Category Archives: 2012 Olympics jamboree

BBC DG: Olympic Coverage Is Too Patriotic, Must Now Support Other Nations

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This was brought up in comments thread of  the “Nearly Back” post by Number 7, but I think it’s worthy of a full post itself and deserves discussion.

We are too focused on Team GB: Astonishing memo from ‘increasingly unhappy’ BBC boss over patriotic tone of news coverage

BBC chiefs have ordered their news teams to stop focusing so much on Team GB’s stunning Olympics success.

Director general Mark Thompson is said to be ‘increasingly unhappy’ with the patriotic tone of the news coverage of the Games.

(…….)

TV and radio newsroom staff were astonished by an email sent yesterday, which told them to focus on the achievements of other nations as well as our own.

In the message, titled ‘An order from the DG’, director of news Helen Boaden wrote: ‘Mark Thompson is increasingly unhappy that we are focusing far too much on Team GB’s performance to the exclusion of all else.

‘This is also becoming a theme within the Press.

‘As editor in chief, he has issued a directive that this needs to change from today. So you need to get cracking on making that shift.’

What, no hugs? Seems like a strange directive for the national broadcaster of the United Kingdom. Especially considering the bit in the Charter about “bringing the UK to the world”. Assuming that the following bit about “bringing the world to the UK” is about news reporting and not jingoism in sports, that is. Even so, this raises some serious questions.

1. Does Thompson believe that in reality there are enough immigrants or communities of immigrant origin in the UK who would prefer to hear about their own country’s success that he is seriously directing staff to pay more attention to other countries? If so, doesn’t that betray the entire concept of a nation united by values and that the much-vaunted concept of multiculturalism is in fact divisive balkanization? Not enough British people living in Britain, then?

2. Is this revealing of a certain embarrassment at the top levels of the BBC about openly supporting British success in the face of non-white nations? I’m pretty sure Thompson isn’t concerned about so much attention being lavished on Usain Bolt for his two brief events rather than on US athlete Ashton Easton for winning gold and setting a world record in the decathlon, which used to bestow upon the winner the title, “World’s Greatest Athlete”. Nor is Thompson talking about giving more credit to the French.

3. Has the BBC’s lust for evil profits, global reach and dominance caused Mark Thompson to subsume the BBC’s ultimate remit – providing public service broadcasting for the license fee payers in the UK as the official State broadcaster – in favor of pandering to audiences in other nations where the BBC reaps or stands to gain commercial revenue?

4. Is Thompson simply the Panderer General?

5. What does this tell us about the line of defense we’re always fed that there is no top-down editorial directive at the BBC, that there are no memos handed down from on high giving editorial directions, that the BBC is too large and too disorganized for there to be an institutional bias of this kind? According a BBC insider the Mail quotes, this never happens:

‘We never get direct orders like this.

Except, we know they do. Maybe it’s just that there’s been no serious objection before when orders come down from on high about Global Warming or Islam, for example.

6. Does the shock amongst regular BBC staff signal at least some hope for the reformation of the BBC after all?

‘It is only natural that our viewers and listeners want to hear about Team GB’s successes. All the other countries celebrate their own medal winners.

‘It would be a shame if we had to water down our coverage to satisfy an abstract notion of fairness.’

Do they not feel, as Thompson seems to, that a significant amount of their audience in the UK is not British or proud of British achievement? Presumably it’s more than just the one or two disgruntled assistant producers who leaked this to the Mail. Or will this current patriotism vanish next week and it’ll be back to business as usual because the only time Beeboids approve of patriotism or nationalism by the English, British, or certain other countries is during sports tournaments?

As an outsider living in a country where the BBC is most definitely trying to increase influence, audience share, and evil profits, I find this very amusing as well as important.

LITHUANIAN DREAMING…

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I also found this aspect of Olympic coverage yesterday a bit perplexing and a B-BBC reader picks up on it..

“The BBC are ridiculously excited about the fifteen year old ethnic Lithuanian immigrant who won   a gold. Not only did they go on  about her for about three hours yesterday, but Derbyshire has been banging on about her today as well, and claimed people consider her ‘one of ours’. Really? Or do you mean just beeboids? Even though she has lived here for several years using British facilities to train, has a British coach and her dad has been given a job here, she competes for Lithuania because she is “extremely” proud to be Lithuanian! Shame beeboids aren’t equally proud to be British.”

FLAG DAY…

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BBC also in overdrive this morning to highlight the mistake made in Glasgow last night when the South Korean flag was flown by mistake at a Ladies football game featuring North Korea. I think the BBC reaction to this has been entirely disproportionate and if ever there was a Nation that we should not be apologising to it is the tinpot but nuclear armed despots of North Korea. Far too much hype afforded to this small incident and one trusts that when the BBC makes mistakes in the days ahead, as we all do in life, these too will be given headline prominence by the State Broadcaster.

OLYMPIC SIZED BIAS?

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With the London Olympics consuming more and more BBC coverage as we approach the start of the Games, I though this was an interesting set of observations from a B-BBC reader;

“This is a slightly different complaint from what is normal, in that the BBC hasn’t yet deployed its bias and general idiocy.  It’s more of a plea to counter it.

A lot has been said of the BBC’s woeful coverage of the Golden Jubilee and rightly so, but their ‘Olympics’ coverage is an area ripe for even greater national embarrassment, giving the BBC, as it does, greater scope for pushing its Left-wing agenda…on an international scale.  It’s a rare opportunity Beeboids are sure to grasp with every fibre of their being.  I hope we can go some way to stopping it.

Although there must be numerous ways the BBC could embarrass us during the Olympics (I hope everyone will list them), I think I’ve found one that hasn’t been widely recognised.

Over the years, I’ve spotted a way that dear old Auntie films women, that doesn’t ever seem to apply to men, suggesting that something is going on.  Particularly at sporting events, women are filmed more often than not from the waist up and sometimes positioned awkwardly in the camera frame – not in the golden position: one third from the top of the frame and one third from the left or right.  Often, the producer cuts to a close-up or wide shot, out of sequence with the events, so behaving differently from when men are the focus. I don’t watch much T.V. any more and certainly not that from the BBC, but I’ve seen this on numerous occasions and in non-sport broadcasts, too.   It may even have been present in the BBC’s Crystal Palace athletics coverage, but I didn’t watch it.  Be on the look out for this and you will certainly spot it.  The rest of the MSM is just as guilty; the advertising industry, included.

Thinking logically, it would be sensible to infer that, if women are the target, the Beeboids behave this way to ‘protect’ them from what they view as ‘objectification’. I guess it is thought that a female athlete’s tumble onto a mat or into the sand, bending over to stretch or leaning forward, reveals too much (On a side note: there is a scary amount of ‘Muslim’ thinking, enveloping this feminist attitude).  It is staggeringly ironic, though, that in countering the normalisation of the ‘objectification’, with anti-voyeuristic camera-work, they draw attention to what they try to conceal.  It escapes the average Leftie that there is a vast difference between one of Berlusconi’s notorious game-shows and a woman demonstrating her athletic prowess.  It creates an unhealthy atmosphere to sexualise something that isn’t.  They’ve finally learned this regarding the depiction of children, but not yet with adults.

To be fair to the BBC [shudder], its execrable Jubilee coverage was an example of uncommon incompetence, albeit mixed with its daily obsession with yoof and anti-intellectualism, but I look on with horror at the thought of it using the Olympics to spread every tenet of politically-correct thought that it can inject in to a sporting event.  God knows how bad the opening and closing ceremonies will be.”

My thanks to the contributor!

THE RACE IS ON..

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Isn’t it inspirational the way the BBC spends OUR cash?

The BBC has used licence fee payers’ cash to buy hundreds of tickets to the 2012 Olympics for staff and guests, writes Jon Coates. Despite receiving press passes for its army of commentators, cameramen and production crew, it has bought 430 tickets, an average of about 27 for every day of the Games. Matthew Sinclair, director of ­campaign group TaxPayers’ ­Alliance, said it was an inappropriate use of public funds. He said: “The BBC shouldn’t be buying tickets to impress corporate contacts at the expense of ordinary licence fee payers, many of whom will have been unable to get their own seats.”

So, is this a proper use of our money?

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