Category Archives: BBC agenda

Jonny Dymond And The BBC Want To Inspire Your Hatred

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In the Open Thread, Anthony Masters calls our attention to Jonny Dymond’s hate-mongering piece about an alleged “explosion” in hate groups in the US because we have a black President. Stop me if you’ve heard this Narrative before…..

I say it’s hate-mongering and not reporting, because the intent here is to make you hate millions of people like me by falsely associating them with a few ugly extremists. This isn’t about raising awareness of anti-Semitism or racism: it’s about creating the impression in your minds that any opposition to anything done by a black President is due to racism and extremism rather than any legitimate policy concerns. There is no valid journalistic reason for this report.

Dymond’s only real source for this story is the Southern Poverty Law Center. Well, while it used to be a respectable advocacy group with a history of fighting the Klan, it’s come to resemble a far-Left hate group with a pro-Democrat agenda in the last few years. They started this Narrative that we’re all out to get the black man over two years ago, and don’t care about facts. They’ve become a propaganda outlet, so it’s only natural that the BBC would look to them for information.

Here’s all you need to know about the SPLC:

Southern Poverty Law Center Still Peddling Lie That Giffords Shooter Was Right-Winger


What a shock: it’s the same lie the BBC peddled. (Bias bonus: Rachel Kennedy tweeted a link to the HuffPo to support the lie.)

Unlikely Foes

A group of leading genocide scholars this month sent the center a stinging letter, obtained by Inside Higher Ed, that charges the center with getting out of a lawsuit in part by assisting “unscholarly and unethical” efforts to cast doubt on the Armenian genocide.

They’re even being sued over libel on this issue:

Scholar’s libel suit proceeds against Southern Poverty Law Center

Guenter Lewy’s very interesting libel case against the Southern Poverty Law Center can proceed in the District of Columbia, a trial judge ruled Tuesday.

This one is worth watching.

Lewy is an emeritus professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts. A survivor of German violence against Jews during World War II, Prof. Lewy has written numerous books and articles about the history of persecuted peoples. In 2005, the University of Utah Press published his book, “The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide.”

Dymond and the Beeboid who hooked him up with the SPLC probably have no idea. It’s not important to the Narrative.

Does the Southern Poverty Law Center think Barack Obama is spreading hate?

They’re adding 13 new groups to the list of hate groups for opposing homosexuality. Now some of those groups do appear to be a bit extreme, but others such as the Family Research Council and National Organization for Marriage are hardly outside the political mainstream, and still others seem to be condemned by the SPLC for no reason other than adhering to biblical teaching on homosexuality.

This is perfect fodder for Dymond. Don’t agree with the BBC’s core values? You’re an extremist and hater. (Unless you’re Muslim, that is.)

Liberals desperate to connect the Tea Party with domestic terrorism

Tea Party leaders say a series of reports by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) attempting to connect the Tea Party movement with domestic terrorists in the militia movement shows how desperate the left has become trying to stop the political juggernaut.

The group says individuals such as Glenn Beck, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann — all regulars at major Tea Party gatherings — have given widespread visibility for ideas espoused by the militia movement, or the “Patriot movement” as SPLC calls it.

No wonder Max Deveson or someone similar sent Dymond to the SPLC to form the foundation of his report. Too bad they’re not very reliable these days.

The SPLC said there was a big KKK rise in Rhode Island, but police found no evidence.

In short, the BBC had a Narrative they wanted to establish in your minds, the same one they pushed down your throats before the 2008 election, and the same one they shoved down after it about the rise of the Tea Party movement. Now that their beloved Obamessiah is in trouble, they’re doing the exact same thing again. They had a story they wanted to tell, so some Beeboid in the US hooked Dymond up with the SPLC. These people see racists and extremists in every closet, under every bed. Everywhere except where they really ought to look.

Where were they when Leftoids were calling for the lynching of a black Supreme Court Justice?

Don’t trust the BBC on US issues. Ever.

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BBC Thinks Roads Are Only For BBC Elite – Not For US

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Our friends at the BBC (you know, the ones who we pay for out of money extracted by force from our pockets and purses) do love to travel in style at our expense but they are not so keen on we ordinary mortals doing the same, especially by road.
Hence the doom laden announcement on the BBC website about the opening of the M74 extension in Glasgow.
True there were positive quotes from the Scottish Infrastructure Secretary Alex Neil and Glasgow City Council leader, Councillor Gordon Matheson but you can always tell where the BBC love really resides when you see the quotes signing off at the end of any website article.

“A fraction of this vast sum (£692m) could have delivered major public transport improvements, and to make the city easier to cycle and walk around.”

That from Glasgow Green MSP Patrick Harvie plus an equally funereal warble from Stan Blackley described as chief executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland (yes, you’ve got it, FoE, the organisation that’s generously funded by EU taxpayers)
So, Stan, you won’t be driving your VW Campervan along the M74 any time yet?
As someone who regularly drives westward I have often reflected that, if we were in France, there would be a dual carriageway A303 all the way to Exeter and an M30 threading through Devon and Cornwall (one of the poorest counties in England)…..but, being a realist, I just know that the Stan Blackleys of the world would have a hotline to the BBC and, within seconds, there would be the second coming of Swampy ordering us all to get on yer bike..

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Ignorant US People Astonish Katty Kay

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Check out Katty Kay – taking over for Matt Frei as alpha Beeboid at BBC World News America since he left for Channel 4 – telling Mayor Bloomberg of New York that she is “astonished” to learn that more and more people in the US are turning away from Warmism.

“What is it with the American public opinion that seems to fly in the face of all the scientific evidence?”

Calm down, dear. Substitute any other political issue and the Beeboids are usually equally astonished by American public opinion. But never mind.

First of all, it’s not that the people don’t believe the climate changes. That’s BS Number One from the Warmists. Of course the climate changes; we all know that and it’s not in dispute. The question is whether or not it’s caused mostly by human activity. The science on that is being debated all the time, yet the BBC acts as if it’s not, and only whackos don’t get it.

The reason I call this BS #1 is that the very euphemism the Warmists have forced into the discussion – “Climate Change” – is disingenuous. What they all really mean is Anthropogenic Global Warming. The “science” of AGW, invented by people whose careers and fortune depend on it becoming fact, is what Katty is talking about, and not about whether or not the earth’s climate changes or was in a warming trend for a while. But because the Warmists have already won the argument – if you’re using their terminology, they’ve already won the argument, even if you’re still talking – Katty and the BBC can get away with saying that people like me don’t believe in “Global Warming” when in fact it’s that we don’t believe that building one more clean coal plant will sink the Maldives. The recent record cold temperatures around the US probably don’t help. But that’s only weather, yeah.

The reason they switched terms is because “Global Warming” can mean all things to all people. There is no cause or effect implied. Yet we know the BBC and all Warmists believe the cause is human activity, as the topic of this discussion between Kay and Bloomberg proves. As the term itself is dishonest, this BBC segment is dishonest and Katty and Mayor Mikey are dishonest for using the term.

Mayor Bloomberg, of course, is a committed Warmist and an über-Nanny Statist. Don’t even get me started on the behavior he’s banned against the wishes of New Yorkers. Hell, even the fact that he’s mayor right now is undemocratic, because he went against the voters – and his own promise – and twisted enough arms to change the term limit rules so he could buy a third election run for mayor a third time (and I speak as someone who happily voted for him the first time, knowing full well that he was a RINO Nanny). So this guy is the perfect example of an elite ruling class forcing his own personal wishes on a helpless public. No wonder the BBC wanted to talk to him. As soon as Bloomberg says “reduce consumption”, you know where he and the BBC stand. All your personal freedoms are belong to us.

I’m not going to bother getting into more details of Katty’s interview with the mayor, because it’s beyond the point. The BBC – as admitted by Jeremy Paxman in the sidebar – long ago took sides in the debate, and actively works to pursue a specific political agenda. Carbon emission regulations, coal plant permits, government subsidy/investment in various technologies, and the regulations for the entire automotive industry are all political issues. Even if we’re talking about seat belts in cars or helmets for motorcycles, creating a law about any of it is a political issue. No matter which side one is on, it’s done in the legislature by – in theory – democratically elected representatives, and these laws can be changed or repealed entirely by the next batch of democratically elected representatives if that’s what the voters want.

It doesn’t matter which side of the Warmism debate one is on. Legislation is political, full stop. The BBC always takes sides in this specific political issue, and deliberately chooses disingenuous language to support it. And as seen here, they do political advocacy posing as news and information.

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Israel In The Crosshairs Of The BBC

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There’s plenty of other stuff on this blog about the BBC’s unbalanced bias against Israel after the President’s speech yesterday, but here’s one glaring example of their entrenched anti-Israel attitude.

This article about Netanyahu’s visit to the US and audience with the President includes an analysis inset from Wyre Davies, in which he sneers at the Israeli PM and at what he perceives to be trained seals in Congress, as well as at the nasty old Jewish Lobby. Surely there is a less snarky – less editorializing and impartial – way to describe the situation? In the middle of the article itself, though, the News Online sub-editor slips in this other bit of Davies’ wisdom:

Israel’s claim to being the only democratic state in the region has also been undermined by the dramatic developments of the “Arab Spring” anti-government uprisings, our correspondent adds.

Let’s consider the twisted logic here. Davies – approved by the BBC – is saying that protests against Arab dictators have (Davies uses the past tense, and so will I) already undermined Israel’s claim to being the only democracy in the village. In other words, according to the BBC protesting against dictators diminishes the democratic position of the only non-dictatorship.

And this isn’t the first time I’ve heard this Narrative from a Beeboid. Kevin Connolly, having departed his former post as US correspondent where he insulted thousands of people on air with a sexual innuendo to become a newly-minted Middle East correspondent, said the exact same thing two weeks ago.

Now if, in a few months’ time or so, an Arab/Muslim country actually achieved a state of democracy as a result of all these Arab Spring protests (which would be great and fine with me, regardless of the resulting government’s attitude towards Israel or the US), then there would be some validity to the BBC’s position. At this time, though, there is no such thing. In fact, the protests highlight the very fact the BBC says is undermined by them. But since BBC groupthink is that Israel is the worst of the bunch and the root cause of all strife in the Middle East (even as the President tells them to cut the crap), they see it exactly backwards.

The anti-Israel sentiment entrenched at the BBC twists their vision into seeing black as white. Protests against dictators undermine the idea that Israel is the only non-dictatorship in the region? Only in the minds of Beeboids. Sadly, it’s a set Narrative, clearly prepared in advance, with the latest opportunity seized with gusto. They want Israel to be undermined, to be diminished, to be delegitimized, and see it happening even where it’s the exact opposite.

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The BBC And The Thoroughly "Moderate" Muslim Brotherhood

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I’m sure everyone here will remember the BBC’s official position during the Egyptian democracy protests, before Mubarak (to his eternal credit, in my view) stepped down, which was that the Muslim Brotherhood is, in fact, “moderate”. Frank Gardener was on air several times saying that the group was “moderate”, and Jeremy Bowen even wrote online that the group was both “conservative” and “moderate”, until he got caught and stealth-edited out the “moderate” bit. (I saw the original myself, and made a comment here at the time, but unfortunately did not take a screen shot.)

A reminder of the BBC’s Narrative on the Muslim Brotherhood:

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood promotes moderate path

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood launches ‘Islamic Facebook’

Egypt’s opposition movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, has launched its own Facebook-style social networking site.

A senior member of the banned Islamist group says the aim is to spread awareness of moderate Islamic values.

Website takes on Muslim Brotherhood critics

Exposing hatred

Through the Ikhwanophobia website, the Brotherhood’s sympathisers aggressively attempt to refute criticisms of the group and to show the world what they consider to be “the true face of moderate Islamists”.

Competing Muslim Brotherhood visions for Egypt

The Muslim Brotherhood is vying to become an official party in post-Mubarak Egypt. The conservative Islamist views of some of the group’s members scare many in Egypt and the West, but, as Tim Whewell has been finding out, many members, particularly young activists, are much more moderate.

With all this in mind, it’s no surprise that the BBC is not mentioning the Muslim Brotherhood or fundamentalist Islam or their influence on the military in things which detract from the Narrative. I didn’t notice the MB complaining about the following incident. I thought they were advocates of freedom and democracy. Or does the BBC consider this kind of thing to be “moderate”, too?

Egyptian women protesters forced to take ‘virginity tests’

A leading rights group says the Egyptian army arrested, tortured and forced women to take “virginity tests” during protests earlier this month.

Notice that, while the Egyptian Army has been known during the Mubarak regime to crack down on anti-Government agitators, this is entirely different. The BBC, naturally, is placing blame exclusively on the army, and pointing out problems in the past to spin it away, nothing to do with the new changes in attitude. Granted, the sub-editor is essentially copying and pasting from Amnesty’s own website, but that’s no excuse. It’s not Amnesty’s job to inform people about the larger context, but it is – in theory – the BBC’s.

This happened after Mubarak stepped down, not before. It’s a different type of crackdown entirely. Making sure that protesters are virgins is not the same thing as cracking down on protests. This didn’t happen during the anti-Mubarak protests, but only after Egypt’s top brass asked a member of the Muslim Brotherhood to rewrite the country’s laws on personal freedom. Or does the BBC think this is “moderate” behavior as well?

Hey, BBC:

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UPDATE: BBC Changes The Story From Wisconsin, But Censors Even More

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UPDATE to my post yesterday about the union protests in Wisconsin. The BBC has dramatically changed the news brief since I wrote the post. They’ve clearly updated it to reflect the Dems going AWOL. I think that part of the story deserves its own report, but never mind. Unfortunately, NewsSniffer has no trace of this report at all, so no hard proof other than the quotes I pulled yesterday.

Changes made: Headline and lead, as they updated it following story developments. This meant the removal of that emotionally charged language from the intro, which is a good thing. They even give quotes from both the Dems and the Governor, providing actual balance for a change. In addition, the sub-editor inserted the following qualifier into the line I highlighted about the misrepresentation of the bill and bargaining rights: “except for matter of salary”. Not perfect, but definitely an improvement, slightly more of a reflection of the reality I provided. At least the union talking points have been mitigated. That was a main component of my complaint.

Unfortunately, the BBC decided to censor the part about the unions going to the Governor’s home and harassing his family. This is not good. It’s the BBC sanitizing the protesters and hiding the truth about behavior from the Left. They also continue to censor the news of the teachers busing in students, the Hitler/Nazi stuff, and the other violent rhetoric. If this had been a Tea Party protest, the only photos provided by the BBC would be of some idiot with a Hitler poster. That double standard is still entrenched in BBC editorial policy.

One step forward, two steps backwards, I guess.

UPDATE to the UPDATE: Click here to see the BBC’s slideshow of the protests in Wisconsin. Not a swastika in sight. Compare and contrast this to their coverage of protests they don’t like, e.g. Tea Party ones. Where’s the BBC mewling about the “anger” here? Instead, it’s all presented as perfectly justifiable concern. All we ever heard from Mark Mardell and his colleagues about the Tea Party was how angry we were, and how we never liked the President anyway. No mention here of how Democrat unions never liked the Republican Governor anyway. Did any Tea Partiers ever try to storm a government building? How many arrests have been made at Tea Party protests across the country? I forget.

UPDATE II: Now the Wisconsin Education Association Council has published the home addresses of state legislators (link to pdf file is directly below the big red Stop sign). Amusingly, the union supporters in the comments on that page are calling the Republicans “fascists”. Hey, BBC: Did any Tea Party protests harass people and their families in their own homes? Was this ever encouraged by any Tea Party groups, BBC? Who’s angry and dangerous, then? What happened to the President’s wonderful words in Tucson about togetherness? He’s not being very bi-partisan or helping cool down the rhetoric now, is He? BBC Narrative failure.

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BBC Bias Favors Unions, Even In The US, And Censors News Of Violent Rhetoric

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For the last couple of days, there have been major events in Wisconsin involving state government legislation intended to curtail public sector union entitlements in order to save money. Like several other states, Wisconsin faces a deep economic crisis and needs to save money and cut spending any way it can.

The newly installed Republican Governor, Scott Walker, has said that anyone who didn’t see this huge budget crunch coming must have been in a “coma”. He’s recently set forth a new budget plan with big spending cuts, including what gets spent on public sector unions. Needless to say, the unions are livid, and have taken to the streets.

The BBC reports it this way:

Wisconsin public workers protest over anti-union bill

Wisconsin public employees have crowded into the state capitol to protest the government’s plan to curtail their right to collective bargaining.

Teachers, prison guards and others say a Republican-sponsored bill would severely cut into their incomes.

In case anyone might get suspicious about the obvious trade union talking point here – ‘cut into their incomes’ – all doubts are dispelled immediately:

‘Scariest thing ever’

In Madison, the capital city of the mid-western state, the Republican-led legislature on Thursday was set to pass a bill pushed by Republican Governor Scott Walker that has been described by commentators as the most aggressive anti-union law in the nation.

The bill would eliminate most public workers’ collective bargaining rights and dramatically increase the amount they must contribute to their pensions and health insurance coverage.

“This is the scariest thing I’ve ever seen,” physics teacher Betsy Barnard told the Wisconsin State Journal newspaper of Mr Walker’s bill. “This is going to change Wisconsin forever.”

“Dramatically increase”? Here’s what the BBC doesn’t want you to know about that:

Currently most state employees pay nothing toward their pensions and only a modest amount for their insurance.

Yeah, I suppose having to pay a little something when you’ve been paying zero might seem “dramatic”. But that’s the union perspective the BBC is presenting, and not an objective fact. The use of emotional language here is advocacy behavior and not journalism. And what about the claim that the bill will “eliminate most” bargaining rights?

It’s also a bit of BS:

Walker, remember, is not removing unions’ fundamental power to bargain for wages. He is demanding that state workers put 5.8% of their wages toward retirement and that they cover 12.6% of their health care premiums, which would still have them paying more than $100 less a month than the average schmoe. He is also proposing that elected officials determine the shape of employee benefits without having to bargain them, and this as much as the added cost has unions crying “unfair.”

More reality can be found here:

Unions still could represent workers, but could not seek pay increases above those pegged to the Consumer Price Index unless approved by a public referendum. Unions also could not force employees to pay dues and would have to hold annual votes to stay organized.

In exchange for bearing more costs and losing bargaining leverage, public employees were promised no furloughs or layoffs. Walker has threatened to order layoffs of up to 6,000 state workers if the measure does not pass.

Instead of reporting (or, hell, even copying and pasting from the wire service) objectively, the BBC uses the emotional language of union talking propaganda, quite dramatically misrepresenting reality.

Next the BBC reports on the actual protests:

With teachers – and some students – massing in Madison to protest, dozens of schools were shut on Wednesday and Thursday.

Hundreds of protesters spent Wednesday night in the rotunda of the state capitol building.

Police officers stood guard outside Mr Walker’s office as angry protesters stood outside shouting for his recall from office.

How did the students get there? Aren’t they supposed to be in school? Well, no, because the teachers’ union closed schools for the day and bused the students in for the cause (video proof here).

How angry were the protesters, BBC?

Angry workers also surrounded Mr Walker’s family home this week, the New York Times reported.

How did they find out his address? Simple: the unions gave it out and sent their workers to harass the man’s family. They also went to the home of the Republican Speaker of the House in Wisconsin. Yet the BBC wouldn’t dream of frowning at this behavior in the way they did at the Tea Party protests. Quite a contrast. No suggestion of violence or dark forces behind it all.

Police in Madison, Wisconsin, estimated that 20,000 people rallied at the capital on Wednesday.

And that’s it from the BBC. Here’s a video of these heroic people. Guess to whom they’re comparing the Governor of Wisconsin?

In case that’s not enough, there’s this:

How about it, BBC? Any thoughts? You guys were oh, so critical when the odd Tea Party protester had a similar poster about The Obamessiah. What do you say now? Nothing, of course. Moving on…..

But Republicans, who were handed election victories in November in Wisconsin, say they have a mandate to cut government spending.

They say that despite the protests, voters approve of the cuts, which the Republicans say are needed to balance the state budget and avoid job losses.

Oh, those nasty Republicans, eh? Here’s what else the BBC doesn’t want you to know about what’s going in Wisconsin: a bunch of Democrat State Senators have gone AWOL because they don’t want to vote for it. If they voted against it, they’d show up. But they’re trying to boycott the vote instead. BBC: ZZzzzzzzzz

In sum: Biased in favor of the unions, use of emotional language which favors one side, censoring or misrepresenting of facts which harms the unions’ position. Don’t trust the BBC on US issues, or issues involving unions.

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BBC Economic Bias: Only The Left Has It Right

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While everyone is enduring yet another full day of BBC reporting negatively about the nasty cuts forced on the poorest by the Conservative-led Coalition, it’s also necessary to check out the BBC’s reporting on budget policy developments in the US.

Barack Obama unveils US budget plans for 2012

US President Barack Obama has unveiled his 2012 budget, describing the proposal as a “down payment” on future cuts to the US budget deficit.

The budget aims to cut $1.1tn (£690bn) from the US deficit over a decade.

He said the US must live within its means and called for some reductions, but said “we can’t sacrifice our future” with drastic cuts.

The White House policy sounds suspiciously like the Labour line. It’s not a coincidence, as both Labour and the White House are guided by the same economic principles. Notice how the BBC treats The Obamessiah’s position.

After the requisite criticisms from Republicans – which sound suspiciously like the Tory statements, only without the luxury of the “we inherited this mess” card – we get more of the Labour line….sorry….White House line that we “can’t sacrifice our future in the process”. Does that sound familiar? It should.

The BBC sub-editor who put this together subtly sets you up to interpret the subsequent statement from the President with this:

Although Mr Obama is empowered to propose a budget, it is up to the US Congress to enact it into law and then to distribute the funds.

Mr Obama’s budget is seen as an opening bid in a long process of negotiation with House and Senate leaders of both parties, and analysts say Republicans will press for deeper cuts.

“Analysts” say? The Republicans themselves have only been shouting it from the rooftops since Nov. 3. Why bother attributing the notion to anonymous analysts? Also notice how the BBC makes sure to include that the negotiations will be with the leaders of both parties.

Then we get some Gordon Brown language in a summary of one of the President’s points:

At a school in Baltimore on Monday morning, Mr Obama called for future investment in education, transportation infrastructure and high speed internet, “so that every American is equipped to compete with any worker anywhere in the world”.

“Spending” is softened and sexed up into “investment”. You’ve all heard that one before, and will continue to hear it next time Ed Balls is in front of a BBC microphone.

Then the BBC quotes the President’s own words about exactly the same thing.

“While it is absolutely essential to live within our means – and while we are absolutely committed to working with Democrats and Republicans to find further savings and to look at a whole range of budget issues – we can’t sacrifice our future in the process,” he said.

“We have a responsibility to invest in those areas that will have the biggest impact in our future.”

So when the BBC writes that His “budget is seen as an opening bid…”, it’s clear that this is in fact the White House’s talking point. In other words, the people who actually see it this way are the President and Katty Kay’s personal friend, the new White House Spokesman. And the BBC dutifully toes the line. He says He’s going to work with “both parties”, just like the sub-editor set framed it above. Another White House talking point turned into BBC reporting.

The resulting impression is that He’s trying His best to reach across the aisle, and any problems will be due to intransigence by nasty Republicans, who want make budget cuts for purely ideological reasons.

Notice, though, more Labour ideology in the President’s statement: “We can’t sacrifice our future”. We hear it time and time again on the BBC when hearing criticisms of the nasty Tory boodget coots.

The bias only gets worse.

Among the programmes slated for cuts under his own plans are some that Mr Obama said he considered crucial, including development grants for poor neighbourhoods.

Hitting the poorest hardest, naturally. It’s getting to be like an echo.

Mr Obama also reiterated his call for $78bn in cuts to the defence budget.

“If we’re going to walk the walk when it comes to fiscal discipline, these kinds of cuts will be necessary,” he said.

He said he aimed to wring greater efficiency from government programmes and to sell 14,000 government office buildings and properties.

So He’s now portrayed as a fiscal hawk. If He’s going to cut the precious US military machine, He must be serious, no? The only mildly opposing view we get is from another analyst who says – wait for it – that the Republicans will want more cuts. Why not get an actual Republican to say it, BBC? None willing to talk to you off the record? Couldn’t any of the legion of Beeboids in the US get a better source? No, an HSBC (greedy banker!) analyst saying we need to cut more will do nicely. Funny how they manage to dig up a month-old quote from the Treasury Secretary about making sure we “don’t hurt the recovery”. Or was it a quote from Ed Balls just mis-attributed? It’s getting very hard to tell. It’s no wonder the BBC is leaning heavily towards one side here.

The reason I’m making this a main post and not just another complaint in an Open Thread is that the bit right before that Geithner/Balls quote highlights the BBC’s bias on economics reporting both in Britain and elsewhere.

Whereas countries such as the UK have imposed spending cuts to reduce their deficits, the Obama administration has said rapid, drastic spending cuts are not the way forward.

This one sentence reveals the massive editorial bias about economics at the BBC. Countries such as the UK, eh, BBC? The Obama administration has said the exact same thing Labour keeps saying, so it must be true. In the context of the recent – including today’s – relentlessly negative BBC reporting on the Tory spending cuts, one can only draw the conclusion that “drastic” spending cuts are disastrous, hit the poorest hardest, etc.

Censored from this and basically all BBC discussions of countries imposing spending cuts is the one country which actually did it starting last year: Germany. Worst of all for the BBC, the Germans seem to have gotten it right.

The German economy, Europe’s largest, has powered the region’s expansion over the past year as companies stepped up output and hiring to meet export demand. While governments from Ireland to Spain are struggling to revive their economies and push down budget deficits, German business confidence surged to a record last month and manufacturing growth accelerated.

Germany’s outlook is looking better and better because of the austerity measures the BBC hated on at the time. They hated it so much that they actually put up a page asking for input from people engaged in anti-austerity riots in Europe. They acknowledged Germany’s success once or twice (while still reminding you that nobody likes it and the masses are rioting anyway), but it’s quickly swept under the rug and censored when discussing policies in Britain, as if the example doesn’t exist.

Business confidence in Germany is the highest in two decades, basically since before West Germany had to absorb East Germany much in the same way that Lloyds had to (yes, had to, despite Robert Peston’s attempts to make you forget about that) absorb HBOS.

This fact is suspiciously missing not only from this report, but from basically every single BBC report or discussion about budget policy. They don’t want you to think about it, because it contradicts the Narrative: Left economic policies are better.

All you hear from the BBC is how bad these cuts are, and what cruel and unnecessary damage is being done. You never hear of a case where it’s working, and certainly are never allowed to consider how the alternative plan failed in Japan and Ireland, for example. The BBC’s partisan bias on budget policy is very clear and consistent.

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Matt Frei’s Musings Are A Riot.

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Matt Frei mused during the violent student riots on Wednesday about what he saw as a relevant problem with higher education costs in the US.

Could UK students’ rage find echo in US?

Frei realizes there’s a disparity between the amount of money over which at least one student attempted manslaughter, and the amount required to attend a top US school. However, he doesn’t seem to understand the situation in the US, even though he actually states the problem himself.

Until now, Americans have tolerated this tuition-for-debt pact because they could expect to earn healthy salaries once they entered the job market. But graduates are standing in ever-longer lines for jobs that no longer exist.

The first sentence is more or less accurate. It’s not entirely true that absolutely everyone ends up in debt, as there are a variety of forms of means-tested grants for state schools, and all universities have various scholarship opportunities, not to mention the myriad other private and non-profit organizations which give out annual awards. All of that obviously exists to make up for the lack of a universal free ride in the US, which is one point any US student angry about tuition fees would not have in their favor. At least the UK students have that claim of unfairness. But that gets right to the heart of the problem, and why Frei misses it completely.

Frei is right that there’s a problem with jobs available for new graduates. In fact, as I’ve said before, there’s a looming higher education bubble in the US. But he seems to think that now students ought to be paying less for degrees for jobs that don’t exist, as opposed to the idea that maybe there’s no reason to get certain degrees in the first place.

Liberal Arts colleges will find that they have to shift their programs to more practical, career-path degrees, rather than the current, more abstract degrees. In addition, many schools are poorly run, and seem to exist primarily to enroll as many students as possible and milk them for all they’re worth, and don’t seem to care if they ever graduate. Does that sound familiar? Then there are the for-profit institutions which entice people to go into debt for their useless degrees. The US Government is already going after them, and the free market will take care of the rest.

The BBC covered the riots from a position of sympathy with the cause. That was evident from the way everyone who condemned the riots was asked if they at least understood the anger behind them, as if the BBC took the position that the cause itself was just, and the person condemning violence still needed to acknowledge this. Violence over free education for the next generation of (insert joke about useless bureaucrat coordinator here)? Is the public sector supposed to provide more jobs for these people? Will violence be justified if not?

So what about the next generation of doctors and lawyers those students were warning would disappear without free education? I don’t know about doctors, but there are a whole lot of law students in the US who were led down the garden path. There’s definitely a shortage of jobs for law graduates, and many law schools are in trouble. In fact, there’s some talk of the current law school system – in which students take on astronomical debt in the hopes of landing that high-paying associate position – as being unsustainable.

And there’s that BBC shibboleth again. If the cause of free education – or, in the US, lower priced – is worthy of violence, who is going to pay for all of it? If all those graduates can’t get jobs, what’s the point? How will they then pay taxes to cover the next generation? Matt Frei and the BBC aren’t interested. They’re stuck in juvenile divine right mode. As ever, the realities of sustainability escape them. This is a huge US story which has direct relevance to current events in the UK, yet the BBC doesn’t see it.

So Matt Frei, too, muses about violence for the wrong reason. He thinks that higher education prices should be lower so that students can continue to get useless degrees for which there is no work.

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It’s The Policies, Stupid.

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Now that we’re approaching the mid-term elections in the US, the BBC has been ramping up the rhetoric against those who don’t approve of the President’s policies. In fact, to hear it from the BBC, it’s not His policies at all, but rather evidence of bad attitudes, inadequacies, and racism among His opponents.

In the last few days, BBC North America editor Mark Mardell has told us that it’s not the President’s fault at all, because the unwashed simply can’t relate to His intellectual behavior. When critics say He’s aloof and people don’t feel like He hears them, it’s not that His policies and statements clearly go against what most of the public wants and believes, but that He just hasn’t communicated the message in a dumbed-down enough fashion for the masses to understand.

Mardell has made other posts highlighting the “anger” of people dissatisfied with the current Government’s policies, as has Katie Connolly, which is an easy trick to disqualify those voices from the start. When someone is presented as angry, that context automatically reduces their credibility. The thing is, it was okay for people in the US to be angry when Bush was in charge; the BBC never looked for nefarious forces underlying that anger. Yet they do spend an extraordinary amount of effort trying to make it seem to their audience as if racism and extremism are the only things which would compel someone to oppose the President. It’s never because of His and the Democrat leadership’s policies. It’s just “the economy”, which is of course not His fault as it was inherited from George Bush. Does that sound familiar?

This Narrative is spread across the spectrum of BBC broadcasting, from BBC World News America to Newsnight to HardTalk to The Culture Show (h/t Oliver on the Open Thread).

Of course, it’s only natural that the BBC would take this position, because they can’t understand why anyone would oppose anything He and the Democrats have done. Even Matt Frei is concerned that the Coalition Government in Britain is taking a “gamble” with these austerity measures, as opposed to the spending and debt-increasing policies of the US President.

The problem is that the BBC has focused almost entirely on the vox pops angle. Mardell and other Beeboids have been traveling around the country talking to various people about their personal feelings. The only other views presented are from Washington Post or Time elite (JournoList) media figures, who, unsurprisingly, support the BBC’s Narrative.

So I believe it’s important to inform people about something the BBC has almost completely ignored: the policies themselves.

I’m sure everyone will remember just how much time and effort the BBC spent promoting ObamaCare (called “Health Care Reform” by the White House and the BBC). Can anyone recall the BBC spending so much time on the domestic policy of a foreign country? Yet, now that many of the predictions of its opponents (including myself) are coming true, there’s total silence from the BBC. It was the announcement of the ObamaCare plan which lit the fire under the Tea Party movement well over a year ago, which was played down as racism, even though the same people were opposed to it back when it was called HillaryCare. Was it racism when Clinton was President?

At the time, many of us knew that this wouldn’t work as advertised, and that it would harm the economy. We’re seeing that now. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office even says that ObamaCare “discourages work” because it gives people an incentive to stay unemployed. Does that sound familiar?

ObamaCare is about to hit small businesses with higher costs over health care, so much so that at least one business owner is opting to give all his employees a raise of $3000 pa ($250 a month) instead of taking a bath, because the Affordable Care Act supporters promised us that private insurance was going to be “affordable” at last. Principle Financial, one of the country’s largest providers, is getting out of the business altogether because of costs. Are they racists? That was one of the primary talking points of ObamaCare, about which the BBC spared no effort in reminding you.

Unfortunately, it has actually increased costs already. The BBC chose to censor that news. Is
one of the top health care organizations in the country now run by racists? There’s also the question of whether or not it violates the Constitution by forcing people to purchase a product from specific, government-approved vendors, health insurance in this case. Several states are challenging the law, including Florida. Are they all racists?

And it’s not just ObamaCare. Other things the President has said and done have caused harm, and the citizens have taken notice. For example, just a couple weeks after He was inaugurated, the President scolded companies for having conventions in Las Vegas, and told them not to go there. Earlier this year, he made a similar scolding comment about how it was wrong to go to Vegas when people ought to be paying their bills instead. It’s no surprise that these careless statements have compounded the pressures of a struggling economy on the city, as well as the state of Nevada. Unemployment is over 15%, and the people are not happy. Senator Harry Reid, one of ObamaCare’s chief architects (the President had little input Himself: it was created by Congress and “experts”) is fighting against a newcomer to keep his seat because of it. Is Nevada racist now? In 2008 they weren’t, 55% – 43%.

The other chief architect of ObamaCare, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, is also getting hit. Even Democrats are making campaign ads positioning themselves against her and her policies. Are all these Democrats racist now? Do they not blame the current Administration’s policies for harming the economy and damaging our future?

People are calling for reform and reining in government spending everywhere. Even in New York where, while writing this, I got a robo-call featuring former New York City mayor Ed Koch – a lifelong Democrat – telling me to vote for someone who has signed on to the New York Uprising Reform pledge. The call was paid for by the Republican Party, but if Ed Koch is in on it, things must be bad. He supported The Obamessiah during the election, and called Sarah Palin “scary”. How much more BBC-approved can you get? Is Ed Koch a racist now? Are we all racists now? Or is it about the actual policies?

The BBC wants you to think it’s the former, and not the latter, because they are ideologically biased in favor of His policies, and cannot accept that His Administration has made poor decisions, so they color their reporting accordingly.

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