‘Overall, television coverage of the whole election has not covered itself, or anything else, in glory.  Too often it has bought the line fed to it by pollsters and pundits on one hand and been childishly confrontational on the other.

This should be the last time that Television attempts to force the political reality into a preassigned format.

The BBC needs fewer gimmicks, more real journalists and a new helmsman; ITV needs to be less deferential to the BBC; Channel 4 needs to grow up.’

AA Gill in the Sunday Times today.

Listening to the BBC news in the car and I heard that Mandelson had pilloried Miliband for not laying out Labour’s plan for economic growth… the web report doesn’t quote him on growth but limits itself to this….

Comparing Labour’s economic strategy to a polo mint “with a great hole in the middle”, he said it gave the impression it was “for the poor, hate the rich, ignoring completely the vast swathe of the population who exist in between who do have values like ours”.

Mandelson’s words reminded me of something from earlier in the week that I let go by at the time, a Nicky Campbell debate on Tuesday in which he asks ‘Are the politicans failing to talk about the issues that are important to you?’

Now if he had asked that back say in January you might have thought yes, let’s stick our oar in and make ourselves heard but two days before the election, you have to be kidding!, and is the BBC really trying to lay the blame for a lack of debate over a wide range of subjects at the politician’s door?

Surely it was the BBC’s job to broaden the debate and ask those relevant questions about subjects the politicians want to skirt around such as education, foreign policy and immigration…and yes Labour’s plans for growth….the one subject they did want to get their teeth into was the Tory’s plans for welfare reforms and the £12 bn of savings/cuts….funny that.

The BBC had a bad election as I said before….it showed clear bias in what subjects it concentrated on, who got the headlines and who it sought to undermine….but it also had a bad election in its role as a news and current affairs broadcaster just from a professional point of view, failing to explore all the issues and challenge the politicans of all colours and creeds about them.  It had a very lazy election.

Just as Mandelson says Labour was intent solely on bashing the rich and presenting itself as the party of the poor the BBC followed the same agenda telling us that inequality was THE major political narrative of our time.  How often did the BBC report from the poorest areas of a city or region, from foodbanks or concentrated on Zero Hour Contracts when such contracts make up a very small portion of the employment market and around 2/3rds of people on them are happy to be so?  This was the BBC that painted the bleakest picture of the NHS as a failed or failing enterprise rather than having a balanced look at what it provides…certainly it is under strain but not as a result of Coaliton changes.  Then we had the ‘living wage’, non-doms, the bedroom tax and the apparent lack of productivity.

All Labour policy concerns given headline status by the BBC.

What did the Tories get?  The sole big Tory splash that I can remember the BBC going big on was the Tory NHS announcement…but that of course was only to try to rip it apart with claims that the promise was unfunded.  However, despite a couple of interviews when Miliband was on the rack over his NHS plans, the BBC machine ignored the fact that Labour’s own plans were unfunded…the Mansion tax and tax avoidance money making schemes ridiculed by most commentators.

Labour promised to spend £2.5 billion above whatever the Tories promised….and yet even that £2.5 bn was, as said, unfunded….so how on earth would they fund the rest?

That takes us to growth and Labour’s lack of plans to increase it…central to funding all its promises, and especially in addressing the ‘living standards crisis’, unless they aimed to fund it all by soaking the rich…..where were the BBC questions asking about this important factor in Labour’s utopian dream?  How was Labour going to fund that improvement in living standards that was the backbone of its attack on the Tories?

The IFS, led by a man with links to the Labour party, told us that Labour could make very few cuts, borrow more and still cut the deficit…just how would that work?  The BBC didn’t ask.  Even when the BBC did quote something from the IFS that criticised both parties the criticism of Labour was soon massaged out of the news.

The BBC failed both in its remit to be impartial and also just from a professional stand point…failing to explore the issues, failing to challenge the Parties on subjects they didn’t want to talk about and failing to really get what the Public thought important into the debate…which is all a bit ironic as the BBC claims it was at the heart of it all…

Election 2015: TV debates ‘most influential’ for voters

More than a third of voters were influenced by the TV debates between the political leaders in the run-up to the election, a survey has found.

According to a Panelbase survey of 3,019 people, 38% were influenced by the debates, 23% by TV news coverage and 10% by party political broadcasts.

The research group said TV was “by far the most influential media source”, outscoring newspapers and social media.

Of those surveyed by Panelbase, 62% said TV coverage overall had been the most influential in informing them about the general election, the parties and their policies – helping them form their opinions.

TV wielded far more power on those surveyed than newspapers at 25%, websites at 17%, radio at 14%, and speaking to family and friends at 14%.

A paradox there….if TV coverage is so influential why is there not a Labour government?  Perhaps the answer is that  we would have had an even bigger Tory majority if the BBC had been less, far, far less, biased.

Anyone else seen Chuka Umunna interviewed by Andrew Marr this morning? I was amazed at the easy ride he was given by Marr and how he was even able to get away with saying that Labour had NOT mismanaged the economy the last time they were in power! London-based liberal elitists such as Umunna appeal to the BBC – even better that he is black. Whether the trade unions are quite as indulgent we will see. It was touching to see Umunna and Mandelson unite around the vital need for the UK to stay in the EU  – with Andrew Marr’s smiling agreement.

I can see that the AFTERMATH thread is overflowing. So, here’s a new one. BBC still distraught and have decided it is timely to hype up Conservative splits over the EU as well as continuing to pander to the irrelevance of the SNP. The floor is yours…

What would the political landscape be after a PR driven ‘earthquake’?

The BBC has kindly provided us with a breakdown…

UKIP would have won 83 seats and the SNP only 25.

Leave you to express your thoughts on that one.

DB on this site (h/t Craig at Is the BBC Biased?) noticed that the BBC’s Hugh Sykes was in a frenzy of sefl-righteousness about the Times using the word ‘earthquake’ as Craig reveals…

I hope the @thetimes will apologise to the relatives of the recently dead in #Nepal for describing the #UK #election2015 as an earthquake.

— HughSykes (@HughSykes) May 9, 2015

 

I hope the BBC will apologise for a similar use just one day ago…….

UK ‘political earthquake’ rocks EU

The words “political earthquake” have been translated into numerous European languages today, making front page news across the continent.

The mood is possibly best summed up in the Le Monde headline: Triumph for Cameron. Concern for Europe.

Of course the Times is from the Murdoch stable and no doubt the ever more dumb Sykes is not on a sanctimonious moral crusade but a political and ideological one.

Looking at Sykes’ Twitter feed he has this gem…which could indicate something…wishful thinking possibly….and ironically from the Times…..

The Miliband future will not be televised….not by the BBC, not by anyone.

That may come as a surprise to anyone who has been following the BBC’s election coverage and had been left with the impression that Miliband was a force to be reckoned with, one that was growing in popularity and stature as the momentum of his campaign grew and carried him inevitably into No10.

Nicola Sturgeon didn’t rate Miliband as PM material and even little Owen Jones is now pointing out that he wrote up Labour’s policies as lacking any real substance last year.

And that indeed was Labour’s problem, one the BBC did its best to bury.  Miliband was the eternal student, lacking any experience of the world outside politics he fought the campaign on clever wheezes designed to catch the voters eye with guaranteed headlines whilst hoping no one would challenge the viability and substance of each new populist policy.  In that he had a valuable ally, the BBC, which rarely bothered itself to examine in depth his policies whilst giving him massive headlines and a write up that suggested he was leading the way, shaping the political narrative.  Energy price freezes, mansion taxes, predistribution, paying for the NHS with ‘whatever it takes’ and claiming he had it all paid for, the ending of non-dom status, the Falkirk selection scandal, stabbing his brother in the back….all variously ignored, downplayed, bigged up or defended to the hilt by the BBC.

Jon Pienaar now says that he always knew Miliband’s non-dom policy ‘didn’t ring true’ and indeed he originally said that the revelation of Ball’s own defence of non-dom status was ‘The mother and father of all banana skins’ however as we pointed out previously the BBC then carried on as if Balls hadn’t said that or that if he had, then things had changed and Labour, with their ‘independent economic advisor’, not, had found a way to make the policy pay.

Pienaar is now also saying that he knew Cameron would get a majority and had been saying it around the office for a long time….why did he not share his thoughts with the public if this is what he believed would happen?….after all that is what he is known for…providing analysis using his own interpretation of the political situation…he isn’t normally so shy about giving us his thoughts.

Some interesting comments from others today….Uber lefty Ken Livingstone blamed New Labour’s legacy for the current failure…saying that millions of quality jobs were lost under Labour to be replaced by low paid, low status jobs.

Dan Hodges admits Miliband stabbed Miliband….‘There were other eyes watching him. From the very beginning, when he stood on that stage in Manchester and looked directly at his own brother and told him “David, I love you”. Straight after he’d killed him off.’

We also kept hearing today that Labour had moved too far to the left under Miliband….when did you ever hear the BBC raising that criticism of Red Ed?

The BBC was all too enthralled by the ‘new political landscape’ (as they were with Occupy)…..apparently we were all fed up with the old politics and there was supposedly a massive move to the left, it was definitely the end of two party politics…..and curiously this election was the first that would bring that about…ignoring the fact of the last 5 years having been a coalition government.  No one party would ever get a ruling majority again…..indeed even today after the Tory ‘landslide’ shock, relatively speaking, the BBC bods were pushing the line that Labour would never get a majority again after losing so badly in Scotland….they never learn…..filling the airwaves with endless speculation that is nearly always proved wrong by events.

We also hear from Labour that the problem was that they didn’t challenge the narrative that they caused the financial meltdown….bit hard to do that when they did cause it as even Miliband himself admits the recession was due to the lack of bank regulation..however the BBC has always preferred not to examine Labour’s record on that  if at all possible.

Labour lost despite the massive support of the BBC, and Russell Brand….his fleeting support now withdrawn as he blames the Establishment and the right wing Press for stitching up Miliband….but he’s just a comedian with a laptop and a bit of mouth he tells us, what does he know?….if you can’t beat the Establishment get compassionate with your neighbour….

The BBC got their campaign, sorry, reporting, massively wrong….the whole tenor of their reporting giving Miliband a substance and credibility he just didn’t have. Miliband’s policies were all show and no go, Miliband himself would never have been able to withstand the SNP assault and he’d have been reliant on them to stay in office…in other words Fallon was right to raise the concerns about what Miliband would compromise in order to stay in No10.

The BBC’s election reporting was ultimately one huge fail having set out to defend and prop up the faltering Miliband instead of sticking to reporting the facts. Every time Miliband made a cock up the BBC would desperately cast around for something negative about Cameron to balance out the negative press Miliband was getting…Miliband is massively slated for his ‘Edstone’ and suddenly all we hear on the BBC is that a Libdem has suddenly remembered an amazing conversation between Clegg and Cameron in which Cameorn said he thought he wouldn’t get a majority….non-news plastered all over the BBC….was someone trying to distract us from the Miliband farce?  Lucy Powell, Miliband’s strategist, admits damningly that the pledges carved in stone didn’t actually mean he would not break some of them….and Pienaar comes on to tell us she of course didn’t mean that at all, that wasn’t what she was saying…well yes it was Jon.

All in all the BBC had a bad election, not as bad as Miliband’s, but bad.  Their analysis of what is happening in politics proving to be way off course…..a single party has won a majority and the population is not moving to the left, Miliband would have been absolutely dominated by Sturgeon and his policies were so much smoke and mirrors.

If you’d relied on the BBC for your news you’d never have guessed the true state of politics in the UK.

The Mail says…

BBC must now pay the price for its blatant anti-Conservative bias

As the results filtered through, and the scale of the Tory victory became clear, the BBC seemed to go into official mourning over the phenomenal losses suffered by Labour and the Lib Dems.

It was as if the Corporation, in its despair over the collapse of the Left, believed the whole nation shared its anguish. 

Nothing could have been further from the truth, and once more the BBC missed the real story — the remarkable, historic triumph of conservatism.

This abrogation of its responsibility as a public broadcaster will, inevitably, have an effect on its future, as the BBC’s licence fee comes under increasing scrutiny.

Undoubtedly, a new and energised Tory Government will look closely at the issue of whether this Left-leaning, management-heavy behemoth should be subsidised by a compulsory tax on TV viewers.

Well then, the BBC are in mourning as the UK returns a majority Conservative Government. Thoughts on BBC coverage?

The BBC has spent a good deal of time either downplaying or ignoring the Muslim Trojan Horse scandal in Birmingham schools, often resorting to saying that the claims of a Muslim takeover were merely the deluded ramblings of racists, Islamophobes and the paranoid…..before suggesting that if that is what Muslim parents wanted then perhaps that is what they should have in the interests of that old dangerous standby ‘community cohesion’.

How different is the BBC approach to similar religious fundamentalism in Georgian schools…

The church’s conservative message is increasingly at odds with the country’s liberal, pro-Western direction, which paradoxically most Georgians also support.

Schools have become an ideological battleground.

Children under pressure

In 2012 Saakashvili’s government lost the election to the more traditionalist “Georgian Dream” coalition, which was enthusiastically backed by the church and grassroots Orthodox groups.

Since then, “collective prayers, preaching and indoctrination in public schools have been on the rise,” says Eka Chitanava from Georgia’s Tolerance and Diversity Institute, which recently conducted a survey of 33 religious minorities. All said their children are facing pressure at school, especially Muslims and Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Ah….especially Muslims under pressure…..that explains the BBC’s concern.

Doesn’t this all sound familiar?…just replace Georgian Orthodox with Muslim, and Russia with Saudia Arabia….

The Georgian Orthodox Church denies being an instrument of Russia, saying the links are historical.

But it cites modern religious Russian literature in its teachings, and Father Iotame told me visiting Russian priests started organising annual religious “boot camps” in Georgia three years ago – where he learned about “paedophile parties taking over Europe”. He wants to save the young from “a wave of filth” from the West.

In weekly sermons, hundreds of priests are delivering the same message: Georgia’s Western aspirations are no longer compatible with its ancient Orthodox faith. And they are telling Georgia’s young people they have to make a choice.

All so familiar and yet the BBC has a completely different reaction to the same religious extremism in British schools.

The sheer hypocrisy of the BBC’s Julia Macfarlane’s Tweet about democracy….

 Julia Macfarlane ‏@juliamacfarlane 19 hrs19 hours ago

Tomorrow I’ll have what people protest, bleed and die for across the Middle East, Asia, Africa. A vote. I hope everyone uses theirs. #GE201

So Bush and Blair were right then to bring democracy to Iraq and Afghanistan and give the first chance to determine their own lives to the Muslims of those countries? A chance that Muslims, and not just the so-called extremists, in Britain decry and oppose violently…so much so many went to fight in Iraq, and now go to Syria to impose the sovereignty of Allah, and happily murder vast numbers of other Muslims…..and blithely supported in their ambitions by the BBC whose opposition to the wars and Western foreign policy fed directly into and bolstered the recruitment process of those who wished to exploit the Muslim communities’ own opposition.