Category Archives: anti death penalty

Is it just me or has the BBC been indecently enthusiastic in its coverage of the news that Amanda “Foxy” Knox has been cleared of killing Meredith Kercher? I listened to John Humphrys on Today this morning (7.09am) and he was using her release to try and undermine the use of the death penalty in the States, a clear example of Humphrys pursuing his own agenda. The disinterest in the feelings of the Kercher family was also telling.

B-BBC contributor Graeme aka Hippiepooter writes;

“As a regular listener to R5L Breakfast, where I took political refuge over a decade ago from the outrageous bias of R4’s TODAY, it stands out when Nicky Campbell and his new co-presenter Rachel Burden are biased, whereas with John Humphrys and James Naughtie it stands out when they’re impartial.

Blatant bias stood out today on R5L Breakfast over the death penalty.

Rachel Burden and Nicky Campbell were incessantly referring to the murderer of Police Officer Mark McPhail, Troy Davis, as being excecuted in the US state of Georgia “despite grave doubts about his guilt”.

Grave doubts? Whose? Not the Supreme Court’s for sure, that had just rejected a stay of execution after the case had been appealed for 24 years. Grave doubts by campaigners against the death penalty that might reasonably be regarded as special pleading? Sure. So why didn’t R5L Breakfast tell us where these ‘grave doubts’ were coming from? They’re doing anti-death penalty special pleading too?

Towards the end of the programme, after having to endure the endless repetitions of unattributed ‘grave doubts’ that is an insult to the memory of Officer McPhail and his family (too early to link to at time of writing, about 02:45:00 when its up), Nicky Campbell interviewed some spokeswoman from ‘Reprieve’ in which he was mainly just feeding her prompts to promote her agitation against the death penalty.

The same one sided coverage was given last night on News24.

According to this report in the New York Times the late Mr Davis took part in an attack on a homeless man and when Officer McPhail intervened Davis shot him dead.*

Hey, BBC, next time you claim to be impartial, please don’t forget to mention ‘despite grave doubts’.

*Court details here

The BBC introduction grabbed my attention.