Category Archives: BBC bias

A new week of bias from the dinosaur BBC and here is where YOU capture the bias!

What we always knew about the BBC attitude…..catch ’em young and keep ’em hooked for life…hence any attempts to criticise the BBC will be met with blinkered, adoring, mindless love for it or indifference to the BBC’s faults…..after all isn’t ‘uncle’ Attenborough so friendly and the animals so cuddly…how’d we cope without the BBC’s warm embrace…never mind the dodgy news and left-wing bigotry, we just love Attenborough….

There’s stiff pressure from the BBC Trust to fulfil its remit of reducing that audience’s age from today’s average of 33 (though he points out the most common age of listener is 23) into the intended 15-24 demographic – the idea being a Radio 1 disciple will stay true to the BBC for life.

Horror!!  Nasty nationalist little Catalonians, those bigoted, racist little Catalonians who want to go it alone and declare independence!!!  Their referendum will surely give licence to the racists to start attacking ‘foreigners’ in Catalonia and will certainly encourage those wishing to relive the Franco era to come out from under their stones.

Oh…hang on…that’s the BBC message about Brexit not Catalan…Catalonians are brave resisters who are fighting the Fascist, Franco state with a demonstration of people power…

In a demonstration of people power, hundreds braved a hail of rubber bullets, batons and riot shields to force a retreat by the police. It was an unforgettable sight on a day full of unexpected violence.

Daniel Sanchez told us he’d arrived at 01:00. “My grandfather would be proud,” he said. He went on to draw a comparison between the Spanish state of today and the Franco era. It was a common refrain.

When we spoke to former regional leader Artur Mas after he cast his vote, he crystallised what many here are thinking: “Everywhere there are peaceful people who are trying to cast their vote – and there is a violent Spanish state that is trying to prevent people from voting.”

So the Catalan independence protestors are brave and principled whilst the Spanish state in trying to stop an illegal referendum and secession from Spain is acting like Franco and oppressing the people… the bête noir of the Left and so the obvious figure for the BBC to compare things to.

Shame the BBC doesn’t show so much concern for the result of a legal referendum and ‘people power’ back in the UK which the Left are trying to undermine and stop using whatever means they can.

Deep joy….on the same day….from the BBC:

and

Edmonton: Five injured in Canada ‘terror’ incidents

Canadian police have confirmed they are investigating possible acts of terrorism after multiple incidents in Edmonton, Alberta, on Saturday night.

They said a police officer controlling traffic at a Canadian Football League game was struck by a car at high speed and then attacked with a knife.

A man driving a van went on to hit at least four pedestrians and was arrested two hours later after a police chase.

Police said an Islamic State (IS) group flag was found in one of the vehicles.

Trump has come under a torrent of criticism and abuse because he dared to defend himself, the massive relief effort and all the workers participating in it to help Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria.  He was originally savagely criticised by the mayor of San Juan, a local Democrat, who stated that Trump’s neglect in essence was going to result in a genocide.  Any wonder he responded to that claim?

“Such poor leadership ability by the Mayor of San Juan and others in Puerto Rico, who are not able to get their workers to help”.

He went on: “They want everything to be done for them when it should be a community effort. 10,000 Federal workers now on Island doing a fantastic job.”

From the Guardian which has run a huge amount of space attacking Trump for essentially that one message he Tweeted out in response to this….

The mayor of San Juan lashed out at Trump administration on Friday, decrying its relief effort in the wake of hurricanes Jose and Maria and saying if it doesn’t solve the logistics “what we we are going to see is something close to a genocide”.

“We are dying here,” Carmen Yulín Cruz said at a press conference, speaking with tears in her eyes. “I cannot fathom the thought that the greatest nation in the world cannot figure out the logistics for a small island of 100 miles by 35 miles. So, mayday, we are in trouble.”

Cruz appealed directly to the president, saying: “So, Mr Trump, I am begging you to take charge and save lives. After all, that is one of the founding principles of the United States of … America. If not, the world will see how we are treated not as second-class citizens but as animals that can be disposed of. Enough is enough.”

So the mayor ‘lashed out’ and said Trump was treating Puerto Ricans like animals and that genocide would be the result…and yet Trump is wrong to answer back?

Trump, having responded well to tackle Irma and Harvey, has sent 10,000 US personnel to help put Puerto Rico back in  working order along with huge amounts of supplies including generators to provide at least some power…the Guardian mentions these but not where they came from….

The electric grid was badly damaged by the two storms, leaving many without power and reliant on gas-powered generators.

The BBC of course has decided that it is Trump who is ‘lashing out’…no idea that it was the mayor who made completely sensationalist and incendiary comments about Trump…

Puerto Rico: Trump lashes out at San Juan mayor over Maria response

We have this obvious porkie from the mayor reported straight-faced by the BBC…

Responding to Trump’s tweets in an interview the mayor said: “I was asking for help. I wasn’t saying anything nasty about the president.”

Listening to 5 Live earlier discussing this issue and it was more a chat down the wine bar with like-minded souls who all despise Trump, Jane Garvey tut-tutting at Trump’s alleged callousness and indifference to the disaster.  It was utter rubbish, ill-informed and prejudiced.

At present the US is putting $6.7 billion towards the relief efforts going to Harvey, Irma and Maria as well as massive amounts of other resources.  Trump was criticised for mentioning the huge debts Puerto Rico has [£72 billion…for a small island economy]…..

Trump again referred to the island’s debt crisis, saying it would have to work with federal authorities to determine how to pay for a massive recovery effort compounded by “the tremendous amount of existing debt already on the island”.

He tweeted earlier: “The fact is that Puerto Rico has been destroyed by two hurricanes. Big decisions will have to be made as to the cost of its rebuilding!”

But once again Trump is right….the debt is a big issue and as Trump says ‘must be dealt with’…meaning taken into account when working out how to rebuild Puerto Rico…

The hurricane has raised questions about how much of a role the federal government plays in solving Puerto Rico’s crisis and whether creditors would give any relief to the island, weighed down by $72 billion in debt.  Any bailout of bondholders or moves toward debt forgiveness looks unlikely, experts said. The more likely scenario is that bondholders wait for a federal package while they continue to try and work out their own situation through the bankruptcy process – which is currently on hold.

There are attempts to portray this as a Katrina-like repeat of Federal neglect, incompetence and indifference….

Critics have warned that Maria threatens to become “Trump’s Katrina” – a reference to the 2005 hurricane that smashed New Orleans and became a defining failure of George W Bush’s presidency.

Yeah, those ‘critics’ again….Democrats and the likes of the NYT and WashPo media…..but who was really at fault in New Orleans, and who did the likes of the BBC ignore when dishing out the blame…the Mayor, Ray Nagin…now in prison….

In 2014, Nagin was convicted on twenty of twenty-one charges of wire fraud, bribery, and money laundering related to bribes from city contractors before and after Katrina and was sentenced to ten years in federal prison.

It was Nagin’s failure to put into action any effective emergency response that resulted in so much disorder, ignoring state and federal offers of help and advice to evacuate the city…nothing to do with Bush…and yet it was Bush whom the BBC laid all the blame on…one of its finest shaking with anger as he berated Bush for his apparent failures and ‘racism’.  They even tried to blame the Iraq war…if only Bush hadn’t gone to war there would have been more troops to help on the ground.  A bizarre attempt to bring the hated Iraq war into the debate and thus double up the criticism of Bush.  The BBC never misses an opportunity nor a trick.

Essentially Trump is right and the BBC, Guardian and mayor of San Juan are politically motivated anti-Trump voices more intent on attacking Trump than seeing Puerto Rico back on its feet.

The Governor of Puerto Rico thinks the Federal help is spot on…why is the BBC not concentrating on that and on the massive relief effort instead of agit-prop from the mayor of San Juan?

Puerto Rico governor: More needed, but feds have answered our calls

Much more work must be done to meet Puerto Rico’s critical humanitarian needs after Hurricane Maria, the US territory’s top official said Saturday, while also emphasizing that the federal government is fulfilling his every request — striking a conciliatory tone minutes after President Donald Trump lambasted a mayor who criticized Washington’s response.

“We need to do a lot more in order for us to get out of the emergency,” Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló said in San Juan. “But the other thing that’s also true is that the administration has answered and has complied with our petitions in an expedited manner.”

‘The alleged murderer was clearly a Muslim, but there is very little to suggest that he adhered to a hard-line interpretation of his religion or that he had political or religious motives.

Still, searching for patterns and for answers is part of what it is to be human. I loathe cliche, but perhaps, for once, this is a “senseless tragedy”, devoid of deeper meaning.’

The BBC is still downplaying the ‘racist’ attack on a 14 year old boy outside a mosque….why?  Because they are pretty sure it was an attack by another Muslim, probably Sunni against Shia.  No sensationalist headlines shouting about ‘racism’ or ‘hate’….just a boring, undramatic, low key heading as they update the report…

More time to quiz man over boy’s stabbing near mosque

So who’s the man arrested?  Any clues?  Any religion or ethnicity?  They obviously know because we get this oblique statement..

Echoing the police that the motive for the attack was not yet clear, he added: “Background checks so far have not associated the suspect with any particular mosque or community.”

So good probability he is Muslim.  Note the BBC does not mention that the boy attacked was a Shia Muslim….possibly very relevant to the story…one clue too many for the BBC to give away?  Then we get this…..

“The board of trustees emphasises that whatever the motive behind this attack, it should not be sensationalised and neither used as a justification to spread hatred or incite violence.”

The BBC has no problem sensationalising and indeed faking news that labels an attack as a racist hate crime when it thinks it was done by a white person but when the possibility is that an attack was by one Muslim upon another this needs to be covered up and downplayed so that it isn’t ‘sensationalised’ and ‘someone’ doesn’t use it to spread hate and incite violence even if the story is true?….but it’s OK to spread hate and incite violence then against white non-Muslims in the BBC’s eyes and do so with a false news story?

The BBC reports that little quote from Mosque officials but fails to report this from yesterday….

The founding member of the Shia mosque, who asked not to be named, believes the attack was ‘inspired by Daesh’ – the Arabic nickname for ISIS.

He said: ‘There is no doubt that this was a targeted attack.

‘The victim might have been random, but in my mind it is clear that these people are from Daesh, and wanted to kill a Shia Muslim based on the belief that they would go to heaven.’ 

‘The West thinks the animosity with Daesh is a new thing, but we’ve been dealing with this for 1,400 years.

If it had been a quote about the Far Right the BBC would absolutely have printed it and broadcast it widely, loudly and often.

The BBC clearly hasn’t learnt a thing since Rotherham and Rochdale and still censors ‘bad news’ about Muslims that paints them or their ideology in a negative light.

Perhaps an irony that just days ago the BBC’s Nick Robinson said this...

We must learn from our past, when the BBC has been slow to challenge the conventional wisdom of the day. Churchill’s pre-War warnings about the dangers of German rearmament were heard by radio listeners not in his own country, but in the US.

The way Churchill was handled is a powerful warning of the dangers of the BBC believing it is being balanced by silencing the voices of those who do not represent conventional wisdom.

The liberal do-gooders falling out with each other.

Normally the BBC treats every utterance from his holyship as the word of God, Gospel, especially if he is doing a drive-by take-down of the Tories or their welfare or ‘austerity’ policies.

Today not so much as the Archbish, the Most Reverend Justin Welby, lays into the BBC.

The BBC’s response was immediately to source voices critical of the Churche’s own response to abuse claims against it rather than to look too closely at what Welby said about the BBC, never mind admit he may have been right…naturally he is completely wrong and the BBC just doesn’t recognise anything he says.

I imagine the BBC will send Dimbleby round to the Archbish’s place to give him a dressing down.

The Spectator is similarly unimpressed with the BBC’s self-serving response [not to mention ungrateful as the Archbish gave his services to them]…

The BBC’s self-absorption has obscured Justin Welby’s real message

You have to try really hard to get any idea of what the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby actually said in his interview for the BBC Today programme, the one where he said the BBC had acted with less integrity than the Church of England or the Catholic church when it came to the abuse of children by Jimmy Savile. You may well have heard that part because it is what the BBC itself reported on its own news broadcasts and duly, every other news outlet followed its lead.

The BBC opted to focus on the one bit of the interview where Justin Welby had the impudence to criticise it. Perhaps – probably – he was rash to say that the BBC’s response to Savile had less integrity than that of the churches when it came to abuse, but was it really that interesting? If the Corporation has done one thing, it’s to bear out what the Archbishop says that the reflexes of institutions are to protect themselves. Justin Welby may well feel he’s been stitched up by the BBC – quoted out of context and with one observation blown out of all proportion from the rest and used to condemn him – the programme promptly invited victim support groups to take issue with his remarks. Presumably he gave this interview in a friendly spirit. Well, that’ll teach him.

Another stabbing outside a mosque, unlike the last one which the BBC put up in lights as a ‘racist attack’ [turns out of course that it wasn’t] and gave it massive publicity on every bulletin, this time all is quiet despite the police saying they are of course looking at all possible motives including racial and religious.  To find the story on the BBC website you have to go to the England page…not the frontpage or even the UK page.  Why might the BBC be reluctant to highlight this possibly ‘racist’ attack?….after all even the Telegraph has decided to label it a ‘suspected racially motivated attack’[despite no evidence other than what the ‘mosque elders’ said…not always reliable as the last attack showed when witnesses claimed to have heard anti-Islamic shouts…turned out to be complete rubbish]…

The Telegraph gives a clue as to why the BBC isn’t putting this up in the headlines...

A 14-year-old boy is fighting for his life in hospital after being stabbed outside a mosque in a suspected racially motivated attack as his father dropped him off to attend a youth event.  Mosque leaders believe the attack was “racially motivated” by a gang who were “lying in wait”.

Adnan Khan, information secretary for the mosque, said: “This is the biggest event in the Shiah calendar.

“We believe this was a racist attack and the young lad was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

West Midlands Police said the attack is being treated as attempted murder but not as a terror incident and they are probing whether there was any racial motivation.

The mosque is a Shia mosque…in other words, just like the Ahmadis, not considered ‘islamic’ at all by Sunnis who are the majority in the UK, and as we know the Shias suffer regular attacks and abuse from Sunnis.

The BBC suggest that ‘Police have not ruled out the attack could be racially motivated.’  Why just ‘racially’ motivated when what evidence there is points to religious motivation…and as the BBC admits…

Det Insp Jim Colclough said: “We do not believe it to be terror-related. The motivation for the attack is not yet known, we are keeping an open mind as to whether it could be racially or religiously motivated.

Remarkable lack of sensationalism from the BBC…have they learnt their lesson from their last attempt to label a stabbing ‘outside a mosque’ as racially motivated?  Somehow you have to doubt that.  They must know this is a Shia mosque, but don’t mention it in their report, and so you must think they are holding back on this story because they suspect it may be an inter-religious attack between Muslim groups….if it is that the story may well then vanish off the radar completely, if it is a ‘white supremacist’ it will be bounced onto the frontpage and will get star billing on the news bulletins…if it is perhaps gang related it will get some coverage but nowhere near that which a white neo-nazi would get despite a gang related attack perhaps being more significant for society in that white neo-nazis kill almost nobody whilst gangs kill or injure many many people…all too often young people like this kid.

I await with interest further developments.

Further developments…Sunni v Shia…..the Mail reports….

The founding member of the Shia mosque, who asked not to be named, believes the attack was ‘inspired by Daesh’ – the Arabic nickname for ISIS.

He said: ‘There is no doubt that this was a targeted attack.

‘The victim might have been random, but in my mind it is clear that these people are from Daesh, and wanted to kill a Shia Muslim based on the belief that they would go to heaven.’ 

‘The West thinks the animosity with Daesh is a new thing, but we’ve been dealing with this for 1,400 years.

Why does the BBC not report that when it so readily reports ‘Mosque elders” claims in other reports and go on to label such attacks as ‘racially’ motivated based on such claims?

And so the weekend approaches and time for one of these to take us off into the wide blue yonder! Detail their remorseless bias here!

Nick Robinson…peddling pro-BBC, anti-the opposition propaganda….or is he?  Who is he kidding…himself?  But does he admit the BBC nearly won it for Corbyn?

The BBC always hated the so-called Right-Wing Press and attacks it relentlessly and at every opportunity never missing a chance to sneer at the Mail, The Sun or Murdoch but it has a new rival, one possibly more dangerous to the BBC dominance of ‘truth’…the Internet and all those upstart digital news-sites, special interest sites and of course bloggers…many of them experts in their own right…far more so than many a BBC journalist.

The BBC wants to position itself in the mind of the Public as that trusted and respected provider of news, as perhaps The Only One to really trust and it has been pumping out constant attacks on the Internet sites portraying them as unreliable, inaccurate, biased and untrustworthy providers of fake news.

This is of course laughable as the BBC hates these sites so much not because they bring us fake news but because they bring us the truth…the inconvenient truth that the BBC hides.  The vast majority are not malicious or intent on distorting the news agenda, they are there more often than not to counteract the lies and omissions of the mainstream media such as the BBC on a vast number of subjects from climate change, politics, economics and history to name a few.

Nick Robinson however wants to reassure you that in a world where nobody can be trusted you can trust the BBC…

Is ‘guerrilla war’ being waged on news broadcasters?

How should the BBC and other broadcasters respond to the changing media landscape including “guerilla” attacks on social media? In an inaugural lecture to mark the contribution of the late Steve Hewlett to journalism, his friend and colleague Nick Robinson discusses the issue. Steve Hewlett, a BBC Radio 4 presenter and former Panorama editor, died this year from cancer. This is an edited version of that lecture.

News is too important to be reduced to a three-letter word.

Yet that is a risk we now face as more and more people get their news from social media, with what they read and see determined for them by the all powerful algorithms that prioritise emotion – “OMG” or “LOL” – over facts and analysis.

That’s such condescending, self-serving tosh…..where are the studies, where is the proof, where is the analysis that shows that shallow, attention deficit, ignorant people really only get their news solely from Facebook or somesuch?  Most people I know get their news from a variety of providers and they are more than adequately informed about current affairs.  Do you think he is really talking  about the ‘Deplorables’…you know those uneducated, bigoted and prejudiced Whites who voted for Brexit and Trump because they were too stupid and uninformed to know the truth…the sort of people you suspect he thinks are too lazy and uninterested in the world to make the effort to find ‘real’ news preferring ‘fast’ news McDonald’s style…flashy, easy on the eye and superficially tasty but ultimately unnourishing, unsatifying with dangerous side effects.

To prove his point Robinson quotes..

To summarise, let me quote one of the bosses of one of those corporate giants who pose the greatest challenge to the old ways of doing things, Google News’s Richard Gingras, whom I met in Silicon Valley a few weeks ago.

Information v affirmation

“We came from an era of dominant news organisations, often perceived as oracles of fact,” he told me.

“We’ve moved to a marketplace where quality journalism competes on an equal footing with raucous opinion, passionate advocacy, and the masquerading expression of variously motivated bad actors.”

I read that last bit and had to laugh…it’s the perfect description of BBC ‘journalism’…indeed Robinson’s very article is a prime example of that….short on genuine fact and relying on emotive drivel that the BBC is the most trusted news source.  And hasn’t this always been the case…Tabloids versus the ‘quality’ Press?

However paradoxically he then claims actually the young love the BBC and get their news from it…

It’s worth noting that BBC News is still watched, listened to and read by a remarkable number of people.

And we are trusted, even by the young, who come to the BBC when it matters. For example, 91% of under-34s consumed the BBC’s 2017 general election coverage in the week of the vote.

Actually that is of interest…Corbyn surged based on a huge turn out of the young….the BBC made a grat deal of effort to encourage the young to vote knowing there was a good chance they would vote ‘Corbyn’, but on top of that the BBC’s news programmes gave Corbyn a massive lift as they relentlessly attacked and undermined the Tories whilst avoiding talking about Corbyn’s radical politics, his links to terrorism and the fact that he dumped all his long held convictions in order to win the election by pulling the wool over voters’ eyes…aided by a complicit BBC.

Robinson is admitting the BBC almost won the election for Corbyn.

Robinson thinks the BBC is beyond reproach, above criticism however somewhat bizarely he does a complete volte face and admits the problem could be the BBC.

He starts off asking…

Attacks on the media are no longer a lazy clap line delivered to a party conference to the raise the morale of a crowd of the party faithful. They are part of a guerrilla war being fought on social media, day after day and hour after hour.

How to respond? I turn to my late friend Steve Hewlett here for inspiration.

Did Robinson read what he has written?…it runs counter to his whole narrative…which is ‘don’t you dare probe the consensus [of the glorious MSM]’..

What made him [Hewlett] different is that he asked questions many others failed to ask.

‘Probe the consensus’

In the early days of Channel 4, Steve worked on a series called Diverse Reports, which had a clearly defined purpose: “Wherever you can find the liberal consensus, probe it, probe it, probe it. And if there’s another way of looking at it, broadcast it.”

Probe, probe, probe the liberal consensus?  Isn’t that what the internet [and the Daily Mail] does so well? Amusingly Robinson says this…

My instinct is that we should build this mindset into all our programmes, so that we ask questions – and can share online items that ask questions – that are invariably not asked.

Again and again over the years, views that start off being seen as extreme quickly become the new conventional wisdom – monetarism, green politics, gay rights, calls for curbs on immigration.

Yeah right, the BBC probing itself and ‘discovering’the joys of immigration curbs.

He goes on…

We must learn from our past, when the BBC has been slow to challenge the conventional wisdom of the day. Churchill’s pre-War warnings about the dangers of German rearmament were heard by radio listeners not in his own country, but in the US.

The way Churchill was handled is a powerful warning of the dangers of the BBC believing it is being balanced by silencing the voices of those who do not represent conventional wisdom.

I wonder if the ‘Islamophobic’ warnings of the dangers of a Dark Ages, unpleasant and backward ideology will become the BBC narrative in time to hold back the future…let’s quote Churchill as it seems appropriate…

Mein Kampf…..”the new Koran of faith and war: turgid, verbose, shapeless, but pregnant with its message.”

Robinson then oddly tells us how wonderful and impartial the BBC is after having admitted it fails to provide a broad and accurate news service…

There is a danger in these times that a growing number will question whether impartiality still has any real meaning, whether it is an establishment plot to limit debate and whether it can be sustained in an era of almost infinite media choice.

I believe that it is still vital, and we should proudly tell our audience that the BBC is not owned, run or controlled by the government, media tycoons, profit-seeking businesses or those pursuing a political or partisan agenda.

It is staffed by people who – regardless of their personal background or private views – are committed to getting as close to the truth as they can, and to offering their audience a free, open and broad debate about the issues confronting the country.

They aim to deliver what Carl Bernstein called “the best obtainable version of the truth”.

It’s not ‘impartiality’ that limits debate it’s the BBC’s partisan approach that loads the dice and sets up certain ideas and political view points as ‘unacceptable’, immoral and wrong.

It does in fact pursue a political and partisan agenda more often than not brought to us by people who channel their own political and social values and beliefs allowing them to shape their narrative in debates and how the news is presented.

Who decides what is the ‘best obtainable version of the truth’?  Can we leave that to the BBC?  No, not likely.