Category Archives: BBC bias

The weekend beckons and so does this NEW Open Thread. Please detail the BIAS here! The floor is yours…

‘The Guardian has admitted that a rogue reporter fabricated interviews in articles for the newspaper and falsely claimed to have been present at events he wrote about.

Joseph Mayton, a freelance who has been writing for the Guardian since 2009, has been accused of making up quotes in some of his stories, even filing interviews with people who later said they had never spoken to him.’

The Guardian is always jam packed with fake news, remember the one about Milly Dowler that got 200 people sacked when the Guardian’s lies forced the closure of the News of the World?  Or how about the recent ‘traingate’ where the Guardian published a story fabricated by Labour HQ? Or how about that er ‘rogue reporter’ who made up interviews? Or how about this….is it real or fake?  Reading it and you might think straight away that it is a spoof, the language is very right-wing, to the point and not very subtle….

Alt-right’ online poison nearly turned me into a racist

I told myself outright: “You’re becoming a racist. What you’re doing is turning you into a terrible, hateful person.” Until that moment I hadn’t even realised that “alt-right” was what I was becoming; I just thought I was a more open-minded person for tolerating these views.

It hit me like a ton of bricks. Online radicalisation of young white men. It’s here, it’s serious, and I was lucky to be able to snap out of it when I did. And if it can get somebody like me to swallow it – a lifelong liberal – I can’t imagine the damage it is doing overall.

It seemed so subtle – at no point did I think my casual and growing Islamophobia was genuine racism. The good news for me is that my journey toward the alt-right was mercifully brief: I never wanted to harm or abuse anybody verbally, it was all very low level – a creeping fear and bigotry that I won’t let infest me again. But I suspect you could, if you don’t catch it quickly, be guided into a much more overt and sinister hatred.

I haven’t yet told my wife that this happened, and I honestly don’t know how to. I need to apologise for what I said and tell her that I certainly don’t believe it. It is going to be a tough conversation and I’m not looking forward to it. I didn’t think this could happen to me. But it did and it will haunt me for a long time to come.

You’d have to think the Guardian realised this was a spoof, it’s ‘anonymous’, and double-bluffed and published anyway….it may read like an simplistic mock lefty piece of angst, all too obviously fake, but maybe they thought all anti-Right-wing rhetoric is good rhetoric even if satirical…somebody might believe it and another recruit to the left’s anti-Right drive is another recruit to the cause.

Guido tells us someone has claimed to be the author and it is a send up…the Guardian of course denies it.

From ‘Infowars’….

A notorious Internet troll reportedly convinced The Guardian to publish a fake news story Monday on his journey to becoming a racist member of the “alt-right.”

Godfrey Elfwich, who jokingly describes Xirself (preferred gender pronoun) as a “Genderqueer Muslim atheist,” has gained a large Twitter following for trolling the far-left. In 2015, Elfwich famously made his way onto a BBC radio show and convinced the host that Star Wars was racist because Darth Vader was black.

In what could be the most trollish act yet, Elfwich appears to have had an article anonymously published on The Guardian entitled, “‘Alt-right’ online poison nearly turned me into a racist.”

Another day and another sneak attack on our consciences trying to make us think of the terrible plight of refugees, to open our hearts and open the borders.

The Tarpaulin…A biography

Historian Dina Gusejnova tells the story of tarpaulin from 17th century mariners to today’s refugee camps and those living on the periphery of society. In the process, Dina shines a light on statelessness, protest, heroism and transgression.

The tarpaulin is a fabric of conflict. Reinvented over its five hundred years of history, the material now has an important role in providing shelter to the millions of people who fall between the cracks of international geopolitics following periods of violence or natural disaster.

Good old Dina was a bit concerned, naturally, about Britain’s ‘closed door policy’ for refugees but she thought that there is only one image that has now come to dominate our understanding of the word tarpaulin…the tented cities that shelter refugees.  Yes, I have always been conflicted, morally and intellectually challenged everytime I picked up a tarpaulin…just what is this thing?  What is its meaning?  Why do I feel so guilty as I so carelessly and casually use it without a deeper understanding of its significant place in modern day life?  Now I know.  That association with refugees.  I’ll never look at a tarpaulin in the same thoughtless way again.

Incredible how hard the BBC works to find any excuse to keep refugees in the headlines…yesterday we heard that 5Live had miraculously, after a long search, found two malnourished children in an Iraqi refugee camp….well go figure…the real story is that they had to look so hard to find these children….kind of suggests the system is pretty much working despite the massive pressures.  And now the tarpaulin.  Clever idea but all too obvious and groan-worthy when you get hit by the conclusion which comes at you with all the subversive subtlety of a steam train at full speed.

Why did the BBC pick Dina Gusejnova to present this programme on tarpaulins?  Because she’s not really interested in tarpaulin merely in using it to explore the idea of statelessness, nationality and the idea that we must think ‘beyond the nation’….experience often shows the State turns against its citizens she tells us…so we learn that international communities and organisations are the utopian answer to protect us…..what saves us is transnational connections, social networks through which the refugees can tell their stories and persuade people to open their borders to the stateless refugee.

The tragedy is apparently that democratic states suspect some refugees of not being all they seem and think they are a possible danger to the State…and we all know that is nonsense.

Listening to R4 this morning and a programme about Jewish humour [not Muslim humour?  Wonder why] and the presenter came up with a joke…the punchline of which was ‘Why would I tell you I’m Jewish when I’m surrounded by all these well armed Christians?’ 

The presenter no doubt rather smugly thought she was being very right-on, edgy and telling it as it is….except of course that’s just not what is happening in modern day Europe as Jews are once again being murdered, attacked and forced to flee this supposedly liberal bastion of human rights, progressive values and cultural diversity.  As the Muslims move in to Europe there is often, all too often, a corresponding move out of Jews.  Coincidence?  I think not.

One day, maybe, we will hear a BBC presenter telling a joke with the punchline ‘Why would I tell you I’m Jewish when I’m surrounded by all these well armed Muslims?’   Don’t hold your breath.

Read this from Harry’s Place….ironically by a ‘liberal’ Muslim……

Who gave us post truth, conspiracy culture and the alt-right?

Some years ago, a friend sent me a shocking article. It said hundreds of British girls were being systematically gang-raped by Muslim gangs. It claimed this was being covered-up.

I’ve never had time for conspiracy theories, especially when they look as hateful as those in the article. So I checked the links and sources in the piece. I found an American racist-far-right website and from there, saw the original source was a similarly unpleasant website in the UK.

I did a brief search for corroboration from reputable mainstream sources. I found none. So I wrote a curt reply to my friend: “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t send me made-up crap from neo-Nazi websites”.

Some months later, I read the seminal exposé of the (mainly) ethnic-Pakistani grooming gang phenomenon by Andrew Norfolk in The Sunday Times.

I was stunned and horrified – not just that these vile crimes were indeed happening and endemic, but that they really were being ignored and “covered-up” by public authorities and the mainstream media.

Some on the left in the West see certain ideas and even some easily verifiable truths, as plain dangerous, much like the totalitarian communists of yesteryear. Dangerous to public order. Dangerous to the ‘common good’.

Whilst this section of the left has always existed, it now seems to have become more ‘mainstream’. It seethes and obsesses within carefully-policed ideological echo-chambers. It dominates in universities, trade unions and the public sector.  And whereas it was once mainly prevalent in fringe far-left outfits, it has now effectively co-opted the Labour party through its membership and leadership.

Anyone who has ever tried to engage with this section of the left will know that it doesn’t ‘do debate’ with conservatives on issues like immigration, multiculturalism and identity politics. For it, “the debate is settled”. Opposing views are intrinsically wicked. Such ideas are to be ignored. Muted. Blocked. Banned. Disrupted. Drowned out with fog-horns.

Whilst the overall number of individuals espousing this groundless sense of moral certainty is relatively small, its effect on political discourse has been disproportionately large given that its champions are focused, organised and operate in the relatively influential sectors mentioned above.

As a result, much of the mainstream media and even world leaders have either adopted its illiberal approach and anti-intellectual language or else avoided language that might provoke its ire.

Today, we’re seeing Western governments implement increasingly restrictive ‘hate-speech’ laws to suppress ideas and comments considered dangerous to the common good. Merkel is leading the charge, seeking to block what she considers to be ‘hate speech’ from social media in Germany.

Throughout the West, we see politically inconvenient truths partially censored or unreported. Or else they’re rephrased and altered in order to appear virtuous.

Post truth  – Framing ‘truth’ in emotional, ‘ideologically-virtuous’ terms rather than the complex and sometimes unwelcome reality real truth takes.

Didn’t the left invent it? Hasn’t it done this for decades?

It may not be pleasant or kind when the Daily Mail or Sun show pictures of grown men being admitted to the UK as ‘child refugees’. But what’s the alternative? Should such information be kept from the public? Won’t doing so give a monopoly on that truth to the extremists? Doesn’t a monopoly on inconvenient truths by extremists empower them more? Haven’t we learned anything from the grooming scandal?

No one’s suggesting it’s easy to engage with people whose views you dislike, especially over issues that you’d rather were different in reality. But ask yourselves this:

“How’s our current strategy been working out for us?”

I think we’ve all seen how the BBC has reacted to the death of Castro, with reverence, regret and rank hypocrisy.  How different was the BBC’s reaction on the death of Margaret Thatcher, or indeed to the life of Donald Trump…Obama was given the Nobel Peace Prize before he’d set foot in the White House just about, yesterday the BBC was telling us Trump was about to cause world war 3 because he blamed the Chinese for the Great Global Warming Scam…actually he’s wrong about that, the Chinese benefit but the real culprit is the BBC’s very own Roger Harrabin (and his mate Joe Smith) who has driven the global warming narrative, suppressed the truth and made absolutely sure there are no dissenting voices allowed on the BBC…and when they do get under the wire their blasphemies are rapidly censured, censored and literally erased from history…ala Quentin Letts…..look at the transcript and you’ll wonder why on earth the BBC thought his programme was at all controversial….just Harrabin being a manic control freak.

The BBC’s reporting on Castro pretty much reflected Corbyn’s approach…Castro may have had a few flaws but he was really a jolly good chap…and so anti-American, how can you not really like and admire him?  As we’ve said, contrast that with Thatcher or Trump’s reception…but it’s not just the right of centre Big Beasts that get the BBC seal of disapproval…if you’re a simple American white girl from the country and you vote Republican and you let people know that then the BBC aims its guns at you….she represents everything the BBC hates and what’s more it’s that damned internet that’s bypassing the old-school media dinosaurs like the BBC…

Tomi Lahren: the young Republican who’s bigger than Trump on Facebook

The report is just a little ‘snarky’ in how it represents her views using perjorative, negative terms…..

One of Facebook’s most popular conservatives burst into prominence with sharp viral rants against liberals. But how will her underdog attack style play under President Trump?

She’s a free-speech advocate who tells her opponents to sit down and quit throwing tantrums.

A sharply partisan commentator who says she feeds people the truth. A rap fan who’s made an enemy of the Black Lives Matter movement. And a combative polemicist who says that all really she wants to do is start a conversation.

Meet Tomi Lahren: a 24-year-old Republican provocateur, a photogenic rising media star, a high-energy mass of contradictions.

They’re biting, outlandish, dripping with sarcasm and – depending on your political perspective – either righteous and rousing or obnoxious and infuriating. Lahren launched into her tirade against the athlete with characteristic snark. [‘Snark’ or truth?]

“Colin, I support the first amendment, I support your right of freedom of speech and expression. Go for it bud!”

“If this country disgusts you so much, leave,” she continues. “It seems to me that blaming white people for all your problems might make you the racist.”

Fair and balanced, she is not. [All the below…again the truth…not sure how her views here are unfair and unbalanced]

She takes a Trumpish tough line on immigration and Islam. She’s compared Black Lives Matter movement to the Ku Klux Klan, and in the Kaepernick video and others she criticises African-Americans for unemployment, drug abuse and other social problems. On women’s issues she hits at a popular theme on the right these days, that feminism was in the past a laudable quest for equality but has been taken “too far” by campus radicals.

Has she ever changed her mind on other things, or perhaps thought she’s gone too far with one of her videos? [In the BBC’s eyes or a normal persons?]

Remarkable how the BBC sees right-wing views expressed with passion and a level of truthfulness unknown on the Left as ‘snarky’ or ‘Trumpish’ or unfair and unbalanced, provocative, partisan, combative, not forgetting biting, outlandish and sarcastic…just how many negative words can the BBC apply to one person in  one article?  Bloody loads it would seem.  Can’t remember a similar level of ‘snark’ being aimed at Left wing commentators…such as Russell Brand or indeed James O’Brien who was actually given a job on NewsNight on the strength of his anti-Farage ‘provocative, unfair, unbalanced, sarcastic and outlandish ranting’ tirades.

Speaking of Farage…he speaks truth to power, the power that is, or was, the MSM…the internet made UKIP and Brexit, hence two good reasons the BBC hates the Web, he criticises their reporting on immigration, Islam and climate change….might get a job on this site now he’s at a loose end….should he not get the ambassador’s job that is….

Time for a new one of these so here is where you can detail the endless BIAS of the BBC!

Here is a classic example of the way that the Left and Islamist activists combine to attack the Right-leaning Press in order to pressure them into silence and to create a narrative that it is the Right-wing Press that drives ‘Islamophobia’ and anti-immigrant hate crime.

A train crash in Paddington during the period when Muslims practice Ramadan, the driver a Muslim….the Sun links the crash to Ramadan and the possible fatigue and inattention caused by lack of food and sleep.  Buzzfeed [the BBC’s new found ally] reports that the Sun has been forced to correct the report that supposedly drives negative notions about Islam by linking Ramadan to the train crash….note who the Buzzfeed journo is…

The Sun Has Been Forced To Correct Its Inaccurate “Ramadan Train Wreck” Story

The Sun has been forced to print a page 2 correction over a claim a train crash in June was caused by a driver who was fasting during Ramadan.

IPSO, the press watchdog, said the paper had made a “significantly misleading statement” in an article headlined “Ramadan train driver in crash”, published on 20 August 2016.

The Sun reported: “A Muslim train driver crashed after going without food or drink for 15 hours during Ramadan,” adding: “Rail accident experts claimed his fast caused the rush-hour derailment that led to three days of disruption.”

The Sun has been forced to print a page 2 correction over a claim a train crash in June was caused by a driver who was fasting during Ramadan.

After a complaint from Miqdaad Versi, a management consultant from London, IPSO said the misleading statement in the article resulted from a failure to accurately interpret the RAIB report, “representing a failure to take care not to publish misleading information”.

Who is the mysterious ‘Miqdaad Versi..management consultant from London’? He’s only the Assistant General Secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, the extremist Muslim organisation that campaigns to stop the anti-terror and anti-radicalisation programme ‘Prevent’, that was at the heart of the Trojan Horse scandal and which provides the Islamic theological justification as to why Ahmadis are not ‘Muslim’…hence we get numerous violent attacks on Ahmadis by ‘real’ Muslims.

Miqdaad Versi@miqdaadManagement Consultant, Assistant Secretary General of @MuslimCouncil, Board member of @rightswatchuk, Grassroots activist.

Prevent is failing. Any effective strategy must include Muslim communities

But hang on…why did Versi only go after the right-leaning Sun?  Google the story and you’ll see just about every news organisation based their story around the same premise…that fatigue and hunger may have been the cause of the accident…thus linking Islam to the crash.  The BBC’s own report emphasised this link from the start to the cause of the crash…..you can see the video above and the opening paragraphs of its write-up….pretty clear what it suggests….

Paddington derailment driver ‘had fasted 16 hours’

A driver on a Ramadan fast had not eaten for 16 hours before his train was derailed, a report has found.

The crash, near Paddington Station, affected services for days.

A Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB) report said it was “unable to determine” whether fasting and interruption to sleep was a factor in the crash.

But the investigation recognised there was research showing fasting can affect people’s concentration levels.

Fasting and driving

The Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSSB) has published research on the effects of fasting on fitness to drive.

It says fasting can have a range of effects including tiredness, dizziness, dehydration, headache, and a reduction in concentration, prompting safety concerns.

The report advises workers to ask for physically demanding tasks to be delayed until after Ramadan, and says managers must be aware of the potential effects of fasting on their staff.

Employers are also called upon to provide as much flexibility as possible, as well as health and well-being guidance for those fasting.

And yet the MCB targets the Sun only.  Just another example of Muslim ‘lawfare’ as it’s proponents use every means possible to suppress all criticism of Islam and to force deference and surrender to its values.

Similarly this recent statement from the New Statesman spells out perfectly the Left’s own tactical narrative and how they wish to portray news and comment from the ‘Right’ as the driver of hate crime and thus should be suppressed…or at least made socially unacceptable….

Mair wasn’t endlessly glued to the Sun and Mail websites. He was occupying a place significantly to the right. But his two-decade long journey of radicalisation occurred against a backdrop of stories in which immigration was a problem, and its defenders in the “political elite” held up as an enemy within. When politicians act as if the £270m spent on foreign patients is the reason for the cash crisis in the NHS, when the Prime Minister talks about “citizens of nowhere”, when the Home Secretary says that foreign workers are allowing businesses to keep British ones unskilled and low-paid, that contributes to a political climate in which the opinions which Mair mainlined for two decades become more acceptable.

So let’s not talk about immigration or ‘health tourism’ fraud….but do let’s make false allegations….’citizens of nowhere’?  A comment about immigrants?  No…about the global elite who jet around the world living in their multiple homes loyal to no nation.  Cheap immigrant labour keeping down wages and Brits out of work?  A lie driving hate?  No….perfectly true as most genuine business analysts will tell you….just ask why is productivity is so low in the UK?…because businesses didn’t invest in training, innovation and R&D because they could just import cheap labour instead.

Fake news, news and comment and ‘lawfare’ that wants to suppress freedom of speech and the freedom of the Press?  That’s all coming from the Left and its Islamist allies.

 

In a tongue-in-cheek article, Washington Post journalist Philip Bump did some calculations around Donald Jr’s statement, using data showing that the annual chance that an American would be murdered by a refugee was 1 in 3.64 billion.

The BBC hated this….

Just how unlucky are those 11 Americans who were knifed by a Somali refugee?

Ohio State attack: Suspect with butcher’s knife, reportedly student and refugee, killed as eleven victims injured

The BBC tells us….

In a tongue-in-cheek article, Washington Post journalist Philip Bump did some calculations around Donald Jr’s statement, using data showing that the annual chance that an American would be murdered by a refugee was 1 in 3.64 billion.

Based on his sums, it would take about one and a half Olympic swimming pools of Skittles in order to find three killers.

One thing, amongst many, wrong with the BBC’s counter to Trump jr’s analogy, is that you don’t have to find the attackers…they come to find you…so the chances are increased massively that an attack will happen.

It’s only been two hours since the BBC reported the attack…can’t be long before we hear that the attacker had mental health problems…due to racism and society’s failure to integrate him and accommodate his values and cultural expectations.

Odd, very odd.  I read the BBC write up on Francois Fillon and I’m thinking so very Trump.  And yet Trump doesn’t get a mention anywhere…not even when the BBC reports that Fillon wants better relations with Russia and opposes abortion…..two things, amongst so many, that the BBC castigated Trump for.  Now apparently …not so bad things.

Guess the BBC doesn’t want to admit that Trump isn’t the crazed, dangerous, racist whack-job that they have portrayed him as for the last 6 months day in day out and that many others have the same policies.  In other words the BBC doesn’t want us to know that BBC news is completely biased, untrustworthy and not worth paying good money for…especially at the ‘point of a gun’ so to speak.

The Spectator thinks the BBC has got a bad case of the sour grapes as its place as producer of illustrious ‘crown jewel’ programmes is threatened by an upstart commercial company, and one on that bloody independent, free thinking, interwebby thing as well….Netflix….

BBC attacks ‘lavish’ Netflix for propagating ‘myths’ about the royal family

It wasn’t long ago that Lord Hall Hall was telling us that the world would fall apart without the BBC, that the BBC was the gold standard for television, one that all other companies sought to emulate and learn from….all of course in aid of his campaign to keep the BBC’s highly privileged position and its funding mechanism….he said no commercial company could produce what the BBC does.

That is patently untrue and has been for years.  What are the biggest hits that get the ‘watercooler moments’?  They’re nearly all American with a few Scandi crime thrillers darkening our shores.  Yes the BBC produces some winners but the point is we don’t need the BBC if we want to have great TV, films and documentaries….Hall’s argument does not hold water…the BBC is not the gold standard, not for TV and not for news….and its programmes are all too often merely vehicles for political messages of one sort or another…and that includes its news and current affairs programmes.