Category Archives: BBC bias

I haven’t watched the BBC’s three part series on the events in Rochdale, I know what happened and why…and I know why the BBC has produced this programme as it comes so late to the party….Do we need pious, self-serving BBC shows to teach us anything?

The Authorities, and that includes the BBC, buried their heads in the sand for years as hundreds of white girls, maybe up to 2,000, were abused by mostly Pakistani men….the reason?  Maybe because first they just didn’t care about what they undoubtedly saw as ‘poor white trash’ and second they baulked at having to tackle something that had obvious undertones of race or religion….they would rather see these girls get raped and abused than have to ‘upset’ the Muslim community…this of course has resonance now in a parallel scenario as the BBC has a similar cultural cringe in regard to Muslim political violence and its connection to Islamic teaching.

Now the BBC has leapt nobly to the girls’ defence and has brought their plight to our attention…years too late.  What is the point of this programme now?  It is little more than some kind of perverse entertainment, a horror show exploiting the very real abuse and suffering those girls went through.  It is in reality a ‘political’ programme as the BBC presents itself as an exposer of abuse and Establishment indifference and cowardice, holding Power to account….neglecting to mention that the BBC was part of that itself.

The Sunday Times believes the BBC is ducking the issue of race and is indeed engaged in massaging the truth for the ‘good of the community’….it also doesn’t think the programme was particularly brilliant, ITV’s ‘Little Boy Blue’ being better….‘superior for having sharper pacing, more efficient use of characters and more obvious moral knots’.

As said not seen either of these but maybe you have…comment below.

The Times goes on…

‘As a document it was noble; as a drama, a little dull.   Three Girls left me morally uneasy…placing the story of the victims front and centre but the other key aspect of the case, the profile of the abusers, remained secondary.  Only at the end of the final episode did we see a somewhat stagy face-off between members of the local Pakistani community.   The reason this case was exceptional was because the culprits were exceptional too.  This was what made your eyes twitch, your mouth tighten, whenever you read about it, regardless of your political persuasion.  By sidelining the race issue the show also sidelined a whole community: the British Pakistanis, good and bad, remained peripheral yet agaiin.  I’m not sure this helps anyone in the long run.

This was very much Auntie placing a calming hand over proceedings.  She couldn’t stomach anything else, for now.’

Auntie always the same…Islam ‘The Religion of Peace’….ducking the issue….until it is forced upon you…and then what?  No good producing a programme showing how it all went wrong when the Extremists have won and now rule the roost.

There’s no evidence, no source, no documents…just phone calls in the night to newspapers that hate Trump and yet the BBC reports…

Evidence mounts – Anthony Zurcher, BBC North America reporter

Donald Trump called the ongoing Russia investigation a “witch hunt”, but reporters have just found a boiling cauldron and a closet full of broomsticks.

The key takeaway from these latest blockbuster stories – there have been so many this week it’s hard to keep count – is there’s now further evidence of Mr Trump’s intent to dismiss FBI Director James Comey because of his handling of the ongoing Russia investigation.

That this revelation came as a result of a meeting with Russian officials, one of whom is a key figure in the investigation, is just the icing on the cake.

What the BBC doesn’t report is that the Russians deny it all and say that the latest ‘sensational’ revelation is nonsense…

Comey’s dismissal not discussed at meeting with Trump – Lavrov

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has denied recent media claims that US President Donald Trump mentioned the dismissal of FBI head James Comey during their meeting in Washington DC.

“We did not touch upon this issue at all,” Lavrov said, speaking to journalists in Nicosia, the capital of Cyprus, on Saturday.

Lavrov already mentioned before that the issue of Comey’s dismissal was not discussed during the meeting with Trump.

“It is not our issue, it is his [Trump’s] prerogative,” he said during interview with Russian Channel One on May 14.

The Russian foreign minister met the US leader in the Oval Office on May 10. One day before the meeting, Trump fired James Comey.

The New York Times claimed on Friday that it obtained some quotations from the meeting provided by an unnamed official. According to them, Trump mentioned firing “crazy, a real nut job” Comey as he was speaking to the Russian officials.

Shortly after the Trump and Lavrov meeting, the Washington Post came up with a story claiming that Trump revealed highly classified information to Russian officials. Both the White House and the Kremlin refuted the report.

President Vladimir Putin described the US media claims as “political schizophrenia” and said that Russia could provide the transcript of the conversation.

So far the BBC is reporting what amounts to highly biased nonsense as fact.  Quality journalism…obviously gone out of the window.  The ‘evidence mounts’?……So far the evidence amounts to no more than a hill o’beans and Zurcher’s reporting is all piss and wind.

A better  late than never open thread…all yours……

Imagine waking up to that in the morning…….on the airwaves of course….

They say the past is another country, certainly the BBC’s rewrite of our past makes Britain unrecognisable to most people, but truth itself is pretty unrecognisable if left in the BBC’s care.  History is a Past Truth Era for the BBC, one to be altered at will to suit the present and to shape the future to their liking.

Consider the Obama loving Justin Webb.  The archetypal, stereotypical, dyed-in-the-wool BBC Stepford wife who is so on-message and soulless you could just replace him with an algorithm and not notice the difference.

Not his finest day today if you believe in free speech, investigative journalism and holding politicians to account..and not just the politicians you don’t like.

Discussing Julian Assange, Webb on the Today show (08:25), had quite a lot to say and it made interesting, if disturbing, listening because he confirmed for us the thinking that we all possibly believe informs the BBC’s approach to its journalism, what information to report, what tone to take and what line to take.

Assange published the Clinton and DNC emails that were either leaked or hacked because he believed they had information in them that was important and relevant to the election.  The BBC was never concerned with reporting the contents or investigating why they might be damaging to Clinton, instead they tried to cover up for her by concentrating on the source of the emails and attempting to spin the Democrat’s narrative that this was the Russians interfering in the American elections with Trump’s collusion, turning it from a story about Clinton into one about Trump, trying to delegitimise him and his campaign by claiming he was a Russian stooge.

Webb continues with this narrative disregarding the emails and their contents and instead tries to suggest the content is of no matter if the source is an ‘enemy’…

‘Well, on Wikileaks and what it has done, according to many Americans, particularly Democrats, is illegitimately assist in making sure Hillary Clinton wasn’t elected President’

The response from the guest was that Clinton was a terrible candidate and if Assange has important information about a major political figure that is true then he feels he should release it.

Webb went on…

‘Yes but does he not care about the provenance of that information and why it might be put into the public domain via him…in other words isn’t it a bit naive just to take him at face value and say OK he doesn’t support one candidate or the other but that actually the actions he took had the effect that he must have known they’d have?’

A fascinating insight into the mindset of a liberal journalist who will decide whether information should be reported based on, not the importance, relevance or truth of that information, but on its source….and of course the ‘target’….if you like the target ignore or discredit the bad news, if you don’t like the target ignore the source and hit the target for six.

You can see the reverse effect of that at work in how the BBC reports the wave of allegations about Trump published by anti-Trump newspapers in the US, the New York Times and the Washington Post, who are trying to force the US President from Office….unsurprisingly the pro-Clinton BBC does not see anything ‘illegitimate’ in this media coup d’etat.  Whilst the Wikileak emails could be seen and read the information that the NYT and WP release is without any backup…it’s all ‘an anonymous source says’ but no evidence…look at the latest about Trump…The NYT merely tells us that it is from “a document summarizing the meeting” that was “circulated” (it does not say by whom). The Times does not have the document. An “American official” simply “read quotations” to the Times.   It could have been anyone at the end of the line…maybe Clinton.

No proof, no documents, no evidence,  no witnesses willing to speak openly…and the only witnesses that do speak say these things never happened.  As Breitbart says…..

The common element in nearly all the major New York Times and Washington Post stories about President Donald Trump this week is that they are based on source documents the outlets cannot authenticate, do not possess, admit are partial, and refuse to share.

And as Breitbart asks…where is that evidence?  So far there is absolutely none…it is all rumour, gossip, wishful thinking and lies..

Dems, Media, Intel Folks Fall Into ‘No Evidence’ Column on Trump Campaign Collusion with Russia

With headlines swirling and lawmakers meeting behind closed doors, it’s not difficult to conclude there is trouble in the Trump White House.

But a deeper dive reveals that lots of people who would not consider themselves Trump supporters admit there is no evidence of any wrongdoing by the Trump campaign regarding alleged collusion with Russians.

Many senior intelligence officials stated on the record that they’d seen no evidence so far of any collusion between the Russians and Trump’s campaign team.  However the likes of the BBC always put the sensationalist claims in the headlines and only later slip in a word of caution that there is absolutely no proof of any of this.  Here’s a perfect example from Reuters….

Reuters ran a story on Thursday with the headline “Exclusive: Trump campaign had at least 18 undisclosed contacts with Russians sources”

But buried in the story is the real headline:

“In January, the Trump White House initially denied any contacts with Russian officials during the 2016 campaign. The White House and advisers to the campaign have since confirmed four meetings between Kislyak and Trump advisers during that time. The people who described the contacts to Reuters said they had seen no evidence of wrongdoing or collusion between the campaign and Russia in the communications reviewed so far.”

A living history lesson

The BBC, most recently in the shape of Mardell and Bowen, disregard history and context at will in order to push a particular narrative of events in the Middle East.  They should realise that the ISIS blitz is an echo from the past…a modern day recreation of the first Islamic conquests by Muhammed…..the difference being that ISIS are unlikely to succeed long term considering the number and power of its opponents should they have the will to combat them.

From Douglas Murray in the Spectator:

The British broadcaster brave enough to discuss Islamic violence

Last night Channel 4 broadcast a deep and seriously important programme. ‘Isis: The Origins of Violence’ was written and presented by the historian Tom Holland and can be viewed (by British viewers) here.

In a nutshell he posed the question ‘Why do Isis, and groups like Isis, do what they do?’ And he answers this with the only honest answer anybody interested in truth could possibly come back with – which is that although they may be inspired by many things, their most important inspiration is a version of Islam whose roots can be traced to the origins of the religion, its foundational texts and the behaviour of Mohammed.

In a profoundly moving sequence, picking his way up a demolished street, on the lookout for explosives amid the rubble, Holland speaks to camera. What he said needs thinking about:

‘There are things in the past that are like unexploded bombs that just lie in wait in the rubble, and then something happens to trigger them. And there are clearly verses in the Koran and stories that are told about Mohammed that are very like mines waiting to go off – Improvised Explosive Devices. And they can lie there maybe for centuries and then something happens to trigger them and you get this.’

The documentary will doubtless have many detractors from the many people – non-Muslim as well as Muslim – who want to cover over those IEDs. Holland’s documentary profoundly and carefully reveals why this is such a terrible mistake, and why from London and Paris to Istanbul and Mosul, the effects of failing to be honest in our assessment of the past has such serious repercussions for our present and future.

Finally it is worth saying that Channel 4 deserve a huge amount of credit for having the commitment to public broadcasting demonstrated by their commissioning and airing of such a documentary. Meanwhile, I see that the BBC has commissioned Nadiya Hussain, from the Great British Bake Off, to present a documentary about the wonders of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca (where of course non-Muslims are forbidden to go). I wonder whether during that documentary Nadiya will make any acknowledgement of the IEDs of her faith? Or whether the BBC will continue to ignore the vast leaps forward in public knowledge demonstrated, and led, by Channel 4 and a few brave individuals like Tom Holland.

 

The BBC scoffed and sneered yesterday when Trump stated that he and his administration were the subject of a witch-hunt…trouble is, as we all know, Trump is right…the Media are almost 100% against him…including the impartial BBC.

A study from Harvard University puts meat on the barebones….and it makes for interesting reading.

Which media organisation is one of the most balanced?  Fox News.  How does the BBC fair?  Of its reports on Trump 74% were negative in tone…the only surprise there is that the figure is so low.

Interesting to hear one of my concerns about the BBC’s manipulation of the news agenda confirmed today as the BBC interviewed a Tory supporter who said he would vote Tory as they’d provide that ‘strong and stable’ government…he then became embarrassed and apologised for using the phrase..before adding though that that is precisely what we do need.

The fact that he was embarrassed to use the phrase shows how powerful and intimidating the BBC’s brainwashing is.  As soon as the Tories came out with the phrase ‘strong and stable’ the BBC began to attack it, mocking and ridiculing it and its use…in a way that they have never once done for Labour’s ‘for the many not the few’…a phrase stolen from Blair and used by the LibDems in 2010….nor has the BBC raised an eyebrow to the repeated uses of the assertion that Labour policies are the result of a ‘democratic process’ or that Labour is a ‘democratic party’…repeated again and again in the same interviews.

The BBC knows Corbyn is seen as disorganised, weak and incoherent economically so they set out to destroy the Tory message that they represent the only alternative…providing in contrast a strong and stable government.

They seem to have done that successfully…I even heard a Tory minister have to laugh off using the phrase….it shows the power of the BBC to create that toxicity so fast and so widespread that people self-censor themselves now and hesitate to use the Tory slogan.

The BBC must be very pleased the cunning plan worked out so well.

What standard has the BBC’s election coverage reached?  Hard to really tell accurately as no one can watch it 24/7…of the bits I have caught some has been good, some questionable either for competence or bias, some is outright bias.  However now that the Tory manifesto has been released into the wild we can at least get a feeling for the coverage overall….and it seems to be pretty much what we have come to expect from the BBC….Labour gets a positive spin and a less than rigorous going over whilst the Tory policies get forensically examined and torn apart.  Pienaar used to specialise in this approach telling us there may be some problems with Labour policies but you know what, they could work and they sound good, whereas the Tories’ are pretty well unworkable and ill-thought out.

As mentioned in a previous post we’ve had Kuenssberg explaining away Labour’s nationalisation as ‘buying assets’ and so essentially costless, today we had Nicky Campbell telling us that ‘many people are worried about immigration’….what the BBC concerned about immigration????…hold on, don’t be daft…Campbell finishes with….‘they are worried about immigration being stopped…because the NHS will grind to a halt.’

Campbell went along with all the critics of the government…and all the callers were critics, Campbell had to ‘assure’ us that this was just how things were and make a plea for Tory supporters to call in. Of  course that should mean he would be sure to be even more rigorous in challenging callers…but no, he at best nodded in agreement and at worst fully agreed and even added his two penneth worth as above.  No challenge to the woman who criticised Tory care povision and went on to say all care homes should be closed as that would free up 60,000 nurses for the NHS…Campbell seemed to see no problem there as he treated her as if she was speaking complete common sense.

Then we had the actual manifesto launch with the big talking point being the sale of homes to pay for care.  On World at One Martha Kearney mentioned a couple of times that ‘people are calling the policy a ‘dementia tax’…er…just who are these people?  Oh….yes…it was Jeremy Corbyn.  So the BBC picks up a highly perjorative and loaded phrase that’s been ‘weaponised’ by Labour in order to demonise the Tories and the BBC tries to get it into common usage by repeating it again and again.  This is the BBC that supposedly doesn’t use words or phrases that are obviously highly political and which they claim can mean different things to different people.  The BBC that doesn’t like to use the word ‘terrorism’ if it can help it but does like to use the term ‘bedroom tax’ and now ‘dementia tax’….guess their principles go out the window when it is a word that can be used to attack the ‘Right’.

And why did the BBC bring in Andrew Dilnot?  He was on just about every programme throughout the day giving us the benefit of his wisdom.  He is highly political and has his own agenda to sell in regard to how social care is paid for……you can see how the Left enjoyed his intervention as illustrated by the Guardian

Tory social care plans will leave people helpless, says former adviser

Andrew Dilnot, who reviewed social care for coalition, expresses alarm at proposal that will mean elderly are ‘completely on their own’

Of course they are not completely on their own…they do not have to sell their house whilst alive and if they use up all but £100,000 worth of their home’s value the state then picks up the rest of the bill….and so if you have less than £100,000 in your home’s value, or rent, you pay nothing.

He thinks the Tory proposal is unfair and there should be a universal spread of the cost through out society, rich and poor to pay…pay somehow…in the programme I heard him suggest we pay by getting insurance cover…but previously he has suggested higher taxes…..both systems mean the poorest will have to cough up more money they can ill afford…how exactly is that fairer than having the most wealthy pay for their own care as much as possible?

What we don’t hear much of on the BBC is that the previous cap on what a care patient could keep of the value of their house was around £23,000…that is, any value above that could be used to pay for care…and note that cap was going to be raised to £118,000 anyway by 2020….so pretty much as May proposes now….you will be able to keep 4 times the value of what you can now….or  more if the costs do not actually use up all the value.

Dilnot’s logic seems somewhat skewed and not thought through….but nice of the BBC to give such a critic of the Tory position such a big platform to strut his stuff.

The BBC has belatedly jumped on the bandwagon and has moved to claim the story about the rape and abuse of so many white girls in Rochdale and Rotherham as its own…after having ignored, downplayed and misreported it for so long.  It has produced a docudrama on events in Rochdale detailing what happened to some girls there and how it was allowed to go on for so long….the Telegraph acclaims the BBC’s programme…

As an act of bearing witness, it was, however, a sterling example of public service broadcasting.

Really?  Where was the BBC when the abuse was actually happening and they knew about it?  Must leave a sour taste in the girls’ mouths as they see the BBC reaping rewards for all their suffering that was for so long ignored with themselves dismissed as white trash.

I heard this comment from a presenter on Woman’s Hour the other day as she discussed the programme with those involved in it…

‘If this makes you angry wait until you see the programme.’

From the BBC which was one of the organisations that turned a blind eye to the real time abuse as it happened and only now is coming out pointing fingers…not at itself of course.

We also had Laura Kuenssberg making an interesting comment about Labour’s re-nationalisation of utilities….

The spending to buy back these companies is apparently not like any other government spending and debt….why?  Because…er…we then have an ‘asset’ that we’ve bought….and so it’s a positive on our national balance sheet.

I’m sure Corbyn was very grateful for that piece of propaganda…but it’s only an asset if we think we might want to sell it in future, not likely under Comrade Corbyn.

Second it’s just like any other debt, it’s got to be paid back and any other spending by government also creates ‘assets’…if the government borrows to build a bridge, or schools or hospitals we have the buildings as ‘assets’….they still have to be paid for though.

Absurd comment from Kuenssberg that seemed intent on helping make the case for nationalisation.

What else have we got?

Oh yes…Brexit was the BBC’s goto bête noire to blame any economic downturn on whilst also claiming immigration was great for the economy and vital for employers.

Curious then that on the Today show we had Remain’s favourite BBC journo, Kamal Ahmed, tell us that the economy is in meltdown with a consumer squeeze as pay is cut and inflation rises.  Ahmed tells us it is the government’s fault for not creating the right atmosphere where ‘work pays’.  Also companies are, get this, too reliant on low paid, low skill workers and are not investing to boost productivity and hence pay.

Yep…low skill and low paid workers keep wages down and are used by businesses so that they don’t have to invest in new technology and upskilling their workforce.

So the BBC is now admitting immigration has held back the British economy, stalling productivity and keeping wages low.

And it blames the government, during an election.  Funny how a new BBC narrative pops up when needed, as suits its political agenda.  The BBC quite happy to sacrifice the immigrants for a couple of weeks if it can damage the Tories by trying to blame them for the economy.  Normal service will return after the election.

Did note the BBC trying to blame the government at first for the NHS computer crash, with Marr trying to suggest ‘deaths’ will be the result.  They had to reel back on this line as expert after expert, and many NHS insiders, said it was down to the NHS Trusts themselves…90% of hospitals being OK indicated that it was failure on the part of individual organisations not to update and secure their PCs rather than government cuts as the BBC initially tried to suggest…along with Labour.

Also of interest, Buzzfeed told the BBC that there is not a problem with ‘fake news’ in the UK…presumably Buzzfeed did not examine the BBC’s output especially concerning fake news…which the BBC insists is the world’s biggest problem and we must crack down hard on it….the BBC appointing itself judge and jury as to what is fake news.

The BBC has also been filling the airwaves with the voice of US General Hayden as he attacks Trump….without telling us he is a known enemy of Trump and who previously stated that he thought Trump was unfit for Office.