Category Archives: BBC bias

We just had a look at the BBC’s own review into how it handles statistics, a review that conveniently and not unepxectedly found the BBC to be somewhat right-wing and reliant on the Tory government for the facts.  The review started off with this statement….

At the heart of BBC journalism is a mission to deliver an accurate and impartial news service. Whether drawing on the expertise of its journalists or from external sources to interpret events or issues, the BBC aims to enhance audience understanding and knowledge about what is happening in the world. Part of the remit includes making sense of the blizzard of statistics that infuses so much contemporary debate, from the latest crime figures, to trends in the health service or the numbers claiming welfare benefits.

I don’t know if any of you have been listening to the BBC’s coverage of the Junior Doctors’ strike plans but from what I have heard, and it’s quite extensive, I’d say that accuracy and impartiality play little part in the BBC’s reporting aims and that enhancing the audience’s understanding and knowledge, making sense of events, is the least of the BBC’s concerns.

There is nothing new in this of course...we’ve been here before….

Junior doctors put patient’s lives on the line so they could get more saturday overtime whilst all the time claiming the strikes were about patient safety.  And the interest from the BBC now?  Zilch.

Exactly the same scenario is playing out now as the BBC neglects to inform us that the only, the only, issue is saturday pay…the health and safety of patients, the survival of the NHS, are not in the slightest genuine considerations for the Junior Doctors.  It’s all about pay.  But does the BBC tell us that?, does the BBC challenge the numerous Junior Doctors who fill the airwaves with their heartwarming assurances that this is all about saving the NHS and keeping patients safe?  No.

Here’s Nicky Campbell’s analysis (42:30) of the situation as he tries to educate a caller….

Do you understand their (junior doctors) concerns, not just about their working conditions but the situation within the NHS and the long term threats that many of those junior doctors perceive to exist?

Pretty one-sided there and not dealing with the real issue at the heart of the dispute…saturday pay…and not long after he also insists on giving the ‘alternate view so we can balance it.’ to another caller who is also against the strikes.

Peter Allen the day before insisted that the government’s contract be torn up and scrapped as it was clearly unworkable..in his opinion…this was a view repeated quite frequently on 5Live over the next couple of days.

The BBC’s coverage of the issues surrounding this strike is highly misleading and uninformative and without doubt pro the Junior Doctors side.

And one last thing…those doctors who say they have the safety of patients and the survival of the NHS at the forefront of their minds and then tell us they will leave the NHS if things don’t improve, ie, they don’t get more money, just where do these moral crusaders troop off to?  To private companies that pay far better and are all too often in lovely, warm, sunny climes.  So much for the doctors’ horror of the supposed privatisation of the NHS….not so terrifying when it comes to padding out the pay check…or as more colourfully put by one doctor…

“I don’t care about anything apart from extracting the best contract. Don’t give a shit about anything else.”

Last month the BBC Trust released the findings of its review of how the BBC handles statistics.  Naturally enough the BBC Trust wasn’t actually looking for a genuinely impartial and honest insight into the BBC’s use of statistics and so the Trust went to the tried and tested Cardiff University which has already pronounced the BBC to be right-wing.  So who better to go to for a balanced, accurate and sensible review of the BBC’s output than an organisation peopled by ex-BBC mandarins and left-wing academics.

Curiously enough they didn’t disappoint and produced the ever-so dodgy and shopsoiled goods from under their Flash Harry mac…the Guardian wasn’t slow to exploit the, er, findings…

‘BBC has high dependency on Tory government for statistics’

Two points on that…one, the BBC takes government figures and then spends a vast amount of time discrediting and undermining them…two, they take government figures as fact when it suits their own agenda…such as during the EU referendum when we were told by the BBC that there was little doubt of the accuracy of the government predictions of economic armageddon and the breakdown of society on Brexit.  The BBC’s ‘Reality Check’ was laughably and unmistakeably badly named as reality was the last thing that the BBC intended to provide the audience with.

The BBC Trust knew full well what the useful idiots of Cardiff University would provide them with and, just as with their science review in which they employed fanatical climate change advocate and BBC yes-man, Steve Jones, to do the review, they understood that there was little chance of the real nature of the BBC being revealed.  To have the BBC ‘denounced’ as right-wing is the perfect outcome for the BBC which they then use as ‘proof’ against its critics who accuse it, quite correctly, of being in the service of the Left.

The BBC is as corrupt and unaccountable as ever and it looks like they will continue to be so as the government backs away from a genuine attempt to rein in the BBC’s extremism and bias and ignores the fact that the BBC actively seeks to undermine and oppose just about every government policy such as on refugees, immigration, the NHS, welfare and the prevention of terror….and don’t mention Brexit.

One year on from the manipulated photographs of the drowned Syrian boy, Alan Kurdi, opened up the gates of Europe to unlimited muslim immigration, the luvvies are out agitating for the UK to allow in 400 more “refugee children” from the Calais Jungle. The BBC reports;

Celebrities including Juliet Stevenson and Vanessa Redgrave, religious leaders and local politicians will gather outside the Home Office later to urge ministers to immediately bring over hundreds of children stranded in the sprawling migrant camp. There are 800 unaccompanied children among some 7,000 refugees living in the camp, according to the campaign group Citizens UK.

The BBC provided these luvvies with an elevated platform from which they can lecture the rest of us. Naturally no tough questions are ever asked of them and the cringing virtue signalling goes unchallenged. Last year the BBC played a central role in helping bring about Islamifying Europe by pushing the Kurdi story for all it was worth so that millions came in and a year on they are still at it. France is a first world country – no one in the so-called Calais Jungle has any right to asylum in the UK. But the BBC will do all it can to continue to undermine this, and us.

Here you go, a new Open Thread for the weekend. This is where you detail the bias!

Just a few weeks ago the BBC was trumpeting the then latest PMI figures that had dipped below 50 and in the BBC’s interpretation this definitely showed we were heading for recession due to Brexit.  This ‘news’ was constantly and loudly broadcast on the day the figures were released.

How different yesterday when the latest PMI figures [53.3] were released showing that ‘the month-on-month increase in the PMI level was the joint largest in the survey’s 25-year history.’

The figures were released at 09:30, the BBC didn’t report this until around 21:00 and the radio news was totally silent all day on this remarkable turn around in contrast to the very high profile the figures received last month.  Odd that the BBC was not chomping at the bit to get these latest ‘good news’ figures that give the lie to the BBC’s scaremongering about Brexit.

Interesting to hear Justin Webb interview Stiglitz on Wednesday as he slammed the EU and told us that if the EU acted in a rational way [note the ironic guffah from Webb…if so sceptical about the EU where was that in the run-up to the referendum?] the Uk could ‘do very well’.

Stiglitz tells us that the EU was supposed to bring solidarity and prosperity but has done the opposite and that the fact that the EU sees the only way to keep members in line, and inside the EU, is to threaten them must show that the EU doesn’t have a positive argument for itself and its supposed benefits.

Stiglitz tells us what we all know…that the only way the EU can succeed and make the Euro work is to have ever closer union…which was a major reason so many people voted to get out of the EU because staying in would inevitably mean we get dragged into that ever closer union…but this was not a line that the BBC cared to explore at all.

Instead the BBC concentrated on the economics..or the ‘economics’ as the Remain camp saw them…the BBC’s presentation parroted Remain’s propaganda unquestioningly even when making what were pretty outrageous claims.

Yesterday I heard Peter Allen get a bit hot under the collar when someone from the Electoral Reform Society suggested that the media were to blame for not properly informing the public during the referendum campaign.  The BBC was, ufortunately the source that the majority of people relied upon for their information….which, given the BBC’s very pro-EU reporting, might suggest Leave might have got an even higher percentage of the vote had we had a more balanced and honest narrative from the BBC.

Have to say most of the ERS’s analysis is mostly hot air…just look at this..

The society said the EU debate was in “stark contrast” to the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence, which it said had featured a “vibrant, well-informed, grassroots conversation that left a lasting legacy of on-going public participation in politics and public life”.

That’ll be right…the Scottish national socialist party’s anti- English rhetoric combined with total falsehoods about the economy meant that voters were had a ‘vibrant and well informed’ debate along with the stay camp’s ‘project fear’.  Such a shining example of how to run a referendum…not.

This is interesting though…

Referendums are a rich source of learning about public attitudes to politics and democracy. They expose views and feelings that are not given true expression or representation at general elections, given our distorted electoral system. At the Electoral Reform Society we have heard time and again from members of the public for whom 23rd June was the first time their vote had truly counted.

So, despite what the ERS are trying to claim, the referendum in fact represented what people actually thought and wanted to say, they were given a voice so often denied to them….and the referendum had a turn out far in excess of any recent general election.  Democracy in action.

The ERS is of course a campaigning group with its own agenda and is twisting its analysis on the EU referendum to support its own line.

I don’t think that voters were under-informed about why we should leave the EU by the Leave campaign but anyone in the Remain camp or undecided were certainly short-changed by the BBC which concentrated on the the supposed disastrous economics of a Brexit vote and which refused to explore the very extreme problems if we did stay in the EU and which painted anyone who spoke about immigration as a racist.

Leave voters were very clear why they wanted to leave….to escape the stranglehold of EU and its unelected politicians, to control immigration and to control our own destiny.  Simple.  To claim they didn’t know what they were voting for, which is the BBC’s own narrative, is just nonsense.  It was the BBC that didn’t know, or couldn’t accept, what they were voting for and no doubt all future debates about this will be ‘informed’ by the ERS analysis, conveniently avoiding the negatives about the Remain campaign, but loudly trumpeting any criticism of the Leave campaign thus adding to the BBC’s narrative that the referendum was invalid and that people were misled into voting Leave….and thus we should have a second referendum.

Note the interview with Gus O’Donnell in which Mishal Husain repeatedly asked if we should have a second referendum….O’Donnell is a Remain man who admits his ‘utopia’ would be to still be in the EU.  This is the man that the BBC chose to present a programme about Brexit.  The programme is designed purely to instill in us the idea that Brexit is so difficult and beset with problems that we are more ready to accept a suggestion of a second referendum to escape Brexit armageddon.

Also note the BBC’s road trip around the UK to check on how Brexit is effecting you…Unlikely Brexit is effecting anyone to any great extent at the moment.  The BBC will of course end up packing the programme with immigrants who claim to have been abused by racists due to Brexit.  Just more BBC anti-Brexit propaganda designed to paint a negative picture of a future outside the EU’s grasp.

The BBC seems to live in an entirely different world to most people and rather than report facts instead reports what it wants you to think you know.  It is corrupt, it is hugely damaging to democracy in this country and is a massive danger to society as it supports terrorism and cheerleads radical ideologies that bring only a new Dark Ages.

The BBC eventually decided to (albeit briefly) report on this story this morning.

The British public want to ban Muslim women from wearing the Islamic veil or burqa by an overwhelming margin of more than two-to-one, a poll has found. Research by YouGov found a huge proportion of the public had no qualms about telling women what to wear, with 57 per cent in favour of a ban and just 25 per cent against.

As someone who has been on the BBC debating this issue, I can assure you the BBC holds dear to supporting the right of Muslims to wear their political garb where and when they want. If you reflect the views of the majority of British people on this issue, as I do, the BBC will bully and set you you up for a fall. The sneering BBC liberal intelligentsia can think of nothing more liberating for a woman to be dressed as a shroud. Aren’t they revolting?

I’m on Talk Radio tomorrow morning just after 9am chatting to Paul Ross about this item.

People who only watch BBC shows on catchup will be legally required to have a TV licence from 1 September, when new legislation to close the so-called “iPlayer loophole” comes into force. Though the vast majority of households own a TV licence, those without one who only watch catch-up content and not live broadcasts were technically exempt from paying the £145 a year charge. The government had promised to close the loophole, which already costs the BBCabout £150m a year and is likely to increase, during negotiations last summer that also saw the corporation agree to shoulder the £750m burden of free licence fees for the over-75s.

Wonder what your thoughts are? I can understand why the BBC want to close the loophole on a commercial basis and that seems fair to me. But the actual License Tax is the problem. It MAY or MAY NOT be seen as good value but it is not a choice. What say you?

Here you go, a brand new Open Thread! Detail the bias here please.

BBC in positively gushing mode this morning. Why?

About 6,500 migrants have been rescued off Libya, the Italian coastguard says, in one of the biggest operations of its kind to date. Some 40 co-ordinated rescue missions took place about 20km (12 miles) off the Libyan town of Sabratha, it added. Video footage shows migrants, said to be from Eritrea and Somalia, cheering and some swimming to rescue vessels, while others carried babies aboard.

How delightful and also how considerate of the BBC not to bother pointing out that Somalis and Eritreans have been busy adding NOTHING to European economies since those boats started coming. Apart from casual stabbings etc.

Ever year it’s the same. The Notting Hill Carnival is little more than a prolonged opportunity for crime and thuggery. Here’s the charge street for “Children’s Day” The BBC does report the violence but you know that it also approves of this farcical annual street crime fest.