Author Archives: Kerry B

with which we have been dosed for so long” –how the BBC was described a while back.

“These well-meaning gentlemen of the British Broadcasting Corporation have absolutely no qualifications and no claim to represent British public opinion. They have no right to say that they voice the opinions of English or British people whatever. If anyone can do that it is His Majesty’s government; and there may be two opinions about that. It would be far better to have sharply contrasted views in succession, in alteration, than to have this copious stream of pontifical, anonymous mugwumpery with which we have been dosed for so long.” – Winston Churchill from a speech in the House of Commons, February 22, 1933.

Sounds like Mr Churchill was looking for some kind of “pick-me-up” too. (See below.) (via Andrew Sullivan)

UPDATE: Check out another telling Churchillian quote here just below the item on the BBC, observed to be “in the vanguard of anti-Bush hysteria.”

which is already being used to support the party line of the pro-tyrant left that Iraq is ‘a quagmire’ and and now entering a ‘spiral of violence’–in reference to the latest French pronouncement. (Mr Villepin’s moralising hypocrisy is hard to stomach when some of those missiles killing and maiming Iraqi civilians and coalition soldiers were made in France during the sanctions period.) Though the CIA has consistently got it wrong, the BBC adopts an oddly trusting posture toward the main US intelligence agency (The enemy of my enemy is my friend?).

(see below) may wish to check this regularly for speeding Beebies. CAMERA stands for Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America. (Via The Corner)

for useful news coverage during his Africa travels. Only the Beeb and a “nameless French network” were on offer in Rwanda and Ethiopia.

I give [the BBC] credit for better overall war reporting than we see in the States; but it’s pretty laughably biased. Apparently there was an ANSWER protest here in the US while I was away: watching the BBC, I half expected to come back to find America’s streets in ferment, and civil unrest rising over this war in Iraq we are evidently losing badly. Right. Well, it made for exciting copy, anyway.

So, I suppose there’s some use for overheated reporting after all.

Bernard Goldberg, 28 years with the American TV network, CBS, explains why elitist news organisations like the BBC need help seeing their bias.

They don’t think that their positions on the most controversial issues of our time are liberal positions. They think they’re mainstream positions, because all their friends in the bubble think the same way as they do. They think everything to the right of center is conservative. Correct. And everything to the left of center is moderate and mainstream. That’s how crazy it is.

And that’s why you can go up to these people and say, ‘Well, there’s a liberal bias.’ And they’ll say, ‘No there isn’t. And anybody who says there is, is a conservative ideologue and that’s the only reason they’re saying it.’ They don’t look at themselves because it’s as if you asked a fish what it’s like to be wet all day. And the fish says, ‘What do you mean wet? What’s wet?’ The fish has no concept of wet because he has no other frame of reference. Well, these people live in the same type of environment. And that’s why–that’s why fixing the problem themselves is so incredibly difficult.

Goldberg is interviewed on the CBS-fisking blog RatherBiased. Much of the interview features US news but one will have no difficulty seeing a familiar pattern. (What’s missing is the license fee.) Goldberg was largely frozen out by his former TV newsies after his book Bias was published a few years back. They closed ranks real quick-like. Even Larry King refused to have him on. Bias sold a gazillion copies anyway because it resonated with many Americans. His follow-up to this is Arrogance. Hmmm. I wonder what he’ll name the next one?

Denis Boyles wonders if the BBC might want to spew its newslurry in other direstions.

A report in the Guardian isn’t very encouraging: “Today, a senior BBC news executive will make a controversial case for desanitising the presentation of war on British television. In a speech to a conference of broadcasters in Budapest, Mark Damazer, deputy director of BBC News, will say the current position is a ‘disservice to democracy’.” The problem? Not enough dead people — and, of course, not enough bias. Dear Deputy Director: How about desanitizing the presentation of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism? Or “a certain type of late-term abortion”? Or the effects of hypertaxation on the entrepreneurial spirit? Or how about sanitizing the way the BBC is funded and managed?

Mr Boyles makes an instructive point here. If TV news is to be desanitised, let us hear more about the driving philosophy of islamofascists just as thoroughly as the BBC pursues those “radical republicans” advising President Bush. Just let the truth be told.

if the gun-control lobby had a plan which “backfired”?

, the BBC cauldron continues to bubble and burp with a ‘story’ on Bush administration ‘corruption’. (Hint: if you give to GW’s re-election fund, you’ll be sure to get in on the ground floor in Iraq.) As one aptly named myth-buster notes here, the study on which the ‘story’ is based is just plain horsefeathers.

Here is an email sent to Glenn Reynolds in response to his post on this which encapsulates the kind of frustration and discrediting this kind of BBC messing evokes.

So, I am in Kazakhstan, forced to watch BBC World as because aside from the Cartoon Network it is the only channel in English. And as I am reading Instapundit’s blurb on THE CENTER FOR PUBLIC INTEGRITY, who should appear on TV for an interview but a representative from THE CENTER FOR PUBLIC INTEGRITY. First hardball question from BBC World Anchor : “So this report is

pretty devastating for the US administration, isn’t it ?” More similiarly probing questions follow, all answers sound like ‘blah blah blah Halliburton blah blah blah halliburton’

Having been forced to watch BBC World for two weeks has been a depressing, enligtening experience. I have lived in Europe and was always fortunate enough to be able to switch to something else and not have to watch BBC. Anti-Americanism is all pervasive on this horror of a channel, the only english language news many people get in many parts of the world. I can’t watch it for more than a half hour without some wild anti-american slur, distortion or lie wanting me to throw something at the TV.

The BBC finds this kind of non-story hard to resist as it fits so neatly with its jaded view of American motives in Iraq (or anywhere for that matter). Daniel Drezner and Stuart Buck provide a thorough de-bunking as well. (Via InstaPundit)

UPDATE 4 November: The BBC, all too willing to parrott the party line, should have a look at Professor Daniel Drezner’s dismantling of the ‘study’ by the Center for Public Integrity in Slate. Someone needs to go back to school.

Where are those highly-skilled investigative Beebots when there is news? Sleeping it seems. First, this postwar anti-war demo was a mere sliver of pre-war and mid-war moonbat confabs. That should be reported, not spun.

The march was thought to be smaller than the mass demonstrations before and during the war. But the BBC’s Jon Leyne, who was at the Washington rally, said it was probably more in tune with the mood of Americans, who are increasingly concerned at the president’s policy in Iraq. (Emphasis added)

Secondly, the sponsoring organisation, International ANSWER, is Stalinofascist to the core. The Beeb cannot resist the urge to describe a counter demonstration as having been sponsored by “the conservative Washington chapter of Free Republic.” Why is there NO curiosity about International ANSWER? Why no simple description of its left-leaning (nearly horizontal) position? I can only conclude that the BBC will put no questions to ANSWER. How else, then, could it remain in the most favourable light?

The BBC finds doubting Don Rumsfeld guilty…of doing his job. Virginia Postrel’s skewering of USA Today applies equally well to the BBC (ever faithful to the party line). Via InstaPundit.