Category Archives: BBC bias

We do not expect you to trust us

It is in the nature of an open collaboration and work-in-progress like Wikipedia that quality may vary over time, and from article to article. While some articles are of the highest quality of scholarship, others are admittedly complete rubbish. Also, since Wikipedia can be edited by almost anyone anytime, articles may be prone to errors, including vandalism. So please do not use Wikipedia to make critical decisions.

Jimmy wales, co-founder of fake news site, Wikipedia, states today in the Sunday Times that ‘Fake news has almost zero impact on Wikipedia’.

The site that banned the Mail for being an unreliable news site is itself one of the least reliable information sites out there…no one trusts it enough to use it as a source on its own…even Wikipedia says, as quoted above, that it would be foolish to do so.  The site that is controlled by people with determined agendas, a ‘stagnant pool of editors from a limited demographic.’

The Mail itself criticised Wikipedia back in 2012…

Iffy-pedia: Up to six in ten articles on Wikipedia contain factual errors

Up to six in ten articles on Wikipedia contain inaccuracies, according to new research.

The number of factual errors shows just how unreliable it can be to use the online resource as a sole means of digging up information.

Yet millions base everything from school homework to corporate presentations using facts and figures they have gleaned from the site

No doubt this contributed to the Mail being banned as a source by Wikipedia…something the BBC hasn’t bothered to investigate despite constantly referring to the ban when talking of ‘fake news’ issues.  The Mail responded with its own investigation into who banned them and why…

The making of a Wiki-Lie: Chilling story of one twisted oddball and a handful of anonymous activists who appointed themselves as censors to promote their own warped agenda on a website that’s a byword for inaccuracy 

You may say ‘they would say that’ but what they say is true…Wikipedia is essentially run by a small clique of activists who guard it and shape its ‘facts’ to suit their own agenda…..

Very few Wikipedia editors and contributors use their real name or provide any information about who they are.

In theory, the intellectual sparring at the heart of Wikipedia’s group editing process results in a consensus that removes unreliable contributions and edits. But often the contributor who “wins” is not the one with the soundest information, but rather the one with the strongest agenda.

Individuals with agendas sometimes have significant editing authority.
Administrators on Wikipedia have the power to delete or disallow comments or articles they disagree with and support the viewpoints they approve.

Due to the fact that Wikipedia can be edited by anyone with an Internet connection, users can falsify entries.

There is little diversity among editors.
According to a 2009 survey by the Wikimedia Foundation, 87 percent of Wikipedia editors are male, with an average age of 26.8 years. According to executive director Sue Gardner, they hail mostly from Europe and North America, and many of them are in graduate school.

It has become harder for casual participants to contribute.
According to the Palo Alto Research Center, the contributions of casual and new contributors are being reversed at a much greater rate than several years ago. The result is that a steady group of high-level editors has more control over Wikipedia than ever….A group of editors known as “deletionists” are said to “edit first and ask questions later,” making it harder for new contributors to participate, and making it harder for Wikipedia—which, again, aspires to provide “the sum of all human knowledge”—to overcome the issue that it is controlled by a stagnant pool of editors from a limited demographic.

Accurate contributors can be silenced.
Deletionists on Wikipedia often rely on the argument that a contribution comes from an “unreliable source,” with the editor deciding what is reliable.

Reading how people convince others to believe their fake news I came across this explanation that chimed exactly with how the BBC operates...relying on its inherited reputation for trust and accuracy in order to peddle lies convincingly to people whom they know will by default trust the BBC and not question its reliability…

Ultimately, though, they aimed to succeed less by assembling convincing stories than by exploiting the trust of their marks, inducing them to lower their guard….hoaxes tend to thrive in communities which exhibit high levels of trust.

Yep, don’t trust the BBC and you might just start to see the world as it is and not as the BBC wants you to see it.

Between 2010 and 2015, the Department [of education] and local authorities created 599,000 new school places at a cost of £7.5 billion

The government estimates that it will need to create 420,000 additional places between 2016 and 2021 – 231,000 in primary schools and 189,000 in secondary schools.

The Department has responded positively to start to meet the challenges it faces in relation to the quality and capacity of the school estate. Significant challenges remain, however, as the population continues to grow and the condition of the ageing estate deteriorates.  NAO

 

On Friday you may have learnt from the BBC that schools are in a funding crisis as budgets are cut and Heads have to decide which courses to cut back on.  The BBC told us this was purely a result of budget cuts…..the fact that the real reason, mentioned by one the Heads in an interview, is an ever growing school population, was totally ignored by the BBC in its reports….more than a million new school places needed between 2010 and 2021.

Mass, uncontrolled immigration is the reason schools have a problem with the ring-fenced education budget…which of course is not being cut.  How did the BBC manage to avoid any serious discussion of this point during a whole day talking about this story?  The Department for Education is now one of the biggest buyers of land in the UK, billions being spent just on the land, never mind building the schools and continued upkeep and maintenance, training and employing new teachers and all the rest of the associated costs.  Mass immigration good for the UK?

Then again we can see more evidence of the damaging effect the media’s pro-immigrant stance has on politics and society as it is now admitted  [ in the sunday Times today] that Merkel’s decision to keep the borders open was not a humanitarian and ethical move but was done because she feared what the images of German police holding back waves of immigrants, especially women and children, always the BBC’s favourite goto image, would be made to look like by the media.  So once again the media, as in Britain where it deliberately failed to hold Labour to account when it opened the doors despite knowing the full damage it would do to Britain, has, instead of being a mere spectator, become a political actor, an agitator, an activist, a blackmailer in effect.

 

While millions of tourists make their way safely across Australia, some shocking exceptions highlight the need for caution in the wilderness

So a judge warns women that getting drunk makes you vulnerable to rape attacks and the judge is denounced by the usual suspects [Labour]….no such denouncements for people warning backpackers to be careful in Australia [in the Guardian] in case they get raped.  Are the warnings not suggesting backpackers will be to blame if they do get attacked as the Judge’s remarks are said to be blaming the drunk girls?  Sarah Montague at first challenged this narrative about the judge’s remarks but wrapped up supporting it.  The BBC frontloads the attacks on the judge in its web report and only gives lipservice to the defence.  Similarly it frontloads the usual suspects’ over-the-top attacks on the Tesco chairman for making the point that board places are being taken by women and ethnic minorites, doing so in a joking manner…a tone entirely missed, probably wilfully, by the shriekers….the more reasoned and sensible defence for his remarks is left until the end.

Interesting that EU bureaucrat, Guy Verhofstadt, should suggest Brits be given EU citizenship and the right to travel….and yet he can’t say anything about Brits actually already in ‘Europe’ and their right to stay….maybe the EU wants to keep up the pressure on May as they see her being attacked for not unilaterally promising to allow EU immigrants to stay here.

How odd the BBC hasn’t reported that Owen Jones has been forced off ‘social media’ by left-wing hate mongers…from Guido…

Owen Jones Driven Off Twitter by Left-Wing Haters

How is it that the BBC isn’t headlining with this story…if it had been right-wing haters they have been reporting it at length and in great detail with every tweet and facebook comment carefully cut and pasted to show how appalling the Right is and how traumatised poor Owen must be by it all.  Jones is one of the BBC’s favourite lefty commentators and for some reason they just don’t seem to care about him being abused by the Left just as the BBC doesn’t bother about the death threats, threats of violence and the tidal wave of abuse at Leave voters and politicians, the BBC preferring to build a narrative that says we are heading back to the 1930’s and a fascist era of right-wing hate…Britain is now a more racist and nasty place after Brexit…because of the Right.

Oh hang on, the BBC has reported it, tucked away on the kid’s newsbeat site [H/T Craig at Is the BBC biased?]…if it appeared on the main site it seems to have vanished already.  But what’s the story BBC?  It’s one of Far-Right extremists and Conservatives, as well as some labour supporters abusing Jones….but it appears that the BBC actually invented the bit about ‘Conservatives’, Jones not mentioning them at all…and why did the BBC headline with the Far-Right when most of the abuse comes from Corbyn supporters and has done so for weeks now as Jones U-Turns on his unquestioning support for comrade Corbyn?

And will the BBC be reporting this ?[thanks to Wild Bill in the comments]

A Muslim girl captured on camera twerking in Britain has apologized for “disrespecting” Islam and hijab following the backlash from the Muslim community.

The girl, whose name remains unknown, was criticized after video filmed in the UK city of Birmingham, showed her twerking while wearing a hijab.

“F*****g s**t someone give me her address I will kill her”. Another man seconded: “Stupid b****h needs to be killed”

Remember when the Tea Party ‘resistance’ movement was the evil, fascist right-wing demon stalking civilised America…but now Left-wing ‘resistance’ to Trump is glorified and applauded…

Bernie Sanders on the resistance movement in Trump’s America

Sanders discusses historical movements from the past century and lessons that young progressives can take from them

Just a few examples of the Left’s hypocritical narrative and approach to news and the rewriting of history.

Here you go, a new Open Thread on which to detail their sordid daily bias.

First…When Dick Nobinson called Hammond ‘Spreadshit Phil’ was he drunk, did he do it for a bet or was it purely a cynical joke to amuse his BBC buddies and those in Labour who wanted Robinson to be their PR guru?  I’m guessing the last one.

Now to the main issue, the BBC’s so-called reporting of the Budget.  The BBC’s top economic editor, Nihal, speculated that Hammond was vilifying the self-employed, calling them cheats who were dodging paying their full whack.  Great journalism…based on what exactly? The BBC’s reporting has been a very low budget affair that seems very light on facts…one crucial fact that went missing was the reason Hammond increased NIC’s for the self-employed…and indeed have been using a clip from Labour’s John McDonnell claiming that the self-employed have got absolutely nothing back…the BBC provided no counter-voice to that clip.  Kind of surprising really as Hammond stated the reason quite plainly in his budget speech….the self-employed now get the full state pension and will get further benefit entitlements later on…not only that but their NICs will still not be at the same level as employed people’s and they are in fact having some contributions reduced…didn’t hear that at all on the BBC all day…..until Tory Bernard Jenkins mentioned it and was immediately shut down and the subject changed by the presenter….which is a bit odd…the absolutely crucial point about the NIC increase and the BBC doesn’t want to talk about it…..from the speech……

An employee earning £32,000 will incur between him and his employer £6,170 of National Insurance Contributions. A self-employed person earning the equivalent amount will pay just £2,300 – significantly less than half as much.

Historically, the differences in NICs between those in employment and the self-employed reflected differences in state pensions and contributory welfare benefits.

But with the introduction of the new state pension, these differences have been very substantially reduced.

Since 2016 self-employed workers now build up the same entitlement to the state pension as employees, a big pension boost to the self-employed.

The most significant remaining area of difference is in relation to parental benefits, and I can announce today that we will consult in the summer on options to address the disparities in this area as the FSB and others have proposed.

Mr Deputy Speaker, The difference in National Insurance Contributions is no longer justified by the difference in benefits entitlement.

The abolition of Class 2 NICs for self-employed people, announced by my predecessor in 2016 and due to take effect in 2018, would further increase the gap between employment and self-employment…. from April 2018, when the Class 2 NIC is abolished, the main rate of Class 4 NICs for the self-employed will increase by 1% to 10%, with a further 1% increase in April 2019.

The combination of the abolition of Class 2 and the Class 4 increases I have announced today, raises a net £145m a year for our public services by 2021-22, an average of around 60p a week per self-employed person in this country.

The BBC was more interested targeting the Tories for breaking their election manifesto promise and Emma Barnett wanted to know if this makes you lose your trust in politicians.  Curiously not at all interested in the fact that the budget is not the Remain camp’s ‘Project Fear’ budget that promised to grind us into the ground with an emergency austerity budget to save us from the perils of Brexit…how is it the BBC is not interested in that broken political pledge?

Barnett had a couple on from the FT and the Huffington Post to discuss the budget…both lefty remain supporting rags…naturally they demanded an election as the manifesto promise was broken…..this would suit the Remain camp, as John Major’s like-minded demands illustrate, as most MPs are Remain and would, when re-elected then claim they were elected as Remainers…and thus had a mandate to crush Brexit.  So will the BBC be asking if such dishonest, corrupt, anti-Democratic shyster politicians have our trust?  No, don’t be silly.

It wasn’t so long ago, when we were having the referendum and it was noted that Leave voters [and of course Trump voters] had no faith in the political class, that the BBC decided we now had to respect and trust politicians…or we’d have more Jo Cox’s…..odd how, now the referendum is over and Trump elected, the BBC goes back to its normal mantra of Politicians are all liars and cheats….well, Tory ones.  No such questions of betrayal of democracy when the SNP says it wants another independence referendum, in fact today the BBC is peddling the SNP’s propaganda that another referendum is just common sense…no, it’s not…it’s corrupt and anti-democratic….Brexit has nothing to do with ‘Scotland’…it’s a ‘British’ issue and ‘Scotland’ voted to stay in ‘Britain’.

Only now, after a day of fact-free disparagement of the Budget do we start to get an inkling that things may not be a bad as they are being painted.   Have to say, to be fair to the BBC, the likes of the Mail, and indeed some of the usual dumb, bovine, self-harming Tory MP’s, are doing a splendid job of creating a tremendous fuss about nothing and seem to be intent on doing a better job of opposition than the lack-lustre Corbyn.

Looking forward to the BBC giving this as much publicity as the OTHER petitions that so excite it!

MPs are set to debate whether to abolish the TV licence fee, used to subsidise the BBC, after a petition calling for it to be axed passed the 100,000 signatures mark. The petition calls for the mandatory fee of £145.50 per household per year to be ditched, arguing that it is too expensive. By law, every household capable of viewing live content must pay the TV licence, used to subsidise the state broadcaster, whether they access BBC content or not. Failure to pay is a criminal offence.

But even if the idea gains support among MPs during the debate, scheduled to take place on 8 May, fee payers are unlikely to be let off the hook for at least another decade as the state broadcaster’s charter, which sets the terms for the fee for a ten-yearly basis, has only just been renewed.

The BBC’s “unique funding” is a 21st century anachronism. Let is go on a subscription basis and let this wicked License Tax end.

The BBC reports…

Middle of the week and time for a new one of these I see! Please detail the bias here…

Terrorism, violent extremism, is easily identified and labelled as a threat, or not.  The BBC, and indeed those in the Establishment, like to tell us there is a difference between Islam and Islamism, Islamism being mostly used to describe the violent extremists, not to be confused with ‘real’ Muslims, ‘Moderate’ Muslims…but of course the violence is just a tool, a tool that is used to further the aims of the Muslim supremacists, these are the same aims that many so-called ‘moderate’ Muslims also have but promote in non-violent ways using the media, the legal system and the infiltration of the Establishment and influential organisations in order to ‘normalise’ Islam, to draw the Establishment into accepting Islam, ensuring policies are always shaped to take into account Muslim demands and by utilising the Muslim ‘as victim’ card to blackmail those with the power to defer to Muslim wishes….always backed up by the threat that the Muslim community will be angered and radicalised if not appeased.

The Establishment is all too ready to accomodate the ‘Islamist’ charter as seen by how many radicals are actually employed by government and how organisations like the BBC employ people on the basis of their religion…no coincidence that the BBC has now had two heads of religious broadcasting who are Muslim.  How on earth did Warsi get to be Chair of the Tory Party and then head of the government’s own faith programme when she is quite clearly someone with fundamentalist views….the woman who wanted to disarm Israel and arm the terrorist group Hamas.

We know that the Muslim Brotherhood is a dangerous, Muslim supremacist organisation that seeks to Islamise the world and is in fact the group from which the MCB sprang as well as Hamas and Al Qaeda.  The group that intends to take over America.  The British government produced a study on the group but diluted it down and made little of it because the conclusions would have been too inconvenient and meant taking action that would be ‘Islamophobic’. The Swedish ‘MOD’ has produced its own report and the conclusions are nothing surprising…unless you  rely on the BBC for all your news and current affairs…

The Muslim Brotherhood is creating a ‘parallel social structure’ in Sweden with the help of ‘political elites’ who foster a culture of silence, a damning government report has found. 

The document claims that  the Brotherhood is building a ‘parallel society’ within the Scandinavian country, which can help the Islamist group to achieve its ends. 

The report, which was published on Friday, was commissioned by Sweden’s Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB), which is part of the country’s Ministry of Defence.

The paper’s authors claim the Brotherhood is working to increase the number of practising Muslims in Sweden, which they say encourages tension with the secular society and puts community cohesion in jeopardy.

The authors also claim the organisation is targeting political parties, NGOs, academic institutions and other civil society organisations.

‘Islamists aim to build a parallel social structure competing with the rest of the Swedish society the values of its citizens. In this sense, MB’s activists pose a long-term challenge in terms of the country’s social cohesion’, the report says.

The BBC seeks to normalise Islam as it disproportionately fills its own ranks with Muslims, fills the airwaves with programmes portraying Islam as a moderate and peaceful religion and peddles a narrative that hides the truth about the consequences of Muslim activism and the realities of what Islam actually means, and actively works to encourage Muslim migration in its millions into Europe despite the very, very obvious conflicts of interest that arise.

It is an irony that a BBC programme, Muslims Like Us, intended to work towards that normalisation of Islam by showing Muslims as ‘everyday’ people just like ‘us’, and commissioned by the BBC’s new head of religion, actually proved the opposite…how most Muslims gravitate towards defending Islam against the West even when they are supposedly moderate, loyalty is to ‘Islam First’, and how those openly professing and pushing the Islamist agenda in an aggressive manner dominate the conversation and the community as those who might oppose them give up and don’t want to be drawn into conflict…so the extremists win and the fundamentalist, strictly observant line on Islam is imposed.

That media goto, Tariq Ramadan, admitted that he expected Muslims not to adapt their religion but for Western societies to adapt to Islam all the while telling non-Muslims that Islam is reforming and we can expect a ‘European Islam’…but that’s a lie, an impossibility that relies on people’s ignorance, wilful or otherwise of Islam…Ramadan is of course a Muslim Brotherhood mouthpiece.

One day we may get the truth…but it will be too late…and there will be no one to save you when they come for you as you didn’t speak up to save the first victims.

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left

The BBC offers the most comprehensive guarantee. Politicians and lobbyists want to influence it more than any other news organisation because, despite occasional lapses, its reporters have earned the right to be believed.

The corporation should be becoming the most important news institution not merely in Britain but the world.

Nick Cohen likes the BBC, loves the EU…he thinks the BBC should be the goto source for reliable accurate news…but is it? The BBC has the same idea but its method of ensuring its dominance is not to improve its journalism and ethical standards but to close down and harry its commerical and political opponents including those it perceives as ‘right-wing’ bloggers on the internet.  In 2009 Cohen wrote…

In this time of upheaval, the BBC has a public duty to invest and broadcast the journalism that others cannot afford. It is failing spectacularly to live up to its responsibilities.

The BBC is so uninterested in content that it is sacking its content providers or journalists as we used to call them.

The paradox of the BBC’s strategy is that the more it spends on expanding into cyberspace the less it has to say.

In 2017 I’d say nothing has changed.

Back in 2006 Cohen was even more critical of the BBC...the BBC’s fact content, ironic considering how the BBC professes itself as the only trusted purveyor of facts today, being somewhat less than fully saturated….

The BBC – where facts are expensive and comment runs far too free

Although it is impossible to generalise about such a vast organisation, the bias charge has enough truth in it to stick. If you doubt me, research one opinion outside the liberal consensus.

You will then notice something disconcerting about most BBC presenters. Although they subject opponents of, say, abortion to rigorous cross-examination, their lust for ferocious questioning deserts them when supporters of abortion come on air. Far from being tested, they treat upholders of the liberal consensus as purveyors of an incontestable truth.

The way out for the BBC is not to swing to the right – it is not an advance to replace soft interviews for Menzies Campbell with soft interviews for John Reid – but make a tactical withdrawal from the opinion business.

Isn’t that what we have just commented on as the BBC shut down Jenni Murray’s personal views published outside the BBC, and impose its own ‘acceptable’ views on her to be broadcast as such on the BBC….but it is not the BBC’s job to pronounce on what is ‘acceptable’,  it is their job to report facts and events.

Cohen goes on…

Producers know that comment is free, but facts are expensive. As well as being cheap, fervent opinions can increase market share because their very vehemence can hold the attention of the channel-hopping audience for a few more minutes….reporting should be true.  If the BBC governors abandon that principle, they will end up with a corporation which isn’t so much left-wing or right-wing, but irrelevant.

Might have been written in 2006 but again still relevant today…unlike the BBC whose reporting is ever more comment and fact-free.