Category Archives: bbc bias and balance.

Congressman Allen West (D-FL) Speaks Truth To Islamic Power. Any Thoughts, BBC?

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Republican Congressman for Florida, Col. Allen West vs. the Executive Director of the Center for American Islamic Relations (CAIR). No prizes for guessing who comes out on top. Unless, that is, you work for or defend the BBC, in which case this video clip will make your head explode.

The only time the BBC actually mentioned Col. West before was right before the elections last November, where Kevin Connolly (he who insulted hundreds of thousands of people on air and online with a sexual innuendo) briefly discussed one of West’s campaign ads, in which Candidate West tries to discourage voters from choosing his opponent by tying him to the President (not counting the separate page where they posted the ad with a short blurb). He barely got a mention for his victory on election night, as if he didn’t exist and wasn’t a huge smack in the face of the BBC’s lie about how racism is a main factor in the Tea Party movement.

Connolly was unable to process the information even then, and made the following very revealing statement:

It is a common enough practice in tight races where the presence of a political big-shot can tip the balance.

What makes the ad unusual is that it is paid for by a Republican candidate, Allen West and he is gambling that Mr Obama’s intervention in the race will be a plus for him and a negative for his Democratic rival, Ron Klein.

It’s unusual for a Republican to do this? Um, yeah, NO. This is Beeboid Connolly simply unable to grasp the concept of a black man not slavishly (oops!) siding with another black man in politics. Of course, the BBC generally supports and understands people voting along racial lines: when it’s non-whites doing it. So it’s only natural that Connolly would be confused by this black man opposing a black President. Connolly is so out of touch that he also said this:

The biggest single factor contributing to those declining ratings is the economy. There is an iron rule in American politics that when unemployment is high, as it is here in Florida, the presidents gets a pummelling.

But there is more to it than that. Somehow the two signature achievements of Obama’s first two years in the White House are being made to feel like electoral liabilities.

Somehow the “two signature achievements” are made to feel like liabilities? As if those “achievements” aren’t connected to the crap economy in any way? His bias prevented him from grasping two simple concepts. Thankfully, the BBC has since transferred him out of the US.

In any event, don’t hold your breath waiting for the BBC to report this, or anything positive about Congressman West at all. They sure as hell don’t want you to know about this. In fact, this is a discussion forbidden on BBC airwaves by anyone.

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The BBC and the Dreyfus Affair

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On January 13, 1898, an open letter by renowned writer Émile Zola was published in the French newspaper L’Aurore. Zola reacting to the unlawful conviction and imprisonment of a Jewish officer in the French Army, Alfred Dreyfus. He accused the government (and, one was meant to extrapolate, the press and society) of anti-Semitism, and declared that this prejudice is what led to Dreyfus’s imprisonment in spite of the facts of the case. It’s still known today as “The Dreyfus Affair”.

In his letter, Zola pointed out judicial errors and highlighted the lack of real evidence in the case. He went on to condemn the general anti-Semitic attitude of the government and many in society which led to the false accusation of espionage. He also stated that the General in charge of the investigation withheld key evidence which would prove the charges were false. In fact, Zola found that another man was to blame for the crime, but since charging him would also have implicated the Army brass, they sat on the story. Someone had to be a scapegoat, and they pointed the finger at someone, simply out of the convenience of prejudice. The Army even tried and acquitted the actual guilty man. Stop me if any of this is starting to sound familiar.

Another dimension to Zola’s point was that the entrenched anti-Semitism in the government, army, and society in general is what caused the crime against Dreyfus. Unfortunately, he was soon convicted of libel for it, and was sentenced to prison. He fled to England, where he stayed until the sitting French Government fell apart. Dreyfus served time at Devil’s Island, but eventually was able to get his case retried. He got a happy result in the end, but it took years and a lot of struggle.

Like the French Army more than a century ago, the BBC is blaming an innocent person for inciting a crime perpetrated by someone else. Even in the face of evidence that the murderer in Tucson had completely different influences, the BBC still accuses Sarah Palin of inciting him to attempt the assassination of a government official. In fact, the BBC tried to censor the news that Jared Loughner was left-wing and had been angry with his intended victim since 2007, long before anyone ever heard of Sarah Palin. In other words, in spite of all the evidence telling them that there’s no possible way the perpetrator of the crime could have been inspired by the words and deeds of Sarah Palin, they accuse her anyway. By extension, they are accusing the Tea Party movement and pundits and leading figures on the political Right for these murders. But they need a scapegoat for the story they want to tell, and found one out of convenience. All in the face of the evidence, and all due to their political and personal prejudices.

Let’s get the first line of defense out of the way. The BBC believes itself to be a special organization, one which stands apart from the rest of the worlds’ media. It’s at least part of their justification for the license fee. Thus, I would say that it would be unacceptable for them to claim that, as the rest of the media is making the story about political rhetoric, so too should the BBC, and that it’s perfectly acceptable for them to ignore the facts of the case and change the story to suit the Narrative.

If we’re to accept the BBC is what they claim it to be, then we expect that the BBC ought to rise above petty politics in the case of a tragedy which was so clearly due to mental illness. Mark Mardell should have followed his own advice from back when that Muslim Major committed mass murder at Ft. Hood, and demurred from pointing fingers at easy targets. The BBC News producers should have held their staff back from declaring a Right-wing cause for this crime in the exact same manner in which they restrained their staff from immediately blaming Islamic Jihad on such crimes when reporting on that Palestinian with a bulldozer, the attempted bombing of Times Square, the attempted bombing of that London night club, when MP Stephen Timms was stabbed, and Maj. Nidal. In those cases, the BBC was among the last to associate the crimes with the influence of Islamic Jihad, and often even warned against such a connection. All in stark contrast to the way they’ve reported on this case in Tucson.

Or did they not have to be reminded of their duty to journalistic integrity in those cases? Is there an instinctive move to defend in some cases, but attack in others, regardless of the facts involved?

Now, the BBC seems to be relentless in this attack of convenience on their political enemies. In spite of the evidence that Loughner was clearly mentally disturbed and dangerous, and had targeted Rep. Giffords since 2007, the BBC still wants to make the story about Sarah Palin, the Tea Party movement, and many others on the Right of the political spectrum. They surely haven’t failed to take advantage of a crisis. A weak attempt to make this about the larger issue of the nature of political rhetoric in the US doesn’t alter the basis of their reporting, or the overall tone of the coverage across the spectrum.

I submit that this behavior is due to an inherent political prejudice at the BBC, specifically in the News department. I include World News in this, as they all share footage and resources so much as to be virtually indistinguishable when reporting on international stories. They all sign off as reporting for BBC News in any case.

In spite of known facts that the murderer in Tucson had no connection to Sarah Palin or the Tea Party movement or Fox News, and was in reality mentally disturbed and had a wide range of influences, they are making the story about the non-Left elements only. Why not discuss his interest in Mein Kampf or the Communist Manifesto, BBC? Why not use this as an opportunity to discuss how society needs to improve the way we look after the mentally ill? No, instead the BBC uses this as a chance to attack their political enemies.

The fact that the BBC is now giving air time to Keith Olbermann, someone who is known not for his journalistic integrity but almost exclusively these days for his venomous political vitriol, tells you all you need to know about the bias at the BBC.

It’s an intellectual failure, and a failure of integrity. It’s not enough to start admitting after two or three days of stories focusing exclusively on blaming political rhetoric from the Right that the murderer had other issues. The damage is done, and the real story buried deep beneath a mass of political attacks. The BBC has done an equivalent of the Dreyfus Affair here by accusing and convicting Sarah Palin and Right-wing pundits of directly inciting murder, in the face of known evidence to the contrary. They leapt to accuse before the facts were out, then ignored and suppressed the facts which pointed in another direction, simply because that would hurt the Narrative, the story they wanted to tell.

In short: BBC, j’accuse!

Nothing short of an apology from the BBC is going to fix this, and nothing short of a wholesale change in personnel at BBC News is going to prevent this from happening again and again in the future. They should start with those in the US.

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INTELLIGENCE MISSING!

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Wondered if you came across this televisual delight from the State Broadcaster? It’s the “Intelligence Squared Debate” and as balanced as you would expect…

“An Elected House of Lords Will Be Bad For British Democracy”. Nik Gowing chairs, with speakers Vernon Bogdanor, Shami Chakrabarti, Sir Simon Jenkins, Lord Adonis and Polly Toynbee and Billy Bragg.

Oh joy. Thanks to the brave B-BBC reader who valiantly watched at least some of this leftist tripe.

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Sometimes The BBC Doesn’t Censor News From The US – When It’s An Approved Thought

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Most people here will be well aware that the BBC censored news of the beginnings of the Tea Party movement in the US for about two months before the reality of nationwide, simultaneous protests on April 15, involving hundreds of thousands of people, forced them to report it. I first mentioned the issue on an open thread here back on Feb. 19, 2009, even before anyone started calling them “tea parties”. They were anti-tax protests first and always. And even when the BBC at last reported it, Kevin Connolly worked to discredit the participants by hinting at dark forces behind it, suggesting that this was not, in fact, an independent, spontaneous grassroots movement. Connolly went further than that, and highlighted the skin color of the majority of participants, implying a racist element behind the motivation of the people involved.

And then, of course, he insulted all of us with a sexual innuendo, which remains on the BBC website to this day.

After that, the BBC again ignored the growing movement, and refused to acknowledge its success in affecting local issues and elections, until Scott Brown surprised them. At that point, the BBC occasionally acknowledged the existence of the Tea Party movement, but – with the lone exception of one video report by Katty Kay – their reports were uniformly negative, suggested racism, and tried to portray extreme fringe elements as representative of the entire movement. You all heard about Christine O’Donnell nearly every day for weeks and weeks, yet during the campaign the BBC censored any mention of Col. Allen West until a few days before the election. Even Katty’s report from January focused on “anger”, and the majority of BBC reports at the time were full of quips about “boiling anger” and whatnot. Anger is okay when it’s against things the Beeboids don’t like, but not when it’s against their beloved Obamessiah.

The BBC’s censorship and subsequent attempts to minimize the impact of the Tea Party movement in the minds of their audience got so bad that it led to Emily Maitlis declaring during the BBC’s coverage on the night of the recent mid-term elections that the Tea Party movement had “come out of nowhere”. Only to those who trusted the BBC for their news on US issues, dear. The link to Katty Kay’s report from Jan. 2010 refers to the Tea Party movement as “new” (fourth one down), even though it was nearly a year old by then and had had some political success. I’m sure most here will remember just how biased and negative their reporting was during the weeks before the election. They spent more time looking for racists under the bed than covering the issues at hand.

In stark contrast, the BBC wasted no time at all in enthusiastically reporting an alleged grassroots anti-Tea Party movement calling itself the “Coffee Party”. Contrary to the BBC’s portrayal as an innocent group of people, it was in fact started by a former New York Times hack and dedicated campaigner for The Obamessiah’s Presidential bid, who used her media connections to gain support and hype. Hardly the grassroots darlings the BBC wanted you to believe they were. The article also quoted one of her own colleagues in support, even though that colleague was well aware of the Coffee Party’s partisan makeup. Of course, Kate Zernicke was quoted because she had written a partisan hit book about the Tea Party movement.

Still, the BBC reported the existence of the movement within days of its launch. However, as the movement was not in fact a genuine grassroots movement and was merely yet another partisan group competing for the attention of loyal Democrats and far-Left activists, it was more or less stillborn, and went nowhere. The BBC’s utter silence on the Coffee Party after that initial glowing report is testament to how useless it was, for if there was even one tiny success the BBC surely would have reported it with equal vigor.

Now there’s another non-partisan group, calling themselves “No Labels”. There was a forum held in New York City on Monday, presenting itself as a non-partisan group of people dedicated to reaching across the aisle and “working together”. The BBC, of course, sent Katty Kay to cover it, and set about informing you immediately, declaring the group’s desire to reduce partisanship for the common good. Once again their editorial double standard is revealed.

Funny how this notion that we should stop the partisanship and work together for the common good is exactly what St. Jon Stewart wanted with his “Rally to Restore Smugness”, for which the BBC gave prominent and favorable coverage when it happened (but remained completely silent after it clearly didn’t have the effect they’d hoped). And funny how suddenly everyone wants to work together now that the Democrat President is in trouble. Where were all these people a few years ago? No, it’s only good to work together when it benefits the Left, which is why the BBC immediately reported this as a true movement for bi-partisan happiness.

Here’s what the BBC doesn’t want you to know:

The BBC website article says the founder is Mark McKinnon, “Republican consultant”. In fact, it was founded by political consultants from both sides, including former finance director of the Democratic National Committee Nancy Jacobson, who worked on Hillary Clinton’s failed Presidential bid. Oh, and that Republican guy worked for Bush and on McCain’s campaign, but dropped out of working on campaigns in 2008 because he didn’t “want to work against an Obama Presidency”.

So the truth is that both founders want to support the Democrat way. The BBC censored not only McKinnon’s support for Him, but also censored the fact that someone besides a Republican founded and came up with the idea for the group.

Without these key pieces of information, the BBC audience has no idea that this might be anything other than an actual bi-partisan group. Something else the BBC decided you didn’t need to know was that the discussion panels were moderated by MSNBC talking heads. MSNBC is a dedicated opponent of the Tea Party movement and its prime-time stars are as hyper-partisan as it gets. But hiding this information allows the BBC to present the “No Labels” event as something other than what it actually is. And nowhere does a single one of the many astute BBC correspondents in the US dare suggest that this sudden desire for bi-partisanship has anything to do with supporting a Democrat President. Oh, and they also misrepresented Mayor Bloomberg’s political leanings. He’s a life-long Democrat who switched to Republican for his first run for mayor (no bribing of Democrat Brooklyn and Queens leaders required), and then declared himself Independent recently when he went back on his promise and against the will of the people and ran for a third term. He’s only non-partisan in that he stands for himself and his own desire to create a legacy for himself more than for any political party.

Katty actually talks to Joe Scarborough, but does not mention his MSNBC association. One positive point here: she allows him to speak of his disappointment that the President is more partisan than we were made to believe. He admits that he initially bought into the Hope and Change™, so not much of a Republican these days. Oh, but that point is deducted right away because this is followed by a statement by the President about His desire to work together. Whew! A narrow escape, there. The BBC almost let a tiny criticism of Him slip through unchallenged.

Naturally, Katty Kay takes time in the accompanying video report to remind everyone of the “angry, energetic extremes of the Tea Party movement” (guess whose name appears on the signs her editor chose to put in at that moment), and that “the point” here is to be lovely and work together. She’s clearly advocating for a cause here. None of the “activists” she speaks to are identified, yet they all share the dream of working together to advance the President’s agenda, “for the good of the country”. Why aren’t any of them named and affiliations displayed on screen, I wonder?

But guess what? The Tea Party movement is also made up of not only Republicans but a healthy percentage of Democrats, and Independents. As many as four in ten, as it happens. Tea Party groups even backed a few Democrats in the election. The BBC never told you about any of that, did they? No, because the Tea Party movement stands for fiscal conservatism, and against the President’s and Democrat leadership’s massive tax and spending policies, policies which the BBC supports.

The BBC censors news they don’t like, and then works to discredit the people involved when reality forces them to report it, while eagerly and immediately announcing it when people hold approved thoughts. All at your expense.

Don’t trust the BBC on US issues.

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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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BBC Clinton Worship, Part XXXVIII…..

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In a gushing, slobbering, sycophantic piece of Hello style candyfloss on the BBC website Katie Connolly goes all Sylvie Krin over the Clintons and their daughter’s wedding.

Moreover, the Clintons are icons of a different, seemingly more youthful time in America’s history – a pre 9/11 era when the country wasn’t weighed down with wars, bulging deficits and billowing oil leaks.
Chelsea is a reminder of that time, and people feel invested in the life of that young girl who held her parents hands through their darkest personal days

Darkest personal days? Great therapy codespeak for this, methinks….

The Clintons, of course, are part of a select few that belong to the BBC’s Royal Family (Arafat, Castro, Nehru, Tony Benn etc) who are always treated with reverence and their transgressions initially minimised then airbrushed out of the “narrative”.

If it was a Palin or a Bush daughter getting married you can be guaranteed there would be plenty of veiled (and not so veiled) sneers and quotes from vitriolic haters (think Thatcher) so, to redresss the balance, and sustain the BBC’s Royalty image, we need an image that will be helpful to all the peasants crowding around their TVs watching their “betters” act out the higher life in that glittering galaxy reserved solely for the great and the good….

Just so you know,folks,like everyone else in these hard times the Clintons and the Kerrys are keeping things lean and mean….

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Bloated And Biased

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In last week’s Telegraph Neil Midgley wrote a piece headed ‘BBC’s £12,000 for lawyers to help keep pay secret.’

The BBC Trust used Baker and McKenzie, an international law firm, to stop the National Audit Office disclosing figures that would allow ‘those in the know’ to make an approximate calculation of individual BBC staff’s paypackets. We’re going to know this soon anyway aren’t we?

I wonder how much more of the licence fee the BBC spends on suppressing things in addition to the hundreds of thousands forked out so far to bury the Balen report?

Another article by Neil Midgley in the Telegraph online concerns Jeremy Hunt and Sir Michael Lyons of the BBC Trust.

Before he became culture secretary and had the power to do so, Jeremy Hunt wanted to abolish the BBC Trust. Now that he has, he’s gone all soft and settled for changing the name a bit, from “The BBC Trust,” to the “Licence Fee Payers’ Trust”. He hopes that, and inserting a non-executive chairman onto Mark Thompson’s executive board, should be enough to address the troubles at the BBC.
Nobody has explained what specific changes Jeremy Hunt is after, apart from that the BBC Trust, or the Licence Fee Payers’ Trust, should be seen to be at arms length from the BBC.

However, as Sir Michael Lyons has secured a promise that the members of the new Licence Fee Payers’ Trust will still be the same old ex BBC members of the BBC Trust, the only way much change is going to happen is when, next year, Sir Michael’s term of Office comes up for renewal, and whether Jeremy Hunt replaces him with someone with very much longer arms.

It looks as though we’ll end up with the same ex BBC staff virtually investigating themselves, and at best giving themselves a token slap on the wrist once in a while.
Everyone agrees that the BBC is bloated, and needs to shrink. But it’s the bias, I’m afraid, that needs to be recognised and sorted out.

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COMPARE AND CONTRAST…

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I have covered this on A Tangled Web but wanted to post it here as well.


It’s a sad story.

British fashion designer Alexander McQueen has been found dead at his home. The poor chap, a doyen in the fashion world, was only 40 years old. His mother died last week.
Here’s the issue.
The BBC report on it here. He died. Just like that, seemingly.
However, as is reported elsewhere, he committed suicide. He hanged himself.
A terrible waste of his life but I wonder WHY the BBC seemed determined to avoid this simple detail? Were they trying to spare the feelings of the family? If so, why is such censorship not afforded to others in such circumstances? Might his gay background be in any way linked to this sudden BBC reluctance to report the facts? I don’t see the issue for the BBC withholding the reason for his death, can you? 

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Little Ben Twitters

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Those who yearn for impartiality in BBC reporting can never close our minds to any side of a debate in our quest for fairness. For many years the bias has been pretty much one-way traffic – because it is inbred, it has become woven like fine silk through the cloth of reporting. So let us consider a contrary view.

Enter Stage Left Ben Bradshaw,  the Culture Secretary and soon to be ex-MP. On Twitter this morning he described the Today program as “biased” and “feeble” in its questioning of George Osborne.

“Another wholly feeble and biased Today programme rounded off with a fawning interview with a Tory pundit!!”

Earlier in the week he said, again via Twitter, that an interview with Shadow Schools Secretary Michael Gove was “disgracefully feeble”. Obviously feeble is his new favourite word, but leaving aside my view that Twitter isn’t an appropriate medium for a senior member of HMG to be sounding off on any issues, let’s examine in depth the points raised by the ex-BBC chappie.

Except there aren’t any.

To start with Evan Davies was fair by all accounts, but even if that wasn’t true, if the Left are to begin throwing accusations of bias in the run-up to losing the election then bring your evidence to the table and we will all listen fairly. Unsubstantiated Twitterings don’t cut the mustard.

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BBC Once More Open to Climate Change Doubts…

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It was a magical moment and, of course, the BBC captured it.

A 13-year-old Indian school girl has addressed world leaders during the inaugural session at the UN Climate Change Summit in New York.
During her speech, Yugratna Srivastava from Lucknow appealed to the world’s leaders to do more to combat the effects of climate change, asking “is this what we are going to give to our future generations?”

But later the BBC, wishing to be balanced, reported that not all the leaders were impressed…

Czech President Vaclav Klaus sharply criticized a U.N. meeting on climate change on Tuesday at which U.S. President Barack Obama was among the top speakers, describing it as propagandistic and undignified.
“It was sad and it was frustrating,” said Klaus, one of the world’s most vocal skeptics on the topic of global warming.
“It’s a propagandistic exercise where 13-year-old girls from some far-away country perform a pre-rehearsed poem,” he said. “It’s simply not dignified.”
……
Klaus said there were increasing doubts in the scientific community about whether humans are causing changes in the climate or whether the changes are simply naturally occurring phenomena.
But politicians, he said, seem to be moving closer to a consensus on climate change.
“The train can’t be stopped and I consider that a huge mistake,” Klaus said.

Whoops – sorry! That comment from the Czech President came from Reuters…couldn’t find it on the BBC – I wonder why?

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