Author Archives: Ed Thomas

‘Note to Biased BBC, you are getting under their skin. You will be pleased to know you are the recognised enemy.’

Well, funnily enough I feel the same way about them.

Guido Fawkes was at the opening night of some We Media thing which the BBC is hosting, and has observations to offer.

There are of course many reasons for not resisting the temptation to become an enemy of the BBC, but one among them is the routine bias– bias like this incident noticed by Ian Dale.

When the media critique a group or institution they tend to do so with a kind of coordination: the BBC becomes all uncoordinated when it comes to Nu-Labour scandals, as Stephen Pollard notes.

Recently I was looking into the worst local government corruption scandal of all time: the Donnygate affair. Searching the BBC produced no ‘Q & A’ article, and the article which reported the conviction of coucillor Peter Birks failed to mention that he was A LABOUR COUNCILLOR- which is rather unlike their approach to a rather less seriously indicted Conservative from the same town- article here. Donnygate was a Nu-Labour scandal (in the sense, especially, that Nu-Lab was a cunning laundering of Old Labour money- metaphorically speaking!!!) through and through, and yet commentary of what it implied about Nu-Labour strategy/culture, occurring as it did in the constituency of one- friend of John Prescott- Rosie Winterton, was not forthcoming.

Well, political winds blow where they will, but the BBC is shelter from the storm for a certain pink tinged political party.

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Guido is his usual kind self to Nick Robinson over the genial political editor’s apparent defensiveness concerning the Prescott-monster with his Clintonesque escapades. Just as we are, Guido is

‘willing to give Nick Robinson the benefit of the doubt when he says “I’m not covering up for Prescott!”‘

The choice presented is this: either Robinson knows things and isn’t prepared to enlighten his employers, the public, or he doesn’t know about what many, many people are now saying is Prescott’s egregious philandering on public time with public money. After all, Robinson is the BBC’s political editor.

Dishonest or incompetent? Or perhaps just nannying. The old dilemmas we wrestle with concerning the Beeb. Guido puts it very well.

Paul Reynolds has an article about terrorism experts ‘floundering about’ in an attempt to understand suicide bombers.

He seems to think they are missing something:

‘I felt that the conference rather ignored some of the political influences on suicide bombers, like the world events -Afghanistan, Iraq, the Middle East, Chechnya, Bosnia and others – that provide a basic motivation for many of them.’

Well I am quite prepared to accept that they are floundering, and missing something- the question is, what? Since, for instance, the West’s assistance for Muslims in Kosovo and Indonesia after the tsunami seemed to cause no softening of the “militant” rhetoric I would be inclined to agree with Peter C. Glover:

‘It is amazing how even the most intelligent and understanding among us sometimes refuse to countenance the plainest of answers when it comes to issues of faith. The root cause here is Islam’s teachings. As I have shown repeatedly on these pages Mohammed taught and the Koran and the Traditions teach openly that murder, violence is a perfectly Allah-given path to subjugating all other peoples, cultures and faiths. Moderate Muslims may well deny it by their overlooking of the innumerable passages that teach these things – something we should be thankful for (and encourage)…But it doesn’t change the reality. The ‘radicals’ not the ‘moderates’ are the ones living out true Islam. Until we grasp this key fact and understanding – as hard as President Bush and others find it – we are never really going to ‘get it’ entirely.’

Certainly political events have their impact, but the interpretation of them is the key, and that interpretation is provided by the extreme suspicion, negativity and contempt which can be drawn with a far amount of ease from the pages of the Koran.

In related matters, Ian Dale notes the BBC drawing back from calling terrorists terrorists, again.

I should add, I think, that over the course of time I’ve grown to like Paul Reynolds and his well-meaning work- aided no doubt by the personal encounters enabled by blogging and his own rather generous-spirited approach to us. Therefore I tend to see this kind of analytical weakness as a symptom of BBC malaise rather than a cause of it, in distinction to other BBC men.

Our own Laban Tall, meanwhile, notices another whitewashing of religion. I dare say he may post about it here sometime, but here is a link to the post, painfully funnily titled ‘Mr Clarke – Over Here !’. And here is a taste:

‘“Abdul El-Gharras, 31, was obsessed with decapitation and had downloaded videos of al Qaeda beheadings before murdering Marvin Gentles last June in an argument over crack cocaine, the Old Bailey criminal court heard.”

(Reuters)

Presumably a foreign national then – and with an unhealthy interest in the more robust manifestations of the Religion of Peace. Can’t understand why the BBC should have missed that’

BBC article here.

, Guido Fawkes has a bombshell to give to Nick Robinson:

‘Nick Robinson blogs that Prescott’s mistress was “a bombshell” to his family and colleagues. Bullshit Nick. It was hardly a bombshell to the lobby or his colleagues. Trevor Kavanagh admits he knew of Prezza’s serial adultery, half the less connected Westminster village from the lowliest research assistant and up knew.

If the political editor of the BBC finds this a bombshell he is either being disingenuous or is in the wrong job.

Indeed.

Update 29/04: Bombshell defused. Not convincingly though.

Sorry, that should be ‘needs reporting’, but with the BBC’s reporting recently I seem to be experiencing tense confusion. The BBC report, most strangely, ‘US economy kept growing, Fed says’ in this report, and in the headline leading to it.

Now, this is weird, because journalistic practise is generally to use the present continuous when some event is up to the present: US economy ‘keeps growing’, or maybe present simple ‘growth continues’. They could use present perfect or present perfect continuous, ‘has grown’, ‘has been growing’, but the past continuous is a definite no-no. Yet they use it, twice. Why?

Well, when you read the account it’s hedged about with qualifications and scepticism- they have sought out, quite unusually it seems to me, numerous banks’ reports to scale down the positive data. In fact, as Bloomberg reports, in what amounts to a complete inversion of the BBC report (positive data up front),

‘The world’s biggest economy probably expanded at a 4.9 percent pace in the first quarter, the fastest since the third quarter of 2003’

Well, why the BBC negativity? The US economy has performed well in difficult times, during time of war and terrorism, and is now, currently, as far as we can see, performing better.

Maybe the answer is in ideology. Take this hysterical (not to say silly) report from Matt Frei. Anyone who states his opinions so extremely must be forcing the editors who sanction him into a corner. That’s not to discount the fact that they probably agree with him, operating within the same bubble.

Here’s how Frei introduces his article:

‘Petrol is the new indispensable staple and the $3 gallon is to America what the over-priced potato once was to Ireland.

Americans are very sensitive to the cost of filling up
It is causing a torrent of suffering and heartache.

Bewailed in country songs and popular ballads, it is forcing ordinary people to do extraordinary things – like car pooling, riding the bike to work, selling their second SUV, or doing a “walk-thru” at their local burger joint instead of a “drive-thru”.’

Now check out what a very clever and attuned American, Glenn Reynolds, has to say, quoting from Forbes’ Nick Schultz:

‘the Associated Press reports that “surveys indicate drivers won’t be easing off on their mileage, using even more gas than a year ago.” Now why is that? If prices are rising, one would expect consumers would use less.

The answer might be in some of the long-term trends that the short-term media lens is too cramped to see. Energy prices may be rising, but energy itself is much less important to consumers and to the overall economy than it once was.’

It surely tallies better with the positive economic data, and with the fact that petrol prices have risen from a high base in recent times.

But the problem is that Frei has set out to put the boot in to the President, and he distorts his case to do so. See the way he drags in the tangentally related issue of Iraq and makes a horribly emotionalised point:

Back to the old old story again. With such extreme, and, one has to say, culpable subjectivity, it’s not surprising the news follows suit, now, is it?

I only ask because the BBC have reported ‘clashes’ between rival Palestinian ‘students’. Obviously the Beeb had checked out their enrollment details, or perhaps one could say it’s obvious they were just undertaking a practical module. The fact that the BBC describe the violence thus:

‘throwing stones and homemade explosives and exchanging gunfire’

suggests that it couldn’t really have been a harder term for the poor undergrads.

They then say, of the two main terrorist organisations in the area:

‘they were ordering their followers to bring the tension to an end and that a committee would be formed to resolve any future problems.’

Why such mealy-mouthedness, Beebies? What’s with this ‘tension’ involving explosions and firefights? You were only too happy to host a debate about civil war in Iraq.

There are so many questions unanswered by this report it’s really hard to call it a news report. Here’s my sample:

1)What sense is there in calling the masked (presumably, if the picture alongside means anything) partakers of violence ‘students’. Was it just the locality of the violence? The picture attached, by the way, seems distinctly unhelpful in supporting the sense of describing them as ‘students’.

2) What kind of ‘hurt’ was suffered by the victims of this violence involving bullets and explosives? Did they all just shoot to miss? This point relates to my general body count scepticism, since reports of deaths strongly influence the news agenda.

3)How can the Beeb call violence involving guns and bombs ‘tension’? Is there simply ‘tension’ in Iraq then? Can it be reasonable to view a gun battle as revealing how ‘suspicious’ one side is of another? Alan Johnston also describes the potential for future similar ‘friction’.

4)I notice at the end of the article that it is reported that 15 had been wounded. My point about the nature of their injuries, and whether any- or who knows, many?- of them led to fatalities, still stands, but I read at the beginning of the article about how ‘several people have been hurt’. I do not consider the two statements to be compatible, and the intro is therefore misleading and wrong.

5) Just what is a ‘shadow security force’?

It seems to me the BBC are in a twist over their reporting of the situation among the Palestinians. The fact is that civil war and ongoing violence would be a much more effective description of the Palestinian situation than it would of Iraq. The BBC have got their descriptors mixed up (deliberately and accidentally, I would say, in some ratio or other), and the result is reporting stasis where their journalism means almost nothing.

Concerning the recent terrorist murders in Israel, Adloyada asks

‘Now why would the BBC report it that way?’

While DFH asks why it is that the Iranian president’s comments about Israel are being buried by the BBC, among other Iran related matters.

Meanwhile, I ask why on earth it is that the Beeb have put themselves at the forefront of the charge against Rumsfeld. Again and again the same dreary story designed to push Bush into a corner, which is where the BBC like to see him. Notice how it’s regularly ‘Bush’ who defends one of his own, whereas a wide range of attackers is entertained and the Beeb basically ignore the many who weigh in on the President’s side.

If like me you find this politicking very wearying, you may well enjoy this parody site.

Oh, and another question for the Beeb concerning the prominence given to some Greenpeace Chernobyl activism is asked here.

I was interested to find people in the comments compiling lists of ‘BBC issues’.

I think the following is a nice example of the BBC’s sly slanty issued-based bias.

This article might seem fairly innocuous, business as usual for Caroline Wyatt reporting French affairs.

It’s got a fashionable feminist slant, after all, questioning patriarchal values blah blah. Typical BBC really. But notice that the photo appears to have little to do with the article. Who is she? She’s not even mentioned in the main text, this ‘Segolene Royal’ (nice name, baby, btw).

To find out you have to click here, but before you do take note of the final line of the aforementioned Wyatt article ‘Perhaps, then, this issue will have to wait until France has a Madame le President?’

Then, in the other article, we have,

‘on the left, MP Segolene Royal, the Socialist in stilettos, a regional leader who is hotly tipped as France’s first real potential Madame la Presidente, overtaking her piqued male colleagues from nowhere.

The idea of a Sarko-Sego battle has gripped the nation’s imagination, with Madame Royal now the cover-woman of the moment, her elegant features smiling from the front pages of four of the country’s leading news magazines this week.

Her features have for once displaced those of Mr Sarkozy from the news magazines’ glossy covers, though no doubt he is planning a rapid return next week.’

So that’s what we needed to know about ‘French politician Segolene Royal [who] is seen as a role model by some’, as her glam portrait was identified in the caption to the feminist article. The connections are cleared up, where in the first article taken alone they are subliminal.

I also noticed a to me quite foolish-sounding word, ‘cover-woman’, where ‘cover-girl’ used to be accepted usage. It’s foolish because contradictory really; and it’s not even as if we have a notion of ‘cover man’. This went hand in hand with Sarkozy (the likely main rival all of a sudden) depicted as at the height of vanity. It’s not as if women are entirely singled out by language generally. There are ‘pretty boys’ and ‘pin-up boys’ and quite a lot besides- so no excuse really for C.W.

All in all, sly, deceitful, sexist, politicised, and well, quite biased. Nice work Ms Wyatt!

David Vance intends to tell the BBC a thing or two, to their faces:

‘I believe the License Fee should be scrapped forthwith and ALL subsidy to the BBC ended. The BBC must stand, or fall, on it’s own two financial feet. As far as I am concerned state broadcasting is anachronistic and totalitarian – time to end it.’

A merry thread ensued.

: BBC gives Greg Palast a presenter’s spot on its Latin America news section (should fit in nicely with Gavin Esler’s approach eh?).

Perhaps you know little about Mr Palast, but we at B-BBC remember him.

He’s the man who exulted in Ronald Reagan’s death.

Produces extreme Bush lied theories.

Maintained that that Kerry won in 2004

And now the BBC have given him the task of reporting Hugo Chavez and his ilk. Surprisingly enough, some aren’t happy about that :

‘But Chavez’s sycophants the world over should fear not, for the BBC has come to ‘set the record straight’…’

I sense a little sarcasm in this statement somehow. The last link compares Channel Four News with the BBC’s coverage of Venezuela, and guess which is the more balanced? Just guess.