Category Archives: BBC bias

Wonder if anyone saw BBC “The Big Questions’ this morning? It was certainly explosive with left wing feminist rent-a-mouth harpy Kate Smurfwaite talking over everyone. However the BEST bit was when fellow leftist “Professor” Connie St Louis accused Milo Yiannopoulos of calling for the “assassination” of someone on his Twitter account. See Milo’s excellent response below. This is going to cost her.

OK folks, I’ve been away for a few days but am now back so let’s START the week early! Here you go detail the bias here!

Time flies I’m afraid and we’ve been caught out again with the open thread..so here’s another one to tide you over till we get back on track…..

The BBC has a bit of a quandary…..reporting the success of non-private school pupils in getting into Oxbridge or hiding that because the pupils come from a Free School and from a poor area of London thus undermining two of the BBC’s cherished mantras about the hated Free Schools and poverty…..both apparently anathemas to success in education.

A few days ago I heard Peter Allen claim that the school system was failing and fragmenting and Free Schools were part of the problem….not a massive rise in pupil numbers due to immigration then?

Wonder what he makes of this…….

‘East End Eton’ pupils beats top public schools to Oxbridge

A free school in one of the poorest parts of Britain, nicknamed the “Eton of the East End”, is to send eight pupils to Oxbridge this year, putting them ahead of some of the most famous public schools in the country.

The London Academy of Excellence, a free school which has been running for three years, is celebrating after eight pupils received conditional offers to study at Oxford and Cambridge.

According to the Sunday Times, the figure puts the school above some of the country’s leading public schools, with one pupil from Gordonstoun, five from Sherborne and four from Haileybury destined for Oxbridge.

It’s hard to tell what he might make of it because so far the BBC has failed to mention this remarkable success that they normally would be trumpeting from the roof tops…especially as the successful pupils are predominantly of a non-white hue….at least 7 of the eight going to Oxbridge are non-white…here’s three of them…

Toby Young in the Telegraph doubts the Left will be celebrating….he could be right…

There’s a great story in the Sunday Times this morning (££) about the London Academy of Excellence, a free school in Newham. In spite of only being open for 18 months, the specialist Sixth Form college has managed to secure offers from Oxford and Cambridge for six of its pupils. That’s more Oxbridge offers than every other school in Newham managed last year.

No doubt Left-wing critics of free schools will come up with the usual excuses as to why this school has done so well. But for those of us who believe in the policy, it’s a huge triumph.

‘…for those of us who believe in the policy‘…that counts the BBC out then.  Be interesting to see the BBC take on this when they get around to reporting it……what’s the betting it’s a long list of every complaint against Free Schools they can muster alomgside a grudging acknowledgement of the success?

When we had the floods recently the BBC made a big play about the supposed North-South divide in funding channelling a Labour Party narrative but not telling us that the person making the claim was in fact a Labour council leader. [Similarly the BBC doesn’t tell us that the PCC’s who complain about cuts to police funding are also Labour party politicians.]

The BBC seems to like the sound of that North-South divide…could it possibly be because the government is trying to establish the ‘Northern Powerhouse’ and regenerate Northern fortunes and the BBC has decided to undermine that with claims of Northern neglect by a Tory government?

Last week we had a day of being told on the news bulletins that again there was this North-South divide, this time in education…..the rich Southern pupils being more successful than their poorer, neglected Northern cousins.

Now the BBC knew this was rubbish and not what the report they based their claims upon said, but anyone forced to rely on the BBC’s news service would have had that false narrative rammed down their throats all day….it was only later in the evening when the report’s author came on did we hear the truth…and he himself had to correct the BBC presenter’s take on his report.

So is there a North-South divide?  No, and the BBC, as said, knew this, as illustrate by the graphic they supplied on their website……

The real problem  places (should you place any faith or trust in such reports at all) are in the Midlands as well as many places in the South. [Update…the bit that looks like Northern Ireland is in fact Greater London blown up…thanks to Embolden for correcting that for me.]

The BBC clearly had a political agenda as their claims were totally false and even the report’s author had to correct them.

The BBC has been blitzing us recently with tales of woe…A&E is swamped by ever increasing numbers, housing is massively in short demand and schools can’t provide anywhere near enough places for the numbers of pupils.

Why has this situation arisen?  The BBC doesn’t know but of course is happy to speculate that it is due to the government not spending enough money…due to austerity measures [and of course the BBC doesn’t spell out why austerity is need and who is to blame for such measures being necessary…ie Labour and Labour policies].

Here is one such report that tells us that ‘London places crisis to hit secondary schools’

The BBC tells us…

Pupils in London face a growing funding gap, with the school-age population forecast to rise by 12% over five years, argues a report.

“Do the Maths 2015” says the government is not providing enough cash for new school places needed in the capital.

London Councils, which represents the 32 London boroughs, plus the City of London, fears crunch time is rapidly approaching for the capital’s education budgets.

There has been “unprecedented growth in demand” for school places in London, says the report.

The number of school-age children (aged five to 19) increased by 112,000 in London in the five years to 2015.

So an ‘unprecedented growth in demand’.…and why might that be?  The BBC doesn’t tell us where that unprecedented demand is coming from.

Could it possibly be that mass, uncontrolled immigration has swamped the British school system and made it unsustainable with parents unable to get the school of their choice and convenience?

Well in all likelihood that’s the answer as in the last 3 years alone we have had nearly one million migrants flood into the UK…they have to be housed somewhere, they have to be treated by the NHS and they have to send their kids to schools.

But the BBC doesn’t like to raise that problem, no mention at all of immigration in its report…The BBC’s mantra is that the problem is the government not spending enough not  too many migrants.  The migrants are economically beneficial to the UK…aren’t they?….

The government said it had doubled funding for school places to £5bn during the last parliament, creating half a million new school places since May 2010, with a further £7bn committed to create more places over the next six years.

Curiously the photos they provide to accompany the report have the pupils all pictured from the rear and a class of nearly all white pupils…is the BBC trying to hide the fact that London schools are predominantly non-white now?  Why aren’t they celebrating the diversity?

This is the type of photo the BBC normally prefer to use:

or this….when the pupils are ‘trouble’…

We’ve got another one of those BBC ‘mysteries’….the sort of mystery that is only a mystery to the BBC because it wants to raise some issues that otherwise it couldn’t…because they are not really ‘issues’ at all.

Belgium is apparently an apartheid state.  Who’d have guessed? Muslims, for naturally it is they, are discriminated against, marginalised and shoved unceremoniously into ghettoes by the racist Belgiques.

I know this because the BBC says it is so…or rather quotes a little too enthusiastically and uncritically a social worker who rants along those lines….

Has Belgium created ‘a system of apartheid’?

Well I think we can answer that immediately…’Belgium’ has not ‘created’ an apartheid system, what has happened is that thousands of unwanted Muslim migrants have landed on Belgium’s doorstep and forced their way in and refused to integrate and take part in Belgium society and culture.

Muslims have created their own ghettoes just as they do in every country, the UK included as we ‘march towards segregation’ as Trevor Phillips might say.

The BBC tells us…

A former senior police official has warned that Belgium’s failure to integrate its Muslim minority has created a de facto “system of apartheid”….Paul Jacobs. For 20 years he dealt with discrimination complaints in the Belgian police – and he’s just finished a session teaching this class “inter-cultural communication”.

So probably not a police officer, but the BBC gives that impression so  he has more ‘authority’….more likely a social workery type.  And what of that ‘Belgium’s failure to integrate its Muslim minority’?  Not Belgium’s fault.  Something like 400,000 French immigrants in London now (many Jewish as they flee the rising tide of anti-Semitism in Europe…of which the BBC shows little interest) and yet do they ‘radicalise’ and set out to bomb tube trains, buses and nightclubs?  Has Britain set out to integrate them?  No.  They get on with it themselves.

Look at the way the BBC writes this up….

A heated argument broke out when Suhaila, the only non-white [police] recruit – from a Moroccan background, like many Belgian Muslims – said she could understand why young Muslims might become jihadis.

“The whole class was reacting – over-reacting,” Jacobs says. “It was the first time they had talked with someone of a Moroccan background.”

So the problem with her comment was not that she ‘understood’ the Jihadis but that the class was ‘over-reacting’ to her comment….probably because they had never met a Moroccan before…not sure how he knows that….they must all be shallow and unworldly or maybe just racist.

Loved this from the BBC…

The headmaster [of a school in Brussels], Erik Van Den Berghe, grew up in Molenbeek. “I really liked the inter-cultural environment, and I used to play basketball and football with all ethnic groups and religions,” he says.

But since then many believe the character of Molenbeek has become more Islamic – and the opportunities for social mixing have declined.

So the BBC is finally wising up….Islamisation is the problem, isn’t it?

Oh but whose fault is that?  The BBC again quotes uncritically….

Divisions have been reinforced because many young Belgians of Moroccan and Turkish descent have reacted against anti-Muslim feeling since 9/11 by defiantly adopting a more religious identity.

Ah…..that old trope about anti-Muslim sentiment creating alienation and radicalisation…when the reality is that it is the other way around.  Many, many, all too many, Muslims are attacking, culturally, socially, legally, politically and with bombs and bullets, Western society.  People see what Muslims say and do and what the Koran orders and they don’t want that in their country.

The BBC of course has its other target of choice in its sights…Saudi Arabia…it quotes…

“Simplistic explanations are the most successful, especially the hardline talk from Saudi Arabia with its binary distinction between what is haram and what is not, between ‘us’ and ‘them’.”

These are the distinctions used by Islamist recruiters who deliberately target young people in districts like Molenbeek, she says.

Once again I say it is odd that the BBC fails so often to make mention of Saudia Arabia’s part in radicalising British Muslims…because then the BBC couldn’t blame UK foreign and domestic policy.  The BBC likes to present Saudi Arabia’s fundamentalist Islam as if it was not the real thing and yet it is the closest to the real thing that any Muslim is likely to get….’them and us’ is what Islam is all about…as are all religions….just some enforce that distinction rather too enthusiastically, it is a distinction enforced by violence in the Koran.

For the BBC the Muslims in Belgium are all victims.  Belgium forced them to come to Belgium, Belgium forced them into ghettoes, Belgium forced them to worship Islam, Belgium forced them to radicalise, Belgium forced them to go to Syria.  Muslims have no minds of their own, no free will, no ability to think for themselves and make decisions based on their own reasoning.

Funny how in ‘moderate’ Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country, there is a burgeoning Islamic radicalisation in progress with many terror groups fighting the good fight in the name of Islam.  Is Indonesia also an apartheid state where Muslims (87% of the population) are disenfranchised and alienated?

Lord Hall Hall’s BBC is still peddling the Muslim terrorist narrative….Muslims are all victims, besieged and under attack by non-Muslims in Europe…one that ISIS is very happy the BBC is spreading.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ks6iLVlUiNY

I know some MPs think we should have ‘Jerusalem’ as the national anthem but actually bringing Jerusalem to the UK?…

Woman ‘tries to stab 15-year-old with kitchen knife on London bus’

Or as the BBC puts it……

Grandmother disarms teenager’s Lambeth bus knife attacker

A curious and convoluted title as the BBC manages to mention the grandmother, the teenager attacked but not the actual attacker’s identity…If it had been an Israeli attacker the title would have read ‘Israeli stabs [Palestinian] teenager’…so why not ‘Asian woman stabs teenager’?….and why does the BBC hide the story on the ‘England’ page when it is front page news on all the other outlets…Guardian excepted of course.  Anyone would think the BBC weren’t keen for some reason to highlight a story in which the attacker is an ‘Asian’ woman in a headscarf.

If the victim had been Muslim and the attacker white the BBC would have been relentlessly telling us all about it all day in every news bulletin just as they did with that tale of a pigs head left outside a mosque recently…..left by who knows who….just as they are still disgracefully covering up what went on in Cologne…still telling us on the news that only ‘some immigrants’ may have been involved leaving you to think, if you didn’t know better, that the bulk of the attacks were by white Germans….I say white Germans because the BBC likes to deceptively use ‘German’ to mean an immigrant who is not a recent asylum seeker…allowing the BBC to kid us that the attackers were ‘German’.

 

 

Our reporting should resist the temptation to use language and tone which appear to accept consensus or received wisdom as fact or self-evident.

We must challenge our own assumptions and experiences and also those which may be commonly held by parts of our audience.

These can present some of the most difficult challenges to asserting that the BBC does not hold its own opinion.  Care should be taken to treat areas of apparent consensus with proper rigour. 

Lord Patten, ex-BBC Trust panjandrum, gave us the benefit on the Today programme the other day.  You have to laugh.  I quote….

STU­DENTS who want to ban ob­jec­tion­able ideas on cam­puses should go to uni­ver­sity in China, Lord Pat­ten said yes­ter­day.

The Chan­cel­lor of Ox­ford Univer­sity said so-called ‘no­plat­form­ing’ poli­cies, which seek to ban cer­tain ob­jec­tion­able speak­ers, are in dan­ger of sti­fling free­dom of speech in the same man­ner as au­thor­i­tar­ian regimes.

The for­mer Tory Cabi­net min­is­ter told BBC Ra­dio 4’s To­day pro­gramme: ‘Can you imag­ine a uni­ver­sity where there is no­plat­form­ing? A bland diet of bran to feed peo­ple is an ab­so­lutely ter­ri­ble idea.’

This from a man who oversaw the no-platforming of climate change sceptics on the BBC, guided of course by Roger Harrabin [activist/journalist] and his mate Joe Smith [climate activist] about whose influence within the BBC is looked upon by some as less than desirable:

From an insider…

‘Following their lead [Harrabin and Smith’s] has meant the whole thrust and tone of BBC reporting has been that the science is settled, and that there is no need for debate,’ one journalist said. ‘If you disagree, you’re branded a loony.’

This is the narrative that Harrabin and his mate wanted to promote….

Harrabin and Joe Smith of the CMEP have worked out  a devious scheme to sideline sceptics…don’t talk about the science…talk about risk or how to stop the world warming…..

‘Climate change should not be responded to as a body of ‘facts’ to be acted upon (with the IPCC acting as prime arbiter). Instead it should be considered as a substantial and urgent collective risk management problem. Projecting climate change as a risk problem rather than a communication-of-fact problem helpfully deflates ‘debates’ about whether climate change is or is not a scientific fact.

My point is: lets not get stuck on the science. Climate change is a vast and widening body of investigation and debate: science is now barely the half of it, and in terms of political outcomes it is not the thing that counts.….a line that is designed to work for people who have ideological wax blocking their ears: ‘don’t get het up about communicating science – talk about clean American energy and jobs in a new efficient, competitive economy’.’

And let’s not forget the extremely biased Professor Steve Jones who did the science review for the BBC and made recommendations on how it should present climate change to the world…essentially by not allowing sceptics on air….apart from being very pro-climate change he also owed his living to the BBC having been washed up as a scientist…by his own admission.

The latest example of the silencing of critical debate is of course the Quentin Lett’s programme about the Met. Office.

You may recall that the BBC Trust stated that ‘The programme would not be repeated in any form.’

So much for free speech, open debate and challenging authoritarian regimes.

You can of course read a transcript of the programme here.

The sheer hypocrisy of the BBC is, ironically, illustrated perfectly by the head of the BBC’s very own climate Inquisition, Roger Harrabin himself, who said of the Met. Office:

“The trouble is that we simply don’t know how much to trust the Met Office.”

From the Telegraph:

Roger Harrabin, an environment analyst at the BBC, told the Radio Times: “The trouble is that we simply don’t know how much to trust the Met Office. How often does it get the weather right and wrong. And we don’t know how it compares with other, independent forecasters.

“Can we rely on them if we are planning a garden party at the weekend? Or want to know if we should take a brolly with us tomorrow? Or planning a holiday next week?

“In a few year’s time hopefully we’ll all have a better idea of whom to trust. By then the Met Office might have recovered enough confidence to share with us its winter prediction of whether to buy a plane ticket or a toboggan.”

Is that not exactly what Quentin Lett’s was saying in a more humorous manner?

Not as if the Met. Office has been at all accurate in its long range climate change predictions:

Met Office: Arctic sea-ice loss linked to colder, drier UK winters

The reduction in Arctic sea ice caused by climate change is playing a role in the UK’s recent colder and drier winter weather, according to the Met Office.

And it did not predict the ‘Pause’.

Here’s what the BBC Trust complained of:

[The programme] indicated the Met Office’s position on climate change was controversial and did not make clear that its work – which used evidence-based observations alongside computer modelling – was in line with prevailing scientific thought. Criticisms made included that it was involved in political lobbying, failed to be impartial and that its claims about climate change were alarmist. The programme included contributors who spoke from a particular perspective on the subject, yet this perspective was not made clear to audiences. A representative from the Met Office was interviewed, but her contribution in the programme as broadcast did not adequately address the criticisms that had been made.

[We] considered audiences were not given sufficient information about prevailing scientific opinion to allow them to assess the position of the Met Office and the Met Office position on these criticisms was not adequately included in the programme.

OK…so let’s look at what the BBC said in 2014:

Reply from BBC Complaints Team

Many thanks for getting in touch again about your concerns with our output on global warming.

We don’t actually have editorial guidelines on the subject but we treat it the same way we treat any controversial subject – in a fair and balanced way. We try to provide the information which will enable viewers and listeners to make up their own minds and provide a forum for debate.

Across our programmes the number of scientists and academics who support the mainstream view far outweighs those who disagree with it. We do however on occasion, offer space to dissenting voices where appropriate as part of our overall commitment to impartiality. The BBC Trust, which oversees our work on behalf of licence fee payers, has explicitly urged programme makers not to exclude critical opinion from policy debates involving scientists.

So global warming is ‘controversial’ and not settled and the BBC’s output is so heavily weighted in favour of the consensus that it is the BBC’s duty to provide a platform for dissenting voices…..seems the BBC Trust doesn’t agree despite the guidelines allowing one-off dissenting programmes like Letts’:

On long-running or continuous output (such as general daily magazine programmes, the News Channel, Online, etc.) due impartiality may be achieved over time by the consistent application of editorial judgement in relevant subject areas.  For instance, it is not usually required for an appearance by a politician, or other contributor with partial views, to be balanced on each occasion by those taking a contrary view, although it may sometimes be necessary to offer a right of reply. 

The BBC’s editorial guidelines are so waffly and convoluted that it is possible to make them mean whatever you want them to mean.  Due weight, due impartiality, accuracy, consensus, controversial, personal views and ‘breadth and diversity of opinion’ are all just words to the BBC Trust…look at how they interpret ‘Personal View’ programmes…

The BBC has a tradition of allowing a wide range of individuals, groups or organisations to offer a personal view or opinion, express a belief, or advance a contentious argument in its output.  This can range from the outright expression of highly partial views by a campaigner, to the opinion of a specialist or professional including an academic or scientist, to views expressed through contributions from our audiences.  All of these can add to the public understanding and debate, especially when they allow our audience to hear fresh and original perspectives on familiar issues.

Such personal view content must be clearly signposted to audiences in advance.

and… “retain a respect for factual accuracy” or “fairly represent opposing viewpoints when included”.

How can a personal view, consisting of highly partial views and opinion of specialists also be ‘accurate’ and impartial’.  Letts’ programme was clearly a ‘personal view’ programme as the Trust admitted:

Trustees considered that the BBC had failed to ensure that there was sufficient signposting to alert listeners that this was a “personal view” programme and had also failed to include adequate information about what constituted the prevailing scientific opinion.

I’m sorry…the Public weren’t alerted to the fact that this was a personal view programme?  The BBC Trust in the same ruling said this:

The Committee agreed that the series had a strong authorial voice. Trustees considered listeners would have expected that the programme would be broadly humorous and would include the author’s own ‘take’ on the Met Office and its operations. They considered that, to this extent, audiences would have expected the programme to be the presenter’s “personal view” of the Met Office.

So the audience did expect a ‘personal view’.  It looks very much like the BBC Trust is making the rules up as it goes to suit the climate fanatic’s narrative.

As for not giving a right of reply to the Met. Office…just read the transcript to see just how much time was given over to the ‘consensus’ side.  Letts states that Piers Corbyn’s dissenting views are ‘not uncontentious’ and gives the many pro-Met. Office voices plenty of chance to speak….The Met. Office’s Helen Chivers was given maybe one quarter of the programme to reply to Letts’ questions…

Quentin Letts: I asked Helen Chivers how accurate the Met Office’s predictions were.

Helen Chivers: On average, we’re accurate – if you look at a great big basket of, you know, sunshine, rainfall, temperatures – round about 80% of the time.

Was there a claim of ‘political’ lobbying as the Trust claims?…

Peter Lilley: I suppose we do get lobbied by them. They come before the Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change, on which I sat, and tell us they need even more money for even bigger computers so they can be even more precisely wrong in future.

Well…that’s not a claim that the Met. Office carried out ‘political’ lobbying, it’s a claim that the Met. Office panhandled for more money.

The BBC Trust is once again misleading us.

What else does it mislead us on?

The Trust claims that the ‘Pause’ was always predicted by the IPCC and the Met. Office….

Periods of hiatus are consistent with earlier IPCC assessments that non-linear
warming of the climate is to be expected and that forced climate changes always take
place against a background of natural variability. The current period of hiatus does
not undermine the core conclusions of the [Working Group 1] contribution to AR5 when put in the context of the overall, long-term global energy budget.

The Trust even quoted this…

The Met Office is […] widely recognised as a world-leader in climate prediction. However, we note that the climate model did not accurately predict the extent of the flattening of the temperature curve during the last ten years.

…and yet dismissed it completely.  And we know there was a pause and that it was completely unpredicted…and that the ‘consensus’ is in complete denial about it….

Phil [Hide the decline] Jones, head of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit. July 5th 2005:

“The scientific community would come down on me in no uncertain terms if I said the world had cooled from 1998. Okay it has but it is only seven years of data and it isn’t statistically significant.”

 

Curiously the BBC has a guideline on how to treat a ‘consensus’…ironically as if it presented a ‘significant risk to the BBC’s impartiality’ ….

Consensus

There are some issues which may seem to be without controversy, appearing to be backed by a broad or even unanimous consensus of opinion.  Nevertheless, they may present a significant risk to the BBC’s impartiality.  In such cases, we should continue to report where the consensus lies and give it due weight.  However, even if it may be neither necessary nor appropriate to seek out voices of opposition, our reporting should resist the temptation to use language and tone which appear to accept consensus or received wisdom as fact or self-evident.

We must challenge our own assumptions and experiences and also those which may be commonly held by parts of our audience.

These can present some of the most difficult challenges to asserting that the BBC does not hold its own opinion.  Care should be taken to treat areas of apparent consensus with proper rigour. 

What is really controversial but seems to get a bye in all the discussion about Letts’ programme is this…..

An early decision that the programme should not include discussion of climate change was not adequately recorded…The decision that the programme should not include challenge to the prevailing scientific view about climate change was mentioned at a meeting between the Head of Radio, Religion and Ethics and the Series Producer.

The BBC decreed that a programme discussing the Met. Office would not talk about climate change and the Met. Office’s role in advancing that theory?  Half of the Met. Office’s job is to deal with climate change and to assess what is happening to the climate in order to inform politicians on policy.  It is a highly important and critical part of the Met. Office’s role and the Met. Office’s poor record should not be hidden away.

Why did the BBC try to censor Quentin Letts and control what  he might say about the Met. Office?  Is it because they knew full well that, as Roger Harrabin admitted, the Met. Office’s record on predicting the climate is pretty abysmal and inaccurate and open to a great deal of criticism…which might then raise doubts about the Great Global Warming Swindle? Something the climate commissars cannot allow.

The BBC Trust’s blatant fixing of the evidence and the the convenient twisting of BBC guidelines to suit the climate change narrative is bad enough but the BBC’s attempt to silence Letts even before he began is the real scandal here.

Still, there are others out there who are more brave and honest……