Author Archives: Ed Thomas

The fightback continues… against Boris

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The BBC is leading the way in blunting the Conservatives’ revival with this special coverage of… well, what exactly about Ray Lewis? Headlined “Mayor’s aide in sex claims enquiry” it’s never clear what the sex claims are in fact. The article is filled with something else on the financial side apparently pursued by the oh-so-upright Church of England back in the 90’s. It’s basically a mess of conflation. The usual suspects, the rat pack of journos, can be heard on the BBC’s televised clip from Deputy Mayor Ray’s press conference- Jon Snow et al getting very snooty indeed. Boris is getting a going-over and the BBC is desperate to be in the vanguard.

I didn’t notice this level of zeal, or even any interest at all, in the case against Lee Jasper.

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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.

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Mr Mote’s Objection

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Independent MEP Ashley Mote has written to the President of the European Investment Bank questioning that organisation’s issuing of soft loans to the BBC. He claims this has led the BBC to breach their charter and gives a few examples. Read the whole thing, but here is Mr Mote’s selection:


1. Listeners were invited to nominate the one piece of legislation they would most like to be repealed. The European Communities Act 1972, which took the UK in to what was then the European Community, was far ahead of all other nominations. The result of the poll was never broadcast.

2. The BBC’s director general Mark Thompson admitted to the Daily Mail a lack of objective coverage and “serious flaws” in BBC coverage of EU matters. Nothing noticeable has since been done to improve the situation.

3. The BBC Trust tells me in writing it has nothing to do with the EU, later publishes an annual report entitled “Forging the Union” directly contradicting the fact, and has only last month been quoted on the BBC itself as “representing licence-payers”! Opaque, if not downright deceitful.

4. Within days of the first EIB loan the BBC’s then Economics Editor broadcast a series of interviews and news items from around the EU about the prospects for the euro. Balanced and objective they were not. They were so embarrassingly deferential that any news editor worthy of the name would have binned them without a second thought.

5. During the signing of the Nice Treaty, within the hearing of many potential interviewees from the UK, the BBC producer on site instructed his crew not to record or report the significant demonstrations against the treaty going on all around them. Opposition was quite literally whitewashed from the screens of British viewers, whose money funds the EU and your bank in the first place.

6. Jonathon Chapman, described at the time as a senior BBC World News Reporter, told the Malta Press Club in March 2004 that “The BBC’s job is to reflect the European perspective…and make the news less sceptical. That is why the BBC has such a large bureau in Brussels”.


On the other hand, I would just add one of my favourite little lyrics:

“You cannot hope to bribe or twist, Thank God! the British journalist But, seeing what the man will do unbribed, there’s no occasion to”

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Knockabout liberalism

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The liberal assumptions that govern the BBC’s output can be seen in the following two articles here and here.

In the first Robert Piggot begins his article on Anglicans and their splits:

“Word has got about that traditionalist Anglicans have something against gay people – and that is what is driving the Communion towards disintegration.

Of course some of them might not like homosexual people, but, as they never tire of pointing out, that is not what this historic rift is about.”

So, in an ironic sort of way, he concedes that there may be more to the Anglican conservatve position than pure bigotry- as they “never tire of saying”.

Matt Frei meanwhile is one of those whose inability to overcome his innate prejudices is almost comically obvious. America, he says while reporting the mourning for Tim Russert “likes a good yarn and here they still appreciate good journalists as master story tellers.”

This fondness for a good yarn (as opposed to the more adult and rigorous reality that Frei deals in) sets them apart from the rest of the world who are more firmly “weary of “the media””. All well and good, but did Frei ever ask himself just how it is that the only major media networks that have a modicum of independence are all Western? People in China, in Africa, in South America haven’t really had the time to become weary of the media. Having some to speak of might be a novelty in some cases.

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I am not normally someone who fulminates about the BBC…

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writes Daniel Finkelstein.

No, but we’ll listen when he does– thanks also to David Preiser who has highlighted this in the comments sections:

John Simpson hearts Mugabe

I have watched Simpson for a long time and he does seem to have a soft spot for dictators. He was once rather chummy with some of Saddam’s ministers and expressed a “sneaking regard for Saddam“.

Now he has some rather bizarre things to say about the political situation in Zimbabwe, and presents it all more as though Mugabe had won a game of chess than battered his opposition with violence.

Simpson doubtless thinks he’s being rather clever to see Mugabe’s power-politics through the haze of violence, but it comes across as apologism. One of the big things we should keep in mind regarding dictators is the mythology that surrounds them and protects them- it’s that that Mr Simpson is reporting, rather than the squalid reality. He admires Mugabe’s mythmaking, instead of reporting the reality on the ground.

Hat tip to Iain Dale too.

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Nothing to see here- routine BBC race policing…

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If anyone wonders why Boris Johnson allowed the resignation of his advisor James McGrath over alleged racist comments one ought to consider the blatant misrepresenation which the BBC made in their initial report of the affair. In the poisonous media environment we live in, most often cheer-led by the BBC, potentially racist comments will be misrepresented maliciously- indeed they will be fabricated where it is possible.

The BBC reported, in quotes, that McGrath said “Black people who didn’t like it here should go back”. Ignore personal feelings for a moment- consider that this doesn’t even sound like a quote but was reported as one in the sensitive conditions we live in.

In fact they changed their article, without admitting their “error”, and said that (as was closer to the fact) ‘“Responding to a claim that some black people might leave the UK if Mr Johnson became mayor, James McGrath said: “Let them go if they don’t like it here.”‘. This “error” would probably not have come to light were it not for the observation and screen save of Tony Sharp.

Though not as bad, the latest BBC version is disingenuous- article here. The question posed by the journalist Mark Wadsworth was referring to a previous comment from Darkus Howe about whether older Carribean migrants might leave if Boris Johnson won the Mayoralty. Now this a detailed scenario in fact, and the BBC had (and still have really) wilfully simplified it.

Of course the fact was that this was a journalistic “sting” operation by a moronic sub-public interest leftist. The BBC fully approves.

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Smells like communism.

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The BBC have been extremely pleased to report the end of the monarchy in Nepal. I almost posted on this general theme before, but today’s article struck me as too nauseating to pass up.

Quite a lot rests on the link leading to the article- it is advertised as one of those “funny stories” the BBC uses to drum up traffic. However I was disturbed by the link line “Smelly Nepalese cavalry faces relocation”.

It is in fact the King’s Household Cavalry that’s been given its marching orders and it could be pretty serious thing, while the BBC seems to be toeing the communist line that “waste matter from the horses gives off such a bad smell that people working near the stables have to close their windows or flee to other offices.”

This is not strictly the government’s argument, but the line of a blatant proxy for it pursuing his “private” action through the “supreme” court with remarkable speed.

Laughably, the BBC do explore the reasons behind the move, but in this analysis accept the primary received version that “It has been ordered to relocate for environmental reasons.”

Well, horseshit.

Equally malodorous is the frankly squirm-inducing whiff coming from the BBC’s unexamined report of the plaintiff’s point that “it was especially off-putting for judges currently undergoing a gender equality workshop”.

That’s the kind of thing the BBC so want to believe that it will not merit questioning until anti-communist demonstrators are dying in the streets two years hence.

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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.

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All the bad news…

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I don’t know whether the BBC will devote a report to the fact that May has been among the least violent of the Iraq war- it could be confirmed as the producing the lowest US casualty figures depending on events today and tomorrow. I don’t know if they’ll register that the six month figure for that is the lowest for any period since the fighting began in 2003 source. Iraq could be arriving at peace.

What I do know is that the BBC will report this against the backdrop of bad news, pre-announced bad news– covered in some depth. Somehow the BBC’s attitude for statistics tends only to work in selected directions.

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General BBC-related comment thread!

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183 Comments

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.