Category Archives: BBC bias

Not long ago we suggested that the BBC’s use of the modest descriptive term of ‘leftwing’ to describe Jeremy Corbyn was doing him a favour as he is to the left, far to the left, of most in the Labour Party.  If there were a Tory MP in a similar position with similarly extreme views he would be described as Far Right….and of course UKIP are usually dismissed as the Far Right and as Nazis by the BBC.  Look at how Enoch Powell, based on one speech, is vilified even now decades after he made that speech and yet Corbyn’s associates, his comments, and indeed some of those whom he has chosen as shadow ministers, should put him in a category of contempt way above that of Enoch Powell.

However others beg, scream and shout, to differ.

Over 50,000 people sign petition saying that the BBC is biased against Jeremy Corbyn

They are asking the BBC to refer to David Cameron as the ‘right-wing Prime Minister’, because they often refer to the leader of the Opposition as ‘left-wing’

The change.org petition was set up by Amanda Drury from Lincoln, and it says in the description:

The Labour Party is leftwing so someone to the left of that must by definition be ‘Far Left’.  Corbyn was not being traduced by the BBC, he was being given favoured status and a makeover by them.  The BBC was presenting him as less extreme than he really is.

It does seem extraordinary that the ‘Left’ are now up in arms about being called ‘left’…what do they have to hide? Do they now think that the nation recognises the ‘left’ as something not to tread in?  Being on the ‘left’ was supposed to be the ‘Red Badge of Courage’ showing you were proudly fighting oppression and inequailty and all that, something to be loudly proclaimed, trumpeted by the believers…. now they’re embarrassed by it?

Perhaps rightly so…Nick Cohen is more than embarrassed by the right-on far left comrades....Why I’ve finally given up on the left.   He says that ‘Left-wing thought has shifted towards movements it would once have denounced as racist, imperialist and fascistic. It is insupportable.’

He could be describing Corbyn couldn’t he?

And, in the run up to the election and subsequent election of Corbyn as leader the fact he was ‘leftwing’ was relevant to the debate….people needed to know where was he on the spectrum of Labour politics compared to the other candidates…who presumably weren’t ‘leftwing’ in the BBC’s eyes.  Now the leadership election is over the BBC will use such a term sparingly, even in its moderate form of ‘leftwing’ rather than the more accurate ‘Far Left’….or perhaps ‘Loony Left’…..the BBC defence?…’The BBC defended their journalists choice of words, commenting choice phrases were employed as a matter of “specific editorial justification” to enhance its audience’s understanding.’

I might suggest describing Corbyn as merely ‘leftwing’ hardly enhances the audience’s understanding as the term is clearly not reflective of his actual beliefs and position on the lefty spectrum.  Left of Yvette Cooper et al maybe, but that would put him to the ‘far left’ of most normal people….the voters.

The BBC however seems to be giving Corbyn a good write up elsewhere, after peviously having studiously ignored his unsavoury connections to terrorist groups et al ….asking if he is the new Attlee and uncritically bringing us suggestions that Miliband didn’t lose because he was too left wing…which of course plays into Corbyn’s own narrative of moving ever more leftward.  Perhaps the BBC should ask a few people instead of possibly academics with vested interests, why they didn’t like Miliband…one, he was clearly not a ‘statesman-like’ leader, two, his party wrecked the economy and looked like they’d continue down the same path and three, he was too far left….intent on imposing state controls on anything that moved with policies that any fule could see would fail spectacularly.

Perhaps the BBC should stick to ‘beige’ in describing Corbyn….A parliamentary revolution in beige, Jeremy Corbyn’s new leader’s navy suit, nowhere to be seen.  

Anyone else bored senseless with the nightly reports filed on the BBC News at Ten by Fergal Keen which are little more than pro-immigrant propaganda? He churns out the same cliches night after night – with the constant narrative that these swarming economic immigrants are lovely people out to make Europe a more vibrant and successful place. Dar Al Islam.

Well then, Labour’s John McDonnell used his appearance on BBC “Question Time” to offer a fulsome apology for his pro-IRA comments back in 2003. The BBC seem satisfied with this, honour has been restored and we can all now move on. Except, of course, McDonnell has simply resorted to lying and the BBC let him away with it. His explanation for his comments, made in 2003, was that he (along with Corbyn) were desperate to help ensure the “Peace Process” survived. The FACT of the matter is that this sordid process commenced in 1998 when the Belfast Agreement was ‘signed”. So what the hell was McDonnell doing FIVE YEARS LATER and why was it almost invisible at that time? The BBC know perfectly well that McDonnell’s explanation is flimsy but they have chosen not to go after him any further. In fact, on Question Time, when Timothy Stanley at least TRIED to go after McDonnell a bit more, he was shut up. It’s easy to say sorry when the sorrow is for yourself.

OK, this one is on time and designed to take us all off into the weekend! Here is where to detail the bias.

The Corbyn leadership poses problems for the comrades at the BBC. They know he is vulnerable due to his extremism so they have to be a bit careful not to link themselves too closely BUT they like what he says all the same. I thought their coverage of his PMQ’s debut was incredibly biased. His “revolution” which they were swooning over consisted of him reading out other people’s questions. This had the BBC reaching for epithets. I think we are in for an interesting time ahead. Labour have chosen an extreme Leftist as leader and the BBC do sympathise with a lot of what he says.

Been away so just back and can see the old Open Thread is as overflowing as a Hungarian border check point. Here’s a new thread for you to detail the bias.

John Whittingdale has made a speech about the BBC...He ends with this positive note…

Finally, I want to say something very simple.

The UK television industry is celebrated and loved across the world. It provides a huge number of jobs and generates massive economic activity. It informs and entertains.

The years ahead promise to be tremendously exciting for the industry.

I see it as a huge privilege to be the Government’s television champion at this time.

The Guardian has a run down of the speech and of the appointment of an Ex-Bank of England deputy governor to lead review into BBC regulation…I’ll let you read them at your leisure…but one sentence stood out…

In a speech at the RTS television festival in Cambridge on Thursday, Sharon White, the head of Ofcom, is expected to talk about the huge impact adding BBC governance to her department would make.

Complaints to the BBC dwarf all other broadcasters combined.

Hilary Mantel is infamous for her self-gratifying fantasy that expressed her deeply felt desire to kill Keir Hardie, a man for whom she still feels a ‘boiling detestation’…even more infamous is that the BBC felt the need to broadcast the short story...‘In Hilary Mantel’s mischievous story a knock at the door announces an unexpected visitor who has plans to alter the course of history as we know it. Harriet Walter reads.’  The Left were naturally outraged that such an iconic figure should be treated in this way by the BBC.  Here is a small snippet from the short story….

The gunman kneels, easing into position. He sees what I see, the flat cap crammed onto the unruly bush of wiry hair. He sees it bob like a dog turd in a gutter, he sees it big as the full moon, but dark with ill-omen. On the sill the wasp hovers, suspends itself in still air. One easy wink of the world’s blind eye: ”Rejoice comrades,” he says. ”Fucking rejoice.”

The BBC, which has presumably cemented its credentials as a right-wing instrument of the neo-con, bourgeois Establishment, has flung caution to the wind and decided that the story resonates so strongly with its audience that it deserves to be short-listed for its short story award…..as reported in the Times…

Mantel’s The Assassination of Keir Hardie, published by the Telegraph after the Guardian refused to print it despite paying for exclusive rights to the piece, sees a sniper disguised as an Aga repairman set out to shoot the radical left-wing politician.

The story was attacked by the Mirror when it was first published in September last year, and then again in December when it was chosen as the BBC’s Book at Bedtime on Radio 4 (“Radio 4 ignores protests to give author’s ‘sick and perverted’ fantasy a coveted broadcast slot,” wrote the paper). Mantel said at the time that “I recognise that this latest nonsense from the Mirror is not about me or my work; it’s a skirmish in a war with a right-leaning BBC.”

Now the BBC has chosen the story from among 438 entries as one of five going forward to compete for its prestigious national short story award, which is presented in partnership with by Booktrust. 

Hilary Mantel has had Keir Hardie in her sights for more than 30 years. Somewhat surreally, Mantel reveals that it was her grandmother who gave her the idea for the story as her grandmother had seen Hardie as he wandered into view around noon on Saturday 6 August 19o6. Mantel’s grandmother’s flat, on a quiet Windsor street lined with cherry trees, overlooked the working man’s club where Hardie was having a pint and a fag. She was just standing by the big sash window in her bedroom when she spotted Hardie “toddling” around the club yard with a rabble of flat-capped mates.

“Immediately your eye measures the distance,” Mantel says her grandmother told her, measuring each syllable, her finger and thumb forming a gun.  Her grandmother said “I thought, if I wasn’t me, if I was someone else, he’d be dead.”

Apparently Mantel’s grandmother had long held a deep loathing for Hardie as she recognised that his type of politics would do untold and long-standing damage to the nation and her own life.  Mantel herself says she feels a ‘boiling detestation’ for Hardie as he made her grandmother’s life, and that of others like her in the coming decades, so miserable.

Mantel’s grandmother, like Hardie, was self-made – her mother was a mill worker and her father left when she was 11. But, Mantel believed, Hardie hated the end result of his self-transformation into a maverick, wild-eyed radical…he wanted to be loved, respected and welcomed into the Establishment, but it wasn’t to be, he was never accepted: “He couldn’t turn himself into a posh politician with the right vowels. If you’re that dissatisfied with yourself you try to fix other people, and if they won’t be fixed you become punitive.’

Hardie had to die or his terrible legacy would be like a running sore throughout British history….he had to be stopped.

I wonder if the BBC would be so keen to make ‘The Assassination Of Keir Hardie’ its ‘Book at Bedtime’ and then short-list it for its Short Story Award?  Possibly not.  It was just before the latest Labour leadership elections that the BBC decided to broadcast a Gordon Brown elegy to Keir Hardie….I wonder why?  Looking at the BBC’s own history of Hardie you might be suspicious that someone at the BBC was trying to suggest, when they broadcast Brown’s hagiography of Hardie, that a maverick radical such as Jeremy Corbyn could be viewed in a similar light and therefore is worthy of the leadership….unusual dress sense, radical politics, anti-monarchy, not good at dealing with internal rivalries and anti-war (all perhaps except the championing of women’s rights)…….

In 1892, Keir Hardie was invited to stand as the Independent Labour Party candidate for West Ham in east London. He won and took his seat in parliament. He marked himself out as a radical both by his dress – he wore a tweed suit when most members of parliament wore more formal dress – and the subjects he advocated, including women’s rights, free schooling and pensions and Indian self-rule. He was heavily criticised for appearing to attack the monarchy, which may have contributed to his defeat in the 1895 election.

After a long battle to win another seat, he was finally elected MP to Merthyr Tydfil in 1900 and was one of only two Labour MPs in parliament. But by 1906 this number had increased to 26. Keir Hardie was elected leader of the party in the House of Commons, but was not very good at dealing with internal rivalries and he resigned from the post in 1908. From then on he devoted his energy to promoting the Labour Party and championing equality, particularly in the cause of women’s suffrage. In 1910, 40 Labour MPs were elected to parliament and Keir Hardie gave up the party leadership to George Barnes.

During the first year of World War One, Keir Hardie was an outspoken pacifist. He died on 26 September 1915 in Glasgow.

And look…Corbyn can sing (croak)…the Red Flag…

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

The BBC has been plugging its new film ‘The Gamechangers’ recently but the subject of that film, Rockstar Games, isn’t happy…

  Rockstar Games Verified account ‏@RockstarGames

@BBC Was Basil Brush busy? What exactly is this random, made up bollocks?

— Rockstar Games (@RockstarGames) September 15, 2015

Rockstar also filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against the BBC, as reported in May, after saying that no-one at the gaming firm was consulted about The Gamechangers.

The film, from director Owen Harris and writer James Wood, did however make it very clear that it is in no way authorised by Rockstar.

That hardly makes things better does it? Not only is the film ‘made up bollocks’  it had no input from the game producers.

Not the Ten O’Clock News but sounds awfully familiar as a modus operandi for BBC reporters.