Category Archives: BBC bias

Remember that ‘cabinet’ memo, you know the one that said we’re all doomed because of Brexit and which said May was not in control?  Remember how the BBC splashed it over their news for days, insisting that the ‘cabinet’ memo was very important…telling us…‘the document does matter because it underlines what we have reported and others have written about many times.’?

Of course it didn’t matter one jot…it wasn’t ‘cabinet’ memo at all but a job application in essence by a company touting for business as a consultant…this was the BBC spreading misinformation on a massive scale in order to make Brexit seem an ever more unattractive  prospect and put the pressure on for a change of mind.

At the time we wrote…

The problem the BBC has these days is that the Internet makes lying much more tricky.  Not only can people easily fact-check you but can then disseminate the truth to counter your lies that much more easily as they have never been able to before.

That doesn’t stop the BBC still trying to pull the wool over our eyes though…it valiantly battles on against the truth and the facts to spread doom and gloom about Brexit by blaming it for every price rise,  every fall in sales, and so often neglecting to connect the OPEC decision that put up oil prices, or the steep rise in world commodity prices, to price rises here, instead blaiming them on Brexit.  Only this morning we were told that shoppers had returned a lot of items they bought online in January and therefore the high retail sales were misleading and shops didn’t sell as much as claimed…due to Brexit.  So people bought stuff…looked at the BBC news about Brexit and decided to return the items ‘because of Brexit’?  Desperate stuff from the BBC.

Still, they chose to just ignore a good news story for the UK economy #DespiteBrexit as PWC announce [as the Guardian tells us]…

‘UK could be fastest-growing G7 economy if it gets trade deals right’

The UK could shake off the near-term impact of Brexit to become the fastest-growing economy in the G7 group of rich countries between now and 2050, according to a report that paints a bright outlook for the country’s prospects outside the EU.

Consultants PwC say the UK economy will not escape entirely unscathed from the decision to leave the bloc and that it will dampen growth prospects in the short term. But the brunt of the impact would be felt by 2020 and in the years that follow the UK would outperform its peers thanks to its relatively large working age population and its flexible economy.

I can’t see it at all on the BBC website, if it’s there it’s not prominent and I didn’t hear it mentioned once on the radio today…which, when you consider the torrent of anti-Brexit coverage we got as the BBC surrendered their network to the fake ‘Cabinet memo’ story , is remarkable…a report that suggest the UK could have the best performing economy in the G7 and the BBC ignores it?

The BBC spins on an industrial scale a false anti-Brexit story but ignores one that adopts a completely different perspective on the outcome of Brexit to that peddled by the BBC itself….and this report comes from PWC who were on the Remain side during the referendum.

What does the BBC choose to publicise?

Tax burden to be highest in 30 years, says think tank

Tax is set to rise as a share of the UK’s income to its highest level since 1986, according to a think tank.

Higher income from taxes and relatively low growth will combine to create this effect, according to the the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

If you visit the BBC Home news portal, it’s just one anti-Trump story after another. The hysteria from the BBC is a joy to behold. They cannot bring themselves to accept that all he is doing s enacting the will of those who ELECTED him. So instead they use every possible angle to undermine him. What a bunch of deplorables they are.

Here we go, new week, new bias new open thread!

Here you go, a brand new Open Thread to see us off into the weekend! Detail the rancid bias here.

Way back in December 2014 we posted the below about the BBC and Phil Shiner…I see no reason to change anything…..it more than stands the test of time which is more than Shiner and the BBC do…..Time for Lord Hall to apologise for all the slurs and traumas he has helped put British troops through.

If like me you have been listening or watching the BBC for the last few years and hearing their coverage of the alleged abuse of Iraqis or Afghans by British troops you will know that the BBC has given itself over to the likes of lawyer Phil Shiner and his extraordinary tales, his own very singular version of the truth.

Today the BBC must be absolutely gutted as the Al Sweady inquiry clears, as expected, British troops of allegations they tortured and killed prisoners.

The BBC has put a lot of work into helping Shiner smear the Army’s reputation and put a great many soldiers through the wringer for so many years.

In 2008 the BBC’s Panorama produced a programme, On Whose Orders?, that claimed to investigate the allegations….here is what one viewer thought of the programme:

Is it just me or do these left wing lobbyists and solicitors actually work with, or very close with the BBC , they have a voice out of all proportion and seem to be able to spout whatever bollox they like on the BBC, I swear they should give Shami Chakrabati her own show, for someone who’s never been elected as any kind of public official, she seems to get more airtime than the PM!

Is it any co-incidence that her sister works for the beeb?

What I’m getting at is do these far left lawyers aproach the bbc with program ideas?

Make no mistake , this was phil shiners program, the bbc only tried to distance themselves from him at the end because of all the critisism they’d recieved in all the major newspapers , that’s the reason they emphisised the program was still being made in the newspaper reports, to do some last minute distancing from phil shiner.

The Sun newspaper wasn’t impressed:

Beeb ‘slurs’ on Iraq heroes

The BBC were initially blocked from broadcasting the programme but went to court to force the issue so insistent were they about finding out the ‘truth’ of the matter…here they are boasting of their ‘victory’:

Panorama’s legal victory

Panorama has won an important victory in the High Court against the Ministry of Defence which was attempting to prevent the broadcast of details of alleged abuse by soldiers in Iraq.

The Panorama programme ended with a bit of a disclaimer…as set out in the web report:

Panorama has seen no proof that prisoners died at the hands of their captors and concludes that the case being brought by solicitors Phil Shiner and Martyn Day represents the most extreme interpretation of a troubling but confusing incident. They are asking for the bodies to be disinterred and evidence to be handed to Scotland Yard.

Despite that dsitinct lack of proof for the next 5 years the BBC continued to bombard us with the allegations in a manner that suggested there was far more substance to them than there was…as we now know…they being the result of deliberate lies, reckless speculation and ingrained hatred….you can wonder whether the judge was talking about the Iraqis, Shiner, the BBC or all three of them.

The BBC was very proud of its Panorama programme stating this on the announcement of the inquiry:

New inquiry into British army abuse in Iraq vindicates Panorama

Ironically the first line of this pyrrhic victory was this:

Time can make a world of difference in an emotive, ongoing story.

The BBC goes on to suggest:

In revisiting these allegations through public inquiries, the entire system of military justice will inevitably be called into question.

Well I imagine military justice has been vindicated…the RMP said there was no case…and there was no case….it was clearly a case of highly suspect allegations being encouraged by ‘ambulance chasing’ lawyers backed up by a media organisation that had its fingers badly burnt as it was caught lying about the Iraq War Dossier and has been seeking to exact revenge ever since.

As the BBC was so clearly ready to congratulate itself on firstly getting its ‘legal victory’ and then slapping itself on the back when it thought itself ‘vindicated’ perhaps it should now make a very large apology to the Public it so badly misled and not least the soldiers it helped pillory and their families who have all had to suffer these allegations for so long.

Con Coughlin at the Telegraph is of the same mind:

Al Sweady inquiry: The British Army deserves a full apology from the BBC

Looking back, it is amazing just how many people were prepared to believe the accusations that the British Army routinely tortured detainees.

In sum, they conclude that the role of social media was overstated, with television remaining by far the primary vehicle for consuming political news….Television remains more important by a large margin.

A study of fake news in the US during the election has completely undermined the BBC narrative that Trump stole the election due to fake news on social media sites fooling people into voting for him.

The BBC has been leading the campaign against ‘Fake News’, telling us that, remarkably, and falsely, that most Americans get their news from social media like Facebook and Twitter.  That’s just not true…nor is it true that ‘Fake News’ impacted in any significant way at all on the result of the US election…..

Did fake news help elect Trump? Not likely, according to new research

“Fake news” stories favoring Donald Trump far exceeded those favoring Hillary Clinton but did not have a significant impact on the presidential election, concludes a new survey of social and other media consumption.

In sum, they conclude that the role of social media was overstated, with television remaining by far the primary vehicle for consuming political news. Just 14 percent of Americans deemed social media the primary source of their campaign news, according to their research.

In addition, while fake news that favored Trump far exceeded that favoring Clinton, few Americans actually recalled the specifics of the stories and fewer believed them.

“For fake news to have changed the outcome of the election, a single fake article would need to have had the same persuasive effect as 36 television campaign ads,” they conclude.

The paper is worth consideration especially given overriding press assumptions about the potency of ideologically driven news coverage.

The BBC has also argued that the US is extremely polarised with Republicans only reading right-wing news and liberals only left-wing news etc but again..not true…. [as your own reading will undoubtedly reflect…the internet has opened up the world of different ideas and views, not created the echo chambers that the BBC insists is the norm now]…

Gentzkow and Shapiro countered that view by showing that most people do not get their news from ideologically driven sources, with more traditional neutral wire service and local TV fare outweighing the much chronicled cable news channels, notably Fox News, and politically skewed websites.

Can’t wait to see the BBC ‘analysis’ of this report.  Any bets they’ll hum and haw and then dismiss it as not fully representative and the wrong interpretation of the data, just as they did when a highly respected black professor concluded that whites were more likely to be shot by police than blacks?

Oh..and just for interest considering the BBC’s views on race and immigration…here’s an American Black thoroughly enjoying an immigrant getting his come-uppance after he attacked a bus driver…..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-VkdRbO0GY

What does the BBC do with your licence money?  Apart from skimming off massive sums to pay itself and its ‘Stars’ a huge amount of that money to live lives that most licence fee payers could never aspire to, and then, because they are ‘celebrities’, abuse that privileged position to tell those licence fee payers how ignorant, stupid, bigoted and racist they are.  Not just the BBC of course but so much of the Establishment as well.

Thus we get Brexit and Trump as the lowly worms turn.  But there is another, darker side to this, an uglier dimension to the BBC’s world view that they propagate.

The BBC keeps telling us that Britain is brutally divided by Brexit.  I’m unsure how they think any general election in which several parties take a share of the vote is less ‘divisive’ than a highly democratic referendum in which there are only two sides and a clear winner….and yet the country continued without riots or civil disorder after the election.  It’s a simple term that trips easily off the tongue but one that is extremely harmful and the BBC knows that.  Keep telling the nation that it is brutally divided, that people are angry and disenfranchised by Brexit, that those ‘left behind’ Remainders must not be forgotten and people start to believe it and you successfully whip up a narratve of grievance, anger, fear and discontent and give it justification…when none is due….Brexit was about leaving the EU there is no cherry picking the bits that Remain want which in total would mean we stay in the EU.

This is a narrative manufactured in order to create some sort of guilt that Remain voter’s needs are being ignored and thus they must be accommodated…not sure how that works as they want to stay in the EU…how do you negotiate that whilst fulfilling the obligation to leave the EU?  Just a trick to try and force concessions out of May.

But such a narrative has other effects especially when combined with the BBC’s other two fictions, one , that the referendum vote was stolen by Leave lies, and two, Brexit has given licence to racism and hate…neither of course true but that doesn’t stop the BBC propagating such lies.  That BBC narrative is also the template for their reporting about Trump and his election.

The effect of those three narratives is to give licence to the Left, to Remain voters, to like-minded anti-Trump agitators, to mount often violent and certainly threatening campaigns against anyone who doesn’t hold the same values and beliefs as them.   The BBC and like-minded media have enabled the thugs, anti-Semites and fascists [who of course are socialists] to use violence, threats and intimidatory language to try and silence their opponents…..just where did the British man who tried to shoot Trump get his anger from?  He more than likely got it from the BBC narrative that Trump is a racist, a sexist, an Islamophobe, a danger to the world. And hot off the press….a prison guard killed in the US…blamed partly on Trump due to the false stories and massive exaggerations about him no doubt….

Authorities have stormed a prison block in the US state of Delaware, ending a 24-hour hostage standoff that left one prison officer dead.

One of the prisoners told a local newspaper they were protesting against US President Donald Trump…Everything that he did.  “All the things that he’s doing now. We know that the institution is going to change for the worse.”

You can see the direct effect of this in the US where a Milo talk had to be abandoned due to massive violence at the venue……the rioters given licence to attack Milo by the likes of the BBC who denounce him and his like as Far Right racists and thus it is OK to attack him…

Riot Forces Cancellation Of Yiannopoulos Talk At UC Berkeley

BERKELEY, Calif. (CBS SF/AP) — Protesters armed with bricks and fireworks mounted an assault on the building hosting a speech by polarizing Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos Wednesday night, forcing the event’s cancellation.

Several injuries have been reported and at least four banks have been vandalized after demonstrators marched away from the scene of a violent protest at the canceled speaking event by controversial far-right writer and speaker Yiannopoulos on the University of California at Berkeley campus.

The BBC’s et al’s coverage of police shootings of black men in the US as racist must similarly have contributed to the many subsequent murders of police officers in ‘retaliation’…when we know that so many of the shootings of black men were not at the hands of white officers and that the shootings the BBC repeatedly still use as examples of police racism were in fact fully justified as born out by the facts which are fully available…such as in the case of Michael Brown in Ferguson.

The BBC is the real danger to democracy, free speech and a stable, cohesive society.

Funny thing…guess some people just attract attention.  Gina Miller was quite vocal about the abuse and threats she said she had received due to the court case concerning Article 50.  She told us she has had death threats and we saw her dramatically flanked by over-sized bodyguards as she made her way to court.  What’s odd is that her QC, Lord Pannick, an extremely high profile barrister in this case, told us that he received absolutely no abuse or threats.  Which you might think was odd if Miller is telling the truth.  Or maybe Miller was exaggerating and the bodyguards were more pantomime than due to any genuine threat.  Miller playing to an audience trying invent a storyline that Brexit has created a storm of racism and hate…a storyline that the BBC happily reports as fact?  Never.

No doubt she received some nasty Tweets but the bodyguards were from central casting…there to create an illusion of threat and fear.

Similarly the BBC keeps telling us the fabulously Muslim cake baker Nadiya, has received death threats and constant abuse for being Muslim….I thought her cake for the Queen was a bit naff but not something that you’d do her in for.

The BBC clearly has a bit of an agenda, whipping up a frenzied atmosphere of fear and loathing as its reporting suggests anyone with an off-white skin tone or wears Muslim garb is living under constant threat of attack or abuse…. A constant barrage of melodramatic reports portraying Whites as racist who are always, always looking to abuse and keep down ethnic minorities…..divisive and dangerous reporting?  Fake news?

Normally it isn’t quite so bothered with Jews, its coverage of Labour’s little problem was slow and grudging as was its coverage of Lutfur Rahman in London and the Trojan Horse scandal which it still presents as a hoax.  Recently though it has turned over a new leaf and has been highlighting a rise in anti-Semitism….the BBC’s reinvigorated interest is not unconnected with Brexit of course and the BBC’s own narrative that Brexit gave licence to racists to vent their hate.

This narrative was loudly aired this morning on the Today show when a new CST report was looked at…the impression given?…Brexit was the main cause of a steep rise in anti-Semitism.  Only…that’s not really true, as you can see from the actual report….

It appears that antisemitic incident totals may have been sustained at this high level by the cumulative effect of a series of events and factors that, taken together, have created an atmosphere in which more antisemitic incidents are occurring, and are also more likely to be reported to CST and the Police.

These factors included the conflict in Gaza and Israel in summer 2014; terrorist attacks on Jewish communities in France and Denmark in 2015, and other terrorism in Europe; and in 2016, high profile allegations of antisemitism in the Labour Party; a perceived increase in racism and xenophobia following the EU referendum, including an increase in recorded racial and religious hate crime; and regular, high-profile discussion of antisemitism, racism and hate crime in mainstream media, politics and on social media during the year.

So, many, many causes…including media coverage of the conflict in Gaza.  No doubt the BBC’s assertion that Jews must expect to be attacked in Europe because of Israeli actions played a part in the rise…no?  The BBC does not mention it.  Note after Brexit there is only a ‘perceived increase’.

Interesting that the most attacks were in high Remain voting areas….

Over three-quarters of the 1,309 antisemitic incidents were recorded in Greater London and Greater Manchester

Also, as I mentioned in a previous post the CST told us that yes, 55% of attacks were by Whites but the rest were by ‘Pakistanis, Arabs and Blacks’…work out the ratios of population [87% white] and you must conclude anti-Semitism must be rife in those communities…and also know that of those Whites a good proportion are from the Left….so the BBC’s narrative that the Far Right are the real problem seems somewhat dubious.

Note the CST report tells us that ‘The charity revealed its highest monthly total for attacks came in May last year, just days after Naz Shah, a Labour MP, was suspended from the party alongside Ken Livingstone the former London mayor.’

So the highest number of attacks came in May…hmm…a month before the Brexit vote…and was directly linked to Labour’s own anti-Semitism…many of the culprits being Muslim.

Not a narrative the BBC wants to push…Labour and Muslims guilty of anti-Semitism.?!!!?…let’s just keep that our ‘dirty little secret’….let’s just blame it on White supremacist Leave voters instead.

Torture may or may not work but one crucial part of any interrogation is to actually ask the questions to which you want an answer.  If you don’t ask the question it doesn’t matter whether you waterboard them or treat them with kidgloves, kindness and respect…you won’t get an answer.

This morning we had Nick Robinson, one of the BBC’s most senior and experienced journalists, on one of the BBC’s most prestigious flagship current affairs programmes. [08:10]  He was interviewing John McDonnell in the wake of the Article 50 vote.

You may have, I certainly did, expected to have found out what Labour’s exact position is now on Brexit, you know, the detail, what ‘deal’ do they expect to get from the Brexit negotiations.  Yes they whipped the vote to trigger Article 50 but that is just democratic window-dressing for the public who voted leave [we respect democracy…no really…LOL]…it’s meaningless unless we know how Labour intends to try and fix the actual content of the deal.

Central to the Remainder’s campaign against Brexit is their demand that we remain a member of the Single Market.  Did we find out Labour’s position on that in this interview?  No.  I don’t think the Single Market was mentioned once.  Which is kind of remarkable given it is the crucial issue for Remain.  What we got from McDonnell was a lot of waffle about ‘what’s best for the economy’ and Labour doesn’t want May’s ‘bargain basement tax-haven’.  To that end Labour are seeking amendments to the white paper….what amendments and to what end?  We didn’t find out.

Robinson completely failed to ask the pivotal question, he failed to mention the Single market and he failed to nail down Labour’s actual position on Brexit.

McDonnell gives us the usual cant about ‘respecting democracy and the will of the people’ but if the deal he intends to force on May is membership of the Single Market then that is not Brexit, we will still essentially be in the EU with freedom of movement and the rest.

Robinson didn’t once raise that question, he didn’t once ask if Labour intends to thwart Brexit by the back door as it seems to want to do.  Voting to trigger Article 50 is not the same as voting to leave the EU…it is not Brexit in itself, not what the voters voted for which was to leave the EU….knowing full well it meant not being members of the Single Market.

So on the absolutely central, vital question of what Brexit means to Labour we are still in the dark.  Nick’s worth every penny I’m sure.

Still, at least Evan Davis has admitted that Brexit was about leaving the EU, an EU that can only succeed if it turns itself into a single unified super-state with taxes and politics decided in one place….something Davis admits Britain would never ever vote for.  We know Stiglitz thinks the Euro is a disaster because it can only work under the auspices of such a single super-state and now we have Guy Verhofstadt pushing such a policy…one we always knew was the real end game for the EU but which the BBC refused to discuss in the referendum run-up, preferring instead, as it still does, to concentrate on the economic ‘disasters’ that will follow Brexit.

Davis though still has ‘BBC Liberal’ running through his veins….the opening film clip was Verhofstadt attacking Farage, then Davis asked a leading, pointed question…‘Do you think Britain has any good choices outside the EU?’…in reference to Trump of course...’at a time when America is not a good model’ [for a united state] intimating slyly that of course we don’t…..and then he says the threat to the EU is people voting for Fascists or those flirting with Fascism….no prejudices there then….

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHi2N9H-gqg

Verhofstadt’s answer to people who think the EU and its lack of democratic accountability is the problem is more EU, a unified super-state…just as the BBC et al think the answer to Islamist terrorism is more Islam…let Muslims practice their religion ever-more freely and we must adapt our own lives to suit them.  In other words surrender to the terrorists.

Note that Verhofstadt wants to over-ride national governments…having to get their agreement is inconvenient, making the EU not fit for purpose…always to slow, too little too late….so the stamp of a single authority…so much for Britain having influence and a say in how things are run…even now we are just one in 28 with very little real say….the Remainder’s argument that we will lose all influence is a nonsense…we have little now and will have even less when the EU morphs into a single super-state…as it needs to to succeed at all.  Cameron’s marvellous ‘reform’ negotiations actually gave away our veto and granted the EU what it wanted…majority voting….thus we lose power over our own destiny completely.

John Humphrys was telling the world that there was huge concern in many quarters about Trump’s policies, Laura Kuenssberg reckoned, rather grandly, that she was speaking on behalf of the British people as she slandered Trump,  and of course this assumption is a common thread throughout BBC coverage…occasionally qualified with a grudging  ‘well there may be some who support Trump of course’.

Well…guess again suckers….In the US Trump has the majority support and in the UK he does too…

Most Britons back Donald Trump’s planned state visit to UK, poll finds

Most Britons back Donald Trump’s planned state visit to Britain, a poll has found.

The survey, conducted by YouGov for The Times, found 49 per cent of the British public supported Mr Trump’s UK visit with 36 per cent opposed.

It is the first poll published on the contentious issue which has provoked widespread protest online and outside Westminster.  

Since Sunday more than 1.7 million people have signed a petition to prevent Mr Trump visiting the UK saying “it would cause embarrassment to Her Majesty the Queen.” 

So what will be the dominant news story now on the BBC?  Will it be the one that accurately reports the views of the silent majority or the views of a highly politicised and ideological group of activists spurred on by their political masters in Labour, the LibDems and the SNP?

I’m guessing the BBC will almost certainly forget the result of this poll almost instantly and will continue to widely promote the anti-democratic intimidation and bullying of the anti-Trump lynch-mob as the only credible and morally acceptable reaction to Trump….as said before, funny how ‘populism’ is suddenly once again popular with the BBC.

The BBC, a danger to democracy, stability and peace?  Gotta think so.