peremptory where actually she was thorough and open in her response. But by cut, cut, cutting away at that response, and tacking on another, the BBC shaped and ran with the story about Sarah hitting back at “‘jerk’ critics”.

Update: you might like to check out this audio interview with Palin giving her point of view most completely.

The One campaign

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The BBC’s latest entry from their journalists following the US elections tells us far more about the BBC than it does about the campaign. Gavin Hewitt’s (following Obama- did we scare off Justin Webb?) is a long and lyrical piece including lines like the following:

“What I can attest to, however, is enthusiasm. The kind of enthusiasm that keeps you standing in a queue at a polling station in Franklin county in Ohio today for five hours. The enthusiasm that persuades you to bring your children with you on a beautiful autumn day to the polling station, knowing they will be bored.”

Matt Price meanwhile, following McCain (guess who the senior journalist is between Price and Hewitt so who got the short BBC straw) offers a terse little piece. Its BBC headline was promising- “breaking stereotypes” – so I assumed something a bit different from the usual snide comments. In fact it sets up a video which is pure Obama commercial. It accuses those who are against Obama of racism. It says McCain simply favours the rich. The BBC journalist who is supposed to cover McCain puts forward the argument for Obama from the mouth an apparent middle-American he’s come across. He claims it is “what this election is all about”.

Two BBC journalists, apparently balanced missions. One, and only the One’s, side of the story.

Update: Price video here. “I have a lot of friends that… they’re ignorant, they’re not going to vote for him because he’s black”. Oh yes, breaking stereotypes with the McCain campaign indeed

Consistent double standards

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She was fooled. She was duped. Sarah Palin gets the full unquotemarked treatment after listening politely to an imposter’s ramblings. I don’t know when it’s right to switch off a call in disgust, myself. Perhaps if the caller had made remarks about having sex with Palin’s daughter, eh? In the end Palin recognised instantly that she was talking to a radio DJ, and asked too quickly for the DJ’s own mind about their station’s listener call back facility (full audio, not on the BBC, here). The BBC meanwhile should know this only cheapens politics and public life, and that listening politely is a virtue not a vice. I can’t say I can fully defend Palin in this instance, but actually I don’t know what it must be like in her position with all the demands on her time, to be patient and polite and diplomatic in all manner of circumstances. What I do believe is that the BBC is selling this story with intemperate unqualified demeaning language which they would certainly not use of The One.

Another note about these consistent double standards- Martha Kearney rejoices herein a gotcha interview with George Osborne. She says, with a BBC hack’s usual mental rigour:

“What took me by surprise was George Osborne’s immediate admission that he had made a mistake.

I cannot recall the last time a politician did that (without being on the verge of resigning).”

Well let me help the dismal memory of this hackette out a bit- let me take you all the way back to, well, April, and to an obscure and unknown politician called Gordon Brown. I am sure he must have resigned after admitting mistakes? Otherwise we’d know that Martha Kearney’s memory was worth about as much as the BBC’s broadcasting standards and indeed their commitment to impartiality.

Open Thread

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General BBC-related comment thread! Please use this thread for comments about the BBC’s current programming and activities. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog – scroll down for new topic-specific posts. N.B. This is not an invitation for general off-topic comments, rants or chit-chat. Thoughtful comments are encouraged. Comments may also be moderated. Any suggestions for stories that you might like covered would be appreciated! It’s your space, use it wisely

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.